Zibby welcomes prominent blind scientist Dr. Joshua A. Miele and award-winning journalist Wendell Jamieson to discuss their extraordinary, captivating, and unexpectedly funny new memoir, CONNECTING DOTS: A Blind Life. Joshua, who became blind at a young age, shares how he has navigated the world around him, from the NYC public school system to teenage rebellion to finding purpose as a thought leader and advocate for accessible technology. Wendell and Josh also discuss how they balanced recounting Josh’s shocking early trauma and emphasizing his joyful, resilient life thereafter.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Joshua and Wendell. I have a two for one special here today. Very exciting. Connecting Dots of Blind Life by Joshua Mealy. Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah. 

Josh: Perfect. Yeah. 

Zibby: I am with Wendell Jamison. Welcome to you both. As I keep telling you, I am obsessed with this book. I read it. Every word I was like pouring over it, dog earing pages, and I just loved the story and just, you know, you as a guy, it was just like really captivating.

Josh: That is so thrilling. Thank you. Thank you for saying that and thank you for, um, reading it and enjoying it. We've, you know, we have had very, you know, we've been living with this book for, you know, three years now and very few people have read it yet. So, um, to have that kind of feedback is so amazing and so, um, exhilarating because we, you know, we think it's, we, we thought it was pretty good but, you know, you never know till the rest of the world gets hold of it.

So, thank you. 

Zibby: It is an anxiety provoking time. I am sorry you are in that, in the throes of that, you know, in the beginning promotion stages, but yes, I can, I can say it is definitely great. Why don't you talk about the premise of the book, when you decided to make this a book, and how the two of you originally teamed up, which I know you write about in the book, but why don't you explain it?

Josh: So, I'm, I'm here, this is Josh, I'm here with, uh, my co author Wendell Jamieson. The book is about, you know, the book is my book, it's written in my voice, but we wrote it together, and it's because, you know, Wendell is a professional, professional writer and he can talk, uh, more about that, but I've got a story, and Wendell really was an incredible collaborator in helping me tell, tell that story.

And the story is that I'm a blind scientist, designer, and inventor of cool things for blind people. And I'm, you know, in my mid 50s, I'm at the, sort of, um, in a nice point in, in a very successful career of doing that work. And I wanted to, uh, we, we sort of as friends decided that, wow, you know, it's time to sort of tell this.

story, because for most of my life, frankly, I've been very interested in doing the work, the accessibility and disability related work that I do around technology, around disability inclusion and rights, and I've been very reluctant to tell my own story because I've, you know, always wanted to say, you know, the story is not really about me.

The story is about us. The story is about people with disabilities, about blind people, and how we use technology to do the things we want to do and how we could really use better technology if the world would accommodate. And so it's been an interesting switch to, to realize that telling my own story is actually part of Making that change in the world and Wendell, um, Wendell, why don't you say a little bit about the book and the story?

Wendell: Sure, so Josh, this is, uh, the way Josh has described it is quite, uh, fascinating and it's very interesting because he doesn't mention how he became blind. And that was something of a, not struggle, but a balance we had to, uh, find in the book. Because the way he became blind was a, a Uh, sort of a shocking thing that happened when we were both growing up in Park Slope, Brooklyn in 1973, which he was, uh, answered the door of his family's brownstone, which was a few blocks from mine, and a, a neighbor who was mentally disturbed poured acid on his, uh, head and blinded him and, uh, scarred him.

And this was a very big event in the Park Slope of those days. It was in the newspapers. It was extremely upsetting. I recall being seven years old when my mother Crying, uh, told me about this, and we didn't even know the melees. And the only other memory I have of my mother telling me something in an equally upset way was the day, the night, the morning after John Lennon was shot.

So that just gives you an example of the magnitude of this thing. And so, when I was a journalist at the New York Times, I tracked down Josh, which is easy to do because he's quite notable and all over Google. And I wrote a story about his, you know, what had happened, this crime that had occurred a long time ago, and then the life he lived afterwards, which to my great Happiness was quite a joyous and successful life.

And so, but Josh was very ambivalent about talking about what had happened, and sometimes ambivalent about talking about what happened even as we wrote the book. So here, I'm going to kick it back to you on that, Josh. 

Josh: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not because I'm, you know, ashamed of it or I'm, you know, I'm traumatized and don't want to think about it like I'm, of course, it's, it, you know, it was a trauma, but, um, but the reason I don't want to, you know, the reason I've spent my life trying not to talk about that is because, for one thing, it's, it's written all over my face, anybody who sees knows that something, you know, serious happened to me, and I spend, um, you know, I, it's not, it's not a big deal in my mind.

Like, I am who I am, I'm blind, I'm burned, but it's just not the important part of, of what I generally want to be talking about with people. So, a lot of the time I have to try to move people away from it. So, for Wendell to say, hey, you know, let's Let's write a story about it. Let's, you know, let's put it in your book.

I'm like, okay, we'll put it in the book, but it's gotta be like, we gotta be, you know, we gotta hit it and move on essentially in the way I have in my life. I have, you know, I hit it or it hit me and we moved, we moved on and the moving on is the really interesting part of the story. Not because I'm some amazing, you know, in disability, there's all these.

There's all these, you know, stereotypes about disability that, that of course people with disabilities are sort of trying, also trying to get away from, and one of them is, you know, the overcoming, you know, oh, I've overcome my disability, and no, I haven't overcome my disability or what happened to me, I just, I live with it, I do the things I have to do, just as anyone would who wants to live a fulfilling life, and to many people who don't, Live with disability or don't have this kind of trauma in their past.

It's very difficult to imagine how that would be. And so the book is really connecting dots is really an effort to to normalize that to help people understand. And it does tell the story of. You know, of how I got burned, but it also tells the story of my childhood and how I went through public school in New York City as a, as a burned blind kid and how I learned braille and learned to use a cane to get around and, and really how I was a, a very self destructive, uh, teenager.

You know, lots of drugs, lots of music, lots of, lots of fun. And how I moved on to, you know, build a career in blindness, even though that's not what I set out to do. I didn't want to build a career in blindness, I wanted to be a physicist. But it turned out that, not that I couldn't have been successful in physics, I think I could have.

But being a person who is blind, who designs stuff for myself and for other blind people, I think was a more, it felt more fulfilling. It was a more valuable contribution. It was something that I felt driven to do that I saw as a, as a gap, as something that there weren't enough people doing. And I, and I'm very pleased with the, the works I've done so far and I hope to do more.

Zibby: That's amazing. What a story. I am not going to dive deep into an area of your life you'd just assume not discussed. So we're going to just go right past that. All I'll say is that it was written beautifully and It gave me a view into an experience that I didn't know much about. And so thank you for, for exhibiting all the courage that you did, even though you don't feel courageous or whatever, I still think having your backstory helps us put everything that follows into some sort of context.

So I think it's important that you put it in and I'm glad you did. But 

Josh: thank you. And let me just say, let me just say, it's not that I'd rather not discuss it. Obviously I'm ready to discuss it. We put it in the book. So it's, it's not that it's just, I don't want to, it's, it, it's a piece of my life. It has defined my life, but it, it isn't the story.

It isn't the story. I get 

Wendell: it. One thing that, one thing that I'm very proud about this book that happened organically as we wrote it. That's I think now that I've reread it a few times, I think we actually create for the reader Josh's experience that, so there's a scene very late in the book where it's sort of a meta thing where I'm actually become a character because I interview him and we re, re, reintroduce to the reader many of his family members from when he was little and sort of catch up with everyone.

It's kind of a narrative device that way. But I think that the reader has, at that point, stopped thinking about what happened to Josh in the beginning. The reader is with him now, out in Berkeley, and living his life. And I think that's the way Josh internalizes it as well. And so I think we actually give the reader a visual sense of how he truly moved on from this thing, which, at first glance, might seem It's a hard thing to imagine to do, but guess what?

We do do it. We do it. And the reader does it with us. 

Josh: But I interrupted you, Zibi. You were moving on to some interesting questions. 

Zibby: No, no. It's okay. It's totally fine. I was just, you know, I feel like learning about your experience and some of the, um, Challenges of being blind that I could, I mean, you outline them and describe them so that we feel we are actually living them with you.

Or Wendell, maybe, you know, both of you together did that. But even something like your relationship with your seeing eye dog or the curb height and your activism there or getting money from an ATM machine or all these things that a sighted person just might not realize. We're so making life so difficult for another group of people and you, and you're not angry about it.

You pointed out like, Oh, well, this is really hard for blind people. Like maybe, you know, and so I love how you laid all that out and then tried to find ways to fix everything. 

Josh: Thank you. Yeah. I'm glad, I'm glad that that came through and, you know, part of the, you know, there's, there's sometimes, you know, people don't, as you point out, don't realize.

where the barriers are, where the difficulties are coming from. And then sometimes people think, Oh, well, like, of course, blind people can't use computers or, of course, blind people can't, you know, go skiing or ride bikes or whatever. And of course, and they can, but, you know, there, so there, there are so many ways to sort of miss.

Construe or misconceive or, or otherwise kind of build your idea of blindness and disability on assumption rather than information. And so it was so much fun to kind of tell these stories and also kind of do some debunking and try to, you know, broaden perspectives while, while doing it. So one of the stories that we, you know, you allude to is this ATM story where, you know, ATMs aren't as big of a deal as they used to be now that, you know, kind of.

Uh, we're moving into a, a, a phase where cash isn't as exciting, but it used to be that if you didn't, you know, if you couldn't get cash out of the ATM, you really couldn't, uh, you didn't have money and we've, you know, we went through a phase. For about 20 years here, you know, since about 2000 where ATMs were quite accessible, but before that in the 90s, which is when my, the story about my ATM thing takes place, ATMs were not accessible, they didn't talk.

And while they had braille all over them. It was performative braille. It was, it was not actually functional braille. It wasn't braille that helped you use the machine. It was basically braille that was put there for sighted people to say, Oh, isn't it great that blind people can use the ATM, but they couldn't.

And so it was, you know, there was a story late at night. I was trying to get some cash out of the ATM. So I had memorized all the. button sequences I needed to do to get my, you know, 60 out of the ATM or whatever. And I put my card in, I did my sequence, and it didn't work. And I didn't know if it didn't work because the machine was out of money.

I didn't know if it didn't work because my pin was wrong. Which I wasn't, I didn't know, you know, so it could have been anything because I couldn't read the screen. And so it, you know, there's, I won't spoil it for the reader, I encourage people to read it, but I don't usually get very angry, but I did get very angry that night.

And 

Wendell: one option Josh has, that we write about in Connecting Dots, is that you can ask the person next to you to help you. Look, here, can you please tell me my balance and withdraw this money for me? Thank you very much. And he'll withdraw, you know, 300 bucks, give you your 60 and walk away. So, 

Josh: or maybe not give you your 60.

Maybe just kind of hit you over the head. 

Wendell: So we used a little bit of the ATM as a proxy. And the ATM is a recurring motif. of to the various things that to you and I, Zippy, we may not think of that to Josh were, you know, something to be over, to be dealt with. 

Josh: I mean, the world is designed for, the world is designed for sighted people.

And my mission in life essentially has been to try to bring accessible design into the mainstream. To try to move us a little further down the road of designing things in a way that, uh, it doesn't have to be, For blind people only, we want, I want to have the things that work for everyone in the world work for me and, uh, other people with disabilities as well, and it's not, it doesn't have to cost a lot more, it doesn't have to be complicated, it just has to be thought of at the beginning of the design process and followed through on in a meaningful way that makes sure it works.

That, uh, that it's actually gonna work for people who need it. 

Zibby: Well, how great to put your brain to good use in that area, right? 

Josh: Thank you. It's amazing. 

Zibby: One of the things I loved about the book was how you write about your family and the family relationships and even the evolution of some of the relationships over time, particularly with your mom's partner.

Uh, I have a stepdad, I am married, my husband is a stepdad. I found that relationship. which became quite influential in your career trajectory and started off from, you know, not a, not the best place. And I just kind of make fun of his accent the whole time. It's like hilarious because you're obviously very funny.

But the way you write about all of them with your, your siblings and your mom and your dad and all of that, talk about writing all, all of that and how you're dealing with the fact that, you know, these are people that are going to probably read the book and have to handle their depiction in it. 

Josh: Yeah, that was scary.

Um, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pretend it wasn't and the thing is that everyone in my family, one of the reason why I feel I have been so able to kind of be a successful blind person and be sort of self actualized in this way is that nobody in my family ever said it. You can't do that because you're blind.

The people in my family said to me, Let's figure out how you're going to do this. And gave me opportunities to figure it out for myself and to advocate for myself and so without, without a family like that, I'm sure you can imagine that it didn't necessarily need to be that way and many people don't have a family that says That behaves that way with enormous impacts on on the psyche of the blind person, right to be told as a child.

You can't do that because you're blind. Don't touch that. Keep your hands to yourself. Those are terrible messages for blind kids. So it's my family that That made me and I wanted to honor them and, you know, talk about them in the book, but you know, nobody's perfect and we, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, uh, uh, imperfections that are funny and adorable and loving and we, Wendell and I, when, when we first started writing it, I said to Wendell, Okay, we can do this, but it has to be funny.

And he said, funny? I'm not sure, I'm not sure if it's a funny story. I said, it is a funny story. 

Wendell: Oh, I'm not sure that's, I'm not sure that's true. I always, we, Josh and I always have a good time. And I always thought there was a lot of humor in it. He's very funny, you know. Our outlook from growing up in Park Slope in those days is similar.

One thing, I'm so happy, uh, Zippy, that you picked up on a family thing. As an outside observer, right, as the journalist who is doing a lot of the reporting and putting it together, I felt that Each member of Josh's family represented a different internalized journey and response to what had happened to him as a little boy.

This was very, obviously, this was very tough on his mother and his sister and his brother. His sister became a very loving, a caretaker. Probably going above and beyond what a such a little kid should need to do whereas his brother became quite angry and Sort of distance himself from Josh at points in their childhood not maybe directly as a response to what happened but that's how it played out and of course Klaus his stepfather was a scientist and sort of Which was in many ways keys to showing Josh that the life of a scientist could be a glorious life.

And his father, who's a tough guy from the 70s, like saved his life on the night this happened. So everyone, his mother of course, I can't, I have to give credit to everyone, was an incredibly nurturing, slightly eccentric, wonderfully eccentric force. So everybody played one of these roles in helping him and themselves move forward.

So I thought, I think, I'm so happy you picked up on that, because I thought it was a fascinating part of the book and the reporting. 

Josh: But it is funny. 

Wendell: Yeah, it is. Very funny. Some are funny. Some are funnier than others. 

Zibby: I think it's funny, too. And I also think, I mean, you had, you had times there when, when you were talking about being in the, the cave or underground at Berkeley with all the other, you know, cool blind or disabled people.

And you're like, yeah. And then one night it got really hot and we all took off our pants because like, well, we weren't going to be able to see each other. I mean, you're just, you just like poke fun. It's like. 

Wendell: Or using the braille machine to heat up grilled cheese sandwiches, right? I mean, necessity is the mother of invention.

Josh: Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, uh, you mentioned the cave at Berkeley, which is, you know, sort of the, you know, sort of community, this impromptu community center of, of blind and disability thinking, uh, on campus at Berkeley. It's gone now, by the way. I think another big part of this book is my sort of my blind awakening because as a child, even though I was so empowered and so, so supported by my family in doing the things I wanted to do, I was not very, I was not down with being thought of as a blind kid.

I was just, I was a kid. I was, I wanted to be thought of. Like everybody else, and just like everybody else, I had these ideas about blindness and disability that were very negative, and I didn't want to be thought of that way, and so, so I didn't want to hang with other blind people, I didn't want to be, like, I didn't want to talk to blind people.

mentors. Like what would they have to say to me? They would teach me how to be, you know, how to be blind and pathetic. And it wasn't until I got to Berkeley that I met a community of blind people that I was like, Oh my God, I've been, I've been totally, you know, ableist. I've been thinking of blind people as, you know, this negative stereotype and trying to get away from it.

When in fact, Blind people, like being blind is, is, you know, can be cool, and blind people can be cool, and I met an entire community of amazing, smart, funny, interesting, and cool blind people at Berkeley and really realized that it wasn't the blindness that I didn't want to be part of, it was, it was the, the representations and the stereotypes of blindness that are so pervasive in sort of history, literature, and popular culture.

And so I really became, I embraced blindness at that point and have, you know, have been on that journey since. 

Zibby: Well, I feel like it is just this fabulous coming of age with your, everybody has their own stuff, right? Your stuff is something that I think a lot of people are curious about. What, what would it be like to be in your shoes?

And yet you go through all the stages of Adolescents and, you know, the phone freaking or whatever that was, like all the funny and dating and falling in love and just all the things which make the story just so heartwarming and compelling. And I don't know, I feel like this should be a, an Academy Award movie or something like that.

Josh: Oh my God. 

Wendell: We agree. We agree with you on that. 

Josh: That would be great and terrifying. 

Zibby: If there's something, like if you could just distill it down, which is a tough ask, into just something that readers need to take with them when they put down your book, what is that, what is that thing that you're like, if you miss, if they missed it, they missed the whole purpose of it?

Josh: Wow, I think 

Zibby: I said it was tough. It was tough. 

Josh: It's a tough question. I'm gonna say that blindness is just another way of living in the world. It's not tragic. It's not scary. It just is. And if we would design the world more thoughtfully for everyone, then blindness would be easier. And I want people to know about that.

Zibby: Amazing. How about you, Wendell? 

Wendell: Oh, I, what he said, of course. But you know, he did get a, draw a bad card that day in 1973. And he persevered. And he went on to have an unbelievably successful, joyous life. And so, If you have, draw a bad card one day, don't throw in the towel. I mean, Josh would say, well, of course he didn't throw in the towel.

He had no choice but to move forward. And I think that's in a way kind of an inspiring thought. So I would, that's what I would like someone to take away. And also, you know, the humor of this book is very important to us. It is a funny book. And I just think you might say, well, I read a book about a guy that burned with acid on the first chapter.

And at the end he won a big, well, I don't want to give away anything. He got a big award at the end. It might not initially sound like a laugh riot, but it, it is. And so I'd like people to have a joyous reading experience. And, and take away also some joy from the various sort of slightly mundane parts of it that you've mentioned.

The, the falling in love, the teenager, and doing drugs and stuff. That is many people's experience who are not blind. But it also is part of the journey and can be exciting to read about. 

Josh: And, you know, Wendell used the word inspiration, and that's another one of those triggering words for people with disabilities, but it's not actually a terrible thing to be inspired, but the kind of inspiration is really important, and, you know, I don't, I'm not trying to do a chicken soup for the soul, where people, you know, with kittens and puppies and people feel good, and I'm not trying to inspire people to say, wow, what a great guy. I could never do that. I am trying to inspire people to say, wow, I didn't realize that. I think now that maybe I want to, like, I want to be that kind of person. I want to take on some of the challenges that, that are being talked about in this book. The, the kind of inspiration that inspires people to do and to be is, is powerful and I want to encourage that.

So I'm hoping that that's, that's where, that's what'll come from reading this book. 

Zibby: It definitely does. You don't have to accept things the way they are, and you can always improve things. And that's something that it comes through in every in every paragraph. 

Josh: Thank you. 

Wendell: Wow. Thank you. 

Zibby: Yeah.

Congratulations. Sorry for sort of fawning all over you guys. I was so obsessed. But anyway, Connecting Dots and Blind Live, congratulations and thank you so much for your time today.