Radiolab - Seeing in the Dark

Episode Date: October 22, 2012

John and Zoltan are both blind, but they deal with the world in completely different ways -- one paints vivid pictures in his mind, while the other refuses to picture anything at all. In this short, they argue about the truth of a world they can't see.

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From. W. N. Y. C. See? Yes. And NPR. Let's just see what happens. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrod.

I'm Robert Colich. This is Radio Lab. The podcast. And before we get to today's podcast, a brief message. Okay. So Radio Lab is listener supported, right? You know this. So the show only really happens when you all listening right now.

Come together and help us pay for it. You know, the reporters, the producers, the bandwidth costs, which are significant, help us pay for that stuff so we can keep pushing this podcast out into the world for free and keep telling you stories that move you, challenge you, make you think. If you've helped us out in the past, thank you. You rock. If you haven't helped us in the past or maybe if you've helped this in the past and want to re-up, think about going to our website, radio lab.org, and clicking on that blue support button.

You'll see it on the right side of the page. Click on that button and, you know, give whatever makes sense, whatever feels right. And thanks. We will make wonderful use of that money. Yeah. To prove it to you, or at least to make you our best offer. We're now going to tell you a story. This one comes from Oliver Sacks, the neuroscientist, who often share.

shares sources with us. In this case, he told us about two people. And we ended up telling the story live on stage at UCLA's Royce Hall. It's part of our show in the dark. 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 we 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? Hello, WMYC. I want to introduce you to someone.

Hello, John. Hello, this is John Hull. Hi, John. This is Pat Walters. We have been emailing. I had our producer, Pat Walters, get John Hull into a studio. Oh, Pat. I, for some reason, imagined you as a woman called Patricia.

Yeah, this happens to Pat all the time, so so many of his blind dates and just suddenly. Anyway, John Hull is a theology professor in England, and he is blind, but he hasn't always been blind. No, no. I was born with a condition. an inherited condition and I developed cataract when I was a boy of 13. And then things got cloudy. Exactly, for milky whiteness. 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 had... When he was 35, his world went totally dark.

When I lost my sight, I suffered a lot from boredom. I just didn't know what to think about. 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. One night at a party with his wife, Marilyn, something happened that got him thinking. 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. Huh? 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 you the same thing. One of them said the other day, you know Marilyn, in a way you are fortunate. one will never see those little grey 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, there's perfume, 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. But how exactly does he do that? 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. That was how I faced the future as a blind man. He decided that he would live without pictures at all. So any time a picture would pop into his head, he would,

consciously push it away. And this became his routine. 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. You don't picture corridors, rooms, windows. 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. Yes.

And yet, when I'm walking in our corridor, I don't have that picture. Wow. When I'm standing in front of a window, I don't have that picture. When you are talking to your kids, do you see them or what's going on? No. 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 context. the contents of that concept, I've lost the concept. And he says he's lost it by choice. Which is strange. So he says he chooses not to see his wife or his kids.

Yeah, because he says, you know, all of 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 be. the idea of a lie. So I just can't imagine they're not wanting to imagine your wife's face.

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. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So meet Zoltan T's a Hungarian name, Zoltan T'O-T-A-N, it's a Hungarian name, Zoltan Tories, and I'm a clinical psychologist.

And like John, Zoltan was not born blind, He had an accident. He was working in a factory. It was a battery factory. And he was getting this huge drum of acid down from a shelf. And it had a plug which was, the screw was worn away on that plug. And when I was undoing it, it just flew open. And the whole, damn, 44 gallons poured out into, more or less into my face.

Oh, my heaven. 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. 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. Once Zoltzhan was out of the hospital and learning to live as a blind person, he says... I was advised to concentrate on touch and on hearing and all the other senses

and forget about it. sight, but this was not acceptable to me. Because for Zoltan, images were essential. For one thing, his dad had been a filmmaker. Head of Motion Picture Studios. And when Zoltan was a boy, his dad would give him movie scripts. Movie scripts to read and to visualize and to memorize. And to him, looking them 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 words. see the world anymore, but I can certainly imagine the world. And I decided to repopulate the world with images and reconstruct reality for myself. So, now when Zoltan walks into a room and he puts his hand on a couch or chairs or a table... I see the furniture correctly in the manner in which you would see it from the corner of your eye. He paints pictures of everything that he touches, everything that he touches, everything that he hears, even smells in a room, help them visualize the room.

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. 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. He would risk his life on it.

That's what he says. What does that mean? 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 wine. 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. I thought, hell, why shouldn't I try to do this? First, I repaired guttering and then large sections of the roof. Well, wait a second. You're blind, though, right? You're totally blind. Totally. So then... Totally, totally, well. Well, then what are you doing on a roof, is my question.

Well, this is what my neighbors asked. They thought I was crazy, you know. All right, so now here we have two very different ways of being blind. That 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 Morden cool to get these two guys together to duke it out, not to mention how politically incorrect that would be. 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. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. We've done it.

We've done it. Yes, wow. Okay. Good, good, good. 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? 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 curling hair and ears. It's like a living image. But tell me, when was the last time you actually saw her face with your eyes? I never saw her face with my eyes. Never? Never. Never know.

I met her only about five, six years after I lost my sight. I see. But this doesn't matter, John. This doesn't matter at all. The reconstruction is so vivid for me. I actually see it. I'm just lost for words. Zaltan, tell me, are you totally blind?

Yes. No light sensation? None whatsoever. Your wife's eyes? What color are they? Brown. Is that... Slightly flecked with little yellow spots in it.

and they are also large, expressive. She tells you her eyes are expressive. 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. But you cannot actually literally see her.

You can only imagine that you can see her. So why does it matter? 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. You know, I think he has a point when he says that. What do you mean? Because I can't, if I think about it, I can't actually imagine having a feeling without a picture first. 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 it with a malady. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm 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? Only very vaguely. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of you out there who listen to Radio Lab if you do and you know, 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. 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. You have to. Yeah, 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. Sultan, you are trying to impose a visual totalitarianism upon the human brain.

No, no, no, no, John, it isn't I. We are visual creatures. Blind people are not visual creatures. Oh, come on, come on, John. You said that you lost the visual world. Actually, I think that you just let it go. I didn't just let it go. I extinguished it for the sake of a greater reality.

What is the greater reality? Truth. He's talking about to think of the truth. Come on, though. That's not, that's like an 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? A fantasy or whatever, a lie perhaps. But at least it allows you to be in the world with other people. So you find a lie as a useful standard for how... 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? Well, you know, that is actually a hard question. I couldn't quite figure it out for myself, so I asked him. It's quite a difficult thing to describe. When 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, but he's asleep. And that is how John does it. That is John's way.

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 Radio Lab 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. 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. Yeah, go to radio lab.org, click that support button, and here's an added sweetener. So We've been touring with this guy, Demetri Martin, hilarious comedian.

He sort of helped us create The In The Dark Show. If you kick in $75 to help us make Radio Lab, we will send you his new CD, which is so freaking funny. It's called, I think, what's stand-up comedian? Is that what he calls it? Yeah. Yeah, okay. We're going to give you a taste right here. This is Dimitri Martin.

We're going to introduce somebody that you say like, this is and then their name, you know, like, this is Frank. It sounds pretty normal. But 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 some of you guys. Hey, he is Frank. Take it away, Frank. 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. What? 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, you know? 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. Oh, okay. He is going. You know, could we just do one more? I like people watching. Mostly this one woman. I'm doing them one at a time from behind bushes and stuff, you know.

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? It's not like if you yell out another feeling, I'm going to have that one instead.

I come home and everybody jumps up. everybody jumps up. Confidence! Damn right. That feel great. Gotta spend an hour at the party answering questions like, hey, so were you really confident

when we jumped up in yellow? Yeah, I wasn't faking. I had no idea. I was confident. I came in feeling kind of lousy about myself, and then I felt, yeah, really self-assured.

It's a great confidence party. I'm so glad you guys threw up front of. 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. That's that bird? That's a house?

That's your house, huh? That's like a sh**ty patio at best. Come on. There's 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. There, a tiny little person house for you. I know you can fly, but I'm putting a roof on it. Tough shit to deal with it. A little hole that's too small for your body to try to get in and out of it. Birds are in the house like, I feel ridiculous.

The other animals think we're trying to do. trying to be little people. This is just really pathetic. Shut up, Lewis. 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 radio lab. 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, 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. How do you think of it? It's like a, you

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. We even send you actually a video of Dimitri Martin in our show doing his... 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 just 75 bucks. gets you a lab partners membership where you can see Dimitri on stage with your eyeballs. Well, let me add one more thing. If you make a gift of whatever amount, it doesn't have to be anything, actually, if you just give us your goodwill, but you do it on our website, before 4 p.m. on Monday, October 29th, 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 if you give us anything. to RadioLab.org, click on that support button. Thanks. I'm Chad I boomrod. I'm Robert Crilwich. Thank you for listening and we hope giving. This is Lee Jones. I'm in Bristol, Tennessee, and I just got married. I met my waiting reception. Radio Lab 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 at www.sloan.org.