How the Lobotomy Changed Modern Brain Science
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 11 September 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the mid-20th century, families desperate for answers turned to a radical procedure known as the lobotomy. Promoted as a cure for everything from depression to schizophrenia, its brutal methods left thousands of patients permanently damaged. At the center was Dr. Walter Freeman, whose name became synonymous with the transorbital lobotomy and the dark side of psychosurgery. Yet from these failures came progress. The shortcomings of lobotomy forced doctors and scientists to pursue safer, more effective ways to treat mental illness, ultimately laying the groundwork for modern brain surgery. Dr. Theodore Schwartz—neurosurgeon, professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, and author of Grey Matters—traces how a medical misstep opened the door to innovation and helped transform the future of neurosurgery.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
Support the show: https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi. |
| 0:08.5 | Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why? |
| 0:15.1 | Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies. |
| 0:18.5 | From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:23.6 | What difference at this point does it make? |
| 0:26.6 | Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:33.6 | You know, This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. |
| 0:48.4 | Up next, a story from Dr. Theodore Schwartz. |
| 0:51.6 | Dr. Schwartz is a neurosurgeon, as well as a professor of neurosurgery at Wilde Cornell Medicine |
| 0:57.4 | in New York City, one of the busiest and most highly ranked neurosurgery centers in the |
| 1:02.6 | world. |
| 1:03.5 | He's also the author of Gray Matters, a biography of brain surgery. |
| 1:08.6 | Today, Dr. Schwartz tells the story of an antiquated procedure, the lobotomy. |
| 1:14.8 | Let's get into the story. |
| 1:16.8 | I knew nothing about lobotomies. |
| 1:19.4 | The hand with a fingers extended demonstrates in three dimensions the course of the fibers from the thalamus to the frontal lobe. |
| 1:25.5 | The phthalmus is represented by the wristwatch. |
| 1:27.6 | When I trained in neurosurgery, we didn't hear anything about the surgery, |
| 1:32.1 | didn't know anything about the history, why it was done, who it was done on, how many were done. |
| 1:35.8 | On January 17th, 1946, a psychiatrist named Walter Freeman launched a radical new era |
| 1:42.9 | in the treatment of mental illness in this country. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.