Blink of an Eye

Fast, Silent, and Life-Changing: What You Need to Know This Summer As summer gets into full swing, Louise shares an urgent, direct reminder about water safety. A single moment at the beach or pool can change everything. In this special PSA, she breaks down the critical realities of how these injuries happen—including the fast, silent nature of drowning, the importance of a designated "Water Watche...

Dissolving the Glial Scar Wall: Dr. Molly Shoichet on Rewiring the Injured Spinal Cord Louise sits down with Dr. Molly Shoichet, a University Professor at the University of Toronto and one of the world's leading polymer scientists and bioengineers. Shoichet arrived at spinal cord injury in 1995, convinced that if academics didn't tackle the hardest problems, nobody would. Thirty years later, her r...

Dr. Karim Fouad on Rebuilding the Nervous System, like Rebars in Concrete Louise sits down with Dr. Karim Fouad, Canada Research Chair in Spinal Cord Injury and Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta, who has spent 35 years asking why the spinal cord refuses to heal. He traces that failure back to evolutionary logic — in the Stone Age, a broken spine meant death, and nat...

The Cellular Detective Who Rewrote Spinal Cord Injury Science Louise sits down with Dr. Michael Sofroniew, professor of neurobiology at UCLA, who spent four decades overturning one of medicine's most stubborn assumptions about spinal cord injury. His lab proved that the glial scar — long blamed for blocking nerve regeneration — is actually the body's own protective border, separating living neural...

The Hidden Intelligence of the Human Spine with Dr. Susan Harkema Louise sits down with Dr. Susan Harkema, a world-renowned neuroscientist and the director of Consortium Growth for Spinal Stimulation at the Kessler Foundation's Reynolds Center for Spinal Stimulation. Dr. Harkema's path into spinal cord research was entirely serendipitous — trained in cellular muscle energetics, she stumbled into a...

The First Electronic Bridge Between Brain, Body and Spinal Cord with Dr. Chad Bouton Louise sits down with Dr. Chad Bouton, VP of Advanced Engineering at Northwell Health and director of the Neural Bypass and Brain-Computer Interface Laboratory at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York. A science-fair kid from Texas who survived his own traumatic brain injury in graduate school,...

The Neurons That Never Died: Dr. Parag Gad on Rewiring the Injured Spine Louise is joined by Dr. Parag Gad, a neuroscientist, biomedical engineer, and co-founder of Spinex, whose work is quietly dismantling one of medicine's most stubborn assumptions — that what spinal cord injury takes, stays taken. Trained under the late Dr. Reggie Edgerton at UCLA, Dr. Gad shares the accidental lab observation...

The Mind-Bending Future of Neural Stem Cells with Dr. Michael Fehlings Louise is joined by Dr. Michael Fehlings, a world-renowned neurosurgeon in Toronto, spinal cord injury researcher, and the head of neurosurgery at University Health Network. Dr. Fehlings reflects on his early years, sharing how his grandfather's struggle with strokes inspired his path into neuroscience. He recounts the immense...

The Cross-Syndrome Medical Quest to Cure Nerve Damage with Dr. Jarod Carter Louise sits down with Dr. Jarod Carter, a doctor of physical therapy and the founder of the Neuron Regeneration Community. Jarod bravely traces his journey back to the devastating moment he received a phone call in the middle of treating a patient, learning that his infant twins, Adelaide and Gray, had Spinal Muscular Atro...

#312 Revisiting Blink: I Didn't See This One Coming Before launching into a new season focused on cutting-edge medical science and breakthroughs in spinal cord injury research, Louise takes a moment to look back at where it all began. In these special revisiting episodes, listeners are invited to return to the origin story of the podcast and the deeply personal realities of spinal cord trauma with...

#311 Revisiting Blink: I Didn't See This One Coming Trauma Healing Learnings Before launching into a new season focused on cutting-edge medical science and breakthroughs in spinal cord injury research, Louise takes a moment to look back at where it all began. In these special revisiting episodes, listeners are invited to return to the origin story of the podcast and the deeply personal realities o...

#310 Revisiting Blink: The ABC Board Before launching into a new season focused on cutting-edge medical science and breakthroughs in spinal cord injury research, Louise takes a moment to look back at where it all began. In these special revisiting episodes, listeners are invited to return to the origin story of the podcast and the deeply personal realities of spinal cord trauma with the intention...

#309 Revisiting Blink: Tunnel Vision Before launching into a new season focused on cutting-edge medical science and breakthroughs in spinal cord injury research, Louise takes a moment to look back at where it all began. In these special revisiting episodes, listeners are invited to return to the origin story of the podcast and the deeply personal realities of spinal cord trauma with the intention...

#308 Revisiting Blink: He Talked with God Before launching into a new season focused on cutting-edge medical science and breakthroughs in spinal cord injury research, Louise takes a moment to look back at where it all began. In these special revisiting episodes, listeners are invited to return to the origin story of the podcast and the deeply personal realities of spinal cord trauma with the inten...

#307 Revisiting Blink: The Call Before launching into a new season focused on cutting-edge medical science and breakthroughs in spinal cord injury research, Louise takes a moment to look back at where it all began. In these special revisiting episodes, listeners are invited to return to the origin story of the podcast and the deeply personal realities of spinal cord trauma with the intention to ra...

The Unifying Language of the Human Breath for SCI Healing with Jessica Dibb Louise sits down with Jessica Dibb, a pioneer in psychospiritual healing, Director of the Global Breathwork Alliance, and the founder of the Inspiration Consciousness School and Community. Jessica shares her unique journey from her early days as a classically trained dancer with the Royal Ballet of England and the Bolshoi...

The Groundbreaking BrainGate Clinical Trials with Dr. Lee Hochberg Louise talks with Dr. Leigh Hochberg, a critical care neurologist, professor of engineering and brain science at Brown University, and the director of the groundbreaking BrainGate clinical trials. Dr. Hochberg shares how his early experiences, particularly watching his grandmother navigate Alzheimer’s disease, sparked a lifelong cu...

A Paraplegic Harvard Scientist's Neuronal Regeneration Quest While Living in a Non-Accessible  World, even in the Ivy League Louise sits down with Jason Biundo, a PhD student at Harvard Medical School whose life and career were profoundly shaped by a severe spinal cord injury. In 2019, while studying neuroscience as an undergraduate, Jason survived a devastating rock climbing fall from the wall th...

Engineered Neuroplasticity and the Future of Spinal Cord Recovery with Dr. Chet Moritz Louise is joined by Dr. Chet Moritz, the Hwang Endowed Professor at the University of Washington and Director of the Restorative Technologies Laboratory. Dr. Moritz shares his unique journey from studying the biomechanics of insect flight to pioneering the field of engineered neuroplasticity. They discuss his la...

Finding Your Tribe After Spinal Cord Injury and the Power of Disability Experience for All Louise sits down with Reveca Torres, an artist, filmmaker, and the executive director of Backbones, a nonprofit connecting people with spinal cord injuries to their communities. Reveca shares the story of her injury at age thirteen during a family car accident in Mexico and the unexpected isolation she felt...

Crossing the Valley of Death in Medical Research through Sound at HEPIUS Innovation Labs Louise sits down with Dr. Amir Manbachi, an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of HEPIUS Innovation Labs. Dr. Manbachi shares his unconventional path from a talented musician to a physicist and neurosurgery researcher, revealing how the physics of sound inspired a breakthrough in s...

Surviving the Crash: A 17-Year-Old’s Lifelong Journey from Stud to Survivor Louise talks with Rick Futia and his nephew, Jag Jefferson, about the 1982 accident that altered the course of Rick's life forever. At seventeen, Rick was an athletic powerhouse whose identity was entirely wrapped up in his physical strength and studious caution. He recounts the eerie premonitions he felt on the day of his...

Love, Prejudice, and the Search for Peace with Cole and Charisma Sidnor In this episode, we are invited into the vibrant and vulnerable world of Cole and Charisma Sidnor, the couple behind the popular YouTube channel Roll with Cole and Charisma. Their story begins with a pivot that changed everything, as Cole navigates the shift from a sixteen-year-old athlete with dreams of college sports to a yo...

The Architecture of Neural Repair with Dr. Pengzhe Lu ​​For decades, the diagnosis of a complete spinal cord injury came with a period at the end of the sentence: no regeneration possible. But Dr. Pengzhe Lu has spent his career challenging that finality. In this episode, we travel into the microscopic world of the Center for Neural Repair at UCSD, where Dr. Lu is engineering neural stem cell graf...

A Raw Look at Redefining Possibility  How do you rewrite your life's story when the plot twists become unbearable? Louise joins author Rebecca Faye Smith Galli to navigate the intersection of profound grief and the sudden onset of Transverse Myelitis. Unlike acute traumatic injury, this rare inflammatory condition presents a unique medical puzzle, attacking the spinal cord from within. Becky share...