Black Box
This hour, we examine three very different kinds of black boxes—those peculiar spaces where it’s clear what’s going in, we know what’s coming out, but what happens in-between is a mystery. From the darkest parts of metamorphosis, to a sixty year-old secret among magicians, to the nature of consciousness itself, we confront the stubborn gaps in our understanding.
- Duration
- 1h 5m
- Broadcast on
- 17 Jan 2014
- Audio Format
- other
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This hour, we examine three very different kinds of black boxes—those peculiar spaces where it’s clear what’s going in, we know what’s coming out, but what happens in-between is a mystery. From the darkest parts of metamorphosis, to a sixty year-old secret among magicians, to the nature of consciousness itself, we confront the stubborn gaps in our understanding.
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No wait, you're listening to radio lab from WNYC and NPR batting first producer Tim Howard I'm just going to get my level here. This is Patrick Purden. He's a professor in anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and works at Mass General Hospital. You want to just tell me where we are? We're standing right now in front of the Bullfinch building. I went up to talk to him because in that building, this is the one with the etherdome? The etherdome is inside this building. The story of the day that you could say humanity emerged from the dark ages. Oh, you laugh now. Just wait. Okay, here we go. It's on the fourth floor. It's on the fourth floor of this building. We headed in up three flights of stairs into this room. What a cool room. Oh my god. It's just like how would you describe that scene? It's like a mini amphitheater, right? He's also got this awesome dome. It's this beautiful domed room with light streaming down from above. Like the acoustics in here are crazy. It must have been terrifying though if you actually heard somebody screaming. I mean, it's so resonant in here. The screams would have been deafening and absolutely would have been terrifying. What is this place? Well, this was an operating room. Oh. And back in the 1800s, when this room was really in use, being in an operation was so painful. It was often permanently damaging to a patient's emotional state. This is Julie. I'm Julie Fenster. I write about American history. She wrote a book called Ether Day, which goes into a lot of detail about the dark, dark days of surgery in the early 1800s. Back then, during surgery, there were no painkillers and patients were awake. Probably more awake than they'd ever been in their whole lives. Some of the patients remembered the sound of their limb dropping to the ground or the saw going through their sinew and bones, the smell of their own body being cut into. Usually its surgeon would employ six burly men to hold a patient down and instead of having an operation, some people committed suicide before they would face going into an operating room, which were usually located on the top floor of a hospital. In part because the hospital really didn't do itself a lot of good to have the screams heard by passersby. This is such a cool room. Here we are at the top of the Ether Dome. But then, everything changes. October 16th, 1846. It's a Friday morning.
Transcription truncated.
This hour, we examine three very different kinds of black boxes—those peculiar spaces where it’s clear what’s going in, we know what’s coming out, but what happens in-between is a mystery. From the darkest parts of metamorphosis, to a sixty year-old secret among magicians, to the nature of consciousness itself, we confront the stubborn gaps in our understanding.