Robert Krulwich (2:43)

And thanks, we will make wonderful use of that money.

Jad Abumrad (2:46)

Yeah.

Robert Krulwich (2:47)

To prove it to you, or at least to make you our best offer, we are now going to tell you a story. This one comes from Oliver Sacks, the neuroscientist who often shares sources with us. In this case, he told us about two people.

Jad Abumrad (2:58)

We ended up telling the story live on stage at UCLA's Royce Hall. It's part of our show in the Dark.

Robert Krulwich (3:04)

It's in the middle of our show, so just settle back. And here we go. We've talked about the journey from darkness to light and how we got eyes and can see. So let's go the opposite direction. We know there are people who see and then go blind and then go back into the darkness. Or do they?

Zoltan Torrey (3:23)

Hello, wnyc.

Robert Krulwich (3:24)

I want to introduce you to someone.

John Hull (3:26)

Hello, John.

Zoltan Torrey (3:26)

Hello.

John Hull (3:27)

This is John Hull. Hi, John. This is Pat Walters.

Robert Krulwich (3:29)

We have been emailing. I had our producer, Pat Walters, get John Hull into a studio.

John Hull (3:34)

Oh, Pat, I for some reason, imagined you as a woman called Patricia.

Robert Krulwich (3:39)

Yeah, this happens to Pat all the time.

Zoltan Torrey (3:41)

So.

Robert Krulwich (3:41)

So many of his blind dates end just suddenly. Anyway, John Hull is a theory theology professor in England and he is blind. But he hasn'.

John Hull (3:52)

No, no. I was born with a condition, an inherited condition, and I developed cataract when I was a boy of 13.

Robert Krulwich (4:00)

And then things got cloudy.

John Hull (4:01)

Exactly. The milky whiteness.

Robert Krulwich (4:03)

But it happened slowly at first. His life really wasn't bad at all. He lived a pretty normal existence. He went to college, he got married, he had kids. But eventually cataracts developed and they got worse. It was gradual, but over the years, his world kept getting darker and then darker and darker until when he was 35, his world went totally dark.

John Hull (4:29)

When I lost my sight, I suffered a lot from boredom. I just didn't know what to think about. I mean, when you're sighted, you've always got something to think about. You know, the waves are rising and falling on the beach. The girls are walking past. There's always something. But when you're blind, what do you think about? What fills your mind? That was a problem for me at first.

Robert Krulwich (4:53)

But one night at a party with his wife, Marilyn, something happened that got him thinking.

John Hull (4:59)

I was at a party and an old friend came up to me and said, john, there's something I think you should know. I said, what is it? He said, I think you should know that Marilyn is looking particularly beautiful tonight. Now, I felt, how dare this man put his eyes on my wife and have the cheek to come and tell me that he thinks she's beautiful. He went on to say, in a way, John, you're fortunate. To you, she will always be as beautiful as the day you married her. Now, I told Marilyn that story after the party was over. She said, some of my female friends are telling me the same thing. One of them said the other day, you know, Marilyn, in a way, you are fortunate. John will never see those little gray hairs, those little wrinkles. And then I thought, robert, what is it like to be a beautiful woman and not to be able to display yourself to the man you love? No point in getting new clothes. No point in going to the hairdresser. Okay, this perfume.

Robert Krulwich (6:12)

No.

John Hull (6:12)

But half the time, the bastard doesn't notice. You see what I mean? Our worlds were becoming so profoundly different. I had to say to myself, and this is the crux of my experience, how am I to live with this woman? Am I to live in nostalgic memory every time I'm with her? I said, no, I will not live in nostalgia. I will live with this woman as a living sighted woman. I as a living blind man. We will live together in the present moment. We will accept each other as we are across the abyss which divides us.

Jad Abumrad (7:01)

How exactly does he do that?

Robert Krulwich (7:02)

Well, he didn't want to picture his wife as she used to be, you know, 20 years ago. So he made a willful and conscious decision to stop picturing her altogether.

John Hull (7:14)

That was how I faced the future as a blind man.

Robert Krulwich (7:17)

He decided that he would live without pictures at all. So anytime a picture would pop into his head, he would consciously push it away. And this became his routine.

John Hull (7:28)

When I meet a new person, I don't any longer wonder what they look like. I don't know what my house looks like.

Robert Krulwich (7:34)

You don't picture corridors, rooms, windows.

John Hull (7:38)

It's funny how much the visual memories are attached to those words. Even as you say corridor, I can see it going away in front of me with its perspectives disappearing.

Robert Krulwich (7:50)

Yes.

John Hull (7:50)

And yet when I'm walking along a corridor, I don't have that picture.

Robert Krulwich (7:55)

Wow.

John Hull (7:56)

When I'm standing in front of a window, I don't have that picture.

Robert Krulwich (7:59)

When you are talking to your kids, do you see them or what's going on?

John Hull (8:06)

I don't see them. I hear them, I feel them, but I have no idea, frankly, what they look like. See, it's more profound than that, Robert. I have to try to remember what you mean by look like. I've not only lost the contents of that concept. I've lost the concept.

Robert Krulwich (8:28)

And he says he's lost it by choice, which is strange.

Jad Abumrad (8:31)

So he says he chooses not to see his wife or his kids.

Robert Krulwich (8:35)

Yeah, because he says, you know, all what I'm doing here is I'm just honoring the truth. And the truth is I can't really know what my life looks like. I could put my hand on her face and try to feel my way across, but any image that I conjure up wouldn't be real, really wouldn't have all the details. In effect, it would be a lie. And when it comes to my wife, I can't bear the idea of a lie.

Jad Abumrad (8:55)

So I just can't imagine, though, not wanting to imagine your wife's face.

Robert Krulwich (9:00)

Well, other blind people obviously do this differently. And in fact, when John wrote a book about this stuff, he heard from a bunch of other blind people said, you know, this makes very little sense. In fact, it's just ridiculous.

Zoltan Torrey (9:11)

Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Robert Krulwich (9:12)

So meet Zoltan Torrey.

Zoltan Torrey (9:14)

Z O L T A N. It's a Hungarian name. Zoltan Tory. And I'm a clinical psychologist.

Robert Krulwich (9:19)

And like John, Zoltan was not born blind. He had an accident. He was working in a factory.

Zoltan Torrey (9:25)

It was a battery factory.

Robert Krulwich (9:27)

And he was getting this huge drum of acid down from a shelf.

Zoltan Torrey (9:31)

And it had a plug, which was. The screw was worn away on that plug. And it. When I was undoing it, it just flew. And the whole damned 44 gallons poured out into, more or less into my face.

Robert Krulwich (9:51)

Oh, my heavens. And the acid burned his face, and then it went to his throat and it burned his vocal cords. And of course, it went into his eyes.

Zoltan Torrey (9:59)

Almost immediately, the acid began to eat itself into the cornea. Within minutes, this ghastly charcoal gray fog was so thick that I really couldn't find my way anywhere.

Robert Krulwich (10:14)

Once Zoltan was out of the hospital and learning to live as a blind.

Zoltan Torrey (10:17)

Person, he says, I was advised to concentrate on touch and on hearing and all the other senses and forget about sight. But this was not acceptable to me.

Robert Krulwich (10:28)

Because for Zoltan, images were essential. For one thing, his dad had been.

Zoltan Torrey (10:32)

A filmmaker, head of motion picture studios.

Robert Krulwich (10:36)

And when Zoltan was a boy, his dad would give him movie scripts.

Zoltan Torrey (10:38)

Movie scripts to read and to visualize and to memorize.

Robert Krulwich (10:42)

And to him looking at scripts and imagining them in his head, that was his form of play. So when Zoltan lost his sight, he thought, well, I'm going to do now what I used to do then with the scripts. I May not be able to see the world anymore, but I can certainly imagine the world.

Zoltan Torrey (10:58)

And I decided to repopulate the world with images and reconstruct reality for myself.

Robert Krulwich (11:07)

So now when Zoltan walks into a room and he puts his hand on a couch or chairs or a table.

Zoltan Torrey (11:15)

I see the furniture correctly in the manner in which you would see it from the corner of your eye.

Robert Krulwich (11:21)

He paints pictures of everything that he touches, everything that he hears, even smells in a room help him visualize the room.

Zoltan Torrey (11:28)

The smell of the place would tell me about cleanliness or the use of the place. The echo would give me an estimation of windows and open spaces and alcoves. I really live with a kind of continuously produced film strip.

Robert Krulwich (11:46)

And Zoltan says I am now so good at this kind of thing, so good at recreating the world in my technicolor head, that he believes that what he sees up here is actually and literally and verifiably in the world. And he says he would risk his life, and does risk his life daily on this proposition.

Jad Abumrad (12:03)

He would risk his life on it.

Robert Krulwich (12:04)

That's what he said.

Jad Abumrad (12:05)

What does that mean?

Robert Krulwich (12:05)

Well, he has a house, it's a multi story house and there's some tiles on the roof that periodically need replacing. And you know, to him it doesn't matter where he fixes it, nighttime or daytime because he's blind. So he'll go up on the roof and he has this idea that just by touch, in the middle of the night and careful feeling and remembering, he can do what he has to do.

Zoltan Torrey (12:26)

I thought, hell, why shouldn't I try to do this? First I repaired the guttering and then large sections of the roof.

Robert Krulwich (12:32)

But wait a second, you're blind though, right? You're totally blind?

Zoltan Torrey (12:36)

Totally. So then totally, totally.

Robert Krulwich (12:38)

Well, well then what are you doing on a roof is my question.

Zoltan Torrey (12:44)

Well, this is what my neighbors asked. They thought I was crazy, you know.

Robert Krulwich (12:51)

All right, so now here we have two very different ways of being blind. You have one guy who fills his mind with pictures, vivid, vivid, vivid pictures. And the other guy says, I won't do that. I think the only way to live in the world, honestly, is to choose. It's a kind of double blindness, really. Not only you go dark on the outside, you go dark on the inside as well. So we wondered, wouldn't it be like more than cool to get these two guys together to duke it out? Not to mention how politically incorrect that would be? So we decided to put them together by phone. So even though one of them Works and lives in the United Kingdom and the other in Australia. We worked through the very radical time differences and we brought them together.

John Hull (13:32)

Can you hear me?

Zoltan Torrey (13:33)

Oh yes, I can hear you.

John Hull (13:34)

We've done it.

Zoltan Torrey (13:35)

Yes.

Robert Krulwich (13:36)

Wow. Okay.

Zoltan Torrey (13:37)

Good, good, good, good.

Robert Krulwich (13:39)

So here's what I'd like to do. Zoltan, can you just describe, since you're sitting there with your wife, what you know about her face?

Zoltan Torrey (13:50)

Well, this is not a problem at all. I've known her for what, 40, 50 years now. And just through the touch, it is very, very easy to reconstruct her mouth and her turned up nose and smile and her curly hair and ears. It's like a living image.

John Hull (14:12)

But tell me, when was the last time you actually saw her face with your eyes?

Zoltan Torrey (14:17)

I never saw her face with my eyes.

John Hull (14:20)

Never?

Zoltan Torrey (14:20)

Never. No. I met her only about five, six years after I lost my sight.

John Hull (14:25)

I see.

Zoltan Torrey (14:26)

But this doesn't matter, John. This doesn't matter at all. The reconstruction is so vivid for me.

John Hull (14:34)

I actually see it well, I'm just lost for words. I. Zoltan, tell me, are you totally blind?

Zoltan Torrey (14:43)

Yes.

John Hull (14:43)

No light sensation?

Zoltan Torrey (14:45)

None whatsoever.

John Hull (14:46)

Your wife's eyes, what color are they?

Robert Krulwich (14:49)

Brown.

John Hull (14:50)

Is that true?

Zoltan Torrey (14:51)

Slightly flecked with little yellow spots in it. They are also large, expressive.

John Hull (14:57)

She tells you her eyes are expressive?

Zoltan Torrey (14:59)

No, no, no, no, no, John, there's more to it than that. I have years and years and years worth of experience and other people's responses get all factored into the construction of a complex image.

John Hull (15:11)

But you cannot actually literally see her. You can only imagine that you can see her. So why does it matter?

Robert Krulwich (15:19)

Good.

Zoltan Torrey (15:20)

Because emotionally we do not react and cannot react properly to things that we cannot visualize. The whole human organism is constructed to react to pictures.

Jad Abumrad (15:37)

You know, I think he has. He has a point when he says that.

Robert Krulwich (15:40)

What do you mean?

Jad Abumrad (15:41)

Because I. I can't. If I think about it, I can't actually imagine having a feeling without a picture.

Robert Krulwich (15:46)

Well, I can help you out. I'm cold. I say you don't have to see like icicles coming off my nose. You know that cold. You know what it means without or. This is a hard table. You don't need to see me hit.

Jad Abumrad (15:56)

It with a button. No, that's not what I'm talking about. Talking about relationships. Like, don't you actually, in order to have a relationship with somebody, don't you have to first imagine them as a being in the world with a form that you can then attach your feelings to?

Robert Krulwich (16:08)

Well, only very vaguely. I mean, I'm Sure. There's a lot of you out there who listened to radio. If you do and heard it for a while and you had a vague sense of who was talking and what they looked like, but it wasn't important.

Jad Abumrad (16:21)

I think it was important. I don't think they had this, this image. I sort of hope they didn't anyway. But I think you, I mean, you have to have some picture. I mean, why is it that quintessential experience when you listen to the radio and then suddenly you see the person on the radio and you're like, you know, like that's a classic experience. And I think it's because in that moment you realize you had been picturing somebody and you have to picture that person in order to relate to them.

Robert Krulwich (16:45)

You have to.

Jad Abumrad (16:46)

Yeah.

Robert Krulwich (16:46)

You can't relate to a blank. Well, John would say that you're being a little narrow minded. And that is exactly what he said to Zoltan.

John Hull (16:52)

Zoltan, you are trying to impose a visual totalitarianism upon the human brain.

Zoltan Torrey (16:59)

No, no, no, no, John, it isn't.

John Hull (17:01)

I.

Zoltan Torrey (17:02)

We are visual creatures.

John Hull (17:04)

Blind people are not visual creatures.

Zoltan Torrey (17:06)

Oh, come on, come on, John, you said that you lost the visual world. Actually, I think that you just let it go.

John Hull (17:16)

I didn't just let it go. I extinguished it for the sake of a greater reality.

Jad Abumrad (17:21)

What is the greater reality, though?

Robert Krulwich (17:23)

Truth. He's talking about the truth.

Jad Abumrad (17:25)

Come on, though. That's like accountant's version of truth. That's not a real truth. If a truth is blank, then why would it be a greater reality than the opposite? It a fantasy or whatever. A lie perhaps, but at least it allows you to be in the world with other people.

Robert Krulwich (17:39)

So you find a lie is a useful standard for how.

Jad Abumrad (17:42)

No, I just mean you want to live in the world and you want to connect. Okay, supposing he does it how he says he does. How do you even do that? How do you connect with something or someone that is absent, that is intentionally held as a blank? How do you do it?

Robert Krulwich (17:56)

Well, you know, that is actually a hard question. I couldn't quite figure it out for myself, so I asked him.

John Hull (18:05)

It's quite a difficult thing to describe. When I had a little boy, Joshua, when he was about a year, 12 months old, 15 months maybe. My wife and I were at home and we had a visitor. Marilyn said to me, that's my wife. She said to me, tell me, darling, what does Joshua look like? I had to say, darling, you know, he doesn't look like anything to me. She said, yes, yes, but what does Joshua mean to you? And I said, well, Joshua to me is that giggling, thrilling, jumping, kicking bundle of boyhood that I throw over my shoulder. Joshua's those little feet that kick me in the chest. He's that beautiful, warm face that I lay my hand on when he's asleep.

Robert Krulwich (19:11)

And that is how John does it. That is John's way.

John Hull (19:16)

Sam.

Jad Abumrad (19:42)

So that was from our performance live at UCLA's Royce hall of our live show in the Dark, and one of our not so secret missions, again in this podcast, is to ask you to help us pay for Radiolab, to help support this show so that we can continue to give you stories like what you just heard, where you hear, like, two completely different viewpoints that are both totally valid. Colliding. And for me, I feel like those kinds of collisions make the world an interesting place.

Robert Krulwich (20:12)

That's the cool thing, is that in doing this kind of work, you can get very rich very quickly by simply exploring. And that's why we'd like to invite you to help us out just a bit.

Jad Abumrad (20:24)

Yeah. Go to Radiolab.org, click that support button, and here's an added sweetener. So we've been touring with this guy, Dimitri Martin, hilarious comedian. He sort of helped us create the in the Dark show. If you kick in $75 to help us make Radiolab, we will send you his new cd, which is so freaking funny.

Robert Krulwich (20:43)

It's called, I think. What? Stand up comedian. Is that what he calls it?

John Hull (20:46)

Yeah.

Jad Abumrad (20:46)

Yeah. Okay, we're gonna give you a taste right here.

Robert Krulwich (20:48)

This is Demetri Martin.

Demetri Martin (20:50)

It's weird when you introduce somebody that you say, like, this is. And then their name, you know, like, this is Frank. It sounds pretty normal when you think about it. This. Walk up with a person and be like, hey, guys, this. This stuff right here is Frank. Excuse me, what is that? This. This is Frank. Oh, that's what that is. Jesus. I guess it should be he is Frank, but that sounds even weirder. You can't walk up with somebody goes, hey, he is Frank.

Robert Krulwich (21:25)

Take it away, Frank.

Demetri Martin (21:32)

It's like when you call somebody on the phone, you know, they say, hello. You have to say, this is hello. This is Dimitri. Can't be like, hello, I am Dimitri.

Jad Abumrad (21:44)

What?

Demetri Martin (21:45)

I am Dimitri. Take me to your leader. But then if you go up to someone in person, the rule flips. Then it's the exact opposite, actually. If I walk up to you, then I have to say, hi, I am Dimitri. I can't walk up to you and go, this is Dimitri. You like this? This is an idiot.

Zoltan Torrey (22:10)

Oh, okay.

Demetri Martin (22:13)

He is going.

Robert Krulwich (22:18)

Sweat. I, you know, I. Could we. Could we just do one more?

Demetri Martin (22:21)

I like people watching. Mostly this one woman. Yeah, I'm doing them one at a.

John Hull (22:32)

Time.

Demetri Martin (22:36)

From behind bushes and stuff.

Jad Abumrad (22:37)

You know.

Demetri Martin (22:41)

I think surprise parties are weird because people jump up and they yell the word surprise at the party. I came home to my house and you guys emerged from my furniture. You don't have to tell me how to feel. I don't need like a hint from the group, you know.

Jad Abumrad (23:03)

It'S not like.

Demetri Martin (23:03)

If you yell out another feeling, I'm gonna have that one instead. I come home and everybody jumps up. Confidence. Oh, all right. Yeah, damn right. I feel great. Got to spend an hour at the party answering questions like, hey, so were you really confident when we jumped up and yelled out tonight? Yeah, I wasn't faking. I had no idea I was confident. I mean, I came in feeling kind of lousy about myself and I felt, yeah, really self assured. It's a great confidence party. I'm so glad you guys were funny. Birds are one of the only other creatures who make their own houses, and they're one of the only creatures we make houses for. That is arrogant. What's that bird? That's a house. That's your house, huh? That's like a patio at best.

Jad Abumrad (24:02)

Come on.

Demetri Martin (24:03)

Just some sticks in a circle. This is embarrassing. You want a house? Tell you what, I'll make you a house. It'll be like a little human house.

Jad Abumrad (24:11)

There.

Demetri Martin (24:12)

A tiny little person house for you. I know you can fly, but I'm putting a roof on it. Tough deal with it. Little hole that's too small for your body to try to get in and out of there. Birds are in the house. Like, I feel ridiculous. The other animals think we're trying to be little people. This is just really pathetic. Shut up, Lewis.

Jad Abumrad (24:37)

It's a free house, so for $75, you can get that CD. That's our way of kind of saying thanks for helping to support the making of Radiolab. When you pledge money, of course, it comes back to you in the form of, you know, more stories, like the story you just heard, or.

Robert Krulwich (24:50)

Here's your alternate option. For the same $75, we will enroll you in something we call lab partners. Now explain to them what lab partners are.

Jad Abumrad (24:59)

How do you think of it? It's like you go to a certain part of the website, you get a special code, you go there, you log on. It's very secret, it's very private, and you get special things that nobody else gets, like videos, like music, like digital art, posters.

Robert Krulwich (25:13)

We even send you, actually a video of Dimitri Martin in our show doing his.

Jad Abumrad (25:20)

Yes, doing Stand up, which is pretty wonderful. And it is exclusive to Lab Partners. So break it down. What have we Learned so far? A 75 bucks gets you Dimitri on CD B or 75 bucks gets you a Lab Partners membership where you can see see Dimitri on stage with your eyeballs.

Robert Krulwich (25:35)

Well, let me add one more thing. If you make a gift of whatever amount, doesn't have to be anything, actually, if you just give us your goodwill, but you do it on on our website before 4pm on Monday, October 29, 2012. That's Eastern Standard Time. If you give us some money before then, you're automatically entered in a contest where you could win an iPad. So there you have it. The iPad could be yours. Just, just if you give us anything.

Jad Abumrad (26:00)

Go to Radiolab.org, click on that support button. Thanks. I'm Jad Abumrad.

Robert Krulwich (26:07)

I'm Robert Krulwich.

Jad Abumrad (26:08)

Thank you for listening and we hope, giving.

Demetri Martin (26:12)

This is Lee Jones. I'm in Bristol, Tennessee and I just got married. I'm at my wedding reception. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan@www.sloan.org.