Someone told one of VaShaun's braille students that braille is on its way out. That is the whole argument, and the three of us do not land in the same place on it.

VaShaun opens as the skeptic. He uses braille for elevators and finding his hotel room and not much else, because the phone does the rest. Eric takes the other side and argues it as an art worth keeping rather than a skill you strictly need, with a refreshable display and an SD card as his answer to what happens when the power goes out. That leads to a long stretch about whether a braille display is just a brick once the battery dies, and what you would do with the brick.

Nicole was on VaShaun's side for years. She told Eric not to bother with the class. Then she took it: "braille stretched my brain more than going to college."

The strongest case against VaShaun turns out to be his own. Recording a voice clone for his AI courses, the last verification step put three sentences on the screen and asked him to read them out. Inaccessible. His braille display was in the next room, going to get it felt like too much trouble, and he waited two days for a workaround instead.

Then it wanders, which is where this show usually earns its keep: QR code menus in restaurants too loud to hear your own phone, why there is braille on the bank drive-through, and how each of them handles cash without getting shortchanged. It closes on Nicole's nutrition regimen and VaShaun committing, on the record, to seven days of the Mediterranean diet.

Watch Us Now. New episodes whenever we land somewhere with decent Wi-Fi.

The topic VaShaun brought in was the one that had been bothering him all week: the haves and the have nots. Not sighted people versus blind people. Blind people with some sight versus blind people with none, and which of the two thinks it is better than the other.

Nicole went first and made the case from the middle. Retinitis pigmentosa gives her a clear morning and a blurry hour later, confidence carries her further than her vision does, and she owns two canes she does not use. Eric answered a slightly different question before VaShaun pulled him back to the one that was asked: "You have people who do have 20/20 vision, but sometimes they lack 20/20 common sense." (7:05)

Then Nicole brought her own topic and the second half turned practical: getting from an airplane seat to an Uber. Unlit parking garages, waist-high gray barricades nobody thought to paint, airport staff whose directions amount to "go around the corner, spin around five times." Eric walked her through curbside assistance and Sky Cap. VaShaun made the case for carrying the cane even on the days you can manage without it. "It's a pride thing, and I know it, and it's an ego thing, and I know it, but you got to pull it out and show it." (22:57) Nicole had already said the quiet part a minute earlier: "It's an ego thing for me. I got to let it go." (21:50)

There is also a bus driver who would not look up, and a reply Eric had clearly been saving for him. (24:41)

First episode with all three of us on the same recording. It only took until 1.3.

Eric Smith has been the co-host of this show since episode one, and until now nobody had actually introduced him. We fixed that — badly, at first. The recording opens with VaShaun working out that the introduction he thought he had done had never happened, and Nicole not being there to point it out.

What follows is Eric in about five minutes: musician, owner and music director of the Epitome Show Band, twenty years of originals and covers around Atlanta, corporate rooms through to backyard parties. He tried stand-up once and calls it the hardest job he has ever had.

Then it turns. Eric has retinitis pigmentosa, and so do more than twenty people in his family, which means he has seen the whole range of it — relatives with no sight at all, relatives with only peripheral vision, relatives with only central vision. He lost his guide dog in 2020. He learned braille at the start of the pandemic and now teaches it, which he describes as "helping people to be able to learn how to live with blindness, instead of let blindness control them."

He also talks fast. Fast enough that his co-host says so on air, and Eric's defence is that this is a podcast and you can just play it again.

Find Eric at leoto.org — Living Everyday On Their Own — and at epitomeshowband.com.

I messed up again. Not as bad as last time.

Last episode I couldn't get anybody into the recording. This time I got one and a half of the people who were supposed to be here, which I'm choosing to count as progress. Eric was there — he's just not in this one. We're re-recording him next week, and I promise I've got it together now.

So this episode is Nicole. Nicole with no H, Myrick. I asked her to introduce herself in her own words, because she's smarter than me and I didn't want to open with a stupid question. She's going to sneak in a thing about Harvard. Listen for it.

Here's what she told us: she grew up in a small town in Ohio, and inherited retinitis pigmentosa from her father, who inherited it from his mother. Diagnosed around twelve. She'd watched her dad live with it, so she thought she knew what was coming — but as she puts it, you don't really know what someone's shoes are like until you begin to walk in them. Losing the chance at a driver's license took a lot with it, and for a while she was bitter about that.

Then she got a degree, had a family, started a business under the Business Enterprise Program, took classes through Harvard, and went back to school again. She has a sailor's license. She runs 5Ks. She jogs with a run group on Saturdays, travels alone, hosts a networking group of business owners in her town, and describes herself as a part-time comedian in her own mind.

Her advice, for anybody out there with any type of limitation: don't wait. The things you think aren't possible are very much so possible for you.

Eric next week. For real this time.

Watch Us Now is about technology, braille and culture — recorded wherever we land, and always circling back to Georgia. Hosted by VaShaun Jones of Fedora Outlier, with co-host Eric Smith and moderator Nicole Myrick.

The introduction. What Watch Us Now is, who's behind it, and why we're bothering: technology, braille, and culture, talked about by the people actually living it.

It's also a solo episode, which was not the plan. Turns out having two co-hosts and having AV software that knows you have two co-hosts are two entirely different accomplishments, and I only managed one of them. Eric and Nicole were ready. My setup was not. Live and learn, loudly, in public.

So the shout outs go first this time. To Eric Smith, of the Epitome Show Band and President of the nonprofit LEOTO, Living Everyday On Their Own. And to Nicole Myrick, who keeps us vaguely on topic and does it at volume. Both of them are on episode 1.1, which is going to happen now that I've made every possible mistake on their behalf.

New episodes whenever we land somewhere with decent Wi-Fi. Watch us now.