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Mick: Every single thing that surrounds us

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today at one point did not exist.

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It was impossible.

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So, then the inverse must be true,

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which is everything
that is impossible today

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is on the trajectory of becoming possible.

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Now, it might not be this
moment, this lifetime,

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but, it's gonna happen.

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(dramatic music)

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(beeping)

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Tempt: One night I had this strange dream.

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I was walking through downtown
Los Angeles in the future.

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It was a filthy,
overcrowded mega-metropolis.

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Even in a situation of seemingly no hope,

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a spark of creativity and beauty existed.

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I never took anything for granted.

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Because you never know

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when everything will be taken from you.

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But they can't take my memories.

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I was ten, and my family had just moved

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to East Los Angeles.

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And there was this sewer
tunnel down the block.

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It was the first time I
ever used spray paint,

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and it felt amazing.

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Chaz: He knew what to do
with the gothic letters

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to make them strong and powerful

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and put the muscle in it.

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That's what I admired about Tempt.

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His letters were gorgeous.

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Angst: He just has this
facility with his hand

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and a can or a marker.

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How he would design certain letters

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to make his name stand apart.

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Tempt is an important
player in the history

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of Los Angeles graffiti.

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(upbeat music)

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Mick: I'm not from the world of graffiti.

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I love art, but I don't really have

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an appreciation or knowledge
of this type of art.

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Angst: Mick Ebeling, I met him

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We were doing one of the
first big fundraisers

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for Tempt and ALS.

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Tempt: ALS is a neurological condition

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where nerve cells die,
causing full paralysis.

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Mick: We happened to
choose to go to this event,

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and by doing so it led
to me realizing the power

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of letting one human being
truly affect your life

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in a deep and meaningful way.

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(oxygen machine respirating)

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Ron: Tony.

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He said Dad, can we have a talk?

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And he says to me,

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I want you to know I'm
gonna fight this disease

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and the people that are around me

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have to be people who do not believe

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I'm going to die.

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(somber music)

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Angst: I think being an
artist, being creative,

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in these kind of situations,

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I believe it helps.

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There's a benefit.

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Our initial will to create from nothing,

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I think he was just hopeful
that something would change.

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Mick: So I end up sitting across
from Tempt's father and brother

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and his brother said,

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"I just wanna talk to my brother again.

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I just wanna be able to
communicate with him."

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And to me that was the first time

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that I had even contemplated

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that someone who was paralyzed

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wasn't able to communicate.

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He told me that they talked
through a piece of paper.

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That they would hold a piece of paper up,

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would run their finger along it,

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and when their finger
would get to a letter,

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Tempt would blink,

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and then they would start again.

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I caught my breath and took a minute

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and said let's do something different.

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Why don't I get you one of
those Steven Hawking machines?

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Angst: I was surprised
mainly because I thought,

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here's this stranger

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who is being friendly,

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is taking an interest in becoming friends

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with my friend.

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That a stranger was
invested in another stranger

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I thought was an amazing thing.

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Technician: It was adjusted
to the proper height,

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the proper distance for Tempt.

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Mick: First time I met him
was after he had the machine.

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I did not want to meet him
until that came through.

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Tempt: When I first met Mick,

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I thought he was a little nuts,

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but nutty in a good way.

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Mick: I said well, wait
why don't we do this?

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If there's a device that we could get him

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that allows him to move
his eyes back and forth

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and then that moves a cursor on the screen

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to select the letters
that makes the robot talk,

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then why don't we figure out

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how he could move his eyes back and forth

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across the screen and move the cursor

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and that lets him draw again.

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And they said, you could do that?

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I'm like, what the heck
did I just commit to?

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Well I'm not a doctor,
I'm not an engineer.

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I've got no training in this,

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but I gotta figure out how
this guy can draw again.

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I end up meeting the founders
of Graffiti Research Lab (GRL).

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They created this interface
there with a laser pointer

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that you could draw in the light.

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Why don't we figure out how to get Tempt

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to control that laser
pointer with his eyes

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and then he can draw again?

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Angst: I mean, I do remember
those conversations,

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you know, we didn't know
if it could be done or not.

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(plane engine roars)

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Mick: These guys flew in
from all over the world.

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They all descended upon our house.

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All the tables and chairs
got pushed against the wall.

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My wife and kids moved out

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into the little place in the back.

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They just took over.

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And we just dog-piled on it

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with a bunch of mad-scientists
and misfit geniuses

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to try to come up with a solution.

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What they were doing was so above me

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that keeping them on track
was more of a conceptual thing

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than actually knowing what
the heck they were doing.

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Dude this isn't even stranded wire

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and it said stranded on the,

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no it didn't, it said solid.

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That sucks.

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Mick: Hacker and maker culture is you do

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whatever you need to do to make it.

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(somber music)

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Angst: Seeing what goes
on with prototyping,

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with programmers and
hackers, total artists,

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in a totally different way,

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but artists nonetheless.

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Mick: We had been working
and working and working

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and this was it.

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It's the last night.

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There was no tomorrow

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because everybody was flying back

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and they had tickets to go
back to all over the world.

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And all of his family and friends

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gathered downstairs in the parking lot,

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just downstairs from the hospital.

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Ron: He's a GRL Guy.
Mick: He's GRL, this is Evan.

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Ron: He's a wacky dude.
Mick: James!

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So there was handful
of people in the room.

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There was a gang of people downstairs.

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People were taking turns
with the laser pointer,

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drawing on the wall,

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then we got the signal from upstairs

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that the next person drawing was Tempt.

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(soft piano music)

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Mick's Son: Is he drawing his name?

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Mick: Yeah, he's drawing
those with his eyes.

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(crowd cheers)

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Angst: Grown men hooping and hollering.

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That night was singular, absolutely.

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Mick: This guy who had had his
passion ripped away from him

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had now been given it back.

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Tempt: Feels like taking
a breath after being held

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underwater for five minutes.

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Mick: At the time I had a
company called the Ebeling Group,

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we were an animation production company,

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we had offices all over the world.

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I woke up every day knowing
exactly what I needed to do,

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but I knew that somehow I
had to keep figuring out

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how to use technology to help people.

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I'd love to sit here and tell you

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that yeah, I totally
had it all figured out.

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I was scared.

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I was really scared, but
Geronimo, here we go.

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Let's just start going out into the world

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and looking for things
that have to be solved

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and let's commit to figuring it out.

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And so that's what we did.

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If you wanna change the world,

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it starts by questioning
things that are absurd.

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Since the Eyewriter, we
tackled the absurdity

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around the deaf not being
able to experience music.

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We figured out how to take music,

187
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break it into its separate parts

188
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and beam that into
specific parts of the skin,

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so we created the skin as the eardrum.

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And we're experimenting
with technological,

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non-pharmaceutical ways to
help people with tremors.

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We've set up the world's first

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3D-printing prosthetic laboratory

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and made an arm that allowed a young boy

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who had both of his arms blown off,

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we made an arm that
allowed him to feed himself

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for the first time in two years.

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We cause people to say

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we can take matters into our own hands

200
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and we're gonna take this solution

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and iterate on it and make it better,

202
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and have that scale.

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Angst: At some levels, it
validates that we are good people.

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This is like a very
simple, human-to-human,

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we look out for each other.

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Period.

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00:09:02,913 --> 00:09:05,400
Mick: I think that's the
whole point of Not Impossible.

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Don't sit back and wait for
someone else to go do it,

209
00:09:07,950 --> 00:09:09,503
you gotta go do it yourself.

210
00:09:09,503 --> 00:09:11,070
(laughing)

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00:09:11,070 --> 00:09:14,220
'Cause if you don't, who will?

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(upbeat rock music)