2024 Wrap Up Final
Erik: It's easy to talk about the successes, but what doesn't get talked about enough is the struggle. My name is Erik Weihenmayer. I've gotten the chance to ascend Mount Everest to climb the tallest mountain in every continent. To kayak the Grand Canyon and I happen to be blind. It's been a struggle to live what I call a no barriers life, to define it, to push the parameters of what it means.
And part of the equation is diving into the learning process and trying to illuminate the universal elements that exist along the way. And that unexplored terrain between those dark places we find ourselves and the summit exists a map. That map, that way forward, is what we call No Barriers.
Erik Weihenmayer: Recording.
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, we are recording.
Erik Weihenmayer: Cool. Hey everybody., This is Erik Weihenmayer welcome to the no barriers podcast and happy new year. Happy 2025. I have a cold today, Didrik. You're gonna have to cut out all my sniffles. I sound like what I'll sound like when I'm 80.
Didrik Johnck: I'm just gonna take charge .
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, take charge buddy, but yeah, Didrik Johnck our producer is joining us today and we're gonna go over our favorite interviews of the year And it's going to be amazing, right?
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, so many people pushing the limits of human potential in ways that were unimaginable years ago. And, it was hard to, you know, it's always hard to pick the sort of the best of the best or the most memorable.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, we're leaving a lot of people on the table, but we're only giving you a slice and yeah, when I went back and listened to all the interviews, Didrik it was really cool because the kind of the consistent theme was this idea of the adaptability and the resilience of human beings and we're about to go over some of those stories right now, right?
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, let's jump into it.
Erik Weihenmayer: Just a reminder that we've interviewed all kinds of people, like everyone under the sun, from inventors, technologists, to athletes, to musicians, and they all exemplify this idea of what a no barriers life can look like. But really the theme is this no barriers life.
And so the stories that come out of this podcast are so beautiful and so uplifting. And even beyond that, what I love is that, people really get into the grittiness of their story and sometimes the gritty stuff is the best.
Didrik Johnck: Well said. We'll touch on some grittiness, like tissue expanders.
Erik Weihenmayer: That will make no sense until you listen.
Yeah, exactly. But let's start with, uh, Zach Anner. And as I started the interview with Zach, I'm an absolute fanboy of Zach. He wrote a book, and it's probably the best title of any book I've ever read in my life. It's called, If at Birth You Don't Succeed. And he was born with cerebral palsy, so he's got a lot of challenges, a lot of physical challenges.
Despite that, he gets out into the world. He's made films. He's a YouTube sensation. He's just, he's a comedian. He's just an amazing guy. And one of the sections of the interview I loved was when he talked about a very simple story about his P. E. teacher. He had this incredible P. E. teacher that would not let him sit on the sidelines. I think, one of the challenges, Didrik, is when you have a disability, you want to either, be normal, or you want to hide. And this P. E. teacher did not let Zach hide. She forced him into the middle. She adapted all the rules to these, different sports and games that they were playing.
And, just forced him. To participate, and as you'll see, it really affected the rest of his life, that kind of modeling.
Didrik Johnck: Let me just add that, this PE teacher, you know, she didn't go to a board meeting to get approval on how to integrate Zach and make him part of the class. There was no, uh, DEI for dummies. The way that Zach breaks it down, inclusion is pretty simple. It just doesn't have to be complicated.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. We way over complicate it, right? We don't have to be diversity experts and inclusion experts to, it's just about getting somebody out there and helping them to play the game.
Didrik Johnck: All right, here we go.
Zach Anner: I tell a story about, playing in a handball where, the rules for that when I, whenever I was picked in gym class, I got to be a two for one deal with my best friend, Andrew, because neither one of us had the athletic prowess to like add any value to a team. So it's Oh, they come as a package. So it's not that bad. And in handball, if I got, like even if someone attempted to pass it to me and I dropped it, then she would blow her whistle and say, okay, let's get him the ball, right?
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, that would be complete.
Zach Anner: Yeah. And so that was the adaptation, but I remember one time I caught an actual ball.
And just that feeling, cause the handball was squishy, so I could actually grab a hold of it. And I remember I was in front of the goal and I actually scored a goal for the first time. And like before Mrs. Fata, I just wanted to be excused from gym class. And when I got that feeling of victory or that feeling of accomplishment from being included in sports, it was like nothing else I'd ever experienced.
So it really, she's not around anymore. She unfortunately passed away. So I'm so glad that I'm able to celebrate her and that story and just everything that she gave me by forcing me to be involved in athletic activity.
Erik Weihenmayer: I love it because, like, we all need a model, right, of how to move forward and it seems like she gave you a little bit of a glimpse of what the model could look like in terms of all the crazy, cool stuff you've done in your life since then and you don't sit on the sidelines, right?
And you could have easily been the kid that like, was the last picked, but everybody in the book wanted you on the team because, because you were an advantage.
Zach Anner: Because it wasn't quite, it wasn't exactly fair to the other kids, but now I'm so grateful. Those kids could, they're probably still bitter about it, but honestly,it's those experiences that allow me to like, go to Workout Wednesday and make YouTube videos of me sucking at sports and trying to motivate people through my failures rather than my successes,
and I think Inclusion isn't as complicated as we make it out to seem sometimes. It really is just, what's it going to take to get them,playing the game. And it's not, it doesn't have to be, done through mountains of red tape. You don't have to have, you know. meeting after meeting about it, because it's really just what does a kid need to make them feel like they're part of a team?
Erik Weihenmayer: Zach's P. E. teacher sounds amazing, man. I wish I had met her. She, unfortunately, died of cancer. But, anyway, with a little more levity, this next clip really shows how funny Zach is and his approach to life. This next clip is about Zach and his dream as a young boy to meet his childhood idol and dream girl, Cindy Crawford.
Who didn't want to meet Cindy Crawford when you were ten?
Didrik Johnck: I know.
Erik Weihenmayer: You know it, D?
Didrik Johnck: yeah. It's so approachable, so relatable, which just is one of the reasons that just makes Zach so hilariously awesome.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, you're right. It makes like disability very approachable and very connected.
Didrik Johnck: Alright, roll clip.
Zach Anner: I feel like this story needs a little context. That's because you're making it seem like I'm a 40 year old man who's in love with Cindy Crawford, not that's not, the case, but I may have run away from my house in Buffalo, New York to try and meet Cindy Crawford when I was 10 years old, a perfectly normal prepubescent response for two running away to New York City, we got about four blocks, but to answer your question, we have not met. Felt like there was going to be some chance when I was doing the book tour in Chicago, like she was in Chicago at the same time.
I don't even know if she's aware of my existence. I also don't trust myself not to make a fool of myself, even though I'm happily in a relationship and getting engaged soon. Like, you know, I feel if I met Cindy Crawford, I would just, I might turn back into that 10 year old boy.
Erik Weihenmayer: Those of you who listen to the podcast, you know that so much of these stories are all about community and friendship and the support that we need in our lives to really go to high places. And Zach has the most amazing group of friends. Some of them he's been buddies with since third grade.
They were kind of outcasts together. And they bonded together to do all kinds of amazing adventures. And this is Zach talking about just the power of his team around him, his friendships, and and then he ends with a really powerful statement that we'll come back and talk about.
Didrik Johnck: Alright, rolling clip number three for Zach.
Zach Anner: My best friend to this day is somebody that I met in third grade, and we've been friends for, over 30 years now, Andrew Martina, and he was the person who was actually assisting me when I won my show from Oprah.
My friends always, we always had similar senses of humor. So it was always through laughter that we bonded. And I would find, people who felt, a little bit like social outcasts. And we would geek out about nerdy stuff. But all throughout my life, it's been, I have, an incredible community of friends and mentors and family who've supported me and, you know, I wouldn't be where I am with, without them. And the thing that I've realized recently about inclusion is it's not just about the person that you're trying to include. Inclusion means that you don't miss out on the amazing things that the people you're trying to include bring to the table.
It's a two way street. And I used to feel like there's no way I'll be able to repay my friends for all that they've given me. All the amazing things they've tried. they've literally carried me up mountains so that I could, you know have a once in a lifetime experience. I've gone up mountains, I've gone on volcanoes piggybacking on my friends. .
Erik Weihenmayer: I love what Zach ends with there, this idea that inclusion is not just about somebody doing you a favor, and letting you into the club as like an act of charity. No, folks with challenges, folks with disabilities, they provide value to the world.
And so, by helping to elevate their lives, we help to elevate our own lives. And I think that's a really powerful point, because that's the end goal of inclusion.
Didrik Johnck: Inclusion is a two way street.
All right. All right, Erik. the next individual that we have queued up is Katelyn McKinney and the title of her episode was Approaches to Wilderness Therapy. People call her a wilderness therapist. She would refute that. But why did we bring Katelyn on ?
Erik Weihenmayer: Look, the podcast is not a blatant advertisement for the No Barriers organization, but we obviously want to connect these stories to the work we do at No Barriers. And Katelyn is an amazing facilitator for No Barriers. She runs our Warriors programs, so she does the whole program. We have a phase one where it's a virtual month where we get to know each other, and then we have this experience for five days in the mountains where we really work on the hardcore stuff and then, we have a phase three, which is okay. What are you going to do with this experience? How are you going to work to make it change your life?
And Katelyn, I thought it's just a real expert in this area. honestly, Didrik, we have this challenge at no barriers where it's, which is like if you water down the programs, we say, Hey, we're just going to do like a one day program. We'll take it folks with disabilities to a baseball game, feed them a hot dog, and say, look, we impacted your life. But that's not true change. True change takes a lot of work. And Katelyn, most of her life has dived into, what does it take to actually create those lasting changes? Like, how do you weed through all the bullshit and say what really works and what doesn't work?
And I think one of the most interesting things she talked about in this interview is how you create a safe, she calls it a container, which is kind of the safe culture, the safe community, because people come in with all kinds of toxic behaviors and, habits and ways of communicating that don't work.
And she says, look, in the next five days, we're gonna create this, or try to create this self, this safe container, where you can really experiment and be vulnerable, and try out new ideas and new behaviors and new ways of communicating, and with the idea that you're modeling this idea of shifting into a new mindset.
And I, I just found it brilliant.
Didrik Johnck: Yeah , I mean, everybody wants to know what the special sauce is, right? Everybody wants to know what the No Barrier special sauce is . And she addresses that head on,in this interview. And it's it's probably not what you think.
Katelyn McKinney: I know one guy who, oh my gosh, Erik, he was the biggest pain I have ever guided. I adore him, but he required so much behavior modification. He was the most profane and the most like dirty humored creature that has ever come on one of our expeditions.
He had the best intention and he also had a severe TBI that like honest to goodness like really did interfere with his ability to remember the filter that he needed to use. but I had to like,
Oh my gosh, I had to camp in this guy's ass the whole expedition, Erik. I just pitched a tent there and just had to constantly be like, Bro, pine. How do I finish the word? You know? And after his experience, he did have a physiologic change. He did engage, wildspace and the gym more, but the really cool juicy thing is that he ended up volunteering, to go into prisons and be with veterans who had been incarcerated and help them build their plan for when they got out.
And he was walking in honest witness with people, like going into their dark spots, going into their shame moments, going into the pockets of society that we have all given ourselves permission to disregardand reflecting back value and hope. And I am so proud of him. And I think that was always in him.
We just had an opportunity to create a space to help push the other stuff aside so that those little seedlings could just catch the right, sunray and catch the right amount of moisture to just do what they needed to do. And so that's what I think our value is. It doesn't work in like a, in a hashtag or like a mission statement, but I really think that it's, if we decenter ourselves in how we see our value, we, more closely honor the truth of people showing up able enough, ready enough, interested enough, curious enough, vulnerable enough to get whatever it is that they can out of this experience.
And that can be so many different things.
Didrik Johnck: Okay, next up on the Katelyn highlight reel is clip number two, where the theme is othered. The injury of being othered.
Erik Weihenmayer: So what I love about this clip is Katelyn talks about the injuries of being othered, right? People come in to these programs feeling alienated. And,this was a veterans program that I took part in with Katelyn this summer. And she sets up all these parameters that make the experience like a healthy, game changing experience.
And what she asks people to do is to give up their sort of low brow humor. It's not like being prudish, because look, I, you and I have been on tons of expeditions and you're always busting balls, right, Dee? But she says, you know, like, this military humor, like, Hey man, you're a jarhead. Hey, you're an egghead because you're in the Air Force.
It just kind of, like, locks us into these identities. Same with the idea of, identifying yourself, with politics or with religion. She asks people to give up all those tropes and just connect with people at a human level. Which is incredibly difficult, but at the same time, incredibly powerful.
Didrik Johnck: She's clearing the air. She's making a place for people to breathe and move forward.
Erik Weihenmayer: Check it out.
Katelyn McKinney: And humans on this planet, I don't think you get to get through a life without feeling scared, without feeling othered, without feeling like you're not going to belong, without feeling like, you've got something to be ashamed of or something that hurts your worth.
Or, these injuries of, of betrayal to self, which seemed to be like the deepest. Like those things are part of the human experience, whether you put on a uniform or not. And if you can allow yourself permission to let that be true for you, then you have 99 percent of the American population open to you as people who can walk with you.
And that's an, I think that's an incredible thing to allow people permission for.
Erik Weihenmayer: Look, this is no diss on veterans. My dad is a Marine. He had 119 missions over Vietnam in his A 4 Skyhawk. But, what Katelyn expresses is that the traits that make you a great warrior sometimes don't translate to civilian life. we're always talking about this idea of how do you transition veterans into civilian life.
It almost becomes like a cliché. But essentially, she's saying like,the things that make you a great warrior maybe make you a rigid parent or a partner or an employee. And how do you shift your mindset? Into something new. So you're just not locked into these identities that aren't necessarily working for you anymore.
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, that was a good one. All right. I'm going to throw a term out at you that we both chuckled a little bit when we heard her say this, which was trauma Olympics.
Erik Weihenmayer: What does that mean? It makes me laugh my ass off because you have to be a part of these programs to understand what that means. But it's one of these counterintuitive things you learn in the field about working with groups. At first, in the early days of these programs, we used to just have people dive into their traumas for hours and everyone would walk away hideously depressed and re triggered and, it would take us a long time to, to rebound.
And we realized that, like Katelyn said, this is not therapy. this is present and future focused work. And so Katelyn actually cuts people off a little bit when they start diving into the trauma Olympics. We don't want to hear all the bloody, gory details of your story, right? it's more about, talking about our traumas, of course, but in a way to move forward.
Not to, trauma bond, as she calls it.
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, yeah, and she I mean the work that she's doing out there, she is literally, to use a military term, boots on the ground. She's in the trenches and it's a balance. It's messy how do you cut someone off people need to you know, express themselves, but again you don't want to have a group of people turn their shared experience into literally a trauma olympics.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, and you're so right like she has fascinating stuff to say about this like when people just dive into their memories and It actually solidifies them and it actually magnifies those trauma memories. So can actually backfire. Yeah, let's check it out.
Katelyn McKinney: I remember a three hour past ceremony where it was detail trauma after detail trauma and people were totally activated and dissociated and feeling in like emotional distress. And then we're like, okay, go to bed. Does anybody like, we just didn't have the tools.
Erik Weihenmayer: And you're diving into the idea that this is, that's the reason it's not therapy. Like you are not a counselor bringing somebody through a therapy session, right? This is present focused and future focused in terms of,
Katelyn McKinney: Yeah, and that's what we've come to, right? I'm really proud of the fact that we, as an organization, when I've brought like, Hey, I don't know that this is our best method. can we try shifting this way? Like we've done some really amazing shifts. . So yeah, so you offer the normalizing flooding and then you'd let them know, Hey, if that does happen. Yeah. I will interrupt you. We will pause you and give you a moment to like, just catch your breath. And that way you know that if you like your storytelling and you're like wondering if you've gone too far, you can check in with us visually and we'll give you the like wrap it up or like you're okay. Um, and also for the group, nobody's gonna be held hostage to a story that is uncomfortable or taking up too much of the limited airspace that we have.
Erik Weihenmayer: Hey everybody, this is Erik, and I want to take a little break to tell you about No Barriers. Obviously, we're interviewing these amazing No Barriers pioneers, but behind this podcast is an organization called No Barriers, predicated on the idea that what's within us is stronger than what's in our way.
Our mission at No Barriers is to help people To break through barriers, to tap into the light of the human spirit, and to reclaim their lives, sometimes to reclaim their potential in the business of shifting mindsets. And it's proud work, and I hope you'll get involved, learn more about us. Check out our newsletter, NoBarriersUSA.org, NoBarriersPodcast. com.
Didrik Johnck: Okay, our final clip with Katelyn, we're going to talk about capital T trauma versus small trauma.
Erik Weihenmayer: I think she refers to this research that's been done that like military trauma is not all that different from just human trauma, like losing a child, or your house burning down, or flunking a test. People are traumatized in all kinds of ways, and that's not to trivialize the trauma of military, but it's really like an idea that I think No Barriers is based on.
And that is that, sure, people sometimes need to start out in like a veterans group with their peers just because it's a safer place to start. But ultimately, the idea is to say, look, trauma is trauma, right? Yeah. And, We've been experiencing trauma since the beginning of human history and, you know, my trauma as a blind person and your trauma in the military, maybe they're not as different as we originally thought.
And maybe if we can lean into each other, there's a way of kind of learning more empathy. And then, instead of just being able to relate to 1 percent of the population, maybe you can relate to 99 percent of the population, which is, you know, everyone.
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, and the research, what Katelyn explains in this clip, is, which was surprising, I think to me at least, was that the research is really starting to bear this out.
Katelyn McKinney: I think part of it is that as a society, we thought that there was a really big difference between capital T trauma and lowercase T trauma. So like the trauma of combat is incredibly different than the trauma of a miscarriage or the trauma of being othered because of your race or your identity of some other variety. And actually, it turns out that in the neuroplastic brain research world, those lowercase T traumas affect the brain very similarly to the way the big T's affect us. And I've actually found that in working with as many veterans as we have in these, this like chunk of time, I've found that folks are not usuallythe, if they have combat trauma or like very military based trauma, there's, usually something else that seems to be a bigger driver of their like tenderness of having had food insecurity as a child or an abusive parent or having been the recipient or perpetrator of sexual violence and all these different ways in which we can hold, injuries of like hurt and then injuries of shame for how we hurt others. And, All of that gets folded into identity and it becomes really hard to have self compassion and compassion for others. Because we kind of like have to like other the world and for veterans specifically, we have told them that nobody else gets it except veterans.Which is, I think it's a pretty big disservice, because it, it relies on a couple of falsehoods or things that we now know are false.
A, two people can go through the exact same, you know, humvee explosion and have very different responses to it, and very different experiences of it. And the other part is that what we're trying to convey in that is that it matters. what happened, the details of what happened matters more than how it impacted you.
Didrik Johnck: All right. Next up, we got Ben Ayers. He's a filmmaker and outreach expert, I guess you could say, and he's been working in Nepal for decades and...
Erik Weihenmayer: He speaks fluent Nepali too. Like, he totally understands the culture. Like, you know, I've never met a Caucasian who, who knows Nepal so well. Yeah. All right.
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, this guy, this guy just plopped himself in another culture. He's out there making mistakes trying to do good work andhe's got something real poignant to say about that idea of making mistakes getting past it and good moving on to the next thing and it involves a blunders greased pig grease pig
Erik Weihenmayer: You're a greased pig D
Didrik Johnck: Also, before we go into this clip, another, a couple other themes come out of this is the idea of just checking your assumptions, you know, what you've assumed going into a new environment, maybe the idea of deprogramming yourself a little bit and being adaptable, but at the end, Ben is a great storyteller, and this is a great clip about, trying to deal with a greased pig in some of the remotest areas of Nepal.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, but if you think about it, a lot of the folks that listen to this podcast, they want to break through barriers, they want to do big things in the world, right?
And so you have to start with this process of making these changes step by step. But in the beginning, sometimes if we rely on our assumptions we're going to blunder and sidetrack, get sidetracked along the way. yeah, it's a lot about checking our assumptions and really trying tolook at things, clearly, and let go of those assumptions, right?
Didrik Johnck: Yeah. Alright, let's roll it.
Ben Ayers: The best one, Erik, was probably the greased pig contest. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you've heard that story.
That sounds like a good story. No, I haven't heard this. So I'm going to try to not take up the whole podcast with this story. We were working in this village called Goodell, which at the time was probably seven days walk away from a road. And this village was really at the end of the valley. It was very poor, very isolated, you know, materially monetarily poor.
And, at the time, that village was sort of, uh, Kulun Rai, the ethnic group. And this is actually where The Last Honey Hunter was filmed.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Ben Ayers: And, so this is a community of indigenous, animistic, shamanistic, practitioners, this ancient culture that lived there. And one of the ways that society lived is that they didn't have toilets, like even pit toilets, you know, a lot of communities in Nepal just didn't have toilets at that time.
But what they did was they raised pigs. Pigs were a sacred part of their culture and their community. They ate pig meat, they pork, but they also, the pigsty was the toilet. And unfortunately,that was a mechanism for, uh, Uh, tapeworm and strychnosis and other diseases that were really affecting the community's health.
That was exacerbated, interestingly, by the fact that when the community shifted from using earthenware cooking vessels that they made to metal cooking vessels, the problem got worse because it cooked at a higher heat and it didn't cook the meat as thoroughly. It just scorched the outside. It looked done. They would eat it. And then the mechanism came. So we worked with the community to help them become the first, what was called open defecation free. The first community where everyone in the village had a toilet. But to do that, we had to get rid of the pig toilets. So in getting rid of the pig toilets and trying to help people build toilets and subsidizing it and getting people motivated and excited, there was some pushback by all the old people thinking that the dZi Foundation was anti pig, that we were trying to destroy their pig culture.
And so. I had this idea when we were going to have this big fair and it was going to be a big fair celebrating agriculture and, and, and our whole approach to this was very positive. And we can talk about this in a minute. The positive, the power of appreciative inquiry, the power of positive thinking was a big key to our success.
But to tell the story, we had this big day where the whole community was gathering, everyone was showing, all the biggest pumpkin that they grew, and they had all these speeches and all this stuff, and I was like, hey, one of the things we do in America that's super cool that has to do with pigs is, we grease them up and then the kids chase them and it's hilarious.
And so I'm going to, why don't we do this? And the community is like, uh, sure. Okay. So we're really excited. And so then back then too, community radio was a big deal. So then they start, it was sort of like a monster truck rally. They start announcing and on community radio, there's going to be a slippery pig contest run by Ben.
And so hundreds of people came to this thing an hour before it the community comes and they tell me they're like listen pigs are sacred pigs are very valuable I know you've paid I bought the baby pig for it so we've decided that it can't be something for the kids. It's too valuable so we're gonna let the men be the ones participating in the Grease Pig Contest. And I was like ah that because these are the porters these are the guys that carry 250 pounds for weeks on end I mean these are like the toughest dudes on the planet I was like, gosh, you know, but I wasn't really given a choice.
So then it comes time to start the grease pig contest. And I hadn't really thought about the grease, right? So we got a bunch of cooking oil and we cooking oiled up a pig. Well, we, we were getting ready to cook an oil, cooking oil of the pig. And then they pull out the piglet. And the piglet, in Nepal, is a traditional pig which looks just like a boar.
And boars have hair, Erik.
huh. You can't make them slippery. So Oh no.
In front of 500 people, I let this little oiled up boar go. Immediately, two dudes grab it, one on each leg, they get into a fist fight over the pig. It was a total disaster. I had to run out, stop the whole thing. We flipped a coin, one of them won the pig.
Everybody hated every second of that event. And the lesson from that was like, Ben's ideas are not good ideas. Like there's a lot of things that can go wrong in the middle, but the amazing thing about Nepal in particular, and the amazing thing about that community was everyone was just like. Well, that sucked and they went on with their lives.
And they didn't hold it over me, right?
Erik Weihenmayer: Crazy pig.
Ben Ayers: Yeah, exactly. That's one of the beautiful things about Nepal is that I've been able to make mistakes here. And people have been forgiving. And I've tried to incorporate a lot of that into my life as well. With the people around me, right? That kind of patience and tolerance to let somebody else You know, grease the pig, as it were.
Didrik Johnck: All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that last clip from Ben Ayers. Our next guest is Jenna Bainbridge, and we've got three clips for her. And Jenna is breaking barriers in a very public way on Broadway. Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: She's in this She's in this new play called Suffs, and it's all about women earning the vote. And it's all about really cool parts of history, a march on Washington. And she's ambulatory, but she spends most of her time in a wheelchair.
So, you know, she's just broken through every barrier under the sun. One of the things she talks about, which I find hilarious, Is,these words like cripple or gimp, you know, they're really taboo, totally taboo. But, Jen, Jenna was saying that look, we take it back as disabled people, right?
Like we can flip the script as they always say on TV and we can,redefine those words and make them our words and use them, to give us more power and purpose in our lives. And I just think she speaks about this really eloquently.
Didrik Johnck: Did you, have you ever taken back,gimp?
Erik Weihenmayer: Well, I like the word gimp because, one of the founders of No Barriers, Mark Wellman, when we climbed together, he was the first paraplegic to climb El Capitan. I always tell this story, he did 7, 000 pull ups in 8 days to get to the top of El Cap.
And when we've climbed together Mark's always like Gimp power and at first I was really taking it back. I was like, are you allowed to say that and Yeah, he's just taking it back man. He's saying yeah, I own that word and it's a positive word. Jen does the same thing
Didrik Johnck: All right. Have a listen
Jenna Bainbridge: I think that, you know, sometimes people want to drag us down with the words that they choose, and we don't have to let them. Right? We can, we can take this and reclaim them. Yeah, and that's, I feel the same about like cripple. I personally identify as cripple. I think it is my word. Um, it is how I identify and, I think that's, it's an interesting point. Yeah. to, how, how are words used and how do we feel about them?
Didrik Johnck: All right, next up is clip number two for Jenna. And I want to frame it up like this. What would you think, how would you feel if you auditioned for a show where you had to sing and dance and the producer said, well, we want to hire you for this, but we don't know how you're going to complete the dance portion.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. Look, I know it can almost sound cliché, but I love these origin stories, Jen is like this super successful actress on Broadway now, and her life looks externally like a fairy tale. But in those early days, she would, audition, and she would just get shut down left and right.
They'd give her every reason, every excuse under the sun. why she couldn't do it, why she wouldn't be able to perform successfully. And yeah, you're right, like this one, like playgroup said,you're not gonna be able to complete the dance portion. guess what? She dances eight days a week.
uh, yep. Eight. Eight performances a week on Broadway. Broadway now.
Didrik Johnck: On Broadway right now.
Erik Weihenmayer: And so they just were like not seeing. the true picture. They were, like, dance to them was somebody standing and dancing on their feet, but she dances in her wheelchair, and it's absolutely beautiful. And it's like about expanding your mind and saying, okay, what's truly possible here if we think differently?
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, right? that's, this is so common, just a knee jerk reaction. oh, you can't, we know you want to do this, but oh, you can't do this. Because it doesn't marry, it doesn't fit within the box with the idea that I've, that we've
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, this is the way we do things.
Didrik Johnck: This is the way we do things. This is the way I envision it in my mind. Alright, let's, uh, let's roll this clip.
Jenna Bainbridge: And I auditioned for a choir and, um, started working with a couple theater companies and just completely fell in love. But, similar to in sports, as theater became more and more professional, there was so many moments where people would say like, Oh, well, you know, we can't cast you in this show because of your access needs.
And sometimes it was the physical access needs, it was our theater is not. ADA compliant, or we don't, we've never worked with somebody who uses a wheelchair, so we don't even know what questions to ask, so therefore we're just not even going to cast you, or even talk to you about it and find out what your access needs are.
And there was also much more, like, blatant discrimination. I remember auditioning for college programs and asking for feedback at one of them, and they said, I, my audition for this program had been, I sang a song. That was it. Just a single song. And I went and asked for feedback when I didn't get in, and they said, oh, you know, we, we loved your audition, but we really, we felt that you could not complete the dance portion of our requirement.
And I was like, you never saw me dance. You just assumed that because I, I used a wheelchair, that I wasn't a dancer. And you know, joke's on them, I'm now dancing on Broadway eight nights a week.
Erik Weihenmayer: This last clip with Jen is, look, I find it fascinating. I hope you do too. Maybe you find it more interesting if you are disabled. But, I asked Jen this question. I was like, look, Do you think people nowadays are truly understanding the value of diversity? Or are they just kind of box checking?And I threw out this story, that when I was a young speaker, I was out there looking for a speakers bureau to represent me, and one bureau said, Hey, um, we like your stuff, but we already have a blind guy.
They had already checked that box. And it was so irritating, right? When you face these barriers that just like slap right in your face, you know? Um, and so I, and so I picked her brain on this idea of Hey, are we in the box checking phase of this evolution?
Jenna Bainbridge: I feel like a lot of institutions are viewing it as a box to check and forgetting that disability and all diversity are just human experiences. And,I once worked with a director that I loved. I had a great time doing a show with him, and the next year I auditioned again, and was told like, oh Jenna, I really wanted to cast you, I had so much fun working with you last year, but, you know, we really felt like we'd already kind of done that.
Meaning, we'd already cast a disabled person and we couldn't do that two years in a row.
Erik Weihenmayer: Wow, yeah. And I was like, Yeah, you're speaking exactly, yeah.
Jenna Bainbridge: Yeah, and like half of the actors on that stage are people you worked with last year, you didn't do that last year? You're like. It's just because I have a disability that you're like, oh, well, we already did that. And I would say, 90 percent of the time, I am the only disabled person. In a show. In a room. You're like, you could have two of us. Or at least the only person who identifies.
Erik Weihenmayer: Maybe two of us. Exactly! Three of us.
Jenna Bainbridge: Right!
Erik Weihenmayer: There's no rule against, you know.
Jenna Bainbridge: There's no rule. No rule. And also, I think that there's also this weird expectation like, oh, well, if we cast a disabled person, if we hire a disabled person, then we have to explain why.
So like, you know, especially for me, if I'm auditioning to be a bank teller in the background of a Law Order episode, right? They're like, oh, well, then we'd have to explain why the bank teller has a disability. And I'm like, no, you don't. You really don't. I also have the right to just exist in the background.
Disabled people do all kinds of jobs. Disabled people exist in every aspect of society.We have the right to just exist. There can be two of us. There can be twelve of us. There can, there is no limit to inclusion, other than your own mindset. And I wish that people would kind of move past, on the one hand, I understand that the checkbox is, important right now because it means that at least people are going, like, okay, great, we're including disability, we didn't forget to include disability.
Right. But we also have to move past it of, now this is just part of how you are casting, how you are hiring, that it's not checking a box. It's, it's. making sure that disability is part of your mindset and part of your inclusion practices.
Erik Weihenmayer: Look, as Jen eloquently says,maybe the box checking stage of evolution is important, right? Like, that's where we are right now, and it's important. it's a, definitely a step in the right direction. But, ultimately, it's about, I think, valuing diversity and inclusion and seeing it for something that's really important in itself, not just checking a box.
Didrik Johnck: Alright everybody. We've got two more individuals that we're going to highlight some clips for ya. Quinn Brett and Jason Stouffer, they've suffered spinal cord injuries and they're both in wheelchairs, and they set out to cross the Grand Canyon, and this is on trikes.
Erik Weihenmayer: That's bad ass by the way.
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, on, on trikes. Hand cycles. On hand cycles,the Grand Canyon, I've stood on the edge of it, I've looked down into that abyss, and it's, so they went to the edge of it with their trikes, and they let gravity do its thing, got to the bottom, criss crossed and came back again.
Erik Weihenmayer: I think they went all the way to the top of the north side, and then the next day turned around and did it again, right?
Didrik Johnck: Yeah, just something so bold and earth shattering. really just, talking about breaking barriers. Here's a pair of them. Here's two individuals.
Erik Weihenmayer: Well said.
Didrik Johnck: So the clip that we chose really addresses the cliche of when somebody is injured, they're automatically going to have this earth shattering transformation due to the injury.
Erik Weihenmayer: And this radical redefinition of our lives, right?
Didrik Johnck: Yeah. It happens for some people, but maybe not as much as you think.
Erik Weihenmayer: He says it boldly too, right? He just states it. He's like, no. My experience is different. I like that. Agree or not. He's, he's expressing a really interesting kind of counterintuitive opinion.
Didrik Johnck: All right, have a listen.
Erik Weihenmayer: Are you guys different after your accidents and all you've been through? Or is that bullshit? Is it just like, hey, I'm the same person I always have been? or are there changes? Are you, have you learned some things?
Quinn Brett: I think I'm still obviously trying to push barriers. And while I was breaking world records before, and now I'm trying to break the stigma that spinal cord injury is not something that we can ever find recovery of function for is state a baseline, I guess, for who I am, like challenging the systems and trying hard and doing better.
But I would say I'm changed and that I am more empathetic and compassionate to people who are different. Or as you gave Jason props for thinking about the other. Where people are coming from on trail who don't know this injury or don't know why we'd be on trikes. I have a lot more patience. And it sounds like Jason does too, for other people out there who maybe haven't had experiences like we have more patience for that.
Jason Stoffer: You know, I think the injury lays bare what's on the inside. if you were a go getter or you were in the gym all the time, or you, you We're a health nut or whatever the heck it was before your injury.
The chances are you're going to keep those qualities and such after the injury. If you were an impatient person before the injury, this thing's just going to make you more impatient. I think it really does just accentuate what you already are. And it goes in the face of what we hear a lot out in public, which is, I don't know if I could do it. I don't know how I would live if I was in a wheelchair. I don't know how you do it. And the, well, the answer is you would do it just like you're living right now. You're going to learn some stuff and there's going to be some major s$!T that you're gonna have to deal with, but the qualities and the characteristics that make you who you are, those things don't tend to just go away very quickly.
Didrik Johnck: All right, everyone, closing in on the final minutes here, and our last guest highlight is Sarah Thomas, a long distance swimmer. Don't make decisions in the dark, swim until the sun comes up. That's one of her mantras.
Erik, tell us about this first clip that we're gonna hear.
Erik Weihenmayer: Well, just like you mentioned that Quinn and Jason, did this monumental thing, which is crossing the Grand Canyon on hand cycles. Sarah is involved in monumental swims. And not only is she an amazing athlete, but, at the the height of her success swimming and the height of her fitness, of course, life punches you in the face and she gets diagnosed with very severe breast cancer. And she's getting chemo. She's not even allowed to, get in the water for a while. She's fighting with her doctors. But essentially this clip is about her talking about going from literally cancer, chemo, to swimming the English Channel four times in less than a year.
it's you wouldn't imagine, you wouldn't think that's even possible, like you'd say that's a dumb movie, there's no way that could happen.
Didrik Johnck: And not four times with like a break in between. Back, and forth, and back and forth. I think she said she had ten minutes, she was allowed ten minutes rest once she reached the shore, before she had to dive back in and swim back another twenty some miles.
So I think it was, what was it, eighty, eighty plus miles total?
Erik Weihenmayer: Oh my gosh. it just speaks to the capacity of the human spirit. it's pretty impressive. yeah, we love Sarah. Check it out.
Sarah Thomas: I finished radiation at the, end of August of 2018. And then my deposit for the English channel was due like two weeks later. And the boat captain emailed me, And he was like, I know what you've been going through, but like, Do you think you're going to come next year?
And so I literally had two weeks to decide, Am I going to do this? Or am I going to try and put it off? And it didn't take me very long to be like, you know what? I'm going to do it. And so I think almost like immediately after all of the treatment was over, I was like, all right, this is next.
Cancer's not going to beat me. I'm fine. I made it through and we're gonna, we're going to figure this out. It was really hard. I'm not going to lie. It was a lot of rebuilding, you know, I was starting almost, not completely from scratch, but in some ways I did after my surgery, I had to learn how to swim again.
Treatments were not good for my body, right? I was all like puffy from all the steroids and it was gross, you know, and just having to say, all right, like that's what I did last year. And then this is what we're going to do this year. And did, I had to put my head down, I had to start really small and just really completely rebuild back everything.
Erik Weihenmayer: When I sit and listen to these, No Barriers pioneers like yourself that I interview in the podcast, there seems to be a lot of counterintuitive thinking going on. And this is, seems like one of them, like maybe in a counterintuitive way, having this external thing to train for and dream about was great for your recovery.
Sarah Thomas: I do think having this big dream, this big goal, that was already planned on the horizon. it helped me through treatments for sure. You know, like, Hey, doctors, I've got an 80 mile swim in a year and a half. Am I going to be able to do that? You know, and we really did take a lot of that into consideration during my treatments. Maybe I didn't like emotionally deal with the trauma of cancer until a little bit later down the road.
Didrik Johnck: For our final clip of today's show, we're staying with Sarah. And if you remember, I mentioned something about a tissue expander at the top of the show. We're now we're going to get weird story to
Erik Weihenmayer: end with.
I don't know if it's like a inspirational elevated highlight of the podcast D but yeah, we're going to end with tissue expander.
Didrik Johnck: What is a tissue expander? We learn lots of things interviewing individuals and yeah, this was one of them.
Erik Weihenmayer: Well, just speaking personally, I love the grittiness of these stories, right? When they removed her breasts because of breast cancer, you have to have something that expands that chest area for when you get implants. And she didn't have time to get implants before she swam the English Channel. So she just swam it with these tissue expanders with a tube that kind of like lets fluid out and they were really scared that like you know she's gonna get to some massive infection by swimming.
Didrik Johnck: Doctors were not happy.
Erik Weihenmayer: They were not happy they said this cannot happen
Didrik Johnck: yeah and she doesn't anyway. Yeah they think they told her it was gonna be impossible
Erik Weihenmayer: yeah so this is not like uh you know we're recommending you to go do something crazy or stupid but I think it's a beautiful story because it's all about The idea, there's just no road map in this journey.
You're kind of an engineer of your own life, right? And you take steps forward when you don't even have all the data. You know, you can't see the future. And in that way, I think it's really beautiful.
Didrik Johnck: Well, one thing I'll have to correct you, Erik. There is a road map.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Didrik Johnck: It's listening to this podcast.
Erik Weihenmayer: Oh, yeah, you're right. Exactly, D.
Didrik Johnck: That's what we try to do. Okay, here's the final clip.
Sarah Thomas: They just look at you. They're like, um, you know, especially with my surgeon, like he had nothing to compare,, he had literally nothing to compare me to.
And so we were kind of taking a stab in the dark about how long recovery was going to take. So I, trained for and swam the English Channel with a tissue expander in, which is just like a temporary breast implant. And for women who have had that done, like a tissue expander is hard.
It's, I always tell people, it's like having a softball sewn under your pec muscle. So uncomfortable. Some women can for, you know, a couple of months that they have to have it in, but I didn't have time in the schedule to replace it with an actual implant because it meant more time out of the water. I had, A lot of roadblocks in place the doctors were literally like, you're not going to be able to swim with your tissue expander in. Um, and I was like, try me, you know, like I'm gonna figure it out.
And I did. And it was definitely painful. Definitely not the best idea I've ever had, but this dream was bigger than all of that. It definitely is one of those things. I'm like, you know what, I'm glad I went for it because who knows? Like it could still be an unswum achievement for anybody.
Erik Weihenmayer: That's it for this wrap up show. And, you know, look, D, we've been doing this for four years now, and it's been such a pleasure for me.
Honestly, even if nobody was listening, I'd still get value from interviewing these people because I learned so much along the way, and it gives me so many great ideas of what this No Barriers life can look like. And, I love this community, and, I'm so excited to be hosting it. I'm not a professional podcaster or anything, but I hope you've gotten value from this, these stories. And, if you want to like us, that'd be great. Or tell you all your friends about the podcast, please sign up for no barriers events, join our newsletter. what's the website there? D
Didrik Johnck: The website is no barriers podcast.com. Would love to hear any ideas you have for the show. Guest recommendations, all that good stuff.
Erik Weihenmayer: Awesome. No barriers to everyone.
Didrik Johnck: The production team behind this podcast includes Producer Didrik Johnck, that's me, and audio engineer Tyler Kottman. Special thanks to the Dan Ryan Band for our intro song guidance. And thanks to all of you for listening. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, share it, and hey, we'd be thrilled for a review.
Show notes can be found www.Nobarrierspodcast.com. There's also a link there to shoot me an email with any suggestions or guest ideas for the show. Thanks so much, and have a great day.
