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You're listening to The nocturnous conversations.

I'm Emily Silverman.

What does it mean to push your own limits?

Can we make art out of failure?

How do we think about the balance between light and shadow, presence and absence? These are just a few of the questions that our next guest has been thinking about for a long time.

He's an emergency medicine physician who suffered a spinal cord injury while surfing a few years ago,

and used painting to aid in but also

to document his recovery. His name is Matthew Wechler, and I heard him speak at a retreat a few months ago,

and as you'll hear in the interview, knew right away that I had to have him on the show to talk about

his paintings, which are really more like performance art pieces.

In addition to being a doctor and an artist, Matthew is the CEO of a digital health company

called Plume, which offers world-class health care to transgender people.

Matthew and I cover a lot of ground in this interview.

But before we dive in, I want to play an audio clip from the short film Resurrection Artist,

which documents Matthew's near-death experience and recovery.

Let's roll the clip.

I woke up floating in the ocean.

I couldn't move.

...