'Crashing Through' from Blindness to Sight

NEAL CONAN, host:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

At the age of 45, Mike May held world records in downhill speed skiing, he'd worked as a CIA analyst for a while and started a promising high-tech business. He had a beautiful wife and two children. A full, happy, productive life. Mike May was blind and thought that being blind was cool.

In 1999, a chance encounter opened the possibility of sight. He learned about a revolutionary stem-cell transplant surgery and debated with himself. Was it worth the risks, which included the chance of cancer? How might vision change a man whose very identity was bound up in blindness? What would it be like to see his wife and his children? In the end, he decided that he couldn't be himself and not try.

Writer Robert Kurson spent many hours with Mike May to capture the complicated and rich story of May's life as a blind man, and later as a man with sight, in his new book, "Crashing Through."

Later in the hour, we'll go to the sunny coast of southern France, where we'll check in on this year's Cannes Film Festival, "Sicko," "Ocean's Thirteen," "A Mighty Heart," and the "Bee Movie". Just a few of the films that are all the buzz.

But first, "Crashing Through." If you were born blind or lost your sight and wonder it would be like to see, we'd like to hear from you. Our number is 800-989-8255, that's 800-989-TALK. Email is talk@npr.org. And you can comment on our blog at npr.org/blogofthenation.

Robert Kurson's new book is called "Crashing Through." He joins us from our bureau in Chicago. Nice to have you on the program today.

Mr. ROBERT KURSON (Author, "Crashing Through"): It's awfully nice to be with you. Thank you.

CONAN: And how did you learn about Mike May?

Mr. KURSON: Well, I was sleepless one night, tossing and turning in my bed at about three in the morning, and came up with this question, which was - what is the single greatest human experience possible? What's the single greatest thing that could happen to a person?

And I tossed around various possibilities. Was it a night of romance with Charlize Theron? Was it the most magnificent steak dinner cooked by the world's greatest chef? Or a night of listening to Mozart under the stars at the Ravinia Music Festival in Chicago?

And then I decided those were great, but the single greatest thing possible had to be the moment the person who'd been blind for life opened his or her eyes. And that seemed to me the single greatest thing that could happen to a human being. So I began to research and discovered that it was much, much different than what I thought.

CONAN: And much more unusual than you might have thought.

Mr. KURSON: Much more unusual. When I did the research originally, I discovered that there were fewer than 20 cases known to all of history, going back to ancient times, in which a person lived a life blind and then gained vision. And astonishingly, in every one of those cases, there seemed to be a profound and deep depression among the people who regained their vision.

There were reports of clawing at the eyes, suicide attempts, fury at the surgeons who cured them. And in the most prolific of cases, there was an early death when the person seemed so disappointed in the visual world and so disappointed in the results that he simply seemed to just give up and die. So it was much different than I had expected.

CONAN: And, in fact, you tell the story not just of Mike May but of a friend of his, also blind, also with the same very unusual condition that might be repaired by this particular surgery. And again, it's very uncommon that you're going to have the condition that's going to be repairable by this particular surgery. And both of them - he had read these case studies you're talking about, just didn't work out very well, psychological problems. Mike May did not.

Mr. KURSON: No. Mike May purposely didn't avail himself of these case studies because to Mike this was about curiosity, and he debated for a long time whether to go forward with this. This was - he was living a full and rich life without vision. He couldn't imagine life being any better. But if Mike was going to go forward, whether it was this or anything else in life, he wanted to go in full force without prejudicing his experience in any way going in.

CONAN: And his experience - when you describe his utter joy at that moment when his doctor first opens his eye.

Mr. KURSON: This is completely unexpected. Mike thinks he's just going in for a bandage change. He expects in three weeks or so to know the results. Instead, the doctor takes off the bandages and a whoosh of light and color and shape flood into his eye. Within seconds he's able not only to recognize colors, but to name them. He knew that's blue, that's red. And then he sees his wife's face for the first time and sees that's blonde hair, that's the blonde I've loved my whole life, even though he'd never seen blonde. And in the end, he stands up -this is a minute into vision - he stands up and makes his way unassisted to the mirror to take a look at himself for the first time since age three, when he went blind. And he's struck by the personal invasion he's making into that man's space, personal space, that he's into. And he forces himself to look again and thinks, that man is tall.

CONAN: He also comes to be amazed and astounded at the number of things that sighted people had never told him about. For example, he'd always thought road signs were on the side of the road. He didn't understand that a lot of them are hung over the road.

Mr. KURSON: Not only that, he believed he was certain to crash into them on the drive home. He didn't understand the depth and how they were hanging over the road. He feared they'd crash into them. He couldn't believe walking out of the doctor's office when he looked at the carpet, the wonderful swirls and speckles. And he told his wife, how can these people in the waiting room just be sitting here when there's such a carpet happening in the world?

He believed stop signs were yellow because the crossing guard uniform he'd worn in fourth grade, when he insisted on being the school crossing guard, was yellow and that yellow represented safety.

CONAN: 800-989-8255, if you'd like to join us. 800-989-TALK. Email is talk@npr.org. Robert Kurson's new book is "Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure and the Man Who Dared to See."

Let's talk with Bob. Bob's on the line with us from Oregon.

BOB (Caller): Yes.

CONAN: Hi, Bob.

BOB: Hi. Hi, Neal.

CONAN: Go ahead, please.

BOB: Hello?

CONAN: Yeah.

BOB: Okay. Yeah. I just want to let you know, when I was 10 years old - this occurred back in 1955 - I had an accident and lost permanent vision in one eye through the accident, but actually I had no vision for about three weeks. And I was in the hospital most of that time, but I had some experiences at that point in terms of what it was like not to have any vision and then to have some again.

Well, one of the things I remember happened is I used to be able to tell if my dad was entering a room because he always would brush against the door jams or door knobs just with his clothing and stuff, and I was able to pick up that sound. And so, once I had my vision back, I actually kind of watched him when he was walking and noticed that he had a real habit of, you know, just kind of brushing against things.

And the other thing is the hospital I was at in Denver, the eye, ear and nose wing is kind of all one thing. And there was a young man in a hospital room next to me that had some adenoid surgery, and, of course, I had no vision at that point. And the disc jockeys at that time were playing name it and claim it tunes, and that's when you were queuing up vinyl. And we won something like five straight tunes because I was picking up on some of the scratches as they were queuing up. I could kind of tell which record was going to come up…

CONAN: Wow.

BOB: …next on that. so that's an experience of having had vision at one time, and lost vision for a little bit and then got it back again.

CONAN: Well, Bob, that's fascinating. Thanks very much.

BOB: Yes. Thank you.

CONAN: Appreciate it.

BOB: It's a great subject, guys. Nice going.

CONAN: Okay, thanks very much. And Robert Kurson, it's interesting what he talked about the increased perception of his other senses when he didn't have any vision at all. And going back to Mike May, this was not a timid man, whatsoever. This was an exceptionally capable blind man who did not need vision to fulfill his life.

Mr. KURSON: He didn't need it at all. In fact, some people swore that he couldn't be blind based on the beautiful way he moved about the world. Mike had such refined mobility skills and such confidence in his person that when it came time and he had this offer, this unexpected offer of vision, it was hard for him to think of a good reason to go forward for precisely those reasons. He already was so good and so curious and so able to put himself into the world already.

CONAN: Let's see if we can get another caller on the line. And this is Maureen - Maureen with us from Cleveland.

MAUREEN (Caller): Hi, Neal and Robert. This is so interesting. Years ago, I was fascinated by this. I'm a teacher. And I read some books about it, and I understand - and you answered a couple of my questions already - that people who have been blind can't comprehend perspective and height and depth like a sighted person.

CONAN: This is one of the most interesting parts of the book, in fact. Yeah.

MAUREEN: And they would show - like, they put their fingers together and show, like, in our spacing, like an inch, when someone says - in their blindness - how tall is that person? They'd put their fingers together - you know what I mean - and show an inch. And that was fascinating to me, and I wondered what you though about that. This is kind of analogous to deaf people who don't want the cochlear implant.

CONAN: Yeah.

MAUREEN: You know?

CONAN: Well, that's about culture and language, too. There's other layers there. But Robert Kurson, go ahead.

Mr. KURSON: Well, it turns out that if you've been blind for life or nearly all your life, and then you're made to see, your vision is very little like the vision the rest of us as sighted people go about the world with every day. It turns out that you get what is a very strange kind of hybrid of vision, in which certain parts of your visual system work beautifully, but other parts don't work at all. These patients, for example, can see and discern colors excellently - maybe better than we can in some cases. And they can perceive motion perfectly.

Some of these cases - including Mike Mays - they could catch balls on the run, over their shoulder the very next day. So motion and color click perfectly. But there are other things that don't seem to work at all. For example, these patients cannot understand human faces. It's not that they can't see them. The face might be very clear and in focus right in front of them, but they don't understand what faces mean.

They don't understand the differences or facials expressions or the nuances of faces. So they can't tell, for example, their wife from a stranger, as Mike couldn't. They can't see in depth, so that when Mike came out of this - though he could catch a ball over his shoulder on the run, he could not tell the difference between a staircase and a set of painted lines, or a curb and a shadow. And even more interesting, they cannot seem to identify common objects. No matter how much they work at it and no matter much effort they put into it, it's all a very serious, heavy lifting proposition. Everything must by thought about, and no matter how much you think about it, it never seems to get better.

CONAN: And this is not a factor of the mechanics of the eye. It's clearly how the brain is interpreting the information it's getting from the eye.

Mr. KURSON: That's absolutely right. It's a brain issue. And this is something that Mike couldn't get his arms around at first. He couldn't understand why he couldn't tell his children apart facially, but when he went to the doctor, the doctor said your eye is 20/40. You should be able to drive in California. And he could not understand even worse why he couldn't make himself better. As you said, this was a man whose life was defined by accomplishment, by crashing through, by always trying and succeeding at getting better at things if he needed to and if he wanted to. And here, no matter what he told his eyes, they wouldn't listen to him in certain categories, and that begins the downfall of all his predecessors and of Mike himself.

CONAN: Thanks very much for the call, Maureen.

MAUREEN: Thank you, bye.

CONAN: And we should clarify one point. We keep talking about Mike May's eye. One of his eyes was permanently damaged in the explosion - the chemical explosion that cost him his vision at the age of the three and was eventually replaced by a prosthetic. So the operation that gave him his sight back was just on the one eye. In any case, we're talking with Robert Kurson about his book "Crashing Through". It's the story of Mike May's remarkable journey from blindness to sight. And we'll take more of your calls. 800-989-8255 - 800-989-TALK. You can also send us email: talk@npr.org. I'm Neal Conan. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. We're talking about one man's journey from blindness to vision. Robert Kurson's new book "Crashing Through" is about Mike May's experience. He was blind for 42 years before a rare operation restored his vision. Robert Kurson is with us today, and, of course, you're invited to join the conversation - 800-989-8255, 800-989-TALK. Email is talk@npr.org. You can also check out our blog at npr.org/blogofthenation. And Robert, one of the things I wanted to go back and emphasize was the risks that Mike May accepted when he agreed to go ahead with this operation.

Mr. KURSON: They were myriad and almost unthinkable. First of all, there was just a 50/50 chance that this operation would work. But even if it did work, the extent of vision restoration was completely unknown. The doctor couldn't tell him whether he would have a speck of vision, be able to drive the next day, or anything in between. But even if he got good and useful vision, the doctor told him you could lose this at any time for no reason or any reason whatsoever for the rest of your life.

So he might enjoy vision for two years, four years, and then have it taken away from you again for the second time in your life. But worse than all of that was the risk of cancer. Mike would be forced to ingest highly toxic doses of anti-rejection medications that carried huge risks. The most serious of them was the risk of cancer, and it was a real one. The doctor told him he lost a patient to just that kind of medicine very recently. And so the question became very quickly not whether Mike wanted to see, but whether was willing to risk dying in order to see.

CONAN: Here's and email we have from Michael in St. Louis. I read this book in less than 24 hours. I couldn't put it down. I was struck by how much work it was for Mike May or any blind person to make it look easy. I have a friend who's blind, and I would often forget that he was blind. That is, I didn't treat him any differently than any of my sighted friends. What I didn't think about is how much work it was it was for him. I now wonder if I have been expecting my friend to walk on water.

Mr. KURSON: That's an incredible point. And one of the most fascinating parts of this story - and I feel exactly as that emailer did. But one of the most incredible points is how much work it became to see when Mike got his vision.

Here, Mike had become very expert at conducting himself through the world blind. And now when he got to see, things didn't happen automatically and unconsciously and instantaneously as they do for us visually. Instead, everything had to be discerned and thought about and figured out. The way Mike described it to me was that every single visual scene to understand was trying - was as it is for us when we're trying to speak a foreign language for the first time.

He had to think of the words and then conjugate the verbs, and then order the words together and then speak it. And that kind cognitive heavy lifting, that effort was required to see every single scene during every single day. And that kind of proposition, that kind of burden is what turns the gift of vision into the terrible gift of vision for these new vision patients.

CONAN: And it's interesting. I mean, for example, he said got to recognize cars pretty easily, but he realized that if he did - saw a car in tree for something, out of context, it would take him a long time to try to figure out what that is - knowing yourself to be a smart, bright person and to feel dumb.

Mr. KURSON: That's right. That was something that had never happened to Mike May before. Mike May could always figure things out. If nothing else, he could put his mind and his heart to it and make things better. And here, his brain wasn't responding for fascination reasons, which I got into and learned later. But there was simply nothing Mike could do to figure things out. As he told me one time, if he saw an orange shape on a basketball court, he would see it very clearly as round, because he knows that basketballs are round. But if you had snuck in an orange square on the basketball court, he literally would have seen it as just as round, because context was everything, and everything had to be thought about.

CONAN: Let's get another caller on the line. And this is George - George is with us from Lansing, Michigan.

GEORGE (Caller): Hello.

CONAN: Hi.

GEORGE: How are you today?

CONAN: Very well, thanks.

GEORGE: Good. Your previous caller mentioned that, you know, people not have - who are blind - which I happen to be, totally blind - who don't have concepts of, you know, how big things are or how small things are - I'm a kitchen designer and have been a woodworker for, you know, 30 plus of my life. And I have an uncanny ability to reason those types of things. When you have to design a kitchen, you have make allowances in corners for door swings and for clearances for dishwashers and stoves and refrigerator doors and all of those kind of things and…

CONAN: George, to be fair, I think that they were talking about was the inability perceive that once they've gotten their sight back. It was this perception problem, not when they were blind. And Mike May and obviously you have exquisite senses of how big things are.

GEORGE: Yeah. And Mike and I are both, you know, downhill skiers and cross country - I'm an avid cross country skier. Have been in the past. But I would - if the opportunity was given to me, I certainly would get my vision back.

CONAN: Why?

GEORGE: I guess for no lack of anything better than curiosity. Is what I perceive to be a good design in my mind and people told me it was a good design - if I got to go back and look at that same kitchen today as a person who could see, would I think the same thing?

CONAN: Hm. There's a quote that's in the book that is about Mike May. "I didn't do this," he said, "to see. I did it to see what seeing was."

GEORGE: Yeah, I guess that would approach it from that very same spot.

CONAN: And the risks - even if they were substantial risks?

GEORGE: You know, life - you know, people drive in cars every day. It's the riskiest thing you can do in the world. And we - you know, everybody goes out and gets in their car in the morning, starts up and drives to work and thinks nothing of it. So it's where you decide your risk is.

CONAN: Hm. That's interesting. Thanks very much for the call, George. And good luck to you.

GEORGE: Thank you very much. Have a good day.

CONAN: Bye-bye. And that was - he seemed to have very much of a Mike May attitude there.

Mr. KURSON: Absolutely. And Mike May had this spatial understanding as well as the caller, that he was so good at understanding physical space, that if you see a movie of him skiing when he was blind, you could never tell he was blind in the first place. And yet you need to be careful what you wish for in certain ways. The first time Mike went back on the slopes after getting vision, he fell about 30 times, tears in his face streaming down, incredibly frustrated. Vision made things much more difficult for him in many ways. And that's the crux - the turning point of the drama of this book.

CONAN: Let's get Gary on the line. Gary's with us from St. Louis in Missouri.

GARY (Caller): Yes, I'm just wondering. How much of Mike May's - what you might call - special abilities once he regained his sight had to do with fact that he was able to see for the first three years? I'm thinking the similar concept with deaf people who have hearing in their early years are able to pick up language, even if they go deaf later on.

CONAN: And much more able to deal with that cochlear implant if it comes in. And much able to deal with it if comes in early. But anyway, go ahead, Mike - Robert.

Mr. KURSON: Well, it seems that a lot of Mike's spatial perception abilities and mobility skills when he was blind may have been due to the fact that he spent the first three years of his life sighted. But once he went blind and spent the next 42 years blind, all those benefits seem to have left him so that when he gained his vision, he couldn't understand depth at all. There was no remnant part of his brain that was able to make sense of depth. The parts of our brain - and we all have parts of our brain dedicated to understanding human faces - didn't work in him at all.

There was no trace of activity in that center. And the same for identifying objects. So even though he had the benefit of vision after three years, it turns out that the human brain - if it hasn't seen for so long - parts of it think, well, I'm not going to sit here useless forever. I'm going to go on to do something else. Perhaps his facial recognition center went on to read Braille, or some other parts did audition. But in any case, when it comes back - when the lights come back on, so to speak, 40 years later, those parts of the brain are set in their ways. They are hardwired and not ready or willing to come back and do what they were do adept at doing when he was three.

CONAN: And it's interesting, because he went and he worked with yet another doctor, Ione Fine, and took brain scans to see what parts of his brains were functioning.

Mr. KURSON: That's right. This is the first this is possible in a case like this. And before this, nobody knows what's going on, if it's a brain problem, an eye problem, a psychological problem. But they put Mike in a MRI and scanned his brain and looked, for example, at the facial recognition center of his brain. They showed him a series of faces, and that part of his brain - of our brains that are responsible for understanding faces - didn't respond at all. It's as if the lights had gone out completely. But then when they had him read Braille, that part of his brain flew into action, lit up like a pinball machine, showing us that that part of the brain - rather than sit around doing nothing for so long, had gone on to do something useful. The problem is 40 years later, it's unwilling to come back.

CONAN: Thanks very much for the call, Gary.

GARY: A quick follow up?

CONAN: Yeah, go ahead.

GARY: When he regained his sight, did he - at times when he was difficulty dealing with things, did he just close his just close his eyes, or did he fight the gut reaction to do that, since that would be how he dealt with the world before?

Mr. KURSON: That's a wonderful question. He did both. It's his gut instinct to fight back, to crash through, really, and to do everything he can to prevail. But this was such an onslaught, and it was a nonstop onslaught. Everywhere he looked, everything he did - everything had to be contemplated. Everything had to be deduced. And often, it got to be too overwhelming to him, and the only defense he had against it - and this a world class athlete - was to simply close his eyes and breath deeply and stop the overflow. He had to figure a way past that. He couldn't live the rest of his life like that.

CONAN: Did his dreams change?

Mr. KURSON: That's one the most interesting aspects of this entire interview I did with him the first time I met him. One of my first questions was Mike, I know you're blind for most of your life, but did you have vision in your dreams when you were blind? And he gave me the most interesting answer. He said, if you would have asked me that when I was blind, I could have told you. But now that I have vision, I don't know anymore.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: That's interesting. Gary, thank for the call. Let's see if we can get - this is Audrey - Audrey's with us from Scottsdale, Arizona.

AUDREY (Caller): Yes. Good afternoon. My question is, was Mike able to learn to read printed matter after he regained his sight?

CONAN: Of course, he lost his sight when he was three. He didn't know to read yet, so…

AUDREY: Yes.

CONAN: If he had to learn how to read, he would have had to learn how to read.

Mr. KURSON: This is a fascinating question. Within seconds of the bandages coming off, Mike could identify by vision alone the letters of the alphabet. And yet, try as he might, he could not put them together into words. That was a different proposition. He could see them perfectly before him and he could name them individually. Now, this is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University with a master's in international relations, but he couldn't and still can't put those letters together. And it might well be, we don't know for sure, but it might well be because human beings see words not as collections of letters but as single pictures, and Mike is not good at identifying pictures or objects.

CONAN: So when he writes now, he still writes in Braille?

Mr. KURSON: Well, yeah. He can print, you know, very basically, but it's mostly done in Braille. And he thinks he could get slightly better if he devoted much of his life trying to read, but he is in the technology business and has so many good alternatives for reading that it's just not worth the effort.

AUDREY: Thank you.

CONAN: Thank you, Audrey.

Let's see if we can get - this is John. John is on the line with us from San Pablo in California.

JOHN (Caller): Good morning, or good afternoon.

CONAN: Afternoon.

JOHN: I did a group in India, 10, 15 years ago, 50 to 75 of us walked into a room, they turned off the lights, and they told us for the next four to six hours, you can do anything you want except busting bones or teeth or anything. Four or six hours later when they turned on the lights, I got so many impressions and it was tremendous. All the - what would you call it? -judgments I made. I had been sitting with a woman for 10 or 15 minutes and I started connecting. You connect with your heart when you close your eyes or you don't have eyes, and you start having real sight.

And when the lights were on, I - oh, she's not as beautiful as she sounded. Oh, she's da da da da da. And after that group, for the rest of my life, I started attempting not to judge people. And what I have found is that when you just make the attempt not to judge people on how they look, you start connecting with their heart.

Mr. KURSON: This idea of connecting with the heart was something that was very fundamental to Mike. And when I heard that it had taken him nearly a year to say yes to new vision, my first question was, well, Mike at least didn't you want to see your wife and children? And he said, I have to tell you truthfully that I felt like I knew and loved my wife and children so fundamentally, so basically, that I couldn't imagine anything like vision or anything else helping me to know them or connect with their heart any better. And so that wasn't a motivator for him.

JOHN: Yes. And it's like many of the religious, spiritual practices say we have eyes but we don't see. And I found that that was very, very true. I still make judgments, but I gave up engineering to become one of the best nurse aides in the Bay Area because I started being used for miracles. And I didn't do them. I was used as a vehicle. And I would do things that doctors, nurses and other nurse aides just didn't know what to do.

And the one thing I suggest is to start having groups like this beginning in kindergarten going all the way through graduate school where people go into a room, they turn off the lights before they get a chance to meet one another and they say, hey, just do whatever you want to do - talk, sit, hug, fight, whatever. Or they can put limits on it, especially, like, if they started one in kindergarten.

They would have a facilitator for those kids who are scared of the dark. They would put some lights on the floor. And then say, oh, how - discuss - they'd give him leading questions. How do you do your homework, and how do you get along with the kids, and do your parents help you study, et cetera, et cetera.

CONAN: It's a fascinating suggestion, John. Thanks very much.

JOHN: Thank you.

CONAN: And we're talking with Robert Kurson. His new book is called "Crashing Through." You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And let's get one last caller on. This is Edgar - Edgar with us from Grand Junction in Colorado.

EDGAR (Caller): Hello.

CONAN: Hi.

EDGAR: Sometime ago, I listened to your program where people who had a heart defects received their own stem cells - injected it into their eyes and their recovery was just fantastic. And I have ever since been waiting for the day when I can have stem cells injected into my eyes and possibly see again. I have had retinitis pigmentosa all my life, which is a gradual…

CONAN: Yes. We talked to a man who'd had that just about a year ago. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

EDGAR: Yeah. And up until year 2000, I could see a little. Now I can't see anything.

CONAN: And you would have the surgery even if it was very risky?

EDGAR: I would have it, because if it didn't work for me, I would have no gain. But if it did, I would have the gain of everything, because I live in the most beautiful state and not be able to see it.

CONAN: Well, Edgar, thanks very much for that. But it leads to the question, Robert Kurson, what about Mike May, does he have any regrets?

EDGAR: I wouldn't think so.

CONAN: Excuse me. Go ahead, Robert, I'm sorry.

Mr. KURSON: No, I don't think Mike has any regrets. But I'll tell you, even if this turned out to be the worst possible result, if his vision was the worst thing you could imagine and he developed cancer, I don't think he'd have regrets because, in the end, Mike didn't do this in the name of vision. Mike did it in order to speak to his curiosity.

For his entire life he enjoyed the power of curiosity to change his life. And I don't think he could have ever lived with himself knowing that he'd once had the chance to know what the poets and philosophers and musicians had been singing and writing about since day one and he'd passed on that chance. That result, passing on that once-in-a-lifetime chance, was worse than any result he could have gotten with his vision.

But beyond that, he made use of this vision, this new strange, hybrid vision in ways we could scarcely imagine that really speak to the idea of his curiosity. And that's the most inspiring part of it all, I think.

CONAN: Robert Kurson's book is "Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See." Robert, thanks very much for being with us today.

Mr. KURSON: Thank you. It was a privilege for me. Thank you very much.

CONAN: Robert Kurson joined us from our bureau in Chicago.

Coming up: Well, we take you to all the best places. Today, we'll head for the Cannes Film Festival, where the beach and the ocean - "Ocean's Thirteen" that is - are all the buzz.

I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.