Two of the people behind the remarkable TetraSki, a partnership between the University of Utah Health’s — Global Adaptive Program, the TRAILS program, and Tetradapt. Program Manager, Tanja Kari and Ross Imburgia, Engineer.

Gabriel Rodreick is a multidisciplinary artist from Minneapolis. Music, dance, poetry, and visual art is his way of learning how to live in a body. At the age of 15, he injured his C5 vertebrae and has been living with quadriplegia and using a wheelchair since. His dark, dank, and dirty artistic voice tells stories of life blooming in the shadows and those lives taking shape in a myriad of bodies. His stage name is Freaque.

By request from our listeners! To kick off 2024 we want to take a trip down memory lane from 2023. This episode showcases some of our favorite highlights from guests we spoke to in 2023. Enjoy!

You've arrived at the intersection of human willpower and biomechanics. After this episode you’ll be wondering, “is the term ‘disability’ about to be dismantled and and reshaped by pioneers using the power of technology?” Our guests are Keenon Werling and Russel Martin, two pHd students from the Stanford Biomechatronics lab. The topic. Wearable Robots. Exoskeletons.

Meet Davis Phinney. He’s an Olympic Bronze medalist and Tour de France stage winner who has the most victories of any cyclist in American history. 328 in all. All that work as a professional cyclist came in handy years later when he confronted a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. Despite the uphill battle that confront him, Davis realized that he could take action to feel healthy and strong. He started a foundation to promote and fund innovative research that seeks to improve the quality of...

Today, we’re talking augmented reality with audio and ultimately sensory substitution. Our guest is Tim Devine. He and his team at Action Audio have developed a product that translates the spatial data from live sports into sound, allowing blind and low vision audiences to follow the action in real time. It’s not just functional tech though, it’s emotional. He wants to bring the tension, the anticipation… the core of what makes live sports amazing to watch, to this audience. Tim shares...

Today we meet Alice Brouhard and her daughter Kara. When Kara was 5 she was struck by an out of control skier. The accident caused a traumatic brain injury, left Kara legally blind and mostly paralyzed on one side of her body. Kara's parents helped her relearn as much as they could and raised Kara to live as independently as possible, patiently pushing her to chase her dreams. Alice took finding assistive technology into her own hands and in the process became a champion of the use of...

What would you with an extra tank of gas? It’s a metaphor for living that we had not heard, until now, when we interviewed Nick Martinez. He’s a true adventurer and survivor of life's highest peaks and deepest valleys. And to complete the metaphor, yes, the fuel indeed ran out and not just once. His narratives provide insight into his world of BASE jumping and climbing as well as his life-altering experiences that have shaped his unique perspective on life, death, and everything in-between....

When our guests talk about their experiences overcoming adversity, it’s personal, it’s unique… or is it? Certainly the stories we’ve heard vary wildly, it’s what drives this podcast and keeps us making it and hopefully you coming back, but when you get to the core of it, is there something we all poses, that we as share humans, maybe it’s buried deep within us and waiting to be tapped when life is at it’s most severe? We’ll attempt to answer that question today with a neurobiology expert....

The story you’ll hear today is about giving away what you have and the unexpected journey that results. Join us for a conversation with Rob Cahill, one of the co-founders of the 4DWN (four down) project and the Hayley Nenadal, Executive Producer of the recently released 4DWN film. The film tells the unconventional, and deeply personal story of a South Dallas skatepark whose mission is to change the lives of everyone that walks through the gate. The 4DWN skatepark is a resilience hub rooted...

Nic is a comedian, actor, and the founder of the Disability Film Challenge, a competition that provides opportunities for individuals with disabilities to showcase their talents in filmmaking. Nic shares the story of how the challenge started as a way to help his friends with disabilities, and how it has now grown into a platform sponsored by major studios, networks, and Fortune 500 companies. We also dive into Nic's journey as a comedian, his experiences as a little person, and how he uses...

Kyle Maynard is no stranger to pushing the limits, overcoming obstacles, and inspiring others to live a no barriers life. That’s why he’s our guest today AND in a few weeks when we see him on stage at the No Barriers Summit. His first No Barriers Summit was 12 years ago and a pivotal moment in his life, because soon thereafter he bear crawled to the top the highest mountain in Africa. Bearcrawled? He’s got a rare condition known as congenital amputation, that left him with arms that end at...

In anticipation of the No Barriers annual 3-day festival we call the Summit (starts on Aug 25th), we’re re-releasing an episode that was recorded live at a previous Summit in Lake Tahoe. The guest? JR Martinez. His journey is filled with ups and downs. While on patrol with his Army unit in Iraq, his vehicle was hit with a roadside bomb. He was trapped inside as the explosives his vehicle was carrying detonated around him. During his recovery with over 30 surgeries and skin grafts, he found...

This episode is about ripple effects, specifically, the one that happened to our guest Brad Ludden when experienced cancer through the eyes of a close family member, his aunt, when he was barely a teenager. At the time he kayaked, so intently in fact, it led him to the World Championships of Freestyle Kayaking. Soon there after into an into a side of the sport that involved going where no one has gone before. Expeditions to far away places and descending a river for the first time. First...

Dr. Diva Amon, along with our host Erik Weihenmayer, and a handful of additional explorers were tapped to guide actor Will Smith through some of earths greatest wonders and hidden secrets. This was for National Geographic’s series, Welcome to Earth. Diva is a marine biologist focused on the little-known habitats and animals of the deep ocean. She regularly ventures down into the depths in submersibles, with her deepest dive to the Cayman Trench. That’s about 8 thousand five hundred feet...

Kathy Eldon stepped into our virtual recording studio seeming off a rocket ship. It’s fuel? The energy she puts into the world that is magnified right back at her. We get into the building blocks of her life, which includes serious adversity, like the mind-bending loss of her photojournalist son while he was on assignment in Somalia (he was stoned to death) and how in the 3-decades since then her quest of transformation and reinvention has led to a remarkable portfolio of projects impacting...

Today we interview Jacob Smith, an up and coming young athlete in the world of freeride skiing. He learned to ski when he was very little. But at the age of 8, that joy was taken away when a tumor was discovered in his brain. It took away most of his vision. After 4 years of treatment and the all clear from doctors, he was 12 and wanted to get back into skiing. Today he’s 16 (actually 17 in a few weeks) and tries lives a normal life, he goes to school, work on his family farm, fixes cars,...

Many entrepreneurs say that starting a business is something they always felt destined to do. Then there are people who never in a million years thought they’d be running their own business, but, lo and behold, somehow the opportunity found them. The ‘accidental’ entrepreneur some might call themselves. Meet Tiffany Fixter. She founded The Brewability Lab, and what’s interesting is not only her path there, but the entrepreneurial journey, filled with challenges and adversity, that she is...

Penny Melville Brown's passion is cooking. However, for a career she chose the Royal Navy. Yes she’s British. During her service in the Royal Navy she became the first female barrister there; it’s a type of lawyer, the ones that wear those wigs. Then as it happened to all of our guests on this podcast, she had a life altering moment. In Penny’s case, she lost her sight and had to leave her 20-year career with the Navy. The next chapter of her life get’s real interesting. With an eye towards...

This episode is about fighting. Yes, literally, but there's more of course. Samantha Tokita trains in the martial art of Muay Thai. Also known as the art of 8 limbs for the body parts used for striking; 2 hands, 2 legs, 2 elbows, and 2 knees. Never matter she’s missing some of those. But her fight isn’t just what you might see as part of an MMA match, it’s much deeper. The fight to be outspoken in the world where she was taught not too. The fight to fill in the parts of her inner child she...

Polar adventurer, expedition guide, dog musher and educator, Eric Larsen has spent the past 15 years of his life traveling in some of the most remote and wild places left on earth. He traversed 550 miles of shifting sea ice and open ocean to get to the North Pole. That wasn’t enough, so off he went to the South Pole. 600 frozen miles and 41 days later he made it. Then back to the North Pole in winter, then up to the top of Mt. Everest… shall I go on? The curveball arrived. Did these...

To kick off 2023 we want to take a trip down memory lane from 2022. This episode showcases some of our favorite highlights from guests we spoke to in 2022. Enjoy! Listen to the full episodes referenced in this episode. EPISODE 136: 500 MPH WITH FORMER BLUE ANGELS PILOT JOHN FOLEY EPISODE 148: OVERCOMING TRAGEDY WITH SEBASTIAN “ZUKO” CARRASCO EPISODE 152: MINDSETS WITH MATT LEWIS, NAVY SEAL AND COO EPISODE 159: LONNIE BEDWELL FEAR SLAYER EPISODE 161: DR> HOBY WEDLER AND HIS SUPER...

A long or arduous search for something. The act of seeking. The idea of a quest is littered throughout history with 1000s of famous examples. Right now? humans want to go to mars AND return to the moon. The quest to solve climate or energy crisis is happening in real time. What do these have to do with the… Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the 1913 Canadian Arctic Expedition …. the life of the famous Apache leader Geron-imo …a 16th century explorer’s death defying navigation of the...

Patrick Kane needed a prothetic arm. Would he rather have one that looked quite natural, with real looking skin or one that was ‘machine beautiful’ with exposed titanium, carbon fiber, alloys, and the like. . Prosthetics have been around for 1000s of years. They’ve been found in Egyptian tombs. There’s a story about a German soldier who lost his arm in war, but that didn’t stop him from returning to the battlefield. He had a suit of armor made with a metal hand on it and he was known to be...