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CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley
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July 25, 2021 11:26 am

CBS Sunday Morning,

CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley

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July 25, 2021 11:26 am

In our cover story, Lee Cowan tells an extraordinary tale of survival by a man who experienced locked-in syndrome. Tracy Smith talks with Geena Davis about her advocacy to increase opportunities for women in media. Martha Teichner steps onto Little Island in the Hudson River, New York City's newest island. David Pogue checks out Brooklyn's fabled Coney Island. Dr. Jon LaPook, who lacks navigation skills, finds out how people can hone a sense of direction, and Mo Rocca meets the inventor of the Super Soaker. Jane Pauley hosts this week's "CBS Sunday Morning."

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CBS Sunday morning podcast is sponsored by Edward Joe college tours with your oldest daughter updating the kitchen to the appropriate decade retiring on the coast. Life is full of moments that matter and Edward Joe's helps you make the most of them. That's why every Edward Jones financial advisor works with you to build personalized strategies for now and down the road so when your next moment arrives bigger small, you're ready for it. Life is for living. Let's partner for all of it. Learn more@edwardjones.com I'm jingling this is Sunday morning. Thousands and thousands of Americans who are in what's known as a permanent vegetative state, and the fact trapped inside their own bodies. Now imagine having that diagnosis only being fully aware of everything being sad all around you, including talk of your imminent death and his remarkable report this morning, Lee Cowan introduces us to a man who's been there and managed to find his way back there is so little we really know about the human brain accepts that he continues to surprises in the right many brains more surprising than Jake handles bring their very few people like Jacob who have ever been described in the medical literature surprises starting the morning after what could've been a forever sleep late on Sunday. Gina Davis has played some memorable characters on the silver screen but feel more memorable than found in Dickinson, along with her friend Louise turned a movie about a weekend getaway into a road trip for the ages. Tracy Smith is in conversation with Gina Davis voice when Gina Davis read the script for Thelma and Louise. She knew it was going to be big so she spent a year trying to get on board and that I just made up about why I absolutely must pretty Thelma, that was quick thinking, yeah, I was good to be that were me, I didn't care I was going to be about worry seems she has a way of getting what she wants. Gina Davis ahead on Sunday morning with David Pogue.

We've got tickets to Coney Island. Dr. John the pool guy asks what is it about guys and directions, 19 takes in a performance at Wolf trap, a Washington area treasurer marking its 50th year plus maraca Steve Hartman and more on this Sunday morning July 25, 2021. I will be right patient who was unresponsive for months and months and months.

Usually we associate that with the worst possible outcome. So explain this story from our Lee Cowan about a man who defined the odds and baffled the experts. Jacob rushed to Massachusetts emergency room four years ago, doctors thought the one time chef as young as he was, was having a stroke, but he wasn't the scan showed something very different and very strange.

Jake's brain seem to be unplugging itself the rest of his body.

The wires weren't sending signals from place to place.

Dr. Brian Adler examined Jake in the ICU wasn't sure at first what was causing until Jake made a confession. He told him party and that included doing drugs, opioids, mostly until he turned to street heroin. Jake's medical team surmised he probably ingested a toxin. Somewhere along the way.

That's what was causing the damage leading to a very rare condition with a very long day toxic acute aggressive leukoencephalopathy are only a few dozen people since the first report in 1982, of the type of brain injury. The Jacob experienced within six months. Jake was little more than a stair.

Ceased any conscious movement.

We believe that he was in a vegetative state, completely unaware of himself or the environment is placed in an extended care facility where he lay breathing by machine fed through to the day after death eventually he was put in hospice nearby Christmas that year they actually causes is over and always got a couple of days, his stepfather, Eli Weiland not even sure if Jake could hear him went to say goodbye. Nonetheless, I just was whispering that it's like it's okay you know we love you. You need this pain anymore. You know and just go.

It's okay to go numb like I appreciate that, but no good. Jake didn't die that night for the next one after that. Instead, Jake's brain somehow sputtered back to life. This Dr. still there. Very few people like Jacob who have ever been described in the medical literature surprises starting at the crazy story. It's hard for me to believe the stories if I was or you're saving I really know my know I've been his remarkable recovery started almost by accident or fate. Maybe when the doctor happened to notice the movement in Jake's wrist was like that which is like it follow-up yeah like some thought it meant nothing, but it was involuntary, but his family thought otherwise you optimistic did you think he was going to get out of this or the severity might be too strong or hopeful that, but it's what happened a few weeks later really stunned everyone. E. I, you, Jake started moving his time in his eyes almost imperceptibly at first, but enough to use a letter board to spell out a message that he been desperately trying to send almost a year.

First thing I said was I can hear you. The first thing I can hear you is the word slowly appear. Doctors realize the Jake hadn't been unconscious for the past year wasn't blissfully unaware of his descent into nothingness. Instead Jake had actually been awake the whole time locked inside a coffin that was his own body so I couldn't express anything to anyone. No one knew what was going on my head that I just wanted someone to know, like that I was in there to go through all of that being fully aware and having others not realize it. I can't even imagine the feeling of isolation or the sensation of fear that one might experience. It's truly humbling to think about how little we understood his brain function at that time for months.

He was silently trapped somewhere between living and nonliving time moron. He noticed that the visits began to slow your nurses: brain-dead even remembers being given last rites did you feel alone and I felt felt very alone. I talk to myself a lot.

All and there were times or I was like I've had enough.

I can do it, but it would always make it to the next, Samberg RA, Carreon hearing everything Jake could feel everything to our life.

This is the worst because I had so many needs wasn't so much pain and I could name and tell anyone. I need to help our like my mouth is dryer like hungry or I love you. Don't worry, these were the hardest things to pass the time Jake would do math problems in his head just to help keep himself from the guilt that his drug use had caused all of this and the doctors kept saying like this is so rare as fire fall in them like night. That's a nice thing to say I causes like a devil in the big feeling of how disappointed my mother would be in me mom mom would find us off Jake's mom died of breast cancer when he was just 19. She had a long miserable fight, Jake started using drugs to escape and to cope. I was so unhappy that I was not thing about the future. Everything was like falling apart.

I wean myself off. I got myself off you tried to quit both hundreds of times but always kind the lake slipped up again, Jake was still lost in that fog married as he began to recover green, blue, space Michelle Braley, Jake's beach language pathologist was helping them learn to speak again but early on the words that came out just screamed of a mental anguish that made her just as much a counselor as a biologist he would say L do I deserve this.

Might have to live like this the rest of my life because of mistakes that I made the types of conversations and it's really happily answer is now you don't deserve this.

I mean, that's the answer. Nobody deserves this wasn't just speech, Jake had to read everything his muscles been frozen for so long.

Even the slightest move was excruciating, but bit by bit through months of work Spaulding rehabilitation Boston Jake's body started to function again putting on shoes buttoning buttons all things he never thought twice about before. For someone that has no coordination membrane and certainly not that his cousin Kim even helped them get back to cooking it cracking eggs and cracking himself housing top is very possible and they then look over there among the apartment where with help is returning to a life without and without the self-doubt, grief, put in that spiral in the first place. I don't think leave think there's anything super special about me per se. I think you really know anybody has the capacity to do with those of the willpower. That's the thing. Not everybody has Jake's willpower. Very few have survived literally being scared to death and come back with such a profound understanding of what a second chance really me I am and improve Jake in a much happier Jake, I want to give up time for maraca armed but definitely not dangerous when inventor Lonnie Johnson was designing this totally okay while he had no idea what a splash it would make sense.

The super soaker hit store shelves in the early 1990s. It's racked up more than one billion dollars in sales.

When Johnson was growing up in Mobile, Alabama. He played with everything including fire waterway. Rocket fuel by our viewing of the pot realize what happened. The whole outside the law simply admonishes Lonnie please stop using the stovetop. The fuse was lit and in 1968 he entered a state wide high school science competition with his very own robot year-over-year with all remote control. He took first place. After earning his masters in nuclear engineering, Johnson landed at Nasser's legendary Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The most powerful water gun ever but it was while he was at home in his bathroom trying to design a new kind of water pump that he had a happy accident were all watching what was happening in the churning water about Wargo, the super soaker was born. Johnson then turned his engineering eye on the right and the left.

The success of Johnson's work with toys has allowed him to pursue more serious projects at his lab in Atlanta one day are all this one called the J tack is an ambitious project that Johnson hopes one day allows the conversion of heat into electricity.

Lonnie Johnson was inducted into the Alabama engineering Hall of Fame in 2011 was your mother there when you were inducted into that Hall of Fame fire new saucepan will remodel rose Connie Island is an American classic with a history that truly stands out in the crowd. Here's our David Pogue the island. The place where Merryman is King. Even if you never step foot cotton candy if you're eating soft ice cream if you're riding a roller coaster was that of course it's all a company mentioned that if it was in my blog and tell you where it was and a wife began here was over 40 years has run a clean island cultural center Museum, sideshow and mermaid people: the mayor of Coney Island. How long you been going by the 1870s, rides, or opening the restaurant there were hotels, it becomes the people's playground in 1923 when people can get here on the subway for five cents American survived the Great Depression and the night 2020 and Coney Island got a reputation for speediness neglect the iconic attractions are still here. The boardwalk, how I have never been here. This is so is the Nathan's exactly where it opened in 1916, the cyclone roller coaster was built in 1927 wooden roller coasters and horse 101st year labor of love, Lonnie my uncle.

He said once you get sand in your shoes and never leave DJ for terrorists and his family have run the wonder wheel since 1983 when his grandfather bought it from its inventors. Family is anyone ever tried to do the math on how many people are in the right. I think it's like 40 million at this point is making 40 million into the wonder wheel has had some upgrades but the fun part hasn't changed in over 100 Outer Cars Just Cir. the colorful sit on here's a real so they spring a little surprised you are not expected like any normal today you probably go to Coney Island for a trip to the past, but in its early days. You go to get a look at the future when our escalator rides and where steam leaders course.

Most importantly, believe from of the parks extended leisure far into the night. As far as you can see Robin Jaffe. Frank is the curator of an exhibition and the author of a book about Coney Island in art and film when you were growing up. What was it that well as a child to me but it was on sale now kind of anti-Disney World owned by company is owned by families.

Some of them flipping here for generations.

Greedier, yes, but also your over the years the attractions here have included everything from the electrocution of an elephant in 1903 horrifically brutal and cruel.

Two rows of babies in incubators is the brainchild of Martin Cooney's idea that Harris could keep babies alive. Waited all development into the mainstream.

He tried to get hospitals to accept incubators and they would not like DJ for terrorist don't mind the greediness in the sprawling hodgepodge of Coney Island that that's what they love about it doesn't matter where you're from this place embodies inclusive and as long as we remember Coney Island will always be a place for all people, Sagan would certainly agree in this era where you can watch any movie on demand instantly ever made was the role Coney Island actual authentic human experience. Shut off your phone experience fear at all. All human. What's wrong hi podcast.

It's me Drew Barrymore all my goodness, I want to tell you about our new shell business podcast and each episode mean a weekly gastric to cover all the quirky find inspiring and informative stories that exist because well and maybe you do to from the newest interior design trend Barbie car to the right and wrong way to wash her arm. Also getting the things that you just kind of well probably not able to do in daytime television.

So watch out. Tristan is ever you get your podcast. It's a good news on the got Steve Hartman on the kindness of strangers. According to her mother, Lacey, six-year-old Ray Litvack asked of Fort Smith, Arkansas is always good.

Daddy's girl. She was very proud of her. Now she always wanted to introduce her dad to just about anybody until recently when her father, Davey, died of colon cancer. He was just 41 and Rae Lynn was just devastated it with a cry that is pure heartbreak. Enter Emily by the who happen to be jogging with her dog blew the day of the visitation she was running past the funeral home when all of a sudden she heard a tiny voice call out from the chapel steps that mind please add your not knowing not knowing Rae Lynn explained that her dad was lying inside gave blew a huge hug and then gave Beverly a stunning invitation. That's right. This still proud daughter invited that random jogger to meet her father.

Emily was hardly dressed for the funeral. She knew just walking in the door would cause a scene which he also knew this was the last time that little girl would be able to introduce her dead. Anyone so she followed her, got followed, Rae Lynn down the aisle, looking around ready to come find and she came in right next to Ray like they've known each other for so long. There was that connection there.

How could two people so quickly.

Lynn says it should be no mystery. Recently, Rae Lynn and family got together again and now plan to stay friends forever course, no one will ever replace her dad but Rae Lynn is clearly on the path to a better place thanks to the kindness of a stranger has, I think SS and the healing power of a warm body on here again is Jane probably Gina Davis has been charming us with unforgettable performances for nearly 40 years, but her latest role as a surprise. She's locating for actors who, like herself, are losing work largely because of age and gender. Tracy Smith is in conversation with an Oscar-winning activist lease payment.

Is it really been 30 years almost from the date open May 1990 Ridley Scott feminist buddy movie Thelma and Louise was considered one of the most powerful generation Gina Davis for the role for more than a year was Thelma to Susan Sarandon's Louise Davis was actually signed to play either part. I was good to be that I was going to be. You know then that it would get the kind of reaction that is absolutely not of us know it was a small movie is very small budget people. It's not hate the ending.

You know, but would strike a nerve like at the time Gina Davis had already created some of the most memorable female characters on film from the newly dead bride Beetlejuice to a quirky dog trainer in the accidental tourist's but Thelma and Louise was on another level, and of course people said this changes everything exactly and only let me think of the ways we didn't.

So the change is it really is still waiting, still waiting change. She's waiting and working for is a film industry with as much opportunity for women as there is for man is one area of inequality that can be changed overnight and that honestly her own activism began in 2004, when she noticed there were a lot more boys than girls in the shows her young daughter watched David turns out to be the magic bullet.

Davis commissioned a study and that she showed in her 2018 documentary share the data with studio execs who started casting more girls and now and now it's 50-50 right but there are other problems that are proving tougher to fix. Have things gotten better for women in their 50s and beyond, no, no, it hasn't its various much different for female actors past 50 than male actors past 50 majority of female characters I believe are in their 20s and majority of male actors are in their 30s and 40s to shed even more light on the issue. She helped start the Bentonville film Festival's letter society as it is. It's an annual event held in Bentonville, Arkansas as a showcase for films that focus on diversity but what's really on display here is opportunity and that's something Gina Davis knows all about.

After studying drama at Boston University. Davis found work as a model in New York City and that actually helped her land her very first movie role someone who looked good in underwear and Davis, who'd been a model for Victoria's Secret got the job opposite Dustin Hoffman in 1982 I shall call but clearly she was a lot more than just a pretty face when many like me in the next you don't. Davis's role as the quirky Muriel Pritchett in the accidental tourist earned her an Oscar nod, but right before she went to the ceremony with then husband Jeff Goldblum. She watched a show where critics agreed she had no chance of assessing C right well I guess I'll go all dressed up and the funny thing was it was Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson were present and Melanie kissed me when she handed it to me and I was very conscious that I might have a pink smirk on my cheek so my acceptance speech. I'm going and I also like to thank kind of shy, actually just to cover up its potential to smart 1992, fresh off Thelma and Louise. She seemed right at home is a star baseball player but truth is fairly new, had a I did not play baseball or any sport I really was so not athletic kid I was always the tallest kid that just tells girl with the tallest kid in my class and very self-conscious and didn't want to try anything physical in case people would laugh at me and they were selling, begging me to build the girls basketball team like just tallest girl anywhere. But now I had to be the best baseball player. Anyone had ever seen. She was a natural sleep after watching coverage of the US archery team at the Olympics. She took up that sport and at age 41 nearly made it onto the US team herself into 1/2 years I was a semifinalist for the Olympic trials, while what you think. I did mentally for you. It was incredible.

It was all about the points you either hate it or didn't you know and it was fascinating to do something that was that precise wasn't up to people's judgment about what you're wearing or how you did. It seems that game in Hollywood subjective you feel like Hollywood is finally getting things so you know they made black widow was recently open to great success and I think we deftly headed more in that direction to have more blockbusters with women in the lead roles is definitely happening more very exciting for her work toward diversity. She was awarded her second Oscar the Jean Herschel humanitarian award in 2019 now at 65 or more personal goal is still elusive. Have you had more opportunities you know I make a joke about that but like because I'm working to get more female roles in movies and TV that some point this will actually benefit me personally but so far it hasn't. Is it strange that things haven't changed for you artwork parts of their Oscar a couple of years. It's it's not like you people don't see me in your out there so few mean if you look at people in my age range, so few that are really getting that are really working steadily know this just very few parts for people my age and older. So just bad on still Gina Davis has beaten the numbers before I call myself an inpatient optimist and in life. Like her best movies just never know how it's going to end. I joke that I want my headstone to read. I wish I'd spent more time at work as I start this country-western song that said have you ever seen a headstone when the words. I wish I'd spent more time at work like of course not. I want my dissent. Actually I do is find a nice this morning. Our Dr. John the poop strays into uncharted territory truly, these do even you can see Ella Fitzgerald talking about love.

But there's another thing, all animals, sense of direction. Other animals may navigate better than we must admit, most humans navigate better than I point the time I visited Iceland. My son Rick. We are in the middle of nowhere. Despite my trouble with navigation. I did manage to track down experts, you're going to show me some of the tricks of the trade. We started with Vermont game warden Mark she's he's taught other game wardens. Those tricks of the trade official term land navigation skills. So whenever I'm introducing somebody to navigating in the wilderness.

I teach and do crazy. I what is crazy Ivan is to let October reference. Same thing applies to.

As you're walking just periodically turn around and look to see what the return trip looks like you, I don't part of it for somebody like me who lives in the city is to train yourself to notice so this is our clump of berries.

There is opposed to just thing out a bunch of wilderness humans do have one advantage over other with the compass aligned with that the ability to use symbols and tool like a compass and maps that I turn until red thread is in the should correct the once pointed in the right direction.

The next task is staying on course by orienting the compass and map picking a target heading for repeat until the nation, orienting yourself on the surface of the earth is a skill that human beings have all of us have that to a greater or lesser degree, all of our senses are involved morning Prof. Nora Newcombe of Temple University studies the psychology sense of direction what got you interested in sense of direction. Basically, people are bad and yet they ought to be good at it. Because if you lose your way.

That's really a threat to survival a sense of direction is encoded in the very wiring of the brain. So that's an important landmark initialized nerve cells track where you're headed and where you are in relation to landmark kind of internal map system in 2014. The Nobel Prize was awarded to the scientist who discovered these cells play cells which pinpoint particular locations to help us recognize our environment and grid cells that make a gridlike pattern to help track distance and position ourselves that fire when you're in this place, but also this place or this place or this place or this place in a regular gridlike pattern so your brain is actually creating maps of where you been in your research. Have you found that men asked for directions more or less actually people don't exactly know that research has shown some differences, men can escape from amazed faster than females might be more likely to take shortcuts that are definitely biological theories people make it out to be a really big difference, but it's not that big in my marriage, my wife and she does have a better sense of direction well in my marriage. I'm the one who says let's not ask for directions. Let's use the map so we both defy sex stereotypes. So we went out when we went to the right. Newcombe has created a virtual world best you can to test people on learning, remembering and connecting roots were trying to diagnose their sense of direction and some people turn out much better at this than others.

She's building a cognitive profile of proficient human navigators so what this really testing is your ability to figure out where something is without seeing exactly what you learned from this. Some people are pretty good at putting together the rain and then some of the people who can put together the root are good at relating to each other but some people are truly start night. How do you explain that sense of direction set up a are using sometimes consciously sometimes unconsciously every single queue. There is and really from the start trying to make that certain overhead map and do I clearly fall to a group saying you're not what we call an imprecise navigators past that that's not saying I'm great but I'm not imprecise. Of course, today's cell phone world imprecise human navigators can survive animals different story.

Robert Rockwell known as Rocky is a biologist at New York's American Museum of Natural History. He studies polar bears and snow geese in the Canadian Arctic literally really migrate if all the birds one years in the winter along the Gulf migrate North move along to use visual cues to fun places fuels rivers that they recognize stops, which fueled their 2500 mile flight right to the nesting colony also groups often times in the last year.

I think it's a combination of two visual cues the birds use the position of the sun sense of smell and the kind of encompass. They may also possess a magnetic sense. So as you get closer and closer to the polls and the harder they can feel it is thought about anything about this is that it is thought this is metric I think the magic is that they can use always modalities and rate them flawlessly. The experts agree it's possible to hone the sense of direction, but awareness is key. So as someone who arrived this morning saying I have absolutely no sense of direction you feel now I do feel better. It's exciting to learn how to use even to the compass in conjunction with a map for real terms, a sense of direction.

What can we learn from other metals. The best thing you learn from them is to watch how you with their environment and elder told me when I first working in the Arctic is just a rock watch.

The point is to be aware of what's going on around you. Too many of us fixated on well I can always find my way because I can pull out Google maps right and pull up my phone until I want to go there and then just follow the little arrow. So where does GPS come in bed for sense of direction. Lots of people to think that it's bad, including me. If you rely on it too much and you aren't forming an overview of the environment you're preventing yourself from building up something that I strongly feel as part of appreciating the world which is to say, looking down at your phone look around because to get you going. You got to really see where you are. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.

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Michael Morel bridge Colby is cofounder and principal of the Marathon initiative project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for your sustained great power competition states put her mind to something, we can usually figure it out what people are saying and what we can know analytically and empirically as our strategic situation motor situations not being matched up with follow. Intelligence matters were ever you get your podcasts