Episode 1: Do You See What I See?

EriK W.:	Right now, I'm feeling the wind. The wind shifting, blowing on my face. I'm feeling the sun. I'm feeling little snowflakes hitting me in the face, and listening to these incredible little birds zipping around over my head.

Mick Ebeling:	Erik Weihenmayer is climbing a mountain. But not just any mountain, he's climbing Mount Everest. He's talking about what he feels and hears, not about what he sees, because Erik is blind. He's the first blind person to have ever scaled Mount Everest.

EriK W.:	And I can also hear the fact, that there's these big mountains around us, that are just huge. I can hear the echo off of them, and I can tell we're way down below them. I get a lot out of the scenery, it's just not visual.

Mick Ebeling:	Erik wasn't born blind, but he began losing his sight at a young age.

EriK W.:	Well, I went blind from just a rare eye disease. It wasn't like a big climbing accident, or anything dramatic. Just this a slow progression of disease. I guess I was missing a gene or something.

EriK W.:	There are days, as a blind person, where you trip over the thing that's in front of you or you bang your head against the wall literally, and you're really frustrated. You have that choice, whether life is this nightmare, or whether it's an exciting adventure. You've got to just be able to see it as that adventure.

Mick Ebeling:	Climbing Everest, skydiving, running marathons, skiing. Erik had figured it out not only how to live a life of adventure, but how a blind person can live life, as he says, without barriers.

EriK W.:	I definitely think it brings out the problem solver in you, when you're trying to think about, "Okay, I'm coming home from the park, and where do I turn mount a bike path?" It's like, "I want to cut across the grass, and cross this little creek, and go into the back of my house. Where do I do it?" How do I figure that out, and not getting disoriented.

Mick Ebeling:	He'd pretty much solved every problem in his way except one, seeing. Until one day for the very first time since he'd lost his sight, Erik did something that seemed truly impossible. He reached out and grabbed the white tennis ball, as it rolled across the table. In that moment, he literally saw the ball, just not with his eyes. I know that sounds utterly, totally impossible, but as you're about to hear, it really did happen.

Mick Ebeling:	My name is Mick Ebeling, and welcome to the first episode of Not Impossible. A new podcast, with a really simple premise. What if nothing in life is impossible?

Mick Ebeling:	This podcast is brought to you by Avnet. A company dedicated to helping creators of all types find whatever they need, to get from idea to product, and then to get their product to market anywhere in the world. We're going to be bringing you stories about people solving the hardest, most mind-boggling problems, in some of the most creative and unimaginable ways.

Mick Ebeling:	Today we have a story about a blind man seeing, with his tongue. You heard me right, I said, "Seeing. with his tongue."

Mick Ebeling:	To get there, let's start at the beginning. By the time he was 13, Erik was totally blind.

EriK W.:	I could never see that great. I was born legally blind, so I could see at 20 feet, I guess what a person with perfect eyesight would see at 200 feet. I never could see in that much detail, like shades of gray. Like faces, faces are something that you look at all the time. But for me they're very complex, trying to form the way a face is. All the lines, and all the shapes, and eyes, and nose and mouth. I mean, it's easy to create that cartoon character in your mind. But it's much harder, to keep the real, the way things actually look in your mind.

Mick Ebeling:	Would you say that what you see are images you're creating? Or, are they memories? Or, are they kind of a mixture of both?

EriK W.:	Yeah, it's what... even though your eyes don't work anymore, your brain still works. So yeah, my brain is extrapolating information, and it's interpreting it and actually creating mental images in my mind. It's constantly doing that. My brain works very visually.

Mick Ebeling:	When you dream, do you dream in pictures?

EriK W.:	Dreams are funny. When I dream, I can see sometimes. I can see vaguely sometimes. Sometimes I just kind of know what's going on, and I'm not really sure how. That's really hard for sighted people to understand, because your vision is so important. Your eyes are so... they bring in so much information. But when your other senses bring in information it creates an image, but it may not be visual.

Mick Ebeling:	For Erik, his eyes couldn't deliver visual information. So he learned to use other senses and other tools, like an ice pick.

EriK W.:	I have to think about where I want to swing, and figure out how to do that. So scanning my tool across the ice, I'm feeling for the vibration through the my pick, I'm listening to the sound, and I'm tapping my tool against the ice. I'm assessing whether that's going to be a good swing through my ears, through my sense of touch.

Mick Ebeling:	But about a dozen years ago, just by chance, Erik's father read a newspaper article about a man who was doing some remarkable work. In fact, he created what is now an entirely new theory of how the brain works. His name was Paul Bach-y-Rita.

Aimee A.:	Paul Bach-y-Rita was a researcher, who spent his life looking at the world through a different Lens. The brain isn't fixed, that maybe the brain is more malleable and can change.

Mick Ebeling:	This is Aimee Arnoldussen. She's a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin. That's where Paul Bach-y-Rita taught and did his research. He had this radical new idea, that the brain can reorganize itself to solve problems. It's called neuroplasticity.

Aimee A.:	As recently as 20 years ago, people thought the brain couldn't change. That the brain had a basic organization that was set up early in life, and areas that were responsible for vision would always be responsible for vision. Areas that were responsible for the other senses, were always responsible for those senses. But it's possible with neuroplasticity, for the brain to be able to change and use different inputs in different ways.

Mick Ebeling:	And when it comes across a problem, to find different solutions.

Aimee A.:	Neuroplasticity is sort of like a roadmap. Typically you try and travel from point A to point B, and you use the most direct route and the route that you're most familiar with. But if there's construction in the way, one can route around the construction and use different roads. Those roads might be longer, those roads might be more difficult to travel, but you can still get from point A to point B. In extreme cases, sometimes you might have to build new roads. In neuroplasticity, that would be building new connections.

Mick Ebeling:	So by the 1960s Bach-y-Rita has this theory of neuroplasticity, and he's looking at the parts of the brain that are involved with vision. He had an idea that maybe we could give visual information to people who are blind, not through their eyes, but through a different form.

Aimee A.:	That form, it was the sense of touch. One of his early prototypes in the 1960s, was a large mechanical dental chair. A person sat in this large dental chair, and a series of pins would poke out onto the person's back, into the shape of whatever a large video camera was pointing it.

Mick Ebeling:	One of the first things he pointed his camera at, was a picture of the super skinny British model, Twiggy, one of the iconic figures of the 60s. That image of Twiggy was formed by pins in the users back, and lo and behold, the user could actually figure out what the camera was pointing at. It was a huge breakthrough. From there, the concept just exploded.

Aimee A.:	You go from the 1960s, where you have this large mechanical chair with pins that poke in and out. To fast-forwarding to the late 1990s and the early 2000s, and Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita explored all parts of the body, to try and figure out the best location to provide this tactile information. He tried the back end originally, he explored the abdomen, the fingertips, even the inner thigh. Where he landed on, was actually the tongue.

Mick Ebeling:	Okay, so now we've reached the seemingly impossible part of the story. How to turn your tongue into your eyes. I'll explain after the break.

Mick Ebeling:	Okay, let's face it. This is a podcast dedicated to technology, for the sake of humanity. But it's also about the people behind that technology. If that's you, Avnet can help, no matter what you build. Why? Because they are the first company ever, to offer true end-to-end solutions for product development in-house.

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Mick Ebeling:	So, back to our story. Paul Bach-y-Rita has figured out how to get visual information to the brain, even if the person is blind. It took another 20 years, but that simple concept gave way to a brilliant new invention. It's called the BrainPort.

Bob Beckman:	First, I'll say that Paul Bach-y-Rita famously said, that we see with our brains and not with our eyes.

Mick Ebeling:	Bob Beckman is the CEO of Wicab, the company behind the BrainPort. Bach-y-Rita, who died in 2006 was company's founder.

Bob Beckman:	He meant that, the eyes are a sensor to the world. But if the eyes are damaged, then you can use an alternate sensor, such as a video camera to provide the input.

Mick Ebeling:	Bob, can you explain what exactly is the BrainPort? Describe it to us.

Bob Beckman:	The BrainPort is a device which includes: a camera mounted on a pair of Oakley Sunglasses, a handheld computer attached to that camera via wire. We process the information from the video camera in that handheld computer, and then we send it to a tongue display. The user learns to interpret electrical signals, but feel like patterns of bubbles on their tongue, as the scene around them.

Mick Ebeling:	You got that, right? First you've got a video camera in the center of a pair of sunglasses, and it's gathering the visual information from whatever it's pointing at. A person, a cup of water, a tree. That information is then sent to a handheld device, about the size of a cell phone.

Mick Ebeling:	Okay, so here's what happens next. That handheld device translates that information into electrical pulses, and those pulses are sent to something that's sort of looks like a flat lollipop that sits on your tongue.

Bob Beckman:	The electrotactile signals feel like patterns of bubbles on your tongue, and the profoundly blind user learns to interpret those patterns of bubbles, as the scene around them.

Mick Ebeling:	Think about that for a second. Just like when your eyes see the pixels on a computer screen and interpret them as a picture, the same thing happens here in your brain. The electrical signals, those bubbles, become the pixels.

Bob Beckman:	Think of it as 400 pixels on the tongue. Obviously, that is very limited, in comparison to the number of pixels that your eyes are able to process. But people who are blind, process the information in their visual cortex.

Mick Ebeling:	It's just, that's and so incredibly science fiction, right? For the most people hearing this for the first time, the concept of someone's seen through their tongue, that seems impossible.

Bob Beckman:	But it's not impossible. The brain is not hardwired, which means that you do not have to send the signal directly from the eye through the optic nerve. Instead, you can use an alternate channel, such as the tongue.

Mick Ebeling:	Why the tongue? Where did that come from? Why did you choose the tongue, as that point of input?

Bob Beckman:	Because the tongue is an excellent conductor of electricity. You could also stimulate a different site, such as your index finger, and you would feel the bubbles on your index finger. But in order to display the same amount of information on your index finger, we would have to turn up the stimulation to a level that would be uncomfortable. So, the tongue is actually optimum, from a standpoint of sites on the body where you can conduct electricity.

Mick Ebeling:	One of the first people to use the BrainPort, was our mountain climbing friend Erik Weihenmayer.

EriK W.:	Very first time when I met Dr. Bach-y-Rita, they were doing things, like they took a black tablecloth and they rolled a white tennis ball across the table. Sure enough, I have this plate on my tongue, and the camera's following the ball. The ball is getting larger on my tongue, as it's rolling through space. Within a matter of minutes, I could reach out and grab this ball, pluck this ball off the table.

EriK W.:	My brain had figured out how to reach out and grab that ball in space. Again, I know I'm going to beat the Everest thing, and it's not it's not as dramatic as that. But for me, it was monumental. It was mind-boggling, in a way. Because as a blind person, you lose hand to eye coordination. If I'm scanning for a coffee mug on the table, I creep my hand across the table real lightly, so I don't tip it over, and I find it.

EriK W.:	But with this, I could look down at the table, I could see the coffee cup on my tongue, in space. I could reach out, and I would grab it out of space. It was crazy.

Mick Ebeling:	If you saw it, you'd think he was faking it.

EriK W.:	My climbing partner, Jeff, he came by one day. He's like, "I don't believe this thing works." He stuck a coke can on the table, and I walked out of the room. I came back and I'd scan the table, and there it was. I reached out, and I grab it. He started crying, it was really cool.

Mick Ebeling:	That's amazing, Erik. That is truly mind-boggling.

EriK W.:	Well, it gets even better, because then I started experimenting with this device. They'd say, "Take this thing out. Don't don't kill yourself, but to go out and experiment, and see how you push the envelope." So I've used it in rock gyms, to look up and find the holds that contrast the wall. And reach out into space, and grab a hold that's on the wall, that's four feet above my head, and find it. That was really wild for me.

Mick Ebeling:	But the true magic of the BrainPort, what it truly restored to Erik's life, went far beyond picking up a can or climbing a wall.

EriK W.:	I started interacting with my kids, like playing games like tic-tac-toe. I could the kids' hands when they played stone-paper-scissors. I could tell whether hand was spread out, or whether it was a rock, or whether it was scissors, like two little fingers. I played board games. I played card games like War, where I could see the card. It was just fully joyous.

EriK W.:	I mean, it was like, you realize what people think about blindness, "Oh, you can't see, so you're in darkness." Well, that you get used to. You get used to not being able to see. But what you really lose out on, are those connections with the world. Those ways that you interact with people in subtle, beautiful ways. Playing stump-paper-scissors with my kids, was like the coolest thing ever.

Mick Ebeling:	It's amazing just to conceive of the fact, that what you just described, playing games, grabbing a coke can, picking up a ball, you basically did that with your tongue.

EriK W.:	Yeah. I mean you could get into trouble. You could see a beautiful woman and say, "I'm looking at you with my tongue, right now." That definitely, would not be something that would work so good.

EriK W.:	There were things that I'd forgotten, too. Like seeing my kids, where they are smiling. I could see the crease of their smile. I was watching something, and Ellie was watching me watch it. I reached out to feel it, and she said "Stop!" I was like, "Well, what is it?" It's this crazy, little round thing, with a little point, and it's flickering around like really, really fast. Bouncing all around. She's like, "Don't touch that, it's the little flame at the top of the candle."

Mick Ebeling:	Erik's experiences with the BrainPort, had a ripple effect. Now there are blind people all over the world who are doing things, things that they could never imagine doing, because of the BrainPort.

Bob Beckman:	A very good person to talk about, is a local person in Madison, Wisconsin. His name is Kevin Jones, he has been blind since birth.

Mick Ebeling:	This is Bob Beckman again, the guy who now runs the company that makes the BrainPort. He told us that using the device, Kevin can now play golf.

Bob Beckman:	He is able to use our technology, to putt on a putting green. In other words, he can visualize the white mallet against the green grass. He can perceive the white ball, and where the hole is in the putting green. He's able to putt, and make putts, better than some of the sighted people I've seen putt.

Bob Beckman:	He's able to throw darts at a dartboard. By sound, he can tell when the dart hits the dartboard. Then as he zooms in, he can see where the dark struck the dartboard. He's getting better and better at throwing darts.

Mick Ebeling:	You're saying Kevin is on the golf course, putting, and in the pub throwing darts because of BrainPort?

Bob Beckman:	Yes, he can do both of those things.

Mick Ebeling:	I don't know, this kind of harkens back to the Paul Newman movie, The Color of Money. I feel a bit of a shakedown, with you guys going out around town. "Does anybody want to bet, that my friend Kevin here can't putt your socks off?" That's an amazing one.

Bob Beckman:	Exactly.

Mick Ebeling:	That's...

Bob Beckman:	Yup. I hadn't thought about that. You've got me thinking now-

Mick Ebeling:	There we go.

Bob Beckman:	... how to raise our next round of capital.

Mick Ebeling:	Exactly.

Bob Beckman:	Yes. Good idea.

Mick Ebeling:	So that's all pretty amazing and fun. And now Wicab has just gotten FDA approval for a new version of the BrainPort, that doesn't even require that separate handheld controller. So it will be easier to use, for even more people.

Mick Ebeling:	But all of this talk how the BrainPort works, begs one very important question. When you're using the BrainPort, do you see what I see?

EriK W.:	I love that question, because there's really not a concrete answer for it. I use the word "see" because, in a way it's seeing. Like Dr. Bach-y-Rita said, "Do you see with your eyes, or with your mind?" I think you see with your mind. When I am feeling these electrical impulses on my tongue, I'm feeling shapes, I'm feeling definitions. It's like putting your tongue on a battery, like when you did that when you were a kid.

EriK W.:	But what my brain is doing, is taking those tactile lines and shapes, objects, and creating a mental picture, of the way I could see when I was a little boy. And so, very quickly your brain learns how to take those things that it's feeling, and build the image of what I could see before. So, when I say that I'm feeling my kids face through my tongue, my brain is really, truly, I think, seeing that. When I think about my kids faces, I'm not feeling it with my tongue. I'm not feeling those lines, and things like that with my tongue. I'm actually seeing them in my mind.

EriK W.:	I remember now, in my mind, the image of my kid talking and laughing, and telling me a joke. And I wasn't even listening to what he was saying. I was just watching his mouth move, and his laugh, and his smile and his teeth. I was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe the mouth moves like that, when it tells a joke and smiles."

Mick Ebeling:	There you have it. The thing that Erik thought was impossible, way more impossible than getting to the top of the world... seeing his son smile, that was no longer impossible.

Mick Ebeling:	Now, let me put the question to you. What in your life seems impossible? What if you said, "Screw it, I'm going for it anyway." Commit, and then figure it out. You don't worry about the how. You don't worry about the whether you're going to succeed. You don't worry about any of those kinds of details. You just commit to doing it, and then see what happens. Just imagine the possibilities.

Mick Ebeling:	Thanks for listening to Not Impossible. Thanks again to our sponsor Avnet, a company that provides true end-to-end technology solutions, to help people who make... well, anything, anywhere in the world reach further. I want to invite you all to go check out their communities. Hackster, the world's fastest growing developer community for learning, programming and building hardware. element14, the biggest designer engineer community on the planet. You can find links to their websites on ours, PodcastNotImpossible.com.

Mick Ebeling:	Be sure to check out. Erik Weihenmayer's amazing book, called No Barriers: A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon, now available in paperback.

Mick Ebeling:	That's our podcast for today. Our senior producer for this episode was Joslin Frank, our development director, Erin Sullivan. Joe Barbarsky is our director of partnerships. Barking Owl Studios did our final mix. Vicki Schairer, our associate producer. Huge thanks to the team at Not Impossible. And our executive producers are Phil Lerman and me, I'm Mick Ebeling.

Mick Ebeling:	Thanks for listening to Not Impossible. And until next time, remember, commit and then figure it out. It sounds crazy, right? Maybe, but it's Not Impossible.