This American Life - 464: Invisible Made Visible

The radio version of an episode we did live on stage and beamed to movie theaters. David Sedaris, Tig Notaro, Ryan Knighton, and the late David Rakoff in his final performance on the show. The other half of this two-hour show was visual, including dancers, animation, and more. You can watch it on YouTube. Ira interviews Ryan Knighton, a blind guy who had a very peculiar experience with a hotel room telephone. (7 minutes) Act One: Ryan Knighton tells a story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness. (7 minutes) Act Two: Famous people are supposed to be somewhere else, invisible to us. Comedian Tig Notaro tells this story about repeatedly running into Taylor Dayne, who was a pop star in the late 80s and early 90s. At the end of the story, we have a little surprise for Tig. (16 minutes) Act Three: David Rakoff tells this story, about the invisible processes that can happen inside our bodies and the visible effects they eventually have. (15 minutes) Act Four: Ira Glass's sister once met David Sedaris, and commented that he was much nicer than she thought he would be, given his writing. David replied, "I'm not nice, just two-faced." In this story, David shares the thoughts running through his head as he attempts to buy a cup of coffee. (8 minutes)

Duration: 58m
Broadcast on: 23 Mar 2025
Audio Format: other

Ryan started going blind when he was 18, so it's been a long time now that he can't see. One night he flies to Chicago for this work thing and gets to his hotel room and wants to call his wife back home in Canada to let her know that he's arrived safely. So all he needs to do is find the phone. So I walk into the room and I find the bed and then to the left of the bed I feel along and I find this nightstand which is where I expect the phone to be and so I feel up the nightstand and there's no phone. So I reach across the bed to the other side and find the other nightstand and I feel that one up and there's no phone. That's unusual, right? It's a bit odd, right? So Ryan can shuffle cautiously around to his knees, graze into things and that's how he finds a sofa, which are handsome. And so I turn to where I think there might be a table and poof there's a coffee table. So I grope this coffee table for a while and there's no phone on it. Grop is kind of a funny word to use for this. It sort of feels that way though, you know, you're just sort of, because you don't know where anything begins or ends so you really maul it. He says that as he moves around in any new place he doesn't exactly draw a map in his head. He says that it's more like wandering around in a first person video game. One where nothing is visible until he touches it. So he figures, okay, let's see what is on the other side of this coffee table that he's found and he edges forward in the room and I find is a desk and I'm like, aha, the desk, right? So I feel around on the desk and there's a lamp and there's the notepad I'll never use and there's stuff but there's no phone. So I'm left to my last sort of blind guy resort, which is I go back to the beginning, you know, back to the bed and I find the wall and I start Marcel Marcell in the walls. You know, I'm wiping them up and down and I round the fourth corner and I get to the bathroom and I go past the bathroom and there's nothing and I feel behind me again and the bed is back behind me again. So I've circled this room and I mean and I even thought, well, maybe it's like a super fancy hotel and maybe there's a phone in the bathroom and I go in there and there's nothing. So I circle the room two more times this way, wiping it down and I check the coffee table again and I check the desk again and I just figure, forget it, I'll just go to bed and try again tomorrow. So he goes to bed, doesn't call his wife, sleeps and in the morning he wakes up to the sound of something curious, a phone ringing and groggy. He follows the sound and finds somehow now there is a phone in this room and the phone is on a coffee table. Now I know I felt that thing up to an illicit degree, like I mauled that coffee table and there was nothing on that table last night and so I answer the phone and it's my wife and she says, why didn't you call me last night and I said, well, there was no phone but there is now. She doesn't believe him that there was no phone but this is kind of par for the course when you're married to a blind guy. And so we talk and then I hang up the phone and I go to get back into bed and there's now a wall there. A wall where the bed should be is now a wall.

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