Speaker
Jodi Powell
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Inspired by secretly learning to ride a bike at 22, Francesca Hayes went on to work for Bike New York and taught over 1,000 adults in New York City how to ride a bicycle.
Dr. Estella Jones's father shined a one-star general's shoes for a living. He lived to see his daughter pin on that same star as a Rear Admiral. He died of COVID in 2021. She now carries his shoes — the ones he once polished for someone else — as a reminder that dreams once thought impossible are worth pursuing.
Michael Corso hit 100 mph, passed the lead cars, heard his navigator yell 'You won!', jammed the brakes, stepped out, and listened to the crowd roar. Then a car drove past him. He had stopped 50 feet short of the actual checkered flag. He got back in, drove forward, and put his head on the steering wheel.
Andrew McGill's father, a NYC taxi driver, never came to PTA meetings or birthday parties. But he always showed up with a gift. The twist: those gifts were items passengers had left in the back of his cab — shoes, a fedora, a Star of David necklace, a PS2, and finally, a wallet with someone else's ID and credit card still inside.
After opening the wallet with someone else's ID and cash, Andrew McGill went home and surveyed every gift his father had ever given him. The realization hit: his dad had made him an accessory to dozens of crimes. He disposed of everything — except the PS2.
Sitting in the back seat of his father's taxi for the first time — not the front — Andrew McGill finally asked: did you always want to be a taxi driver? The answer unlocked a full biography: Berlin, failed music, tailoring, immigration, 35 years of driving. For the first time, Andrew saw his dad not as a mystery or a deadbeat, but as a person.
With a threatening ex-husband, a 3-year-old daughter, no money, and a spot at the Institute for Primate Research in Nairobi, Dr. Estella Jones burned every skycap airline mile she had and flew to Africa. It was the most dangerous, transformative decision of her life.
At the Institute for Primate Research, staff warned Dr. Estella Jones to always walk to work in a group — and never with anyone faster than her. Old lions from the adjacent national park occasionally strayed over the fence. The warning was completely serious.
Watching wild animals roam free across 1,200 acres while knowing what it felt like to be trapped, Dr. Estella Jones had an epiphany. She returned from Africa no longer afraid of her threatening ex-husband and determined to pass that freedom on to her daughter.
Francesca Hayes couldn't let anyone know she didn't know how to ride a bike. So she designed a three-stage system: observe riders for mechanics, simulate on a stationary gym bike, and visualize riding every night before sleep — thanks to a Cosmopolitan tip. Thorough. Secret. Entirely self-directed.
It had to be 3 a.m. It had to be dark. No one could witness a 5'9" adult in a purple helmet on a tiny turquoise Mongoose bike. But when Francesca Hayes pedaled and stayed upright, she laughed, cried, and heard something she'd never heard before: the sound of wind passing her face.
A helmet-free hipster cyclist passed Francesca in the dark and muttered that she shouldn't be riding if she was that drunk. She burst into happy tears. His dismissive comment was the first external confirmation she was actually riding a bike — and she took it.
Michael Corso was diagnosed with retinoschisis — a splitting of the retina — and woke up totally blind the morning of his 12th birthday. His family was devastated. His first thought: can I still play with my friends? Weeks later, he was trying to jump garbage cans on his bicycle.
PIX 106 radio host Bob Wolf organized the Eye Rock 500 — a stock car race for 14 blind drivers at Fonda Speedway. Usual attendance: 100 people. Race day attendance: 6,000. Michael Corso called in, was put live on air, and was signed up before he could think too hard about what he'd agreed to.
Dr. Estella Jones grew up in poverty in Columbus, Ohio, attending a school built for 700 that housed 1,600. By age 12 she was going down the wrong path. Her 7th-grade teacher Dr. Charles Tennant pulled her back with a single line: 'Nothing is impossible unless you succumb to it.' By 14, she had turned her life around and won a scholarship to Emma Willard.
Every car in the Eye Rock 500 had a wooden block wedged under the gas pedal to keep speeds safe. Michael Corso found it, said something unprintable, and kicked it out. Then he put the car in neutral, revved the engine, and told his sighted navigator: just tell me where to go.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Education 50%
- Society & Culture 50%
Connections
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