#BlindTok Podcasts

Moving the Couch Closer: #BlindTok E:10

In Episode 10 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson welcome Joey [LAST NAME — unconfirmed], the show's first male guest, who happily jokes about finally evening out a panel that had left him pleasantly outnumbered. Joey takes us back to the early signs he couldn't yet explain, a high school stretch when the textbooks quietly slipped out of focus, and a driving test that asked far more of him than anyone in the room realized. When the diagnosis finally landed, it arrived in words no teenager wants to hear, and Joey speaks with disarming honesty about the anger that came next and the long season where giving up felt easier than holding on. The heart of the episode lives in what carried him forward, from a best friend who quietly nudged the couch closer to the big screen to the slow, humbling practice of asking for help. Murray and Tammy fold in their own chapters too, weighing small town isolation against the independence a bigger city can hand back, and tracing the tender, complicated choices parents make when a condition might pass to a child. There's a golf cart, an electric scooter, a young son who reaches for his dad's hand at every crossing, and a real, hard won sense that the road ahead, with the technology now arriving, may be brighter than any of them once let themselves believe.

Advocacy Through Defining Yourself: #BlindTok E:9

In Episode 9 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson are joined by Delaney Walsh, an Iowa-raised athlete and occupational therapy student whose entry into the low vision world started long before her own diagnosis. What begins as a family story shifts into something far more personal: a car accident, a quiet realization, and a teenager who suddenly had to make sense of what she had been watching from the sidelines for years. Delaney walks through what it was like to lose vision in just months, why she stayed silent at first, and how the people closest to her became both her translators and her safety net. Then come the sport stories. Volleyball, soccer, a varsity jersey that did not stay a varsity jersey for long, and a surprise athletic chapter that nobody, not even Delaney, saw coming. There is plenty here for anyone who has ever heard "but how can you do that if you cannot see," from blindfold drills and bow-and-arrow accuracy to the universal blind and low vision rule that nobody, under any circumstances, moves the furniture. Delaney also opens up about choosing a career path she had never heard of, finding mentors in unexpected places, and why the next generation of low vision rehabilitation specialists might just look a lot like her.

Disability Rights: #BlindTok E:8

In Episode 8 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson sit down with Alison DeFranco, an international human rights lawyer whose journey from small-town New York to Jakarta, Mexico City, and a tiny Irish island most people have never heard of started with a question her mom asked over spring break: why are you holding that book so close? What followed was a Stargardt's diagnosis, a wildly unhelpful eye doctor with a knack for terrifying parents in the next room, and the start of a long chapter of hiding, masking, and shooting an alarming number of three-pointers along the way. This one digs into the moments that quietly forge an advocate, from a college admissions decision that went sideways for all the wrong reasons to a New Zealand bus that talked back. Alison shares the airport adventure she swears nobody should ever recreate, the Irish ambassador who insisted she write a book with an unprintable title, and the slow shift from passing as sighted to standing fully in her own story. Funny, sharp, and quietly powerful, it's a conversation about what gets built when you stop apologizing for the way you see the world.

Discovery through Faith: #BlindTok E:7

In Episode 7 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson are joined by Jessie Evans to walk through what happens when a kid knows something is wrong and the adults around her keep insisting it isn't. Jessie's story stretches across a decade of being told she was dramatic, of glasses that did absolutely nothing, and of a mom who flat-out refused to back down. The episode gets honest about the quiet damage that comes from being labeled a liar by the very people who were supposed to help, and about the slow, stubborn work of learning to trust your own gut again.   The trio also digs into the strange genius of growing up undiagnosed, where memorization becomes an art form and faking it becomes a full-time job. Sports stories arrive with all the grace of a nickname like Swiffer, choir rehearsals turn into an exercise in ditching the sheet music, and the conversation lands somewhere unexpectedly tender as Jessie talks about finding a community she didn't know was out there. Whether you've spent years masking or you're just starting to suspect you have been, this one is going to feel familiar.

From the Back of the Classroom to the Front: #BlindTok E:6

In Episode 6 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson are joined by Madeline Stafford for an honest conversation about what happens when answers take years to arrive and you spend most of your life filling in the blanks yourself. Madeline walks through her road from a Utah classroom where the books were bigger than she was, through a college experience that nearly didn't happen, and into her current role as a Teacher of the Visually Impaired, with plenty of those famously beautiful red 90s glasses moments along the way. A good eye specialist makes more of a difference than most people realize, eye irritation and dilation drops are their own special kind of indignity, and the Netflix documentary Crip Camp has quietly become required viewing for anyone who hasn't caught it yet. Blind summer camps come up too, where guards come down, friendships outlast decades, and the strange comfort of finally being around people who simply get it shows up in full force. Whether you're still hunting for answers or just figuring out what advocacy looks like in practice, this one settles in close.