Before you watch Johnny’s interview with Daniel Kish, here’s what you should know about Daniel…
We deal a lot with the impossible on this website, but Daniel Kish has done something that most people would say is truly, literally, impossible. Completely blind from the age of one (and that’s with zero residual sight; he lost both of his eyes), Daniel has taught himself to see. And now he’s teaching other blind and visually impaired people to do the same.
Daniel’s company World Access For the Blind teaches the use of what’s called “Flash Sonar.” The user emits vocalizations, and those vocalizations strike objects in the world and bounce back. Through careful study, students learn to interpret the changes in the echoes and can find the object around them, tell their shapes, and navigate around them.
If you redefine “seeing” as something that happens in the mind instead of the eye, this is sight, indeed. There have even been MRI studies that show the visual cortex functioning through echolocation.
Daniel says that under most circumstances, the resolution is “about the size of a softball.” He himself goes through the world as just about any sighted person would. He even rides his bike through the city.
Check out this truly astonishing interview below. And prepare to have your mind blown. Prepare to rethink the impossible.
Below is the video of Johnny interviewing Daniel.
Download audio MP3 file (Right-click and choose “Save Target As…” or “Save File As…”)
