Surgical Precision: One doctor's quest to show how video games can save lives

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. James "Butch" Rosser was a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s. When he credited his surgical skills to video games, people dismissed him. The prevailing narrative was that kids who played video games became killers, not doctors. So Butch set out on quest: to show how video games can help make better doctors.

Show notes:

The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st century (JAMA Surgery)
Study: High-School Video Gamers Match Physicians at Robotic-Surgery Simulation (Slate)
We Have to Operate, but Let's Play First (The New York Times)
He’s really on his game (Orlando Sentinel)

Credits

This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix, sound design and music composition by Emily Jankowski.

"Hidden Levels" is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software for Technical Computing and Model-Based Design.
0:09.1	MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.
0:16.3	Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Merotra Institute at
0:22.3	B.U Questrum School of Business. What happens when businesses regulate themselves without government?
0:28.6	Stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Ben Brock Johnson.
0:47.3	Uh-huh. Amory Seabritson, yeah?
0:50.3	Are your fingers magic?
0:53.3	Are your hands your greatest asset?
0:58.6	I think, I mean, I can tie a double knot, no problem.
1:05.4	And I do have a double-jointed thumb.
1:09.3	So that's a thing that's cool about my hands. Oh, yeah. You, like, crack your thumb sometimes, right? You do, like, a weird, like, thumb roll. No, I can just, I got a double-jointed thumb. It just, like, kind of pops in and out. But, like, if you ask me to do anything with a needle and thread, I'm worthless.
1:28.6	You're not even getting the thread through the needle.
1:30.8	No, it's tough. It's tough. Tough to thread that needle for these sausage fingers, for sure.
1:36.3	Okay, well, our next exclusive side quest from Hidden Levels, our series with 99% invisible
1:42.5	about how the video game world has changed the world
1:45.4	beyond video games, is about a surprising connection that one man has been trying to get
1:51.7	the medical community to accept and celebrate for decades now.
1:56.4	And he's got scientific studies to back it up.
1:59.6	Next up in our series,
2:03.1	Grace Tatter brings us an episode that should make you think twice
2:05.0	about the concept that video games rot your brain.
2:08.3	This one's called surgical precision.
	...

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