Enriching Your Experiences
Dr. Hoby Wedler
Hoby’s Essentials
Biography
Dr. Hoby Wedler is an insightful, disarming, and passionate thinker who loves to bring people together to help them see new possibilities. With the heart of a teacher, Hoby helps turn your dreams into realities. Hoby has been completely blind since birth. He is a scientist, an entrepreneur, a sensory expert, and is driven by his passion for innovative, creative, and insightful thinking. Hoby is remarkably tuned into his surroundings and has frequently chosen to walk the unbeaten paths in life over known territories. In 2016, Hoby earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from UC Davis. His fearlessness is infectious, and he has actively paved the way for others to join him in his quest to follow passions regardless of the challenges that lie ahead.
In 2011, Hoby founded a non-profit organization to lead annual chemistry camps for blind and visually impaired students throughout North America. In the same year, he began opening doors to the world of wine aromas by developing Tasting in the Dark, a truly blindfolded wine experience, in collaboration with the Francis Ford Coppola Winery. He has since expanded the program to a global market in a variety of industries and special projects. Over the years, Hoby has become a motivational speaker, a mentor, and an educator. He is also committed to making the world an inclusive, equitable, and accessible place for everyone.
In his work, you will find a unique trilogy between sensory awareness, scientific knowledge, and a love for sharing his insights.
Numerous people and organizations have recognized Hoby’s work over the years. To name a few, President Barack Obama recognized Hoby by naming him a Champion of Change for enhancing employment and education opportunities for people with disabilities. Also, Forbes Media named Hoby as a leader in food and drink in their 30 under 30 annual publication. Hoby’s dedicated to impacting everyone he works with by unlocking doors, overcoming challenges, increasing awareness, and expanding their horizons.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/officialhobywedler
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www.marlanasemenza.com
Audio : Ariza Music Productions
Transcription : Vision In Word
Marlana: Today's guest is truly incredible. Dr. Hoby Wedler loves to bring people together to help them see new possibilities. With the heart of a teacher, he helps turn your dreams into realities, completely blind since birth. He is a scientist and entrepreneur and a sensory expert. He's dedicated to impacting everyone who works with unlocking doors, overcoming challenges, increasing awareness, and expanding their horizons. Welcome Hoby!
Hoby: Marlana, thank you so much for this honor, I really appreciate it. It's an exciting opportunity to chat with you. You know, we talked a few weeks ago, I think we have so much in common, and we're both artists at heart, and there's just so much to talk about.
Marlana: Well, you know, I have to tell everybody listening that I have made my life as a photographer, so, I've made it through what I see, and you have taught me how to see differently. Because I think so many of us rely on simply what we see. And we judge by what we see, we assess by what we see. And we forget that we have other senses. And when I watch the way you create experiences, whether it be for yourself or for others, you make them so full and rounded. So how do you go about that?
Hoby: Yeah, you know, I think that for someone who's actually lacked one sense, which is the sense of eyesight, for my whole life, you know, I really do have a different approach to how I take life and how I live life, you know, it's about embracing the non-visual senses that we have, but creating opportunities out of those senses that create that same joy and pleasure and evoke, you know, happiness, basically, because it's not about for me, life isn't about, oh, is me, I can't see, I can't take stuff in, I need all this help, you know, my job is harder, because I'm blind. It's like, know how I am going to figure out how to be the best possible blind person I can be. And, you know, experience life through the non-visual senses, you know, really stopping and listening to birds that are chirping outside or smelling the air and just being happy that I'm alive. And that I'm in this, this air in this area where I am. And you know, eyesight allows us to really move so quickly through the world. And I feel stressed out just like, you know, analysis. And sometimes I feel like I don't have time. And if you're busy and I certain situations happen, or I'm just totally, you know, running through the world and trying to get things done. But I think that ultimately being blind, lets me slow down a little more than other people, sometimes get the opportunity to, and observe things that that maybe people don't necessarily get to observe on a day-to-day basis. And that's how I sort of view the world with you experiences that I create. So, one of my favorite things to do is to not use before for game or anything like that. But bring people together. And let the Turley wear a blindfold and engage in something that I created with Francis Ford Coppola, a movie director, back in 2011, called Tasting In the Dark. I developed it with him for wine, but I've since expanded it to many different industries in many different markets around the world. And what would I say about that? When we temporarily remove eyesight, we are really able to focus in on our other senses so much more. And when we use our vision or eyesight to obtain 85 to 90% of the information we take in from our surroundings when we take it away. It's not about oh, what does this taste like? I mean, it’s kind of is we have fun with that, right? But it starts so much earlier than that. It's okay. What are we, you know, what does this chair feel like? We mean, what are we talking about when we're not distracted by our eyesight? What other information can we take in that we didn't even think was possible? And that's really exciting. That's my way of generating experiences for everybody to sort of understand and go back and I didn't realize I was doing this since I was a child. I've really been developing my palate, my ability to observe different flavors and aromas and textures and I'm particularly done in understanding they are. So basically, really have a library of flavors and aromas in my mind that are individual. And then when something's a blend of many different flavors, I can really break it down and pull out the components that you know that really, really contribute the individual components. And I'm able to talk about those and talk through them to the best of my ability. So that's a lot of fun.
Marlana: So, in either two things, but one, I'll ask you now and then the other one we'll get to. So, tell us a little bit more about Tasting In the Dark. And also too, because I had heard about the experience of Dave Matthews, tell us about that.
Hoby: Yeah, sure! Tasting In the Dark is really just an experience where people get to engage and understand their non visual senses for a while for anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, or sometimes even longer than that depending and really delve into what something is what happens when we remove our eyesight, but really, what ends up happening is that we're able to focus in hole in on our other senses, so much more than we would be otherwise. You know, and we can talk about flavor people pick up flavors that they never would have gained, and we don't necessarily tell them what the wine or food or drink of any type that their tasting is, you know, we literally just, we let them taste it and explore it on their own. And we use aromatics. Basically, samples that I develop ahead of time to help people really develop their aromatic vocabulary, Scheibel understand wines that we are tasting and working with ahead of time. And then people will be able to smell and understand what lemon by itself smells like, what does vanilla smell like, by itself, you know, things that I pull out of the wines, maybe three to five different aromas that I'll make individual samples of. So, people can smell these, and I like to say, sort of calibrate or exercise their aromatic vocabulary. So here are a few things that we're smelling by themselves. And the task is going to be can we pull these out of the wines when we smell them and taste them. And then we smell the bad food or beverage. In this case, I'll just use wine as my example, for a while and really talk about everything we smell. And finally, we taste it. And we talk about everything we taste, and just analyses it together as a group and people that think, Oh, I'm not that good with my sensory, you know, describing things find, usually, for me anyway, when they put a blindfold on, they're very capable, and they become so strong at understanding, you know, different aromas, different things that they maybe wouldn't be able to pick up on, because they would be distracted by their eyesight. And when we don't tell people what a wine is, again, just using wine as an example, here. Sometimes people will come to me and say, I don't like Chardonnay. And then they'll do this experience and say, Oh, my gosh, this wine is delicious. I would love this; I would totally buy this. What is this wine? Well, you'd be surprised to know that it's Chardonnay. And we show people that maybe sometimes they’re their preconceived notion of what they like, he's only based on Oh, I see the bottle, I see that sharpening, I'm gonna immediately decide that I don't like sharp knife for whatever reason, maybe we don't need to put up these walls and these barriers around what we do. And that's really exciting to just sort of open people's minds and change what certain beverages mean to them.
Marlana: And I know that you added in the element of music at one point, which
Hoby: we've done a few times. So, I will talk about the Dave Matthews experience for sure. You know, the Culinary Institute of America are sometimes known as the CIA's cooking school. And I work as an adjunct faculty for their properties here in California. And people have learned over the years that whenever they want something really strange, they call Hoby. I'm gonna be figuring out weird things to do that hopefully are fun for people. So, in this case, we were they basically were doing a summit for beverage professionals and most of the people who attended this are selling games, people who really understand wine or even Masters of Wine and some beer people, some spirits people for sure, but definitely a lot of wine people and they want to do a disco at the end of the first day of the conference, a basically a silent meeting. disco when people wear headphones and go around listening to music and tasting wines, and they rank their favorite wine based on music that's playing in their ears, right? They listen to different music, and they rank wines differently. And they said, We want something to do with wine and music the hour before we do this, this discount. That's interesting. You know, who's someone who does wine and music really well? Well, Dave Matthews has a winery dreaming tree wines, and they're very good wines. Very much available pretty much nationwide. So, I thought, you know, most people are gonna know what this is, and let's see if we can do an experience around it. And I'm always the person who says, Well, what's the worst they can do? They can say no. So, I decided I would just take a shot in the dark and email Dave's winemaker man named Sean McKenzie, saying, Sean, you know, I do this tasting in the dark programme. I've been asked to do an experience your own wine and music. I would love to do an experience where we take wines from the Dave Matthews or from the dreamy tree portfolio and pair them with songs from the Dave Matthews songbook. Is this something you'd be amenable to? And expected? I don't know. I didn't know if I would hear back from him. I just didn't know. 30 minutes later, I got an email back saying Hoby Yes! Absolutely! Let's have a call. We had a call and it's like, Okay, wow. And then he said, Okay, well, why don't we come to the winery, and we'll taste the wines, we'll decide what we're working with here. And in the meantime, we'll talk to Dave about songs. So, Dave weighed in on songs, it was ultimately our decision, but Dave weighed in on what he thought would be best. And lo and behold, you know, we built out this whole experience where we talked about wine and music with people, it's about 200 people in the audience. And then while people were under blindfold, for some of them, the last one, we actually I'm removed the blindfold and just moved to the music and the music video that we showed, but we paired five ports of line with five different songs from the Dave Matthews songbook and the sort of climax if you will, the experience was wise three and four, were for wine three, you know, we serve wine with them, you know, with a piece of music that was sort of very, very happy, very, you know, kind of a romantic piece of music, a little bit of a love song, you know, kind of it's just fun. People tasted the wine and suddenly at the end we talked about what the wine tastes like. It was very citrusy, very fruit forward, you know, a lot of floral components smells like something I'd want to drink in the summertime. And then we played with wine. Sorry, I think that was wine I said wine for, but I think that would that was wine three with the next wine. We played a company of sort of gritty song that was just more you know, work hard and you'll get what you wish for and you know, keep on trying, keep on pushing but not that same sort of happy go lucky, sort of tune and I wouldn't describing non phase music is happy but luckily but I'm trying to try to figure out the right words here to describe the music and people tasted the wine and talked about its minerals, how they could smell some fruit but you could smell granite in it, you can smell the basically wet earth Wow, this is just full of minerals almost like you might hear describing a wine from like a Rosie from Provence, France, you know, really just very minerals, very rich, very full of full of flavor. And started from basically anywhere in the south of France. I didn't mean to call out Provence as a as a region in in and of itself. But anyone who's sort of in the south of France, you might find really minerally either red wines or Ramsay's people did identify the third wine as a Rosie. They said for the fourth wine man, this might be a red blend, like, it's got so much minerality it might also be an old-world white wine. They just didn't know. What we didn't tell people is it the fourth wine was exactly the same as the third one, it was just the same dreaming tree Rosie The only thing that was different and they couldn't see it, right, that helped to literally the only variable that was different was the music they listen to. And I was doing this to show people how much music can impact anything for that matter, can totally impact the experience, the overall experience of why.
Marlana: love that. And, you know, it's so incredible to me that people thought it was a completely different thing just because of adding that music.
Hoby: Yeah. That's amazing. You know, I mean, I guess for just thinking about your work as a photographer, you can make something look totally different, even if it's the same exact set or same exact thing you're photographing using different light, right? By the way, you edit something.
Marlana: Yeah. It kind of boils down to what we want people to see and experience. And so, with what you do, and even with what I do, we are leading them on a journey. And we already have their destination, hopefully in mind.
Hoby: Exactly. So, this is what art is to me. You know, everybody says art is visual? Well, it certainly can be, and you're a great producer of visual art. But art doesn't have to be visual, you know, exactly what you say we lead people on a journey we guide them through. And you know, we help them see things they didn't see before.
Marlana: Absolutely. And, you know, I want to talk a little bit about, because I follow your Instagram, and these places that you go to and you experience, you make people feel like they are there and immersed with you. So, when you embark on an experience of your own, how do you approach something? Let's say you go to the Swiss Alps for the first time, how do you start?
Hoby: Yeah, you know, it's funny, I don't, the way that I start is, I don't even think about it, I just describe to anyone who wants to hear how I'm experiencing it. And it kind of grabs them usually and pulls them into it. Because the way that I experience things and describe them is not visual, you know, what I found with people who are very sort of focused on what they see, it's hard for them to describe something and make it almost feel like you're there. Because they're really paying attention to the visual, which they can then explain and you know, that which works fine, but it's talking about maybe green hills, rather than, whoa, what do we smell? What's the overall experience around us? Like, what are we gaining from this environment, this experience, you know, where we are right now? You know, how are we it's a really interesting question. And I haven't thought about the answer to what you're asking, Where do I start, but you know, and when I think about it, I say that I don't think about it at all, but I do try to try to think about things before I talk about them, and then explain them, sort of what I'm experiencing. And I guess what I like to do is I like to think if someone were describing this to me, what would they say to make me feel like I was there. So, I describe the smells, I describe the way the airfields describe the way the ground feels, and just something about the experience and the people and, you know, everything, everything going on in a place in an opportunity that I would want to hear about, to feel like I was there. So, one of the videos that you saw that I was most proud of was a video in the Italian Alps, where they're actually working anyway, of cows moving through a pasture and their bells ringing as they move. You know, that's an audio picture that we were able to capture. And along with the description of the, you know, the smell of the grass, and the manure and all these different things, it really created the ability to tell a good story and have sort of a multi-sensory approach. It's really enjoyable. What I didn't tell viewers is that about three minutes after we shot that video, the cows got scared. Someone else was doing some other filming and had a drone out. And the drone spooked the cows, and we were still in the pasture with them. One like charged after we had to run our way out of their gate. That was a fun experience. But we didn't show that or tell viewers that it was a sort of thing where it had a camera bent on it would have would have been one of these things that like goes viral on tick tock, but of course we didn't. We didn't feel that moment.
Marlana: I'm almost sad that you didn't know, I know it just weren't prepared. And you know, when you're being charged by a large animal, you don't have time to turn on the camera. But you actually bring up an interesting point, because you just described a whole experience. And even though you don't have the luxury of taking photos that will bring these memories back to you. These experiences stayed with you. And I think so many people when they go someplace, they are so consumed with documenting their life and what's going on that they don't experience…
Hoby: Yes, they don't experience it for the experience.
Really interesting point that you bring up so and it's one that I really want to touch on. You know, I feel like eyesight is a very good general sense, I think that the way that we use our senses in order of how vulnerable they are. So, eyesight is not vulnerable, and you can look up and see the moon at night, you can look up and see stars that are hundreds of 1000s. if not millions of light years away, you can drive with your windows open, and just use your eyes to do it. If you don't, if you can be in the privacy of your own car and operate it without issue, using your own two eyes, hearing, I think it's the next least vulnerable sense, you can hear a loud noise from far away, you don't really have to make something part of you in order to hear it, touch is pretty honorable. If I'm going to touch my desktop, like I just did, I have to be close enough to attack better trusted, you know, and I'm going to smell or taste something that those are the most vulnerable to senses because we're, we're right near it. And we have to actually make it a part of us whether we're breathing in or actually tasting it, you know, we have to trust the source basically, is what I'm saying. And interestingly, you know, when we think about photography, we're using our eyesight, and but when we use our sense of smell, that's actually a much more primitive sense. That gives us a lot more information. If you look at a picture of your grandmother's kitchen. And you might say, Oh, that was grandma's kitchen. That was great. But like, let's see, your grandma used to cook gingerbread cookies, I don't know if she did, that's just an analogy. But the next time you smell gingerbread cookies, baking, it's almost like you're in grandma's kitchen. Right? So, when we look at something, you know, our brains are actually doing a lot of work. First of all, that image is coming into our mind inverted of what our brain actually sees. And literally when we look at something, we're converting a molecule of trans right now, which is a lower energy structure, to sis right now. And that's all we're doing. That's all that's happening chemically. When our eye looks at something, right, and our brain knows exactly how much was converted, and how long it took, and does all the rest of giving us the image. So, you might not think about it. But it takes five to 15 milliseconds, I've heard from when you see something on the lens of your eye, to the time that your brain recognizes what you're seeing. So, and that doesn't sound like a long time. But it actually is kind of a long time and a lot of subconscious brain processing that needs to take place as that happens. And they're about I think it's 500 or 600 million neuron bridges between your optic nerve in your cerebral cortex where visual images are really perceived. Now don't smell something. Our olfactory bulb is where we're doing a smelling just over the bridge of her nose. And it's about 8000 little nerve endings, which look like hairs around a sphere. And when we smell those, you know, things get stuck to those nerve endings and tell our brains immediately what we're smelling. So, in there's only about 50 million neurons I've heard between our olfactory bulb and our cerebral cortex, it's a much shorter journey. And smell is just sort of more a more primitive but more emotion evoking sense. So, like, you know, you might document a wedding, for instance, visually is great, because it's lighthearted. It's like oh, yeah, we were with those folks. It was a great time, you know, you can kind of remember that that day, right? Mister photos, date stamped. But if it's really important to you, like if it's your own wedding, and you remember what type of champagne we're drinking at that wedding, you know, you were serving it at your wedding, you can open a bottle of that champagne five or 10 years later, and pet it almost feel like you're there again when you smell it.
Marlana: And I think that's what I am hoping that people get out of this is to try and immerse themselves in the experience of their life. And yes, I'm all about photos, you want to take a photo to recall something or whatever Yes, but you will enrich your experience and it will stay with you a lot longer if you embrace all of the aspects of it.
Hoby: And the other thing that I would say that I think it's just so important to point out is that you know we have all of our senses are always available to us. So, use them to enrich your life as much as possible. Pay attention to the way things smell when they're cooking to the smell of the changing seasons outside in us in winter but wait a few short months we'll be in spring and given let's smell different things crash being cut, flowers blooming just experience life through your nonvisual senses. You know, I was born without eyesight. So, people would think oh man, his life must not be very rich because he can't see you Like us, but the life without eyesight is actually all that I know. I don't know what life is like without vision, without eyesight. So that's how I live. That's what I do. You know, and I think there's so much richness that people are missing out on without their, without using all their senses. I will point something out to you. That's really interesting. I think your viewers will find; listeners will find it interesting. About a week ago, I came down with COVID. And one of the things that, you know, I'm fully vaccinated and boosted and everything, I got a breakthrough case, which seemed to be very popular these days. One of the things that's been happening to some people, not all, but some is that their taste and smell are going, and I actually experienced this. And my sense of smell is just barely coming back. But it's all weird. And I have to kind of retrain my brain. And when you're someone who relies on those two senses so much for your survival and for your work, and for what you do to lose them even temporarily, it's really jarring. I'm sure, yeah, and it's something interesting. And I think a lot of people don't realize or didn't realize how important, strong, and necessary, their sense of smell was until it went away. You know, and I've heard stories and read articles about this, I just find it fascinating how much we maybe use our other senses, but don't necessarily think about it. And that's my career. And that's the work that I do is in sensory design, basically designing products in the food and beverage industry, mostly, but also outside the food and beverage industry, that appeal to our senses more than eyesight. They call that sensory design. And what I like to say is all of our senses are always on in delivering information. We just might not be paying attention to it, but they will let us know I guarantee if we don't like something, our senses will tell us, hey, that's something you don't like, you know, even really silly subconscious things like the way your cell phone feels when you hold it up against your ear to the way your shower curtain smells when you open the package to all these things that we don't necessarily think about, but they actually matter. And these are the things that I think about. So, I like to say to people who I work with that my clients are folks that are you know, really good at what they do, but they need help looking beyond eyesight.
Marlana: And, you know, now that you brought up that you make products in the experiences in the food and beverage industry, please tell everybody about Hobby’s Essentials, what's that?
Hoby: Yeah, it was essential. A lot of fun. It's a line of spices and gourmet seasonings that we have. Currently have two products, which are two that I am my standbys that I'm making for years and years and years in my own kitchen and thought why we don’t just get these out to the world. One is a happy paprika, which is paprika, and a little bit of salt, and mostly paprika, cumin, onion, garlic, a little bit of coconut sugar, just a great grill and roasted meats and vegetables rub. The other is Rosemary salt blend, which is literally salt. It's been flavored with rosemary and sage and garlic and the kind of secret ingredient there is lemon juice, to really bring out the flavor and it's just incredible one, poultry, potatoes, you name it in anything. It's really quite fun. And I'm very excited about those.
Marlana: And so now that you told everybody what's in them, the challenge is when they buy these products to see if they can actually pick out the flavor of each thing.
Hoby: That's it. That's it. Absolutely. And, you know, I'm also working on a vodka project right now. I'm going to be launching a vodka line in the next six months or so. And eventually a wine brand. So, I like to tell people, honestly exactly what same things and just produce products with great quality. And also done some work in the tech space. Thinking about glass texture, as it appears on our trackpads of our computers or on our smartphones, you know, actually a few years back helped a company decide on what glass they would use based on texture for their next generation of smartphones. So, so interesting. All these things matter. You know, how does the glass feel under your finger on something you're interacting with? Maybe more hours a day than we all care to admit?
Marlana: Yeah, love it. Thank you! I have loved every minute of this conversation will be suited on him or No, thank you. But with that, I just have four final questions for you. The first one is what's the best piece of advice you're ever given?
Hoby: The best piece of advice I was ever given was from my parents. And it was, this isn't your life. To live you need to take responsibility for yourself and your actions. Meaning that if we succeed at something, if we take a challenge and we succeed, we are the ones, should get the credit, right. But if we take a challenge, and we fail or like the word fail, but if we don't succeed, we should take the blame for it. But everything we do; we should own from the bottom of our heart. And that is a really important, very significant piece of advice that I think everybody should embrace. Because when we take responsibility for everything, we can't blame other people for anything that's happening to us. And it makes it more fun when we succeed.
Marlana: Share with us one thing in your bucket list
Hoby: One thing in my bucket list, I have been thinking a lot about this one. You know, I have dreamt a lot of putting together a TV show or something just about experiences in the food or beverage industry. You know, that is a bucket list for me.
Marlana: Do it Hoby. Do it, I will watch it.
Hoby: Thank you, I need to do that while I still have my time on this planet, and that will happen. That is my biggest bucket list item, and I wanna get to it sooner other than later because it thrills me to get to think about it. You know my passion is about getting other people who love what they do to talk about the things they do and why they love it. You know, so many people are in the food and beverage industry, not because they love what they do, but maybe they’re stuck with the grind of life. My goal is to rekindle that passion they have.
Marlana: Okay! When the toys company finally gets around to making an action figure of you, what two accessories will it come up with?
Hoby: What two accessories will it come with? Man, for me… That’s a great question. An action figure of me would come with a cane, something that’s used to navigate the world, a white cane. And the other one would be something we can use to have an overall experience of the world, like a thinking cap, we can ponder the world.
Marlana: And last one Hoby, if someone wants to find you, follow you, or even by Hoby’s Essential, how do they do that?
Hoby: Absolutely! You can head over to hoby.com, there are links to Hoby’s Essential as well as my personal website which is hobywedler.com. I’m all-over social media (Hoby Wedler) Instagram, LinkedIn, Tick Tok, Facebook and just email me any time (hoby@hobywedler.com).
Marlana: Love it! Thank you so much Hoby for being here.
Hoby: Marlana, its an honor, thank you for inviting me. I love your show, I love the spirit of your show. I love what you do.
Marlana: Thank you!
Hoby: Thank you! Bye!