This summer I listened to a lot of podcasts, and a lot of my favorite podcasts are the TED radio hour compilations. If you haven’t listened to them, I highly recommend them- each one is a collection of segments from TED talks on the same topic with follow-up conversations with the people who originally gave them. One of the best ones that I listened to this summer had to do with humans and our physical interactions with technology. The most memorable of the talks featured in the podcast was by Hugh Herr, a mountain climber who lost both of his legs from the knees down after he was caught in a storm on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. As he had been an avid and gifted climber prior to his accident, he refused to accept that he would have to surrender a recreational escape that had been so meaningful to him so he worked incessantly to develop prosthetics that would allow him to return to the activity he loved. He jumped off from this point and now works to create comfortable prosthetics for all kinds of people so that amputees no longer feel they are less-than, and are allowed to feel again that they are wholly human, if not more.

Aaron’s comments on hiking and the challenge triggered my memory of this TED talk because I believe Herr says something about how it had always been a challenge to climb and his recovery had been a challenge to return to being able to tackle those cherished challenges again. Definitely worth checking out: