Your Legacy Is What’s Said About You When You Leave the Room with Dr. Hoby Wedler

Dr. Hoby Wedler is a motivational speaker, mentor, educator, and the Founding Partner of Senspoint, a brand development agency that helps businesses create an everlasting impact by engaging all five senses. Dr. Wedler is also a scientist, a food and beverage expert, and a passionate explorer and innovator of sensory experiences.

Dr. Wedler has been blind since birth and has frequently chosen to lead an unconventional life. In 2016, he went back to school and earned his PhD in Organic Chemistry from UC Davis. In the same year, he was named one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30” in the food and drink category. Additionally, Dr. Wedler was recognized by President Barack Obama in 2012 when he was named a Champion of Change for enhancing employment and education opportunities for people with disabilities.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Dr. Hoby Wedler talks about what drove him to pursue his doctoral degree
The valuable role that mentors play in our lives
The challenges that Dr. Wedler overcame while earning his doctoral degree
How Dr. Wedler used the findings from his dissertation to make chemistry more accessible
Turning a perceived disadvantage into an advantage
Dr. Wedler discusses the intersection of art and science
What is sensory literacy and how does it lead to awareness and inclusivity?
How Dr. Wedler creates multi-sensory branding experiences
Dr. Wedler shares his goals for the future

In this episode…

Whether you’re at a cocktail party, teaching in a classroom, or simply shopping in the grocery store, what you do and say is going to leave an impression on the people around you. Dr. Hoby Wedler, the Founding Partner of Senspoint, believes that this impression is what defines your legacy.

Dr. Wedler also knows that we don’t create our legacy on our own. Without his incredible mentors, Dr. Wedler may never have discovered his passion for science, which motivated him to pursue his doctoral degree and start his successful brand development agency. As he says, our mentors often see a future for us before we can see that future for ourselves.

Tune in to this episode of An Unconventional Life as Dr. Russell Strickland talks to Dr. Hoby Wedler of Senspoint about earning his doctoral degree in organic chemistry despite the visual challenges he faced along the way. Dr. Wedler also shares his advice for people who are thinking about getting their PhD and explains how growing up as a blind person in a sighted world influenced his entrepreneurial mindset. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Dissertation Done, America’s #1 authority in dissertation completion for working professionals.

Founded by Dr. Russell Strickland, Dissertation Done serves people in two ways:

If you’re struggling with your dissertation, getting ready to start your dissertation, or just plain wanting to get your dissertation done as soon as possible, go to www.dissertationdone.com/done and Let’s Get Your Dissertation Done
If you’re busy living your Unconventional Life and have a message that you want to share, maybe you should join our Expand Your Authority Program to become a published author. Go to www.dissertationdone.com/book and let me know that you’d like to talk about Expanding Your Authority.

Visit www.dissertationdone.com to learn more about our other services and leave a message or call them at 888-80-DR-NOW (888-803-7669) to schedule your free 30 to 45-minute phone consultation.

Episode Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is here for your reading convenience. It was created by machines and may (a-hem) contain some errors. If you email us about these errors, the machines will undoubtedly find out. I hope they won’t get angry.

Intro 0:03

Welcome to An Unconventional Life, a podcast where we share stories about the crazy 1% out there, who earned their doctoral degrees and then went on to use them in crazy, cool, unique, and unconventional ways. here’s your host, astrophysicist turned teacher, author, dissertation coach and more. Dr. Russell Strickland.

Dr. Russell Strickland 0:29

Hello, and welcome to An Unconventional Life Podcast. This is Dr. Russell Strickland. I’m the founder and CEO of Dissertation Done and your host here today. And today. We have I am so excited about this. We have Dr. Hoby Wedler and Dr. Wedler earned his doctoral degree in organic chemistry. And that might sound tough to some of you guys, but I tell you what, Dr. Wedler was born blind and has been blind all of his life and earned his doctoral degree in organic chemistry. So for those of you making excuses This one’s for you this episodes for you. Dr. Wedler has gone on to found companies like Accessible Science, which was a nonprofit organization, he held annual chemistry camps for blind and visually impaired students. He also has hosted Truly Wine, wine tastings with the Francis Ford Coppola winery than I love me some Francis Ford Coppola merlot. He’s founded a company called Senspoint, which is a creative brand strategy consultancy. And he’s been recognized by organizations like Forbes and by President Barack Obama as a champion for change. So, listen up here, this is going to be a great episode, I can’t wait to introduce you to Dr. Hoby Wedler, before I do real quickly, as always, this episode is brought to you by Dissertation Done, if you are a doctoral student who is about to start working on your dissertation, currently in the midst of it, maybe struggling a little bit, reach out to us so that we can see if you might be a good fit for our Fast Track Your Dissertation coaching program, we tend to get our students through the dissertation process a good year or two faster than they would on their own. And you can find out more about that at www.dissertationdone.com/done. And if you’re already living your unconditional, your unconventional life, and you have a message that you’d like to share with the world, the best way to do that is by expanding your authority by writing your own book. And our Expand Your Authority program helps you do that, just that in a few months, we’ll go from developing an idea to having a book actually out there available for sale in paperback form, in electronic form on Amazon, and any other platform you might like. So if you’d like to get your message out there, the Expand Your Authority program, you can find out more about it at www.dissertationdone.com/book. Now speaking of book, Hoby, I think you’ve got three or four or five in you. With the discussions we’ve had so far. It’s amazing what you so far. Welcome, Hoby.

Dr. Hoby Wedler 3:00

Well first of all, Dr. Strickland, I just want to say, I just want to say thank you so much for the invitation. And it’s a real honor to, to be joining you on this podcast. And, you know, I feel like I feel like it’s a good fit. I feel like my life is definitely unconventional. So it’s a good opportunity to, to get to chat with you and and connect. So it’s been a real pleasure getting to know you beforehand. And again, it’s an honor to be with you today.

Dr. Russell Strickland 3:22

Well, thank you for being here, Hoby. I’ll let our listeners judge who, who has the honor here today because I am fascinated with what you’ve been doing. Tell me a little bit about your story. Let’s go back to why did you decide to get a doctoral degree? A lot of No, not many people do that. A lot of our audience does. But not many people in general do. But what made you decide to pursue that?

Dr. Hoby Wedler 3:47

Well, that’s a great question. And you know, my first of all, I want to go back just one step further and say that my love for science really began as a young child with my parents being very motivational very much telling me that I should do whatever I wanted to do, and being very practical about it as well. But I’ve always loved understanding how things worked. So I remember being five or six years old in my house and turning on the tap at the sink and sink, wait a minute, how is this water coming under pressure up from wherever, to me and that sparked me learning about the municipal water system and the fact that there’s this whole network and maze of water pipes underground that are carrying water from one point to the other day, I was like, Man, this is a really, I just love understanding how things fit together. And of course, when you when you’re like that you also take things apart and maybe or maybe not put them back together again the right way. Right. So that was me as a kid. And, you know, oftentimes, it’s said that a great high school teacher really paints a career and paves a path forward. But they really are great mentors for us and I had a really excellent high school chemistry teacher and the boys who really The stage for me to fall in love with chemistry as a subject and, and something, you know, something really exciting, you know was was the ability to know that, you know, with with the right assistance and with the right attitude, I could go and receive my undergraduate degree in chemistry, which I did from the University of California Davis. Now, when I was an undergrad and really all along, I’ve always known that I’ve had the heart of a teacher, that’s just my goal in life is to get people excited about something maybe they didn’t know, they were excited about or could be excited about, just to make people feel good about what they’re doing and about themselves, sort of a motivational teachers sort of thing. And, and my dream job is gonna sound surprising to people. But my dream job was to be a college lecturer of chemistry. Where I might, my whole goal was to walk into a class, you know, big lecture hall of 500 people at, you know, 8am, on a Monday morning for freshman chemistry students, teach them some chemistry and have them go from feeling like Oh, God, I absolutely dread having to sit in this chemistry class for an hour to, hey, chemistry, and science is very interesting. And I really want to study it and understand it. So that was the driver to get the PhD. It was a real desire to teach at the college level, and perhaps to the research at the college level, but I was actually driven much more by the teaching component of it.

Dr. Russell Strickland 6:28

And I think that you’re right, and when you talk about mentors, I myself, I had a two folks that I can point to in high school, my chemistry teacher, his name was Lewis Gottlieb, and he was just as smart as attack. I mean, he was really, really on top of things, and helped instill that, that notion for of excellence in striving to learn more, we actually had, under his guidance, organic chemistry in high school, which is a wild thing. And I won’t say a little bit you have obviously studied but but we were talking about all of these different types of molecules you can put together with carbon and hydrogen. And then my math teacher was awesome. She, we had this experience where I was in geometry class as a freshman, and I was, it was after lunch, they kept the room really hot, it seemed like I recall, and I had a very hard time not falling asleep, in part because I was a freshman, we had high school seniors in the same class, obviously, they’re not going to be moving at the same pace. And, and so we had a few experiences in that class. of, of, you know, I may, may or may or may not have not at all, occasionally, and I’ve been a little bit of trouble for that. And

Dr. Hoby Wedler 7:49

you’re not alone there. Let me just say that.

Dr. Russell Strickland 7:52

So a few of us ultimately went up to this teacher as freshmen. And I certainly would say not very confident at the time, and asked her Hey, is it possible that next year, we have a class that’s just for sophomores. Somehow, she thought that was just the most entitled, elitist, insensitive thing in the world to ask for. And she was so incensed that she actually brought it up at the faculty meeting, can you believe these kids? And my math teacher for the next three years said, no, that sounds like a good idea. And she did all this are getting her guinea pigs, she had our class of sophomores, and juniors, and then seniors, we were the only grade level in that math class each year, and she took us through for the next three years. And I honestly don’t know that I would have felt the same. I always felt like I was drawn to math and science, but I don’t know that I would have felt the same way. If If I didn’t have her. And hers was not so amazing. My experience, it wasn’t this ultra expertise. She wasn’t the genius, you know, scientist type person, but she cared about us. And she instilled that, you know, wanting to learn, and knowing someone’s going to be users support you. And that was really important, my growth.

Dr. Hoby Wedler 9:06

That’s incredible. And, you know, I really just thinking about mentors. And we can, we’ll get to talk about our graduate mentors here in a minute. But I really think, you know, mentoring is something that is, is has so much value, and I would encourage all of your listeners to think about in their lives, who their mentors have been. Absolutely. And, you know, reach out to those people. Thank them, thank them now, thank them a year from now thank them 20 years from now, because they’re there. They’re the ones that that supported you and got you to where you are. And I simply put, I think that a mentor really sees a future for us, maybe before we see that future for ourselves, and they kind of guide us to that future.

Dr. Russell Strickland 9:48

Yeah, I think that’s a good that’s a good point that sometimes a mentor can see just a little bit further than you can because they’ve been there a little bit longer. They’ve seen what other people have done, and they can say, I know that you can do this When you might not even know what this is so that’s an important point actually um and before we move on I you’d mentioned teaching and how that was a something that you were very inspired by. I just wanted to mention get it on the record here. But but to see if you’ve actually heard them Have you ever listened to The Feynman Lectures on Physics,

Dr. Hoby Wedler 10:22

which I love? I love Professor Feynman for his amazing storytelling quality. And, and just the way that he pulls you into his conversation. No, it’s absolutely amazing. So if you if you like science at all, if you are at all into physics,

Dr. Russell Strickland 10:41

these lectures were fairly basic. They were kind of freshman sophomore level courses. But look up, I’m sure they must be on YouTube, I’m sure you must be able to find them easily, The Feynman Lectures on Physics He just had a remarkable way of explaining things. And I’ve endeavored to try to develop that quality. To some extent myself. I won’t compare myself to him. He was a Nobel laureate. He’s the guy who actually explained to Congress what happened with the the challenger explosion that disaster, people couldn’t figure out why, why these O rings didn’t work. And he simply kind of put an O ring in a glass of ice water, and demonstrate what demonstrated what happened to it right there live in front of the committee, and just made it so clear to everybody. Oh, this is what the problem was. And so not just the, everybody, the legislature’s everybody watching on c span or whatever it was, at the time could understand what happened.

Dr. Hoby Wedler 11:35

You can actually find that that video on YouTube as well. And it’s, it’s worth watching because sometimes an overshift, what some might consider an oversimplification is exactly what’s necessary. And I gotta be honest with you, that’s one thing that I take very seriously. When I’m talking with people about science or writing about science, is popularizing it. I don’t like it when when people just deliver a bunch of jargon, it doesn’t make sense. I think one of the one of the most highly finished highly trained skills is the ability to what we call popularize one’s work. And I can be science, I can be math that can be history, you know, right, we get into things and get our PhDs in them, or doctorates of any kind in them. We inherently know a lot about them. And when we present on them, to people that we talk to, it might sound like we’re using too much jargon and like what she tries to kid. So if you have your PhD, if you’re working on your PhD, I challenge all of you to really think about how to popularize that work. Yeah, as much as you can.

Dr. Russell Strickland 12:36

So that brings up three quick stories. For me. The first one is that when I was an undergrad in physics, we had something that might now be considered a little bit pejorative, but we had something we called the grandmother theorem. And that was that you don’t understand something until you until you’ll truly understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother. The idea here is that my grandmother’s aren’t theoretical physicist is not that they’re simpletons. It’s just that they’re not theoretical physicist. And so if you can explain it to your grandmother, she will listen to you because you choose your grandmother, right? But you got to, in addition to her, you know, giving you her attention, you’ve got to give her an understanding that meet her where she is. And so that’s, that’s really important. I had a, an undergraduate professor, who told this story about how he got on one occasion, he was speaking with his grandchildren for a while, and they went running back into the kitchen. And a few minutes later, his wife came out, she said, What did you do to these kids? And he said, they asked me why the sky was blue? And she said, Okay, well, what did you do? He said, I told them. And so that’s kind of the opposite of popularizing science. Um, but then a professor that I was a teaching assistant for one day, he was teaching a lecture class, for the science class that freshmen who weren’t going to take science anymore, we’re going to take Yes. And he stopped in the middle of that class at one point and said, You know what, everything I’ve told you to this point is a lie. And everything I’m gonna tell you from here on out is a lie. But it’s going to be enough of the truth, that you’re going to get something out of it. And he says, because the fact of the matter is, if I explain this as best as I possibly know how to that’s still a lie, because we don’t have all the answers yet. So what we do I really, is we give you enough of the truth to help you understand and move you forward. And then if you take another course, we’re going to say, Well, here’s where we weren’t quite right about what we talked about before. Here’s the next level of understanding and the next level. And this notion of meeting people where they are and giving them what they need to hear. Not to placate them, but to help them understand is really, really important. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an excellent example of people, a person who will do this. He’ll explain things so that anybody who kind of graduated from college or maybe even High School, can understand what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t get into like the math and the hardcore different part of the process, he explains it so that people can understand and get something out of his explanation.

Dr. Hoby Wedler 15:06

You know, the other thing, Russell, I think is cool. A more modern analogy of that is I really commend the work that SpaceX, which is Elon Musk’s space travel companies doing. I mean, when you watch their webcasts, their live live webcast. So, you know, tests on their equipment, or better yet launches and recovery of pieces of the vehicle. He explained to you exactly what’s going on the whole process through and it’s, it’s absolute, it’s like, anyone can watch it and gain an appreciation for it. And that’s why I call what they’re doing rocket science made easy. You know, I think it’s smart.

Dr. Russell Strickland 15:43

Well, and and they are, they’re one of the pioneers of setting up a primary stage rocket, sending it up in the space, and then bringing it back. And I always thought, oh, gosh, what is what’s the point of doing that? Exactly? And then he said, Well, here’s how much it costs to build a primary rocket. And he said, so yeah, and I don’t remember what the number is. So I don’t want to say it was many millions high, many millions of dollars. He said, so let’s just imagine that we lift lift to, you know, a huge pallet full of cash into space. Yeah. And then we drop it. Would you like to go catch it?

Dr. Hoby Wedler 16:23

Exactly. I mean,

Dr. Russell Strickland 16:24

it’s a catch that cash as it comes falling down to the earth. And so that’s what they decided to do is instead of letting it burn up, fall into the ocean, whatever, they brought it back under control for a relatively cheap price to bring it back and cover it. And then they basically caught this pallet full of cash. I thought it was an awesome explanation for folks as to why are we going to do why do we do this in the first place?

Dr. Hoby Wedler 16:47

Well, it’s like, he wants to commercialize space travel. So you know, if you think about it, like the airline industry. Okay. Do you really, if you’re United Airlines, do you really want to throw away your 737? After the ride? No, right, right. No,

Dr. Russell Strickland 17:00

I mean, I don’t have I’m not quite the same numbers in terms of cost, but it but it’s in the ballpark, it certainly is in the ballpark, the hardest thing to do is to get something into orbit. You can you could send something to the next star and, and time and navigation notwithstanding, the expensive part of that is like getting it out past the moon. After that, it’s further further away, you get it that’s just cheaper buy per unit distance, as you go with

Dr. Hoby Wedler 17:28

a little shove every few months, you know,

Dr. Russell Strickland 17:31

yeah. So yeah, but let’s talk about who be the the. So you mentioned your motivation for for going into this process. But now, organic chemistry is not the easiest thing in the world, getting a PhD in anything is not the easiest thing in the world. And you have never been able to see any kind of image you said you can’t even detect light is level blindness you have is that right?

Dr. Hoby Wedler 17:57

That’s correct.

Dr. Russell Strickland 17:58

Yeah. How the heck are you getting organic chemistry PhD, if you can’t see all the little drawings of all these complicated molecules. So tell us about that.

Dr. Hoby Wedler 18:08

You know, I didn’t to be honest with you, I didn’t know how that would be possible either. When I was finishing up my undergraduate career, I found my love for organic chemistry as an undergraduate student, because what I realized is that I sort of an aha moment, it was a Friday afternoon during winter quarter of my sophomore year, and I was in my first semester organic chemistry class. And I had a great assistant, let me just say that she was is an amazing person who I was fortunate enough to work with, from my undergraduate career all the way through my graduate career. And she would actually explain things verbally. And if that wasn’t enough, she would draw things out using a technique that created easy to draw and easy to feel tactile drawings that were basically disposable, but could be saved for a long time. Because they were basically done by pressing hard on a, on a sheet of paper. I’ll save that that story. But you know, it’s an interesting, so I was able to feel some of the drawings, but I really learned how to think about chemistry using ball and stick model kits and, and good verbal description. So I became very early on, I became really strong at naming and nomenclature of molecules. And really, molecules are just a collection of atoms that are connected by bonds, single, double or triple bonds. And what I realized, again, it was an aha moment is Friday afternoon. I’ve been working all day. It’s about 5:30pm. And I said, I know why this makes sense. It’s because I have been using the same skills that I use right now as an organic chemist for all of my life, as you know, for my survival as a blind traveler, so I can’t see anything. I can’t see down the city street that I live on, right. So I need to imagine everything if I if I’m lecturing to a group of students. I need to Imagine where they are in that classroom, I can’t see them out there. So everything is in my mind, right. And if I can imagine meters and kilometers and feet miles and all that stuff and figure out how to navigate from one point to the other in my in the town that I live in, there’s absolutely no reason I shouldn’t be able to reduce those distance to angstroms and nanometers, and use the same exact process to think about atoms and molecules and how atoms connect to form molecules, much like how, you know, blocks of a city connect with streets to form a city or a college campus, right? So that I loved organic chemistry, and I was good at doing it at night. In my mind, I still like to think that I am. But the hard part is really an was and still is a getting material from a very visual medium that you describe in my mind, and then be getting my results back out into that visual medium that really requires assistance. So to answer your question, I didn’t know how I was going to get a PhD in organic chemistry either. I was in my my final, advanced organic synthesis class. Actually, I thought I told you this before. But I also got a degree in United States History because I didn’t know that I would, I would be able to study chemistry. And I honestly thought that I was going to be teaching history. Instead, my goal was to teach chemistry, but I was ready to apply to graduate programs in history. I knew at that point, I was just, I was a nerd, right. So I knew that I wanted to get a PhD in something. And I didn’t know if chemistry was going to be the right field. But when I began talking about mentors, when my advanced organic synthesis professor connected me with an organic computation, organic chemist named by the name of Dean Cantillo, Dean convinced me to work in his group for a summer and just as an undergraduate researcher and see how it went. And man, I worked in his group, and through the support of him and all of my group members, we were able to make a lot of the exercises that we carry out and research processes that we carry out in that lab, fully accessible to me, once again, have scripting and that sort of thing. getting a PhD as anybody is is a timely process, it’s time consuming, and arduous process, as a blind person, it’s even more so. So it was not uncommon for me to work both for undergraduate and graduate tenure, you know, 110, hundred and 15 hour weeks, that was that was very typical, because it takes you know, the only thing that blindness does is it adds a little bit of a lack of efficiency when, when you’re doing things in a sighted world and you’re dealing with something that where data is inherently presented in a visual way, as in organic chemistry, just going to take more time, and I was a stickler for not wanting any more assistance than absolutely necessary. So I, I like to make a lot of the work that I did, you know, accessible to me, right?

Dr. Russell Strickland 22:50

Now. That’s, that’s awesome. And that attitude, I think, carries you very far in life, regardless as to what discipline you’re following. I had a, you know, a friend that I grew up with, who had, who was born with a very, very small lower leg on his on his right leg, essentially, he had it’s not portable below the knee, and he was constantly being fitted for prosthetics and even as he grew up, but he was a very big, strong, kind of burly barrel chested guy, because he was constantly rolling himself around in wheelchairs, and on crutches, between prosthetics, he developed such a wonderful attitude for dealing with life, and, and when he was on his prosthetic, he could outrun half the class mean, you don’t have to let these things define you, or slow you down. Particularly even though it’s it’s more difficult, everybody has their kind of issues that they have to deal with. And they they weight range broadly. And the fact that yours is kind of obvious to people when they meet you is, is no different than people’s issues that are hidden from them. The fact of the matter is, it’s it’s about deciding to take that head on and not allow that to define who you are, or keep you from doing anything you want to do. So I just really commend you, because that is a big hurdle to overcome, and you’ve done it with aplomb. So that’s really, really cool. I appreciate that.

Dr. Hoby Wedler 24:22

Thank you so much, Russell, I would I would just encourage everybody to do who’s thinking about maybe getting a PhD and kind of on the fence about it. You know, I want to say it’s definitely a challenge and it’s really exciting to take on a challenge and succeed. But it is also a great deal of work. So really think about, you know, is this right for me, um, it’s, it feels amazing to to and this is sort of what I’ve always loved doing is challenging myself and not really knowing how I would I would overcome the challenge or succeed in the challenge but just have to start somewhere and and just take away at it. You know, it’s like it’s like climbing a climbing a cliff. You know, That’s just one step at a time, and you will eventually make it to the top here. So I just wanted to just say a couple more things about about the accessibility stuff that I sort of touched on from throughout my, my graduate tenure, it was always my attitude that I didn’t want any more assistance than absolutely necessary. So the way that that Mike my graduate career worked was that I would talk to my advisor about a project that was interesting to me, or he would come to me with a project that he needed done. And it would take a little longer maybe than some of my peers to arrive at the, at the results and at the data that we you know, that we that we need to get to the design first figure out, Okay, what do I need to do to make this project? You know, more accessible to me? And, and what, what do I need to make me able to do this work myself, and then I would do the do the actual work. So I would say that about 35, to 40%, of my dissertation, ultimately was, you know, best practices for making chemistry accessible. And a lot of that had to do with, with 3D printing and writing in house computer scripts to extract information, key information from very, very large files, you know, why don’t publish that stuff? Why not tell the world what we did, you know, I don’t want anyone to have to recreate the wheel. And then I would say about 65, to 70% of my dissertation was, was actual hardcore chemistry research. So it was sort of a blend. And I really, I talked with my advisor a lot about this, and ultimately decided that, you know, who am I kidding? Why am I holding? Why would I ever think about holding this, except these accessibility findings back like, that’s just, to me, that’s almost just as interesting as the science because I want other people who maybe have have sight loss or whatever to be able to do whatever it is they want to do with, with minimal assistance, and be able to read read our papers and, and glean from it some, some information about about that. And I’ll just, I’ll just tell you one quick story related to this that I think is particularly interesting, because it shows how you really can take something that might be seen as a disadvantage and turn it into an advantage. So we had a, we had a mechanism that we were working on, it was actually a migration of a bromine, it was a, it was a what we call a one three halide shift. So shift of a bromine from one carbon to another carbon to two units over in a molecule. And we figured out the majority of the mechanism, we just couldn’t figure out how this bromine moved from, from where it was on one carbon to to go on to the carbon where we where we actually needed it. And I said, you know, we were kind of at the end of our rope, I was collaborating with another, another graduate student. And I said, Listen, when I don’t know where I am, and I need to figure stuff out, I just slowly start walking out away from the point that I that I know. And I started investigating my surroundings. And I eventually figured out what I need to go in bromine can’t see anything, either. He’s just responding to electronic forces. Let’s do a scan where we just take the carbon bromine bond, and we lengthen it way out, lengthen, lengthen life and see where the bromine drifts. And what we found is that the bromine drifted over to a copper atom. And we never would have thought of that. But it’s like, you know what, use a skill that I used all the time, as a certified, you know, for my survival was a blind guy, and apply it to chemistry. And when we arrived at the result that got us into a good journal. So it’s like, it’s just funny how these things these things happen.

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