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0:48

Hey, it's Lulu. This is RadioLab, and I

0:50

am about to hit play on what

0:53

I think is an all-time favorite

0:55

RadioLab. It is certainly one we've

0:57

heard about from listeners over and

1:00

over again. It was

1:02

originally aired in 2011, and I'm not going

1:04

to say much more, except that we're

1:06

going to launch you into the story, and then

1:09

we have two pretty wild updates.

1:11

So think of this as a

1:13

trilogy, the Emily trilogy. Here

1:16

we go with part one in the

1:19

wall. Hey, wait, you're

1:21

listening. Okay. All

1:24

right. Okay. All

1:26

right. You're listening to RadioLab

1:30

from

1:33

WNYC.

1:39

Hey, I'm Jada Bumrod. I'm Robert Krillwich. This

1:41

is RadioLab today. Sort of a love story.

1:43

Here's the guy. My name is Alan Lundgaard.

1:45

Do you want to say anything

1:47

more than that? I don't know. Is this for like

1:49

a credit? Sometimes we'll walk down

1:51

the aisle and show you what people introduce

1:53

themselves. Oh, I don't know. I

1:56

don't have a title. Okay. All right. So that's

1:58

Alan. The Girl, Emily. The to

2:00

meet her a bit later for reasons

2:02

will become clear. The story begins on

2:04

a fall day. In. Brooklyn

2:06

so dame questions.

2:09

Guess who's the morning of October eighth? They're

2:12

both living in this one room loft in

2:14

Brooklyn and we woke up in you know

2:16

both twenty one when about or daily routine

2:19

and prepared to go. He was in art

2:21

school. she was taking some time off from

2:23

art school to work for a local artist

2:25

to she would take the bike and I

2:28

would take the train was a morning like

2:30

this abuse days in. Her son was loans

2:32

guys there's no long shadows. I stepped on

2:34

her helmet and just. Did it. took a

2:36

bite out for her weakest each other goodbye and

2:38

said i love you and I watch your i

2:40

down the street. In

2:43

the early morning and then and now on

2:46

I went down into the subway. Six.

2:49

Hours later, he's working in the studio

2:51

audience and sculpture. And

2:53

he gets a call. From. A

2:55

cop and. He. Said

2:57

Emily Garcia. She had an

2:59

accident. She's in Bellevue. This

3:01

is the address. And I

3:03

said oh I'm india have any more information he

3:05

just me that it was bad. I

3:09

was carrying a bunch of stuff in

3:12

his drop everything and start. A

3:17

Bill Allen and only had only been

3:19

together nine months but when it started

3:21

says Alan. It was

3:24

just so immediate. Late

3:26

they got together. they both just can a

3:28

new those. Sort of like a weird. Prosthetic.

3:32

Kind of thing where a single is the

3:34

first day that the schools had. A snow

3:36

day is no no is kind of like

3:38

this past blizzard sort of lake City shuts

3:40

down magical kind of thing. He'd

3:43

gone out with some friends. Just.

3:45

As the snow was coming down and we

3:47

was trapped at this party. And

3:50

that's where he bumped into Emily Pint

3:52

sized. These. big night

3:54

iridescent eyes and very

3:57

kind of his I

4:00

have trouble describing a voice. It's almost as if...

4:03

I know you guys are audio people, but it's

4:05

like stereo almost. Truth

4:08

is they've known each other for a while, but

4:10

that night, says Alan... Fireworks, all of a sudden,

4:13

and it felt right. So you had a

4:15

feeling this wasn't just a thing, this was

4:17

a thing. Right. Or the thing. The thing.

4:19

The thing. The thing. The

4:21

soul thing. Yeah. Well, Emily... There's

4:25

always been voice frown to Emily. That's Susan

4:27

Gassio, Emily's mom. She says at first, when

4:29

Emily told her about Alan, she thought, okay,

4:32

so that's another boy. Emily seemed to have

4:34

that effect on boys, perhaps because she didn't

4:37

really seem to need them. Here is

4:40

someone who's been obsessed with art,

4:42

and has given up everybody in

4:44

her life for art. At the

4:46

age of six... She was creating her own

4:48

comic books. In junior high school, she took

4:51

drawing classes every night, and then in high

4:53

school... She left us, friends, boyfriends...

4:55

To go to a high school of the

4:57

arts in Florida. No one stands in the

4:59

way of her art. It's all she sees, it's

5:01

all she focuses on. But then she

5:04

visited Emily in May a few months before the accident,

5:06

and she met Alan. I met

5:08

Alan, and he was delightful.

5:11

But there was a different look that I'd

5:13

never seen in Emily's eyes before when she

5:15

looked at him, and I

5:17

didn't like it. Tell

5:22

us about the accident from your perspective. I

5:26

was at work... You were in New Orleans? Metery,

5:28

which is a suburb of New Orleans. And

5:31

I get a telephone call, and I looked and

5:33

I thought, was Alan? Alan has never called

5:35

me before. I answered the

5:37

phone, I said, hello, Alan? And he said,

5:40

you have to come. Emily was hit

5:42

by a truck. An 18-wheeler semi-truck.

5:45

And I took a breath, and I said,

5:47

Alan, is Emily dead? And

5:50

he said, no, but you need to get here as

5:52

soon as possible. Six hours

5:54

later, her and her husband, Emily's dad, were at

5:56

Bellevue Hospital here in Manhattan. They brought us into the...

6:00

her Roman surgical ICU. We all went

6:02

in, she was just lying in bed.

6:04

And there were tubes. Tubes down her

6:06

throat. Coming in and out and her

6:09

face was so swollen. Emily covered in

6:11

blood. Weighed probably at the time

6:13

of the accident about 100 pounds and

6:15

she then weighed 128. She had swollen 28 pounds. She

6:21

had multiple fractures in her leg and her pelvis in

6:23

the left side of her face. They had opened

6:25

her abdomen and they had

6:28

taken her intestines out and put them on top

6:30

of her body so that she could breathe. And

6:32

she was just lying completely

6:35

still. You know. That

6:37

first 48 hours, nothing

6:40

moved. Nothing. We

6:42

took up shifts, you know. Her mother would

6:44

be there in the day and her father

6:46

in the evening and then I would be

6:48

there with her at night. Her eyes weren't

6:50

even flickering. And as she sat there watching

6:52

Emily not move, she says she kept thinking,

6:54

why? I've got these four kids and everything

6:56

bad seems to happen to Emily. Starting at

6:58

six months. Ear infections. Then

7:01

sinus infections. Then asthma. By

7:03

kindergarten Emily was losing her hearing for reasons

7:06

no one could quite figure out. She had

7:08

to get hearing aids. On both sides. But

7:10

somehow her mom says all this just made

7:12

Emily more fierce. If anyone can

7:14

conquer this, it's Emily. I think

7:16

on the second day they started

7:18

to take her off for medication expecting

7:20

to see some sort of reaction from

7:23

her. And.

7:27

It

7:31

was a nurse and

7:35

the nurse said that Emily was gone and

7:38

asked me about organ donations. And

7:42

I said yes. And so

7:45

I worked up enough courage to go into what they

7:47

call the track room which is where the residents

7:49

usually are. And there was one woman

7:52

resident sitting at a computer and I went and I

7:54

said, when are you going to let Emily go?

7:56

And she said, we will

7:58

have a family meeting. meeting tomorrow morning

8:02

and we'll talk then." And so

8:04

I said, okay, and I left and I went back

8:06

and I'm sitting with Emily,

8:08

inside of her bed, and

8:10

I'm telling her, Emily and I read the

8:12

book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, when

8:14

she was a sophomore. And I

8:17

remember the ending of the book. There's

8:19

a land of the living, there's a land

8:21

of death, and the bridge

8:23

is love, and that love is the

8:26

only thing that survives, and it's kind of the way it

8:29

goes. And so I was sitting there with Emily

8:31

and I was telling this to, I was saying

8:33

this and talking in her ear and saying this

8:36

and talking to her and telling her that I

8:38

would love her eternally through all time, that our

8:40

love would never end. And

8:42

Emily raised her left hand. It

8:51

was chaos. I

8:54

was yelling for the nurse. I saw it. I saw

8:56

her move. That

8:58

was really one of the really

9:00

abrupt moments. Now,

9:03

they knew Emily was not dead. Emily

9:05

was alive. But how alive?

9:09

Over the next few days, says Alan, she

9:11

slowly started moving more, not

9:13

really in response to anything. She'd rise

9:15

in bed, scratch her leg where there

9:18

was a wound. We would hold her

9:20

hand down and she'd slap, she'd

9:22

slap our hands away. But

9:25

when they tell this to the doctors, the doctors

9:27

would say, that's not indicative of any kind of

9:29

mental functioning. Could just be a reflex,

9:31

really. So the medical team began

9:33

trying to determine just how damaged

9:35

was she. The ophthalmologist teams were coming

9:37

in and they were trying to get

9:39

Emily's eyes to our pupils

9:42

to respond and they weren't responsive. And

9:44

so I knew what that meant. What does that

9:46

mean? It meant she could be blind. So

9:49

Emily couldn't see, couldn't

9:51

hear. Because remember, she wore hearing aids. And why

9:53

didn't you just put those in? We tried. I

9:56

mean, we tried many times to put it in, but

9:58

she just wouldn't allow it. What would

10:00

you do exactly when you did it? Flail her

10:02

head, shake her around. Kick and she would hit.

10:04

Had a lot of bruises on my body where

10:06

she'd kicked me and pinched me. So we stopped.

10:09

Every once in a while we would go back to

10:11

it. But there

10:14

was the question, you know, maybe

10:17

she couldn't hear anymore. So what do you do

10:19

to a person who's... You don't know what's going

10:21

on inside her and you can't get to her?

10:23

You send her to a nursing home and, you

10:27

know, that's where she would have remained.

10:30

And after several weeks in the ICU...

10:33

Emily. She was stable. And that

10:35

meant they had to make

10:37

a decision. Once you become stable, then you have

10:39

to move off surgical ICU and out of the

10:41

hospital to either a rehabilitation or to a nursing

10:43

home. So that became the new question. Where would

10:45

she go? Could she be repaired, so to speak,

10:47

in which case she'd go to rehab? Or

10:50

is this it for her? In which case she'd

10:53

go to a nursing home. Now, making that

10:55

call medically... is sometimes

10:57

tricky. That's Dr. Michael Eisenberg. She's a

11:00

physician at NYU and it's her job

11:02

to make that call. And she

11:04

has one of the key criteria for getting someone

11:06

into rehab. To do rehab on somebody,

11:08

you need to have them reacting to

11:10

you. A person needs to be able

11:12

to participate in a meaningful way for

11:15

three hours of therapy a day. They

11:17

have to be able to follow commands

11:19

because that's how you rehabilitate someone. If

11:22

the person can't hear, if the person can't see,

11:25

then there's no way to communicate with her. And

11:28

so they made the

11:30

assessment that she could not

11:32

go to rehab. And that Emily should go

11:34

to a nursing home. So

11:39

I sent my husband back

11:42

to New Orleans to look for a nursing home. That

11:46

they could bring her back to. They just

11:49

kept it all secret from me that they were going to take her

11:51

away from me. I mean, how do you tell someone

11:53

who loves your daughter that much that we're taking

11:55

her away? But there was

11:57

not just one life that we had in our hands.

12:01

We felt that that would be the best

12:03

thing for him. And Alan

12:06

could hate us. Maybe

12:08

as a way for him to bridge

12:11

and let go for that grief. But

12:16

then, as the doctors were prepping Emily

12:18

to move her to a nursing home, they had to remove her

12:20

tracheotomy, which was helping her breathe. And

12:22

she all of a sudden started

12:24

talking. Really? She spoke,

12:26

yes. What was she saying? She

12:29

would curse. Don't touch me, you

12:32

blank-a-blank, you know. She would say, stop. This

12:34

is in response to someone touching her? Touching her. And

12:37

if she wasn't cursing, says Alan? She would

12:39

call everybody Miss Dashwood. Certain people that were

12:41

touching her were Miss Dashwood. What's...

12:44

Is it... From Sense and

12:46

Sensibility. But voting Jane Austen. Oh

12:49

yeah, we had watched the movie like a couple months

12:51

previous to this. So somehow she

12:53

was locked in the movie. And it

12:55

was just the assumption of the doctors

12:57

that she was just sort of mentally

12:59

damaged. But if she's calling people Miss

13:01

Dashwood, doesn't that at least mean something? No. It

13:04

wasn't enough to say that

13:06

Emily could follow a command like, sit up, raise

13:08

your right hand. So the plan was still the

13:10

nursing home. Right. I mean, no. Every

13:13

possibility had not been exhausted. I can see

13:15

him. He was sitting across

13:17

the room and his jaws were just

13:20

clenched. That was not going to give up. And

13:22

he was saying, you have to give her a

13:24

chance. She... You have to give her the

13:26

chance. Do you have a plan? No. I

13:29

had no plan whatsoever. No. I

13:31

was lost. This experience was just

13:34

completely traumatic to me emotionally. But

13:37

at the same time, I was going to help her in

13:39

whatever way I could. The only trajectory

13:41

I had was to help her. And

13:45

one night, just a few days before

13:47

Emily was going to be discharged to a nursing home,

13:49

away from him. I was there

13:51

alone with her at 3am or something. And she was calm. Like,

13:54

she wasn't trying to fight me away or anything. I had

13:56

helped her fix a thing that was wrong with her mouth.

14:00

Wiring it was like a wire that was poking her

14:02

and I fixed it for it and he says at

14:04

that moment Something occurred to him. It really just was

14:06

like in the recesses of my mind He thought of

14:08

the story of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. He'd read

14:10

about it a few days earlier online and he thought

14:13

Hmm. What if I tried what

14:15

Annie Sullivan did with Helen Keller on? Emily

14:19

I took her left hand with

14:21

my left hand and I leaned over

14:23

and using her Wrist is

14:25

the baseline for the words and

14:27

his finger is the pen. I just wrote I Waited

14:30

a second L waited a

14:32

second Oh Waited

14:34

a second V E Waited

14:39

a second you then

14:41

according to Alan. She said

14:43

to him. She said oh you love me. Thank

14:45

you She literally replied.

14:47

Yes, you replied immediately. She has does she know

14:50

who you know, she has no idea who I

14:52

am But

14:59

now we had a way to get to her so

15:01

he could figure out how much of her was actually

15:03

there and Maybe even prove

15:05

it to the doctors, you know, I had to

15:07

have something that was conclusive to present to them

15:09

the following evening. I Took

15:12

out my cell phone and it has

15:14

a record function on it and I started

15:16

recording Question

15:20

after question to determine her

15:22

cognitive ability. What

15:25

is your name? What

15:28

W H a T Hi

15:38

You fingers don't every letter. Yes Oh

15:50

But You

16:18

She's writing her name on the palm of

16:20

life. She

16:29

called me at 4 o'clock in the morning and said, You

16:31

have to come now. I have to preach. She

17:00

thought it was hers. Very good.

17:02

Very good. Very good. Emily,

17:05

very good. Very,

17:07

very good. Do you

17:10

know where you are?

17:14

Question mark. I don't know. I

17:17

don't know where I am.

17:19

Okay, right now I'm going

17:21

to write hospital. Got there

17:24

about 4 45 in the morning. Alan is over

17:26

there by the desk, continuing to finger spell and

17:28

talk to her. And she calls him Alan. She

17:33

knows that this person who is finger spelling on

17:35

her hand is named Alan. But

17:38

Alan can't get her to understand who he really is, that it's

17:40

her Alan. I'm just going to write my

17:42

name again, Alan. She just couldn't make

17:45

that mentally jump to connect her past

17:47

life with her present. Alan, Alan,

17:53

why in ethnicity are you? Are you Asian?

17:59

Am I Asian? and

18:01

tell her no. Next

18:04

thing I hear her say is, pull

18:07

me out of the wall. She

18:10

kept saying, pull me out. Please pull me out

18:12

of here. It's dark in here. Pull

18:14

me out. Help me. I know you can do

18:16

it. Pull me out of the wall. I

18:19

kept saying I can't. I would write

18:21

on her hand, I can't. Alan starts to

18:23

sob, and I'm crying to... What

18:26

are you thinking at this point? It wasn't enough. It

18:29

wasn't enough. And I said, Alan, ask

18:33

her about her hearing aid. And...

18:36

So he fingerspelled hearing aid. ...he was hearing

18:38

aid, and she said, okay. She

18:41

agreed to put the hearing aid in for the first

18:43

time. So we put it in and switched

18:45

it on. He

18:48

said, Emily... Emily, can you hear me? It's me,

18:50

Alan. And immediately...

18:54

Everything came back to me. I

18:56

was there, I remembered everything. The

18:59

door opened, and Emily stepped out. She

19:02

was back. Yeah, just by

19:04

hearing his voice. I knew it

19:06

was him, and I... And then

19:08

he said my mom was there. And I

19:11

heard her say what I had been waiting for

19:13

her to say all those weeks. I screamed, Mommy,

19:15

Mommy. She said, Mama. You know,

19:17

I couldn't believe I was there the whole

19:19

time. We asked

19:21

Emily, before she came back, where

19:24

was she? I didn't know where

19:27

I was, if I could see at all.

19:33

I mean, all I knew is that I was sleeping,

19:36

and I was always dreaming. She

19:38

says people would come to her in her dreams and say...

19:41

Don't touch that. Stop scratching your

19:43

wounds. My dreams, they'd blend

19:45

in with reality. She says she knew

19:47

somehow that there were people around her,

19:50

but she couldn't get to them, and that she also

19:52

knew she was in a dream. Why am I

19:54

still sleeping? That you couldn't somehow wake

19:56

up from. I felt helpless. really

20:00

helpless. Were you waiting

20:02

for someone like that? I mean, were you...

20:04

I was waiting for some

20:09

communication, you know?

20:18

And I was relieved. She's

20:24

a miracle to me. Emily

20:34

is now at the Rusk Institute, which is one

20:36

of New York City's leading rehab centers. And

20:39

on the day we visited her, she just

20:41

had a breakthrough. Today was the first

20:43

day I could stand on both legs and

20:46

walk. Actually walk.

20:50

I walked 100 feet today. After

20:52

rehab, she'll be moving into an apartment in

20:54

Lower Manhattan with Alan. She's

20:56

blind, and the chances for

20:58

seeing again are slim. But Alan

21:01

plans to spend his time helping her cope and

21:03

helping her find a new way to make art. Emily,

21:06

can you introduce yourself? Do you want me to say my name

21:08

is Emily? Yeah, just so we have it all on tape. They

21:10

asked me if I would have a title, and I couldn't think

21:12

of one, but I thought of one.

21:16

A title? Yeah, I'll do mine. My

21:19

name is Alan Lungard. I'm the boyfriend. My name is

21:21

Emily Gossio. I'm the girlfriend. You're the star of the

21:23

show. Oh, is that what I said? No. When

21:25

we come back, Emily's story continues. This dog is going to take it over.

21:49

Mine does not cost Pini and Italian, painful, 151. Hey,

21:52

Mendoises, where are you at? Oh, hey. Hi,

21:54

I'mwhitsand where? Shit. I don't call this

21:56

a wondering

22:00

where it all went. But there's

22:02

a question. If we were magically given

22:04

that time back, what would we do

22:06

with it? Perhaps you'd spend more time

22:08

with a friend that you've lost touch

22:10

with, or petting your dog, or just

22:12

noticing the sweetness of doing nothing. The

22:15

best way to let those special things into

22:17

your life is to know what's important to

22:19

you so you can make it a priority

22:21

going forward. A therapist can guide you through

22:23

the process of defining your values and understanding

22:25

your priorities so you know what things you

22:27

can spend your time on that will really

22:29

fulfill you. BetterHelp offers convenient, affordable

22:31

online therapy that comes to

22:33

you. Start the process in

22:35

minutes and switch therapists anytime.

22:37

Learn how to make time

22:39

for what makes you happy

22:41

with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/Radiolab today

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to get 10% off your

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first month. That's BetterHelp, help.com/Radiolab.

22:50

Radiolab is supported by the John

22:52

Templeton Foundation, funding research and catalyzing

22:55

conversations that inspire people with awe

22:57

and wonder. Learn about the researchers

22:59

making the latest discoveries in the

23:01

science of well-being, complexity, forgiveness, and

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free will at templeton.org/podcast.

23:11

I'm Terrence McKnight. Join me for a

23:13

new season of the podcast where people

23:15

tell stories about the classical music that

23:17

shaped their lives. I'm Tom

23:19

Middleton. My name is Natalie Joachim. I'm

23:22

Maren Olsop and you're listening to

23:24

The Open Ears Project. You're

23:27

going to meet some incredible people and

23:29

maybe, like them, fall in love with

23:31

a piece of music. The

23:34

Open Ears Project, listen wherever you

23:36

get podcasts. Lulu

23:43

Radiolab, we are following the story

23:45

of Emily Gossio and a few

23:47

years after her accident from

23:50

her emergence from the wall that her

23:52

mind was trapped in. We

23:54

followed up with her and we'll

23:57

call this part, part two, Walking

23:59

through. Of all the

24:01

stories we've ever done, I think this one has gotten

24:03

the most response. And when we

24:06

left that story, Emily had emerged from the

24:08

coma and begun to recover, but

24:10

she was blind. Totally blind,

24:12

right? Yeah. And like no light,

24:14

nothing coming in? No. Okay.

24:17

Needless to say, it was a very big adjustment. I just, no,

24:20

I just had to develop my own ways

24:22

to navigate

24:25

throughout the world and trust myself.

24:28

And being a visual artist, she had

24:30

to develop new ways to draw. I had crayons,

24:33

and if you draw the crayons

24:36

hard enough, you can feel

24:38

the wax on the paper. Yeah.

24:42

But then one day in the summer of 2012, she gets a call.

24:46

From the Lighthouse School in New

24:48

York City. The Lighthouse School? Yeah. It's

24:51

the school for the blind. Her mom had found out

24:54

that they were trying out this brand new technology.

24:56

I think they were doing the study for the

24:58

FDA. Very experimental. Her mom signed her

25:00

up. Long story short, Emily shows up to the

25:02

Lighthouse School one day and walks into this room,

25:05

and a guy named Ed gives

25:07

her this thing. He gives me his device. Can

25:09

you describe it? I mean, is it a big helmet? No, it's

25:11

not. It's just like

25:13

a regular pair of

25:15

sunglasses. Though they were a

25:17

little heavier than your normal sunglasses, she says,

25:20

because right on the front, like on the

25:22

bridge of the nose, was a little camera

25:24

pointing forward. And then attached to

25:27

the sunglasses was a little wire. That

25:29

ran out of the camera and down to

25:31

this little square piece of metal. I think it's

25:33

made out of titanium. And it's

25:36

just like the size of a postage stamp.

25:39

Or a little bit thicker, though. Ed

25:41

explained to her that a little piece of

25:43

titanium was filled with thousands of electrodes. And

25:46

what was going to happen is that the camera

25:48

was going to convert images into patterns of electricity

25:50

on that little square. So he told her to

25:52

take the little square. Put it on your tongue.

25:54

Put it right on the center of your tongue.

25:57

And close your mouth. So

26:00

I put it on and they turned

26:02

it on. And

26:06

it was like, it

26:08

started to tickle. Imagine

26:10

a lot of Coca

26:13

Cola, like a lot of

26:15

bubbles on your tongue, and

26:17

always like, prickly, prickly

26:19

feeling. The idea

26:21

behind this thing, according to science writer Sam Keene,

26:24

author of The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, is

26:26

that we actually see with our brain, not our

26:28

eyes. I mean, it might seem like our eyes

26:30

are doing the seeing, and our ears are doing

26:33

the hearing, and our fingers and tongue are tasting

26:35

the touching, but that's actually not how it works.

26:38

Each of our senses sends signals into the

26:40

brain as electricity, little

26:42

blips on nerves. And it is the brain

26:45

that then converts those little blips into what

26:47

you perceive as a sight or a sound

26:49

or a smell. Now, obviously, someone

26:51

who is blind, their retina, is not sending those signals

26:53

anymore. But what if

26:55

there is another way to get signals

26:58

for light and dark and color into our

27:00

brains? In all of our brains, there are

27:02

lots and lots of pathways going from every

27:04

part of the brain to every other part

27:06

of the brain. And normally, your brain isn't

27:09

using those pathways, even though they exist. It's

27:11

like there's a road there, but it's shut

27:13

down and traffic can't be on it. But

27:17

what if you could open up some of those rats? He

27:20

just let me sit with it

27:22

on for an hour or two hours. Emily

27:25

says at first she had no idea what was happening.

27:27

She would just swivel her head around and feel the

27:29

patterns on her tongue change. And every

27:31

time I looked around, he'd say, Oh,

27:34

that's a chair. That's a door. That's

27:38

me. That's your mom. And

27:40

it went on like this for a while. Ed showed her

27:42

a ball and a square. A plastic

27:44

banana. Nothing was really happening for

27:47

her except for the prickly feelings on her tongue. But

27:50

then there was this moment. Ed had

27:52

this really long styrofoam rod, and

27:55

he flashed it in front of me.

27:57

He moved it up and down in front

27:59

of my head. face and

28:01

I was like oh my god what was that? Suddenly

28:04

she says she just saw it. I

28:07

was like oh my god it just

28:09

happened on its own. What

28:12

did it look like? In some of my mind's

28:14

eye it looks like a

28:16

long white skinny stick.

28:19

Could you see the texture of the stick? No

28:23

I couldn't see texture I couldn't

28:25

see in three dimensions.

28:27

It was very flat. It was kind

28:29

of like that kid's

28:32

toy light bright. So

28:35

imagine like a black screen and

28:37

little tiny white dots. All

28:40

arranged in a line. So

28:43

Emily was allowed to keep the brain port device

28:45

for about a year and a half and during

28:47

that time the light bright resolution of it did

28:49

get better as her brain learned

28:52

to speak tongue. It was awesome. When

28:55

I saw the people moving. And one

28:57

of the things that really struck me in our

28:59

conversation was I asked her about this video that

29:02

her mom had sent me showing her wearing the

29:04

device and walking down the street. She

29:07

told me that usually you know now that she's blind

29:09

when she's walking down the streets of New York City.

29:11

Especially uptown where the streets are

29:13

a lot wider. She

29:15

says people see her in her white cane and

29:18

walk a really wide circle around her. So

29:20

I yeah I hardly

29:23

ever notice other people walking

29:25

around me. It feels like I'm

29:28

just walking alone. I can

29:32

always hear the traffic and the sounds

29:34

of traffic but not

29:36

other people. But she says when she

29:38

put the device on and put that little sensor in her tongue

29:42

the sidewalk came

29:45

alive. I thought it was amazing

29:47

like I didn't know

29:49

this many people were on the street at

29:51

the same time as me. So now they're

29:54

all they're all there

29:56

again. Which she described them in a way that

29:58

sounded. almost

30:00

like a painting. Like

30:04

really soft blotches. Everything

30:08

was really soft, like soft blotches

30:10

of ink that

30:13

could move. They

30:16

were walking and I could see their legs moving

30:18

and I could see them, their gait. But

30:21

I couldn't see them clearly, like I couldn't see

30:24

their features or whether

30:26

they were wearing a shirt or a shorts

30:28

or dress. It

30:30

appears that you just see their

30:33

shadows and every

30:35

now and then I see the light casted on

30:37

them. Really? Yeah. I

30:42

imagine somehow like underwater creatures. Uh-huh.

30:46

Squishy jellyfish like. Yeah.

30:51

Yeah, like lighting up. Yeah,

30:56

like that. Yeah. And

31:08

that for Emily is what it's

31:10

like to translate the city with your tongue. New

31:14

York City becomes this, uh, hazy

31:16

sea of walking

31:19

fish that make

31:21

their way along in the sunshine. So,

31:43

it's been a full decade since

31:46

that last update with Emily and

31:48

she has been busy. She completed

31:50

an MFA program at Yale and

31:53

the artworks she's been making have

31:55

been shown in museums and galleries

31:58

across the world, including exhibit

32:00

that just opened at the Queens

32:02

Museum in New York City. We

32:05

sent producers to do Niyama Sambandan to

32:07

Emily's home in the Upper East Side,

32:11

where she lives with her partner

32:14

Kirby and London, her

32:18

guide dog, to talk

32:20

with Emily about what's been on her

32:22

mind, her tongue, her heart

32:24

these days. So like in the second

32:27

episode it was about that like

32:29

sunglass like tongue device. I

32:31

haven't used that in years, but it

32:33

was fun to experiment

32:35

with. Was there a reason you stopped

32:37

using it? I just found

32:40

that drawing with my hands, tactile

32:43

drawings was a lot easier

32:45

and more freeing than trying

32:48

to like look

32:50

at something through my tongue,

32:54

you know. Sometimes

32:56

it would give me headaches

32:58

too, it just was

33:00

too swell for me. Is

33:05

there any other tools that are helpful to

33:07

you in your art making process? I

33:12

have a rubber pad drawing

33:15

board, so when I place my

33:17

paper over the rubber padding and

33:20

I draw into it using a ballpoint pen, the

33:23

lines of my drawing will pop up and

33:25

so I'm tracing the line

33:27

of my drawing with my left hand as I draw with

33:30

my right hand. And

33:32

so I can, I feel like I'm looking,

33:35

I can see what I'm

33:37

doing as I'm doing it.

33:40

The color on my drawing

33:42

is using Crayola crayons and I was able

33:44

to organize them by putting each

33:46

crayon into their own separate envelope

33:49

that I put a real label on so that

33:53

I can pick and choose which colors

33:55

I want to use. But

33:58

before that I had a I

34:01

created a color journal with

34:03

these Crayola crayons and I asked

34:05

Kirby to describe each color to

34:07

me and then I associated that

34:10

color to a memory. That

34:12

way I'm able to clearly visualize

34:15

the Crayola colors I'm using. Do

34:17

you have that with you? Do

34:19

you know where it is, Kirby? My color

34:22

journal? I'm going to look at the effects here.

34:25

I mean, that's just amazing. So it's just like memories

34:28

connected to each color or each color

34:30

has a memory and there's how many

34:32

of them? In

34:34

my journal I have 90 on wrappers. Oh

34:40

my gosh, wow. Okay, here's the journal. It's like

34:42

this little gray book. What

34:45

is one? Okay. Denon

34:47

is the Crayola name and then it

34:50

says ilk made. Oh,

34:52

sorry. The Crayola

34:54

crayon is named Denon and my

34:57

memory of milk made the Vermeer

35:01

painting and she joined this

35:03

blue blouse over her dress and it

35:06

was just the most beautiful blue I

35:09

can remember seeing. Okay,

35:12

I'll just do a couple more. Above I think it

35:14

says like C2 Dallas? Is it

35:16

Dallas? Oh, I see. One

35:20

of my favorite movies is the fifth element. Okay. And

35:24

so Lulu Dallas is

35:26

the main character in this

35:29

movie and she has really

35:32

awesome orange hair. When

35:37

you say that, do you see that moment in your head? Yes.

35:40

And I guess you see Sunset Orange orange.

35:43

Yeah. This

35:45

time I'm going to read the memory and then you can

35:47

tell me the color. My

35:49

hair summer 2005. Oh,

35:53

that's midnight blue. Yeah.

35:58

Does your experience of being a the wall ever show

36:00

up in your work? I

36:03

don't know. No, not at all.

36:06

Um, so is that

36:09

a period of time where you don't really make

36:11

art about it? Oh no, no

36:13

I never make art about it. No. Why?

36:17

Um, it's just,

36:19

I feel like I really just

36:22

want to leave it all behind. Yeah,

36:25

right now my work is

36:28

really centered around memories

36:30

and dreams and also

36:33

the intersectionality of the

36:35

experience of disabled people

36:37

and animals. Um,

36:40

and it also focuses on

36:42

love and intimacy and

36:45

co-partnerships. I'd

36:48

love to talk about your exhibit at the Queen's Museum.

36:50

Alright, I'm going to just cut in here for

36:52

a second to describe Emily's most recent exhibit, which

36:55

is currently at the Queen's Museum in New York

36:57

City. You can go check it out. And

36:59

so you walk into this room and there

37:02

are these three big white

37:04

dogs standing on their hind legs. They're

37:06

made out of paper mache. And

37:09

each one of them is holding

37:11

a leash up in their paw

37:13

that's connected to this walking stick,

37:15

this giant walking stick that they're

37:17

all sort of dancing around,

37:19

almost like a maypole. And at

37:21

their feet are all these paper

37:23

mache flowers in red and magenta

37:25

and pink. And around them are

37:28

these giant paper mache trees. Um,

37:32

and the whole thing is called other-worlding. What

37:34

does this show mean for you? Uh,

37:37

the show to me is a

37:39

celebration of my relationship

37:42

with London. London and I

37:44

have been working together for over

37:46

a decade. The three

37:48

sculptures of London are human scale. Um,

37:52

we kind of take dimensions from my

37:55

body and London's body and mesh

37:57

them together. There's

38:00

London. There's London. Tell me

38:02

more about London. Yeah, London is a

38:04

blonde English Labrador and she is 13

38:07

and a half years old. She's

38:12

my first guide dog and she

38:15

changed my life in many

38:17

ways. When

38:20

we're together, I feel like we've

38:22

become this super organism in some

38:25

ways. She and I are

38:27

going back and forth between

38:29

a maternal and a

38:31

spousal relationship. It's

38:34

a relationship built on

38:36

interdependence. I'm curious

38:39

what specific moments you can think of

38:41

with London that really inspired this

38:43

piece. In

38:46

the beginning of our relationship, when

38:49

we're just starting to bond together,

38:51

which is a really important process

38:53

of your relationship with a

38:55

guide dog is the bonding. I

38:58

would turn on music. London

39:03

would press around me, wagging

39:05

her tail and I hold my arms out

39:07

to her and she'd jump up and

39:11

put her paws in my hands and

39:13

we kind of like stomp

39:16

around to the music

39:18

together. So

39:22

in a way, I feel like what

39:24

really carried me through all

39:27

these years is these foundations

39:29

of love that I've had

39:31

from my partner of London

39:33

and Kirby. London

39:35

and Kirby. Yeah, Kirby and London,

39:37

you know? If

39:40

you want to make it in alphabetical order. London

39:43

and Kirby, for

39:45

sure. We're a team. All

39:53

right, that'll do it for today. Thank

39:55

you so much for tuning in. We'll

39:58

be back in two weeks. With

40:00

more. Radio

40:05

Lab was created by Jad Abumrod and

40:07

is edited by Sorin Wheeler. Lulu Miller

40:09

and Lassif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan

40:12

Keefe is our Director of

40:14

Sound Design. Our staff includes

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Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca

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Kielse, Annie McEwen, Alex

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Sneason, Sara Khari, Sarah

40:33

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40:36

Walters, Ollie Webster. Our

40:39

fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily

40:41

Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Let's go!

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