Ep 59- Beware the Ice Pick: The Lobotomy Era

An ice pick through the eye socket. Ten minutes of “surgery.” A taxi ride home. That’s not an urban legend, it’s a documented moment in the history of lobotomy, and it captures the sick casualness that let psychosurgery become mainstream.

If you care about medical ethics, informed consent, disability rights, or how mental health treatment gets shaped by social pressure, this conversation will stick with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves medical history, and leave a review with your take: where do you see “manageability over care” showing up today?

Sources for today’s episode:
National Library of Medicine — All in Their Heads: When Faces Made the Case for Lobotomy
https://infocus.nlm.nih.gov/2020/01/30/all-in-their-heads-when-faces-made-the-case-for-lobotomy/

Nobel Prize — Controversial Psychosurgery Resulted in a Nobel Prize
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/moniz/article/

Nobel Prize — The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1949
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/summary/

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Lobotomy
https://www.britannica.com/science/lobotomy

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Transorbital Lobotomy
https://www.britannica.com/science/transorbital-lobotomy

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Walter Jackson Freeman II
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Jackson-Freeman-II

Encyclopaedia Britannica — How Many People Actually Got Lobotomized?
https://www.britannica.com/story/how-many-people-actually-got-lobotomized

StoryCorps — My Lobotomy
https://storycorps.org/stories/my-lobotomy/

StoryCorps — StoryCorps 455: My Lobotomy
https://storycorps.org/podcast/storycorps-455-my-lobotomy/

PBS American Experience — The Lobotomist
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lobotomist/

PBS American Experience — Howard Dully
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lobotomist-howard-dully/

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum — Rosemary Kennedy
https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/rosemary-kennedy

U.S. National Park Service — Rosemary Kennedy, The Eldest Kennedy Daughter
https://www.nps.gov/

Transcript

Cold Open And House Banter

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Amanda! Hello, Jenna. Ooh, that was very that was very Hannibal Lecter. It was was it?

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Goodness. I don't know. Well, I haven't met him personally, but yeah, maybe. Um hello. Yeah, it was. It was kind of like Hello. Um cannibal. Ew! Ew. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Okay, well, that was that was an interesting start. Uh yeah, I know. I just, you know, because undiagnosed ADHD, it reminded me of like Adam and I were talking about Venus flytraps yesterday and like cannibalistic. I was just like, I don't know. Never mind.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah. Have you ever had a Venus flytrap? I always see them like in like the the the impulse section of like Walmart or wherever, where it's like, buy one of these and you're like, gosh, I wonder if this thing works. I don't know. Do you think it here's here's a thought. Now I'm really excited. What if they ate ladybugs? Oh my goodness. I should get a ton of them. You should get one. Are you kidding me? You should put one in every corner of that house. I need to get a tester first. And then if that thing works, it's all it's all I'm gonna have in my house. I swear.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

She's like, I'm buying stock in Venus fly drops.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

And they're gonna be well fed.

unknown 2:14

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Because apparently in the Northwoods, ladybugs never die.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Nope. They don't, they just multiply and they get fierce. So anyway, oh, I still have Wiffle. She's back for week two. So Wiffle, welcome back, baby. Yeah, and so Alley Cats, if you haven't already taken a look, Amanda posted a couple of pictures, motion pics of Wiffle helping me. She was sitting on my phone selfie stick helping me edit, looking over things. So yeah, thanks, Wiffle, for your contribution. All right. Well, otherwise, how how are you doing? I mean, I'm good now, but this is one of those episodes where the deeper I got into the research, the more I had to periodically stop, stare at the wall, and remind myself that I was in my own house and I'm not in a psychiatric ward in 1949. Truth be told, I wasn't done writing Lucy Let Be. I mean, I went down another distinct rabbit hole with Lucy. So I just thought, well, I'd take a little light detour to cover a different topic, but I ended up in another dark space in spite of myself.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Which is where you never want to be and never what you want to hear before we start recording.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Because it means one of two things on this show. Either medicine has done something incredible or medicine has done something so deeply cursed that I need to emotionally pace myself before I can even make an outline.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

And I guess, you know, based on your face right now, I'm guessing we're not in the all uh medicine's inspiring and beautiful category today.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah, no, today we're in the what in the ever-loving hell was accepted as normal category.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Ooh, my favorite and least favorite category.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Funny how that works, but yeah, truly. It's bad for the soul, but somehow great for podcasting.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I don't know. That sounds ominous. Should we just jump into it?

Topic Reveal And Content Warnings

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yeah, let's do it. Uh today's episode is on the history and development of the lobotomy. And this one needs some serious content warnings up front. We're gonna be talking about psychiatric institutional institute. Institute. Institutionalization, institutionalization, coercive medical treatment, disability, child patience, medical abuse, death, and there'll be some mentions briefly of suicide and self-harm. So, you know what? Take care of yourself if this is or any of these are topics that hit close to home.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Can I just do a quick insert since you mentioned psychiatric institutionalization? Your episode about the psychopath test? Yes. Yes. So I had someone text me today. They finally got to that episode, and they know the person that I was scoring, and they were like, Oh my god, I was laughing my ass off. And I was like, Okay, so since we both know this person, do you think that I was scoring fairly, or do you think that I was biased? And this person said, Hell no, I was scoring the same.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

So Wow. Yeah, see, see, yeah. Do you still think about that test sometimes when you meet people or you hear about people and you're like, Yeah, they would have really scored high on this.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

I truth be told, have not yet, but I really am still in this cocoon of maternity leave at home, and I don't really see anybody.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Oh, yeah, that's true. Well, and I suppose you're not up at all hours like listening to podcasts when you have to be, you know, take care of babes. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, I I I guess it's not necessarily people in my life, but it's people, you know, that I'm hearing on different podcasts and you know, that are the subjects of some of these criminal true crime stories that we enjoy. It's like, oh yeah, that's textbook, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

I could see that. I yeah, I am behind on all things, podcasts, books, audiobooks, everything. But I am so fucking good at a diaper change.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Listen, you're behind on some of the other stuff, but the important stuff, you're well ahead. The parenting, the bonding, the nurturing, the diaper changing. It's all part of you being ahead. So yeah. How many? So, how far are you into your maternity leave? Or maybe you don't want to talk about it. I know I didn't, I know I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Well, my son is gonna be 11 weeks old. So I'm uh rounding up to week 11, and I have about a little over a month left. Yeah.

unknown 7:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Well, and uh I I want to say enjoy every minute of it. Yes, Wiffle wants to say that too.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

What up, Whippy?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, but also, you know, it's it's it's devastating when you have to go back to work, but things will things will settle. It it's gonna all be okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

I'm right where like people typically have to go back, or if they maybe had already had to go back, but he's already to like the fun stage where like he's reacting and like so smiley and like laughing. And so I can see how when people go back at 12 weeks, they're like, Well, this fucking sucks. Like, yeah, it's like now you feel like you're getting a reward for your work, and before it's just like holy shit, I'm so tired, and like this is this doesn't feel rewarding yet. This feels like 24-7, just everyone listening knows what I mean. Just trying to just try to want to sound like ungrateful.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

No, no, no, not at all. But just trying to be your best self without any sleep is is hard. Yeah, but yeah, when they look at you and they have that toothless that grin gum smile. Oh see, yeah, with one of my kids, I had to go back at nine weeks. Oh gosh, it was terrible. And my husband at the time was able to take paternity from the time that I went back, so he got all the best, you know, like toothless grins and and giggle. He's like, This is great. You're like, that was a lot of work, you know, and all the milestones that start happening one after the other when you're not there. But anyway, so good. So you're gonna get some of that before you have to um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Okay, so sorry about my rabbit hole, but you were giving disclaimers. Everyone take care of yourself if any of those trigger warnings hit home for you. But what else do we need to know?

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Don't date anyone that scores high on the psychopath list.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

LOL. I was just gonna say, watch out specific city in Minnesota, but no, we're not even going to be.

Sources And StoryCorps Detour

SPEAKER_00 9:02

I mean, there's probably so many cities in the country that have similar that should come with similar warnings. But anywho, that's a that's a whole nother episode. But before we get started, I just want to be clear about the tone of this episode. If we laugh, we're not mocking people with mental illness, people with dis developmental disabilities, or anyone who is subjected to these procedures. If anything, this episode is about how vulnerable people were transformed into problems for institutions to solve, much like the psychopath test, and how often medicine has confused making somebody quiet with making them better. So for this episode, I pulled from the National Library of Medicine, Nobelprize.org, Britannica, PBS, American Experience, Story Core, the JFK Library, the National Park Service, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Healthcare.gov, and the American Medical Association. So these sources and others will be cited in our show notes. I do want to mention one of those resources is a new resource to me that I am extremely excited about. So Story and then the core C O R P S. Do you have you ever heard of them? No. Okay. So I looked it up. They're an organization that basically they take like human stories, human, I mean, obviously the animals aren't talking, but they take people's whimple is they take people's stories and archive them in the US Library of Congress. So almost a million people since so they started doing this in 2003, and almost a million people have had conversations, recorded conversations and telling their stories or life stories, or you know, what brings meaning to their lives, their history, or people that they know. And it's all been recorded and collected in the Library of Congress for posterity. And I just think it's amazing. So it is the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered. They're independent, they're nonprofit. And if you go onto their website, storycore.com, you can look up different subject matter. I mean, there's all kinds of things from like dealing with grief to, you know, this is what really happened, or I knew Rosa Parks, and this is what she told me. Like all kinds of stuff. So that's cool. Um, yeah, you guys should check it out. But before we get into the story, it's time for a correction section.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

I would say thankfully, this week I don't think we have any corrections. Oh, a peaceful correction section. Oh, we love a quiet correction section. But you know, just a little calm island before that old sea monster shows up that I'm sure you're gonna talk to us about.

Sponsor Break One

The Taxi Ride After Surgery

SPEAKER_00 12:00

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SPEAKER_01 14:30

Oh whoa, no, absolutely not. You had me cringing from beginning to end there.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Right? Because even before you know the larger history, that detail tells you something is fundamentally wrong here. Brain surgery with electroshock as an anesthesia, and then attacks you right home, just like she got in a tooth pulled. It's the casualness that makes it somehow even worse. Exactly. The casualness is the whole point. That detail tells you this was not being treated like a fringe medicine or some rogue backroom horror show. It was being treated like a practical clinical solution. That's one of the hardest things to wrap your head around with lobotomy. It wasn't secret, it wasn't underground, it was mainstream. The National Library of Medicine notes that from the late 1930s to the late 1950s, doctors might try. Doctors might twy. They might twy, but they won't cure. And that Walter Freeman used before and after portraits of patients as supposed scientific evidence that the operation worked. What we now look back on as one of the most brutal mistakes in modern medicine was once sold as progress.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

The bad ideas never introduce themselves as like obviously bad. They just show up like they're addressed as innovation, you know? Because the pictures, are you kidding? Right?

Desperation In Early Psychiatry

SPEAKER_00 16:14

No one says, hello, we're here to permanently damage your loved one's brain. They say, We may finally have a breakthrough. And psychiatry in the early 20th century was deeply vulnerable to that kind of sales pitch. Before modern psychiatric medications, treatment options for severe psychosis and major psychiatric illness were limited, inconsistent, and often brutal. Nobel's historical review of lobotomy says that violent or highly distressed patients might be restrained, heavily sedated, or kept in prolonged baths. I mean, what? Why? By the 1930s, doctors were also using insulin coma therapy, which, as we're going to talk about with the Lucy Leppy situation, insulin is pretty dangerous, chemically induced seizures, and electroconvulsive therapy. But the same Nobel history says bluntly that there did not exist any truly effective treatment for schizophrenia at the time leucotomy was introduced. In other words, psychiatry was desperate.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

So the field is already set up to fall in love with something extreme.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah, exactly. Once the system's overwhelmed enough, the standards start to slide. Instead of asking, does this restore the patient? People started asking, does this make the patient calm? Does it instead of asking, does this preserve dignity? It becomes, does this reduce disruption? And instead of, is this good for the person? It becomes, is this easier for the family, the doctors, and the institution? I mean, it's that shift from healing to manageability. It's the moral rot at the center of this whole story because quiet is not the same thing as well. A person can be quiet because they're healing. A person can also be quiet because they're frightened, sedated, defeated, neurologically damaged, or just no longer fully able to express what's happening to them. And the roots of that way of thinking go way back before Walter Freeman and before Antonio Egas Monis, who we're going to talk about. In the late 1880s, Swiss physician Gottlieb Burkhart removed parts of the cerebral cortex from psychiatric patients. Some died, some didn't improve. But then, because some of them became less agitated, they didn't die and they didn't not improve, they just became less agitated. Burkhart treated the experiments as meaningful. So that basic logic, if the patient becomes easier to handle, then maybe the treatment worked. And that logic never fully went away.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

That's such a dark standard because it sounds clinical, but it's really social control.

Egas Moniz And Nobel Legitimacy

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Exactly. And that's why the history of lobotomy is not about a bad surgery, it's about a bad definition of success. So now enter Antonio Igas Monis, the Portuguese neurologist who became the founder of modern psychosurgery. In 1935, a conference discussion of frontal lobe experiments on chimpanzees helped inspire Moniz to consider surgical intervention in human psychiatric patients. Britannica and Nobel both trace modern lobotomy to that moment. Moniz, working with surgeon Pedro Almeida Lima, began performing prefrontal leucotomy, initially by drilling holes in the skull and injecting alcohol to destroy tissue, and then later using an instrument called a leucotome to cut sections of white matter in the frontal lobes. By 1936, he'd introduced the procedure that would later be widely called lobotomy.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

And this moved really fast, right? This wasn't like decades of careful study. And then, you know, I don't know, a cautious rollout or anything.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Not even close. It moved at a speed that should have scared everyone more than it did. Mooniz published early results and framed the operation as simple, safe, and potentially effective. I mean, how scientific is that potentially? Oh, you should take this drug because it could potentially be effective or it could potentially kill you. Anyway, he was already a respected neurologist, a man also known for work in cerebral angiography. So prestige mattered in this instance. Nobelprize.org notes that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 specifically for the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses. That kind of recognition didn't just reward a treatment, it legitimized it. It gave the glow of official truth.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Which is wild because if you hear Nobel Prize, your brain automatically goes, Well, then this obviously was solid.

Walter Freeman Sells A Movement

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Exactly. A Nobel Prize can harden an idea in people's minds long after it should have been under more scrutiny. And even then, the evidence wasn't even clean. I mean, Britannica notes that by 1937, Moniz and Lima had completed nearly 40 lobotomies, and results were mixed. Some patients improved, some did not, and some relapsed. And you kind of have to wonder would that have happened without treatment? That some improved, some did not, and some relapsed. You know what I mean? But when a field is starving for hope, mixed can still get mistaken for, oh, this is promising. So, okay, now let's talk about the United States, because that's where this becomes not a procedure, but a movement. And the man most responsible for that movement was Walter Jackson Freeman the second. Watch out for guys with Roman numerals. LOL. So good.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

We got him twice. I haven't heard that before.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Did you make that up? Or is that no?

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Yeah, I just said that for the first time in history.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

So funny. I love it. Freeman was a neurologist, not a neurosurgeon. Okay. So this guy that's gonna we're gonna talk about doing brain surgery. He was a neurologist. So this is alarming. Britannica says he came from a medical family trained at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. So maybe he got it by osmosis because he was not a surgeon. He was not a surgeon. Okay. So he worked at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Washington, D.C., where exposure to the realities of overcrowded psychiatric care shaped his thinking. He became convinced that severe mental disorders had organic causes and therefore might be treated through biological intervention. I mean, that idea in itself isn't absurd, but the absurdity was the intervention that he became invested in. In 1936, A decade before honing his method that involved ice picks, Freeman modified Monese's technique and renamed leucotomy to lobotomy, all under the oversight of neurosurgeon James Watts. He performed the first prefrontal lobotomy in the United States on September 14th. So this is the drilling method where they drill through the holes in the skull as opposed to what we're going to talk about later. But their first patient was a 63-year-old housewife. I'm just laughing because Amanda's wiggling her head and shaking her microphone with vigor. She is not happy about hearing about this. I know, I feel you, girl.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Because I'm just thinking, like, okay, so we actually do have a neurosurgeon doing this with you, but okay. And he and that neurosurgeon's not like, oh, you're a neurologist, but fuck it, here's a here's an ice pick. Like, what?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Well, so right now we're not ice picking. He he went off on his drilling. We're drilling. Yep, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

So either way, something sharp.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Oversight isn't enough. Because obviously his oversight, I mean, yeah. You're right. You've identified a very disturbing, uh, among many disturbing points here. So the so their patient was 63-year-old housewife. Okay, get this. So she had trouble sleeping, and she was you know anxious and she had a bit of depression. So according to Story Core, her name was Alice Hood Hammett. Either way, she got the surgery, and Freeman saw this not as an experiment, a marginal at best experiment. This was the beginning of a revolution in psychiatry.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Oh, okay. So this is where he just stopped being a doctor then and starts becoming like uh a salesman.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Yep. You got it. He didn't just practice lobotomy, he promoted it, he staged it, he publicized it. The National Library of Medicine describes him as the world's greatest proponent of lobotomy and explains that before and after portraits of of patients' faces were used in journals and textbooks as proof that the surgery worked. What? So a patient looking tense. Yes, can you believe it? A patient looking tense or distressed before surgery and then calmer after surgery was turned into an argument for success. I mean, this is ridiculous. A flat facial expression would be rebranded as a recovery. The absence of distress got to stand in for the presence of health. So if someone looked brain dead and emotionless, that was considered a success.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

So basically, vibes as data.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Mm-hmm. It really is a vibe-based surgical era. And the broader medical system was primed to accept that flimsy evidence. Nobel's historical account explains how overwhelmed psychiatric institutions had become. In 1943, there were about 100,000 new new admissions to mental institutions in the U.S. and only 67,000 discharges. By 1946, nearly half of public hospital beds were occupied by the mentally ill. I mean, that blows my mind. Those are not just medical numbers, those are institutional pressure cooker numbers. In that environment, a procedure that seemed to promise calmer patients, shorter stays, and fewer crises, we're always going to find supporters, especially among the bean counters. Am I right?

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. So lobotomy wasn't just being sold as treatment then. It was being sold as a system fix, essentially.

The Transorbital Roadshow

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yep, exactly. And that's an important point. Lobotomy was not just presented as a cure for suffering, it was presented as a way to relieve families, relieve staff, relieve hospitals, relieve overcrowded wards, and administrative strain. That means that the treatment was never only about the patient's interior life, it was about making life easier for everyone around them. And once that becomes the metric, patients can disappear frighteningly fast. Freeman and Watts originally used what became known as the standard prefrontal lobotomy, which involved drilling into the skull. But by the mid-1940s, Freeman had grown impatient with the complexity and the formality of the process. Britannica says that by 1945, he was refining the transorbital lobotomy, a quicker and cheaper technique influenced by Italian psychosurgeon. I love this psychosurgeon. Amaro Fiamberti. Amaro Fiamberti. Instead of drilling into the skull, Freeman used a pick-like instrument through the eye socket to reach the frontal lobes. It was less expensive, much faster, and in Freeman's view, just as effective if not more so.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Oh god. So this man looked at brain surgery and said, uh, how can I make this more portable?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yep, which should never, and I think you'll agree with me, ever, ever be a sentence associated with brain surgery. Ever, ever, ever. Story core says Freeman's first transorbital lobotomy on Sally, Ellen Inesco in January 1946. So this is the first time that he used his ice pick method, was the moment he launched what he called a new radical era in mental health treatment. Yeah, it was radical. Britannica explains the mechanics in a way that still turns your stomach. I mean, it's a pick-like instrument that's forced through the back of your eye socket to pierce a thin bone, separating your orbit from the frontal lobes, and then sever connections in your brain. Get this. Freeman often did it in less than 10 minutes. And Britannica notes he used it on patients with relatively minor mental disorders that he thought didn't warrant the older, more invasive standard lobotomy.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Less than 10 minutes. That is truly unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

It's horrible. It's horrible because the speed became part of the sales pitch. Freeman's longtime surgical partner, James Watts, hated this is the neurosurgeon. He hated this development. Britannica said that Freeman didn't fully share his transorbital plans with Watts. Can you imagine? They show up to surgery and then all of a sudden this new instrument shows up and Freeman's all about the ice pick, and Dr. Watts probably has to save face in front of all of his crew. Can you imagine the shock and horror?

SPEAKER_01 29:12

No. I mean, I can picture it.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

So history says that Watts objected strongly to doing brain surgery outside proper operating room conditions. But I mean, I'm sure he was upset if he's any kind of neurosurgeon. So their partnership eventually collapsed, but Freeman didn't care. He took this transorbital procedure on the road. He crisscrossed the country, teaching it, performing it, and turning it into a grotesque traveling demonstration. Story Core says that he crossed the country 11 times, visited 55 psychiatric hospitals, and performed his ice pick lobotomy on at least 2,500 patients in 23 states. Britannica says he performed or supervised more than 3,500 lobotomies by the end of his career, while more than 50,000 were carried out in the US overall.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Wow, that is so wild. And it ruined so many lives wrapped up in this one man's confidence.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Yep. And once you realize how production line it became, the horror gets worse. Story Court reserves or preserves accounts from people who watched Freeman work. There are stories about rooms full of staff, curious observers. One patient brought in, one patient wheeled out, the next brought in. In July 1952, during a push in West Virginia that newspapers nicknamed Operation Ice Pick, Freeman reportedly performed 228 transorbital lobotomies in two weeks. He turned brain injury into a spectacle. He would literally get a mallet and hammer this ice picks in two at a time. I absolutely cannot.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

That's sickening. There's really no other word for it. I'm also thinking like, I hope that both of your hands were equally like dexterous because hopefully, like, if you're right hand dominate the left and go rogue, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

I mean, honestly, there's no words. I mean, this was happening in the language of medicine beneath the umbrella of authority in a healthcare culture that convinced itself it was being bold and practical. By the late 40s and early 50s, lobotomy had become not just a procedure, but a medical trend. Britannica notes that also, although some patients did appear less tense or agitated afterwards, many others became passive, apathetic, lacking initiative, emotionally blunted, or dependent in childlike ways. That is the part of the celebratory case that reports could obscure. A treatment could seem to quote unquote work if you define success narrowly enough. But if the price of relief was flattening a person's emotional life, judgment, complexity, drive, then what had medicine really accomplished?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

That's the central lie, though, isn't it? Because you can look at the absence of visible pain and just assume you created wellness.

Why Lobotomy Spread So Fast

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Exactly. And sometimes what they created was not peace, it was diminishment. And before we moved into the individual cases, the cases that make this impossible to keep at a distance, I want to pause and talk about why it spread so fast. It spread because psychiatric hospitals were overcrowded. It spread because doctors had few reliable options. It spread because families were desperate and because institutions love anything that looked like order. It spread because a charismatic physician with a gift for publicity made a weekly supported irreversible procedure sound modern. And it spread because too many people in power were willing to confuse easier to manage with better.

Chart Note On Alzheimer’s Blood Tests

SPEAKER_01 33:00

And with that, it's time for our chart note. And now I feel like I have to sing, but I feel like it used to be a chant. I don't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

No no note. Welcome to the chart note segment where we learn about what's happening in medicine and healthcare.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

What I just was remembering how, like, around the holiday time we were doing it to like jingle bells.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Like, chart, chart note, chart, chart, note, no, no. It's almost Easter. Do we have an Easter song?

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Here comes Peter Cotton. Here comes your chart note. Down the trail.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Your little fluffy cottontail chart note. Oh, well, today's little fluffy cotton tailed Easter chart note is about one of the biggest recent developments in dementia care. Alzheimer's blood tests are moving out of the research world and into actual clinical use. In May 2025, the FDAA cleared the first blood test to aid in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease, the Lumipulse G P tau 217 beta-amyloid 142 plasma ratio, which is a tongue twister. But it's meant for adults 55 and older who are showing signs and symptoms of the disease. And it's designed to help detect amyloid plaques associated with all with Alzheimer's using a simple blood draw instead of jumping straight to a PET scan or a spinal tap.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Okay, Mill, that already sounds huge. So what exactly is it measuring?

SPEAKER_00 34:40

It's it's measuring the amyloid plaque. And the FDA's review data are a big reason that people are paying attention. In a clinical study of 499 cognitively impaired adults, 91.7% of people with a positive result on this test, the lumipulse test, had amyloid confirmed by PET scan or cerebral spinal fluid testing. And 97.3% of people with a negative result had a negative PET scan or CSF result. So it was less than 20% that got an indeterminate result. The FDA also says this test is intended for people seen in a specialized care setting, and that the result has to be interpreted alongside the rest of the patient's clinical picture, of course. So this isn't a standalone diagnosis in a tube of blood.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Actually, maybe sounds like a big step and not just a magic wand then.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah, no, exactly right. But I mean, if you think about how invasive a spinal tap is and how expensive and long it is to get a PET scan, I think this is promising, but the field keeps moving. In July 2025, the Alzheimer's Association released its first clinical practice guideline for blood-based biomarker tests. The guideline says that in specialized memory care settings, high-performing blood biomarker tests can be used as a triage tool to help rule out Alzheimer's pathology. And the highest performing ones may even be able to substitute for PET scans and CSF testing. But the same guideline warns that not all commercially available tests meet these performance thresholds and that these tests do not replace a full clinical evaluation by a healthcare professional.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Well, that's good to hear because I feel like sometimes the second people hear blood tests, they start thinking it's going to be like one lab test result and then boom, diagnosis.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Right. And that's not what this is. This is more like the toolbox is getting better and less invasive, but doctors still need symptoms, history, cognitive testing, and the rest. In October 2025, the FDA cleared another blood test, Alexis P tau 181 Plasma, as an aid in the initial assessment of Alzheimer's disease and other causes of cognitive decline in adults 55 and older. Its FDA review says a negative result is consistent with a negative amyloid PET scan, while a positive result needs further investigation. So this one is especially useful as a rule-out tool, but not a final answer. And that's why this is such a big moment. The story here isn't just that there's an Alzheimer's blood test now. The story is that blood-based biomarkers are starting to reshape the diagnostic pathway. Less invasive, more scalable, and potentially faster, but still with very important guardrails around who should get tested, where the test should be used, and how the results should be interpreted.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Well, thank you for that. That was a fascinating chart note. Also, not a diagnosis in a tube of blood is maybe the most important sentence in this entire segment.

Rosemary Kennedy And Family Control

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah. Well, let's get back to the story because this is where the human cost stops being abstract. Dun dun dun. Yep. If part one is the rise of the machine, the second part that we're gonna talk about is the people that the machine rolled over. And the first case we need to talk about is the most famous one in American history, Rosemary Kennedy. Rosemary Kennedy was the eldest daughter in the Kennedy family. And I think it matters to say that out loud before we say anything else, because people often flatten her into a symbol instead of remembering she was an actual person with a life. The JFK Library says she participated in most family activities despite her intellectual disabilities, kept a diary as a teenager, wrote about dances and concerts that she attended, and even recorded a visit to the Roosevelt White House. When Joseph Kennedy became U.S. Ambassador to Britain in 1938, Rosemary went to London and was presented at court with her mother and sister Kathleen. The National Park Service adds that she loved social events and found stability in a convent school with a Montessori style program. She was not just a family burden waiting for history to happen to her. She was a young woman with routines, pleasures, frustrations, and relationships.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

That always gets lost. People always talk about the Kennedy sister who was lobotomized. And that phrase alone, I don't know, kind of erases her, which is really sad.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Yeah, I mean, she becomes a tragedy before she gets to be a person. So when the family returned to the United States in 1940, things changed. The JFK library says that Eunice later wrote that Rosemary seemed to be going backwards and becoming increasingly irritable and difficult. The National Park Service adds that she had become more rebellious and more likely to sneak out at night, and the family feared she might be taken advantage of or embarrassed them publicly. In 1941, after being persuaded that a lobotomy would calm her and control her mood swings, Joseph Kennedy authorized the operation. The National Park Service notes that the procedure was still experimental and had not yet been accepted by the American Medical Association.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Oh, that is devastating because you can feel the family control piece under the surface. And obviously they have the fear, the reputation, shame, and it's just all tangled up.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Yeah, Rosemary's stories about disability, patriarchy, image control, and the way that medicine can be used to enforce all of those things at once. But the outcome was catastrophic. The JFK library says the surgery left Rosemary permanently incapacitated and unable to care for herself. The National Park Service says it was immediately clear that the operation had failed horribly, damaging her ability to walk and talk and permanently altering her personality. She was eventually sent to St. Coletta's in Wisconsin, where she spent most of the rest of her life. For years, her siblings were kept largely away from her. And it wasn't until much later, after Joseph Kennedy's stroke, that she was brought more visibly back into family life. Right. And it shatters that comforting fantasy that wealth and prestige protect people from bad medicine. I mean, the Kennedys obviously had status, power, money, access, and influence, and none of it protected Rosemary. If anything, power made it easier to frame the decision as responsible and easier to hide the damage afterwards. And there's another layer to her story that's important, even though it doesn't soften the harm. The JFK library says that Eunice Kennedy Shriver's close relationship with Rosemary helped inspire the camp that she began in 1962, which eventually became the Special Olympics. So Rosemary life, Rosemary's life left two different kinds of legacy: one of catastrophic private harm, and another that helped spur public advocacy for people with intellectual disabilities. Both things are true, and that's what makes the story so difficult.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

I did not know that. So thank you for sharing that. That's how that eventually became the Special Olympics. That's so cool. But while that's so cool, it's also true that history is so rude that way because it never lets anything stay emotionally simple. Right. Never.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

This next case is less famous in the general public, but if you care at all about American literature, it's impossible to ignore Rose Williams, sister of playwright Tennessee Williams. The historic New Orleans collection, which holds Williams family letters, describes Rose's lobotomy as tragic and notes the significance of letters written before it because they preserve her voice before that turning point. So sad. The Tennessee Williams Annual Review places the operation on January 14, 1943, after a period of increasing psychological distress. Institutionalization This is a word that's out to get me today. Institutionalization and insulin shock treatments. The article notes that the lobotomy happened only about three months before Tennessee Williams began writing The Glass Menagerie and describes Rose's medical history as a lasting source of torment that echoed throughout his work.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

And once you know that, you start seeing her everywhere in his writing.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

Yeah, you feel Rose and the fragile sisters, the haunted households, the women treated as too delicate, too unstable, too difficult for the worlds around them. You can feel the grief and guilt and helplessness baked in the emotional architecture of his place. And Rose's story raises another important question. What do we do with old diagnoses? The Tennessee Williams annual review points out that Rose was historically framed as schizophrenic, but suggests that if her adolescence were interpreted today, clinicians might understand her symptoms differently. That doesn't erase her suffering, but it adds another layer of discomfort. If the diagnosis itself was unstable or culturally shaped, then the treatment built on it becomes even more horrifying.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

That just like makes me sick every time. The possibility that the diagnostic certainty people trusted was nowhere near as solid as it sounded.

Frances Farmer Myth Versus Records

Howard Dully And Child Lobotomy

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Yeah, because in this era, diagnosis didn't just explain people, it sorted them into pathways of control. So there's also a name that comes up almost every single time people talk about lobotomy in pop culture, Frances Farmer. Now I knew she was an actress, but I didn't know a whole lot about her, so this part is I pulled from Wikipedia. She was born September 19th, 1913, and died August 1st, 1970. She was an American actress. She appeared in over a dozen feature films and three significant Broadway plays over the course of her career. Farmer gained greater notoriety posthumously for having had a nervous breakdown and undergone a five year involuntary commitment in a state run mental institution. She was said to have suffered abusive conditions. Which have remained the subject of much controversy and speculation. In the decade after her death, Farmer was the subject of two ho high host. It's been a long week already. In the decade after her death, Farmer was the subject of two high-profile books focusing on the years that she was institutionalized. One was called Will There Really Be a Morning in 1972, which was an autobiography partially ghostwritten by a friend. In it, she claimed to have been subjected to consistent and harrowing physical abuse. Subsequently, Seattle journalist William Arnold investigated the book's claims for his own novel called Shadowland in 1978, in which the author pieced together a larger story behind her commitment and mistreatment. These books offered drastically different visions of Farmer, and elements of each would be disputed, but they created an intense, posthumous interest in her life. Over the subsequent four decades, this interest resulted in three feature films, eight stage plays, and numerous popular songs about Farmer. Like Kurt Cobain's 1993 rock anthem, Francis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle. She was frequently celebrated as a psychiatric martyr and a defiant feminist rebel. There's controversy around whether Walter Freeman actually performed a lobotomy on her, and there's no documentary proof establishing that he did. That matters because so many people treat it as a settled fact. But honestly, one of the reasons that the myth survives is because the real history is already so awful that it feels plausible. I mean, you don't need to invent victims to make the era horrifying. There are already thousands. Exactly. The legend persists because the surrounding truth is monstrous enough to hold it. Now we have to talk about Howard Duly. Howard Duly was 12 years old when Walter Freeman lobotomized him in 1960. PBS says Howard's stepmother brought him to Freeman because she described him as disrespectful and occasionally violent at home. After multiple evaluations, Freeman performed a transorbital lobotomy on him. Story Court later described Howard as one of the youngest patients ever to receive an ice pick lobotomy, and noted that he became the first patient to obtain a photograph of his own operation from Freeman's files.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

That makes me sick.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

Howard later gained access to his medical records and read what adults had written about him. According to StoryCore, the complaints included that he daydreamed, resisted chores. I mean, imagine if this was the criteria for whether or not you need a lobotomy. He daydreamed, resisted chores, turned late lights on in the daytime, hated to take a bath, and was occasionally oppositional. What kid? Tell me what kid. Honestly. They're all getting lobotomies. Freeman diagnosed him with schizophrenia from this. Story course production notes say that Independent Review later concluded that this diagnosis was unfounded and incorrect. Well, shock. The same notes say that Freeman later claimed Howard had badly in injured his infant brother, but interviews with family members showed that this allegation was not true, and Freeman had already decided on a lobotomy before hearing it. He probably wanted the press like, ooh, look at me. I'm doing something on a youngest kid ever.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Yeah, I'm sure. And so we have a child, a dubious diagnosis, family conflict, and oh, an irreversible brain procedure. Like nightmares are fueled by this kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

Yeah, so no longer is lobotomy reserved for desperate, desperate adult asylum cases. This is a kid in a family power struggle, being treated like a behavior problem that medicine can solve by stabbing his brain. So Story Core's account of his records is especially chilling. Freeman reportedly suggested that Howard's parents consider changing his personality. Let me say that again. Freeman reportedly suggested that Howard's parents consider changing his personality by means of transorbal lobotomy. And also advised that Howard not be told about this in advance. Howard later said the whole thing cost$200. And afterwards, Freeman wrote that the boy sat quietly, grinning, and offering nothing. It just makes me want to throw up. This kind of note tells you everything about the framework. I mean, silence was documented as success, and compliance was documented as healing. Basically, they scramble his brain and they were like, see, he's sitting there quietly, because his brain scrambled.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Yeah. I hate that so much, all this, most specifically about wanting to change his personality.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

I mean, because that says the quiet part out loud. The goal wasn't simply to treat a disease, it was to change a person's personality. Howard spent decades, bless his heart, trying to understand what happened to him. Story chords that he had little memory of the operation itself, but he lived with this persistent feeling that something had been damaged. In the documentary, he says he wondered whether something was missing from my soul. That phrase is so much more honest than the clinical language that surrounded lobotomy. It wasn't flattened effect, not reduced emotional reactivity. Something was missing from my soul.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

That is one of the saddest phrases I've ever heard in a medical story.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

It is, I feel like crying because it gets at what the charts can't really capture. And one of the most heartbreaking parts of this story is what later emerged about the adults around him. Story core records that his father, Rodney Doley, was said that other doctors had thought that Howard was normal and that the real issue was his stepmother. Rodney later admitted, I got manipulated. I was sold a bill of goods. And that's brutal because it shows how medical authority and family dynamics fuse together. Nobody had to think of themselves as monstrous. They just had to trust the wrong expert, fear the wrong things, and decide that if a child's brain was an acceptable price to pay, well, so be it for peace at home.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

That is just what makes it extra upsetting. It's not cartoon evil. It's people deciding that they're solving a problem. Yep.

Consent On Paper And Coercion

SPEAKER_00 51:33

And once a person gets framed as a problem, almost anything can start sounding like a solution. So now we get to one of the clearest spouse consent cases in the historical record, Patricia Mowen. Story Core's oral history says that Patricia Moen was lobotomized by Walter Freeman in 1962 at the age of 36. Her husband, Glenn Moen, said it immediately and very plainly. I signed the release. Patricia says she'd been crying constantly and feeling mentally unwell. Glenn says he was told the procedure was a last resort. Patricia recalled Freeman warning that he she should she could come out of the operation a vegetable or dead. She also said she remembered nothing after meeting him, not going into the hospital, not the operation, and not the period immediately afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Yeah, okay. Her husband just very plainly saying, I signed the release. Yeah, uh yeah. That feels like an entire era distilled into one line.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Yep. And it matches a larger historical record. A chapter on consent and lobotomy published by Springer says psychiatrists are expected to obtain consent from the patient or the patient's next of kin, and that disputes over lacking or inadequate consent. And it matches a larger historical record. A chapter on consent and lobotomy published by Springer says psychiatrists were expected to obtain consent from the patient or the patient's next of kin, and that disputes over lacking or inadequate consent became central to the eventual criticism of psychosurgery. On paper, that sounds like a safeguard, but in practice, it often meant that a husband, a parent, or institution could decide whether another person's brain would be surgically altered. This is my worst nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Imagine that was you. So wild. So the existence of consent didn't really actually mean that the patient had meaningful power whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Yeah. There was a process and that the person freely and fully consented or they're a close family member. I mean, it's not the same thing at all. And Patricia's story is important because it shows why lobotomy was able to survive as long as it did. Because the aftermath is not emotionally simple. Glenn later says he questioned how much how much good the surgery actually did, saying he didn't see a huge change beyond Patricia becoming easier to live with. Is it just me or I hate this guy? I'm like, fuck off, Glenn. Yeah. Patricia, on the other hand, later said she felt freer after the operation that she went home and started living because she got back to cooking, shopping, and daily routines. Oh, so it made her into a really happy step for a wife. So no wonder guys got on top of this. I'm just so bitter right now.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

And that's what makes this history hard to talk about, honestly, because some people did say that it helped. But honestly, it's good for her. It sounded like she lived her best life after, and Glenn still hated it, so fuck you, Glenn.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

But like creating, she was happy because she was created into what he wanted, which was like a stepfruit wife. You know what I mean? Like changing her personality. Yeah. So uncomfortable. But you know, a harmful coercive, poorly evidenced practice can still produce some people who say it brought relief. And in fact, that's often how harmful practices survive. They produce enough outcomes that look good to the people in charge to keep the machine going. But the harms of lobotomy were never minor. Britannica says many patients became passive, apathetic, emotionally blunted, unable to concentrate, or dependent in childlike ways. Some died. Britannica's estimates suggest that of the roughly 3,500 lobotomies that Friedman performed or supervised, 490 patients died. I mean, that's 14% of his patients that died. That's not a side note, that's mass harm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Yeah, and the emotional flattening is so disturbing because it could be rebranded as success.

Decline Of Lobotomy And Lasting Warning

SPEAKER_00 55:33

Right. And that's the fraud of lobotomy. It could reduce or remove visual anguish by removing the essence of themselves. I mean, there's other cases in Story Core's material that drive this home. Howard Dolly interviewed a woman named Carol Noel about her mother who underwent a transobal lobotomy for severe headaches in 1950. The headaches reportedly improved, but Carol said the surgery left her mother with the mind of a child. And that's such a perfect example of why it worked, but it's a deeply misleading phrase. I mean, what problem got better? Her headaches went away, but now she's a kid. I mean, what the person got lost in the process. So by the early 1950s, lobotomy had reached its height, but the decline was already beginning. Nobel's Retrospective says chlorpromazine, the first drug that had a definite effect on schizophrenia, was introduced in 1952. Britannica notes that less extreme psychiatric treatments like antidepressants and antipsychotics helped push lobotomy out of favor in the mid-50s. Once psychiatry had an alternative that didn't require physically cutting into the brain, the broad enthusiasm for psychosurgery began to collapse.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

So you're saying lobotomy didn't just disappear because everyone suddenly grew a conscience.

SPEAKER_00 56:53

Nope. It faded because another tool arrived. And that's one of the bleak lessons here. The procedure was not abandoned because the field had a massive ethical awakening. It was abandoned because something else came along that was easier to scale, defend, and obviously less visibly barbaric. Freeman, of course, kept going longer than the culture around him because he cannot read the signs. Story Core says that his final lobotomy was performed in February 1967 on Helen Mortensen, and that was her third lobotomy by him. She died of a brain hemorrhage after her third lobotomy, and Freeman was then finally banned from operating again. Britannica likewise says that he continued until a patient died from a hemorrhage in 1967. So it seems to be confirmed.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

The phrase her third lobotomy is honestly just so horrifying. I don't even know what to do with that.

SPEAKER_00 57:52

I know, because it shows what a bad system does when it fails. It doesn't stop. It sometimes just doubles down. And I think that's why the history of lobotomy still matters so much, because not because we're likely to bring back literal ice picks through your eye socket, let's hope not, but because the logic underneath the practice is never entirely gone. The logic says, well, this patient's too difficult, this family's overwhelmed, this ward is overcrowded, this behavior is too disruptive, this person's too sad, too loud, too sexual, too defiant, too inconvenient. Isn't there some way to make them easier? And that is a dangerous question. Because once medicine starts being rewarded more for reducing disruption than for preserving personhood, the door opens to all kinds of harm. Lobotomy teaches that a treatment can be embraced with weak evidence if the surrounding social pressures are strong enough. It teaches that prestige can protect bad ideas and consent on paper can still mask coercion. It teaches that the people most likely to be harmed are often the ones with the least power to refuse. Children, disabled people, instant institutionalized. How many times is this word going to come up in this episode? I don't do well with this word. And anyone who's distressed inconveniences the people around them.

SPEAKER_01 59:15

And that's just what drags it out of the past for me. It stops being like, wow, people back then were barbaric and becomes more like, what systems today are still rewarding manageability over actual care?

SPEAKER_00 59:28

Yeah, I mean, the tools change, but the incentives don't. And that's the history of lobotomy. It's not just a horrifying surgery or a reckless doctor, but a warning about what happens when we get too complacent with taking care of difficulties without evidence.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

So yeah, yikes. That was a fascinating case. And by fascinating, I mean devastating, infuriating. I mean, obviously, it's very sad, and just kind of you know, the medical history that always stays with you after the episode ends, because it's kind of like holy shit, this isn't just like a this could have happened. It's like, no, this did happen. Yeah. To many people and children. Oh, well, thank you. It was you did a great job. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:17

Should we go to sponsor number two? Oh, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

Yeah, yeah, let's do it. I'll I'll do sponsor number two because I think uh you're doing our little med mishap today.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

Yes, let's switch.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

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SPEAKER_00 1:01:51

And now it's time for our medical mishap. So I had one, but it was way too long because our episode's already gone over. It's we're an hour and four minutes. So I'm just gonna tell a little medical mishap from my own history, my own experience. So my firstborn, my son, had a huge head. I'm just saying it was so big with his tiny little body that he looked like I called him the lollipop boy. Because I mean, honestly, his head was so big, he was so cute, but his head was so big. And I was friends with his pediatrician at the time, so we felt pretty comfortable with each other. But at one of his visits, I think he was maybe between one and two years old. I I I brought him in and I said, Listen, I'm super concerned. I'm pretty sure that he has hydrocephalus, which is fluid buildup in the brain. I've signed up for the hydrocephalus association, and I think we need to take him. Let's book him for surgery and get him a shot because this kid has a massive head. And the pediatrician took one look at me. Granted, she's a friend of mine, but she looked at me and she said, huh. And instead of looking at my son with his horrendously big head, she came at me, me of all people, with her tape measure. And she placed it around my head, took a measurement, and then looked at me frankly and said, Tell me. Did anyone ever make fun of your head when you were a child? Oh my god. And I looked at her and I said, Excuse the hell out of me. What are you speaking of, my lady? Because this child has a big head and we need to sort him out. Why are you measuring me? And she said, hmm. And she did a little calculating and she came back to me and she said, Do you realize that your head size is the 97th percentile for head size for women? And I looked at her and I was like, What? What are you telling me? Like it still didn't dawn on me. And she said, Listen, you have a big head. He it's genetic.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:01

We don't need to chunk him. He has a big head because you have a big head.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:05

Yeah, you can cancel your. I was getting the magazine. Honestly, I was convinced this child had hydrocephalus. So I was like, there is I was still in denial. I don't mind having a big head, but I was like, no, this is the first time ever hearing of this. This can't be true. So I came home and I measured my at the time's husband's head, and I measured my parents' heads and my mother-in-law's heads. And guess what?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:30

Yours is the biggest.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

We're at the hundred percentile for head size, most of us. So oh wow. So, you know, I grew you don't need to sound so uh impressed.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:41

No, I was just thinking like that. You were thinking like obviously, obviously, you didn't bear the lead that you had a big head.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:49

But the fact that you all that made us think we were normal. We all grew up like no, we all had big heads, no one knew. We all were lollipop kids, big headed family, and none of us knew. So this whole time we've been walking around on planet earth for decades without realizing we have big heads. So that was my epiphany. And so yeah, and also then I and I said to myself, well, then big head, big brain. Well, you know what? As we all know, it doesn't matter how big your brain, it matters how many wrinkles. So that's where wrinkles are good. If you have a lot of wrinkles, then you're smarter. So we can't even use that excuse. Really?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Never heard that.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:32

Yeah, more fissures in your brain mean, you know, the more sulk sulk.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:37

Oh, I thought you meant like my forehead wrinkles.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:39

No, on your actual brain surface, my dear.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

I was like, uh, should we not get Botox?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:44

Oh, no, no. No, get your Botox. Go get your Botox, girl, if you want to, but you don't need to.

Next Week Tease And Listener Calls

SPEAKER_01 1:05:50

I can't. I'm breastfeeding. Anyway, anyway, we're at an hour and eight minutes and we don't need to talk about my face. Medical mishap. Okay, super. Okay. Well, I know you're gonna ask me what we can expect to hear next week. But last week you told us we were getting a two-parter, and so I haven't looked yet because you didn't tell me until last night that you weren't doing that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:15

So basically, what can we expect to hear next week, Amanda? Oh, Lucy Leppy part one.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:22

Well, I guess either that if you finish. Otherwise, yeah, I don't know. I I was like, I'm gonna look today, you know, because I found out last night, but then my child was a velcro baby all day and Jazz haven't looked yet. No, I'll I'll it's gonna be a surprise, you guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

It'll be a surprise to be Lucy Leppy or some unknown. Surprise. Yeah, some Yeah she was just it was such a deep dive. I wanted to be able to kind of focus. I need to stop watching documentaries about her and just get down to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:51

So I'm honestly glad that you're doing that though and didn't just like do it to get it done like I feel like I did with uh what's her toes, Jolly. No, that was a good episode. Stop. You did good. No, I might redo it at some point. Okay. I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:05

Okay. I have one I want to redo as well. So maybe we'll do a redo, but on our ones that we think we could do more on. But anyway, it's gonna be a while.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:17

Yeah. And so until then, don't miss a beat. Subscribe or follow doctoring. Yeah. Follow us, doctoring the truth, wherever you enjoy podcasts for stories that shock, intrigue, and educate. Trust, after all, is a delicate thing. You know, you can text us directly on our website. Hello at DoctoringTheTruth at BuzzFriends. Hello. Uh email us your own story ideas, medical mishaps, and comments at doctoringthetruth at gmail.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at DoctoringTheTruth Podcast and Facebook at DoctoringTruth. We're on TikTok at DoctoringTruth and ed oddpod. For those of you who aren't aware, it's E-D-A-U-D-P-O-D. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can be sure to bring you more content next week. Until then, stay safe and stay suspicious. Wow, that what in the fucking horrible Mariah Carrie was that. Okay, gotta go.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:14

Oh, I forget about the jingle. Bye, guys.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

Bye.