In 1951, John Cage walked into an anechoic chamber at Harvard expecting to hear pure nothingness, and instead heard a high whine and a low thrum that the engineer explained were his own nervous system and his blood circulating. This episode traces how that discovery, combined with years of studying Zen Buddhism under Daisetz Suzuki at Columbia and the courage he drew from Robert Rauschenberg's all-white paintings, transformed an idea Cage had first floated at a Vassar lecture in the late 1940s, a silent piece he wanted to sell to the Muzak company, into the 1952 composition known as 4'33.

The conversation reconstructs the premiere on August 29, 1952 at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, where pianist David Tudor closed and opened the keyboard lid across three timed movements while wind, rain on the roof and an increasingly furious audi ...