Podcast 'Cardiac Cowboys' tells captivating story of Minnesota's open-heart surgery pioneers
"Cadiac Cowboys" covers the work of pioneering doctors who created modern day open heart surgery.
Courtesy of Jamie Napoli
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Audio transcript
NINA MOINI: Before the 1950s, heart surgery was widely regarded as a guaranteed instant death for a patient. It wasn't just done. It just wasn't done, no matter how badly it was needed. So it took a lot of guts for the pioneering doctors to take on the first lifesaving heart surgery for pacemakers and heart lung machines. A screenwriter is telling the winding story of one of the first open-heart surgeries, which took place here in Minnesota, and all the drama, scandal and millions of lives saved that went along with it.
That screenwriters name is Jaimie Napoli, and he created the new six-episode documentary podcast called Cardiac Cowboys. Let's listen to the opening scene, voiced by actor Chris Pine.
CHRIS PINE: Lyman Glidden is still conscious when they wheel him into the operating room. He's 39 years old, rugged, and strong from years spent working in the iron mines of Northern Minnesota. A few feet away from Lyman's operating table is a scrawny 13-month-old boy who lies unconscious on a second operating table. This is Gregory, the youngest of Lyman's 10 children.
Gregory was born with a hole in his heart, the likes of which no child has ever survived. He's about to have open-heart surgery. The problem is, this is 1954, and outside of these walls, the field of open-heart surgery doesn't exist.
NINA MOINI: Wow. Jamie Napoli's here to talk about the podcast now. Thanks for being here, Jamie!
JAMIE NAPOLI: Thank you so much, Nina.
NINA MOINI: I really find this so fascinating. This is another thing I really had no idea. You never think about when a technology wasn't even around these days. Why was it just so just crazy to think about this idea of doing this? And what led doctors to keep trying to make them work?
JAMIE NAPOLI: Yeah, I'll tell you, before I got involved in this project, I also knew nothing about this. I had no idea about this story. And it's such a recent history. Doctors were doing brain surgery. They were removing tumors in the 1800s and before 1950. Doctors are taught do no harm, and there simply was not a way to cut into the heart without killing a patient almost instantly. And so it really took a group of special rule-breaking, outside-the-box thinkers to be able to cross this threshold.
NINA MOINI: What made you want to take this project on and how did it come to you?
JAMIE NAPOLI: It came to me through a surgeon and medical historian, Dr. Gerald Imber. He was in the early stages of writing his own book about this, and he brought this story to my creative partner, John Mankiewicz, and myself. And I confess it took me a minute to really grasp the medical significance of it, but the characters immediately leapt out at me.
And as soon as he started talking about some of these characters that we'll get into, they were some of the most fascinating people I'd ever heard about in my life. And so much of what their personal flaws and complexities were played into their success. And so their personal and professional lives were so intertwined in a way that I felt like I needed to immediately tell this story.
NINA MOINI: Yeah, like, the heart surgery's not the most dramatic part. Who would have thought? Tell me about one of these main doctors that you look at who's based in Minnesota. Tell me about him and what he contributed.
JAMIE NAPOLI: Yeah. So, Dr. Walt Lillehei emerges as a kind of unsung hero in this story, and he is endlessly fascinating to me. He was a war hero in World War II. He comes back. He's starting his career. He's an ambitious young guy.
And at the age of 32, he's diagnosed with terminal cancer, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He undergoes a radical cancer procedure. They remove the sternocleidomastoid muscle in his neck. So for the rest of his life, he has this tilted neck. And he still thinks that he's not going to make it to 35.
And that, as you can imagine, sets this ticking clock on an already very ambitious guy, where he feels like he needs to-- if he's going to change the world, he has a few years to do it. And so I think that plays a big role in the risk taking that he does. And the irony of that is he ends up living to 80.
But this guy is the father of heart surgery. Over the next 15 years, he develops so many of the tools and techniques and procedures that are still used today. Countless lives are saved because of Walt Lillehei, and everything that's done today really stems from his early work.
NINA MOINI: Wow. Yeah, and just the fact that none of these people are perfect people, right, that everybody's flawed. You focus really on some of the competition and the drama between the doctors. What kind of drew you to this aspect of the characters of the story? And what are they competing about is, like, who's going to make the best discovery, without giving too much away?
JAMIE NAPOLI: Right. Well again, my background is not that of a doctor or a historian. I'm really interested in the characters and the story so that's always what I'm focused on. And also this is a series that is not meant for doctors, although we've gotten a wonderful response from doctors. It really is meant to be dramatic and entertaining.
And to speak to what's driving these doctors, they all have their own complex. I think, for instance, you're talking about the rivalry down in Houston. Two very, very famous powerhouse doctors, Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, revolutionized cardiovascular surgery at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. And their competition was a huge part of what made them so successful.
Denton Cooley performed over 100,000 open-heart operations over the course of his career, which no one has done. And that same competition led the two of them to not talk to each other for almost 40 years. They started their careers in a father-son kind of dynamic.
DeBakey was a mentor to Cooley. And they had their own hospitals across the street from each other, and it was the cover of Time magazine. It was called a bitter feud, and it took 40 years for them to finally reconnect at the end of their lives. And it's a wonderful redemption story, but it shows that that two-sided-- on the one hand, their competition is fueling what they're able to do. And at the same time, it's to their detriment.
NINA MOINI: Mm-hmm. So the six-part podcast-- and I love that art form in this form of storytelling as well. And I wonder what made you want to do it this way, in this podcast form?
JAMIE NAPOLI: Well, it's a form I've had a little bit of experience in working with Audible on a number of projects before this. This is with iHeartMedia. But what I love about the audio form is it allows you to tell stories that-- it's very easy to imagine this as a television series. It's so thrilling. It's so dramatic. But the kind of budget that that would necessitate is just-- right now, it would be a real uphill battle. And to be able to drop listeners into the operating room-- we have an incredible composer and sound design-- and tell a story that's a mix of drama and history, I think, is really unique to this medium.
NINA MOINI: Yeah and just lastly, the six parts, how did you decide how to break that up? Or what can you tell people about the format of the episodes?
JAMIE NAPOLI: Well, what I love about this is so many of these stories begin in Minnesota. Walt Lillehei really is the conduit. So the doctor who performs the first human heart transplant, he started his career at Minnesota. The doctor who laid the groundwork for that in Stanford, he started at Minnesota. Denton Cooley down in Houston, he learned how to make a heart-lung bypass machine from Walt Lillehei in Minnesota.
And so we're able to tell a story that begins at the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic and spreads out as we follow these surgeons going back to their hospitals all over the world. And they continue to compete with each other. And one of my favorite things is when the first human heart transplant takes place in South Africa, a guy named Christiaan Barnard does it. Denton Cooley sends him a letter the next day that says, congratulations on your first transplant, Chris. I'll soon be announcing my 100th.
NINA MOINI: Oh, wow.
[LAUGHS]
JAMIE NAPOLI: Which he was nowhere close to that at that point. But these doctors remained so close and connected and competitive with each other through their careers.
NINA MOINI: Wow! It's fascinating. Jamie, thank you so much. I can't wait to give it a listen. So glad to have learned about this today. And congratulations.
JAMIE NAPOLI: Thank you for letting me talk about it, Nina. I really appreciate it.
NINA MOINI: Thank you. That was Jamie Napoli, the creator of the podcast Cardiac Cowboys. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
That screenwriters name is Jaimie Napoli, and he created the new six-episode documentary podcast called Cardiac Cowboys. Let's listen to the opening scene, voiced by actor Chris Pine.
CHRIS PINE: Lyman Glidden is still conscious when they wheel him into the operating room. He's 39 years old, rugged, and strong from years spent working in the iron mines of Northern Minnesota. A few feet away from Lyman's operating table is a scrawny 13-month-old boy who lies unconscious on a second operating table. This is Gregory, the youngest of Lyman's 10 children.
Gregory was born with a hole in his heart, the likes of which no child has ever survived. He's about to have open-heart surgery. The problem is, this is 1954, and outside of these walls, the field of open-heart surgery doesn't exist.
NINA MOINI: Wow. Jamie Napoli's here to talk about the podcast now. Thanks for being here, Jamie!
JAMIE NAPOLI: Thank you so much, Nina.
NINA MOINI: I really find this so fascinating. This is another thing I really had no idea. You never think about when a technology wasn't even around these days. Why was it just so just crazy to think about this idea of doing this? And what led doctors to keep trying to make them work?
JAMIE NAPOLI: Yeah, I'll tell you, before I got involved in this project, I also knew nothing about this. I had no idea about this story. And it's such a recent history. Doctors were doing brain surgery. They were removing tumors in the 1800s and before 1950. Doctors are taught do no harm, and there simply was not a way to cut into the heart without killing a patient almost instantly. And so it really took a group of special rule-breaking, outside-the-box thinkers to be able to cross this threshold.
NINA MOINI: What made you want to take this project on and how did it come to you?
JAMIE NAPOLI: It came to me through a surgeon and medical historian, Dr. Gerald Imber. He was in the early stages of writing his own book about this, and he brought this story to my creative partner, John Mankiewicz, and myself. And I confess it took me a minute to really grasp the medical significance of it, but the characters immediately leapt out at me.
And as soon as he started talking about some of these characters that we'll get into, they were some of the most fascinating people I'd ever heard about in my life. And so much of what their personal flaws and complexities were played into their success. And so their personal and professional lives were so intertwined in a way that I felt like I needed to immediately tell this story.
NINA MOINI: Yeah, like, the heart surgery's not the most dramatic part. Who would have thought? Tell me about one of these main doctors that you look at who's based in Minnesota. Tell me about him and what he contributed.
JAMIE NAPOLI: Yeah. So, Dr. Walt Lillehei emerges as a kind of unsung hero in this story, and he is endlessly fascinating to me. He was a war hero in World War II. He comes back. He's starting his career. He's an ambitious young guy.
And at the age of 32, he's diagnosed with terminal cancer, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He undergoes a radical cancer procedure. They remove the sternocleidomastoid muscle in his neck. So for the rest of his life, he has this tilted neck. And he still thinks that he's not going to make it to 35.
And that, as you can imagine, sets this ticking clock on an already very ambitious guy, where he feels like he needs to-- if he's going to change the world, he has a few years to do it. And so I think that plays a big role in the risk taking that he does. And the irony of that is he ends up living to 80.
But this guy is the father of heart surgery. Over the next 15 years, he develops so many of the tools and techniques and procedures that are still used today. Countless lives are saved because of Walt Lillehei, and everything that's done today really stems from his early work.
NINA MOINI: Wow. Yeah, and just the fact that none of these people are perfect people, right, that everybody's flawed. You focus really on some of the competition and the drama between the doctors. What kind of drew you to this aspect of the characters of the story? And what are they competing about is, like, who's going to make the best discovery, without giving too much away?
JAMIE NAPOLI: Right. Well again, my background is not that of a doctor or a historian. I'm really interested in the characters and the story so that's always what I'm focused on. And also this is a series that is not meant for doctors, although we've gotten a wonderful response from doctors. It really is meant to be dramatic and entertaining.
And to speak to what's driving these doctors, they all have their own complex. I think, for instance, you're talking about the rivalry down in Houston. Two very, very famous powerhouse doctors, Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, revolutionized cardiovascular surgery at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. And their competition was a huge part of what made them so successful.
Denton Cooley performed over 100,000 open-heart operations over the course of his career, which no one has done. And that same competition led the two of them to not talk to each other for almost 40 years. They started their careers in a father-son kind of dynamic.
DeBakey was a mentor to Cooley. And they had their own hospitals across the street from each other, and it was the cover of Time magazine. It was called a bitter feud, and it took 40 years for them to finally reconnect at the end of their lives. And it's a wonderful redemption story, but it shows that that two-sided-- on the one hand, their competition is fueling what they're able to do. And at the same time, it's to their detriment.
NINA MOINI: Mm-hmm. So the six-part podcast-- and I love that art form in this form of storytelling as well. And I wonder what made you want to do it this way, in this podcast form?
JAMIE NAPOLI: Well, it's a form I've had a little bit of experience in working with Audible on a number of projects before this. This is with iHeartMedia. But what I love about the audio form is it allows you to tell stories that-- it's very easy to imagine this as a television series. It's so thrilling. It's so dramatic. But the kind of budget that that would necessitate is just-- right now, it would be a real uphill battle. And to be able to drop listeners into the operating room-- we have an incredible composer and sound design-- and tell a story that's a mix of drama and history, I think, is really unique to this medium.
NINA MOINI: Yeah and just lastly, the six parts, how did you decide how to break that up? Or what can you tell people about the format of the episodes?
JAMIE NAPOLI: Well, what I love about this is so many of these stories begin in Minnesota. Walt Lillehei really is the conduit. So the doctor who performs the first human heart transplant, he started his career at Minnesota. The doctor who laid the groundwork for that in Stanford, he started at Minnesota. Denton Cooley down in Houston, he learned how to make a heart-lung bypass machine from Walt Lillehei in Minnesota.
And so we're able to tell a story that begins at the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic and spreads out as we follow these surgeons going back to their hospitals all over the world. And they continue to compete with each other. And one of my favorite things is when the first human heart transplant takes place in South Africa, a guy named Christiaan Barnard does it. Denton Cooley sends him a letter the next day that says, congratulations on your first transplant, Chris. I'll soon be announcing my 100th.
NINA MOINI: Oh, wow.
[LAUGHS]
JAMIE NAPOLI: Which he was nowhere close to that at that point. But these doctors remained so close and connected and competitive with each other through their careers.
NINA MOINI: Wow! It's fascinating. Jamie, thank you so much. I can't wait to give it a listen. So glad to have learned about this today. And congratulations.
JAMIE NAPOLI: Thank you for letting me talk about it, Nina. I really appreciate it.
NINA MOINI: Thank you. That was Jamie Napoli, the creator of the podcast Cardiac Cowboys. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
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