Tuesday Topics

I think particularly people who are born blind often assume they know a lot more about how sports work than they actually do! I know that I take formations in football for granted and don't have a good understanding of how players are placed in cricket even though these are sports I follow. It will be interesting to see how two folks who have been blind all their lives (I think) experience new technologies that make football and basketball more accessible.

I don't have a clear idea of what I am missing from tv! I know there are stats that appear! I know that there are replays and diagrams! …

Tuesday Topics will take a big risk! Lots of our shows depend on hearing from guests. We sometimes invite several guests to join us! This time we are making a different sort of invitation! We are inviting affiliates to tell us what they do to build membership! Virtually everybody knows about BITS and its hugely successful effort to increase its membership. We heard last night that it's important for ACB to get new members! We heard that, in spite of what we might have heard, at large memberships only constitute about 1 percent of our group!

What are affiliates doing to encourage new members? What more could they do? …

This is the time of year when our affiliates are getting ready to send in membership lists so we thought it might be a good thing to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly about how we are doing at the local, state and national level at encouraging new members. It's generally accepted that our membership numbers are falling. Why is that? Are there particular reasons it is happening to ACB? A few groups are growing! Who are they and why is it happening? What does falling membership mean? How is it affecting ACB'S ability to do what it's supposed to do! There are lots of other questions we will explore surrounding recruitment and retention and how we can do better! …

It is still January so many people will still have a pretty good memory of what happened last year! We thought it would be fun to ask you to think back to last year and tell us about some cool things you found last year. We would like to hear about the best book you read! We want to know about the best movie you saw! (It doesn't have to be a new one!) We want to know about what you think the best song or album from last year was! Finally, we would love to know what the coolest thing you did last year might be! You are our audience and you are what makes Tuesday Topics vibrant and compelling! Help us again by sharing the books, movies, songs and events that made 2025 outstanding for you! …

Tuesday Topics will encourage folks to consider an issue that could potentially create some interesting disagreements. As

we take to the internet and a range of devices too numerous to mention, we will explore together a question that everybody has thought about but many have

avoided discussing!

Many people attempt to persuade us that there is only one sort of person with visual impairments. That person is "blind". In reality, according to some

statistics I have seen, only ten percent of those with vision loss are totally blind. …

Usually on Tuesday Topics we attach our predictions to other elements like "how to keep your resolutions" or something similar! This time we are flat out

prognosticating! We are gazing blindly into the future with the hope that something from the chaos of what is to be will trickle back to us! I would argue

that these times are as hard as any time ever during which to look ahead! The art of extrapolation says that we ought to be able to take what has just

happened and assume that these events will help us unerringly identify those actions that the events that have happened portend. Lately, friends, it does …

Those of you who have been long time listeners to our show can

probably guess what our topic is. At the end of each year we like to review the events that those of us on the team and you think are the most significant

things that have happened during this year. We are pretty loose about what can be included but want to talk about blindness things, technology, movies,

books and whatever else seems to come up. There are some things we know we should be thankful for and we like to look at some of those. There are probably

some trends that are not so great and we will probably talk about some of those. …

There appears to be a whole range of ways that the brain reacts to picturing something with one's eyes closed. I listened to a recent program where a condition

was described that intrigued me. The term I heard was "afantesia" but that appears not to be the correct name of the condition. Essentially people who

have this condition see nothing in their brains when they close their eyes and try to picture even something as concrete as an apple. At the other end

of the spectrum there are people who have, again not the correct word apparently, "hyperfantesia". These individuals can be reading a fantasy novel with …

Last year we featured a play

with blind actors from our ACB Sacramento chapter. We hope to have them on in the future to share their latest project! On our show this time we feature

a group based in Pennsylvania interested in "improv".

Sue Lichtenfels from Out of Sight Improv will join us for the next Tuesday Topics. Through virtual experiences, Out of Sight Improv enables blind and sighted

actors to soar high through their mind's eye. After learning a little about Sue and this project, we'll hear the trailer for their most recent improv audio …

Tuesday Topics will once more tackle an issue that we think deserves atffention. We live in polarizing times! Politically

our nation is perhaps more divided than it has ever been. Within our very own organization it sometimes seems that civil discourse is replaced by uncivil

recourse to inappropriate messaging.

Are there ways to defuse this level of irreconcilability? Can we find ways to interact with each other in ways that produce dialogue rather than log jams?

We certainly can't change where our country is with a single program but we think we can…