Aaron Tracy

Again, sounds obvious, but no one had ever come up with a design that reduced the risk of blockage before.

I don't know if it's the special alchemy of these three specific men with their very different skill sets, or the urgency Dahl feels to get this done quickly to save his son.

But together, Dahl, Till, and Wade come up with a better tube than has ever existed.

Can I just stop for a second here to say, oh my god.

With absolutely no training, Dahl wills himself to come up with this breakthrough device in order to save Theo, his only son.

Is that not the greatest thing you've ever heard?

His poor infant son is dying, nothing is working, and instead of just throwing his hands up, he literally invents the solution.

It takes two years for them to build it, which is roughly 40,000 years fewer than it would have taken me.

The Wade-Dahl-Till valve, named for its three innovators, is so successful that it soon gets manufactured globally.

Dahl insists they not make a profit on it in order to be able to distribute it cheaply.

According to the National Library of Medicine at NIH, the device is estimated to have been used in 2,000 to 3,000 children worldwide in the two years after they came up with it.

It's especially useful in developing nations where medical devices like this mean the difference between life and death.

Not to take us off topic, but a quick aside just to say that I did a bunch of research around this, and the only similar example I found of anything like this ever happening, a breakthrough medical device getting created by someone without medical training, is exactly one year later.

A guy named Paul Winchell, a TV actor who appeared in lots of sitcoms like The Brady Bunch and The Beverly Hillbillies, and was the original voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh, he co-creates the first artificial heart.

I have nothing more to say about that except, what the hell was happening in the 60s?

For Dahl, creating the tube is another incredible feat in a life full of them.

I think each of these accomplishments was only possible because of the one that came before.

They all built on each other.

When Dahl was recruited into the Irregulars in his 20s, without any espionage training, he didn't know what he was doing.

But in a matter of months, he was hanging out with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.