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Forensic Dentistry · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's not here, but she's here in spirit.
0:16
Speaker 2: We're all flashing our pearly whites because we're in a
0:19
Speaker 2: lineup and this is stuff I.
0:22
Speaker 1: Tried, or my case, front four of my pearly off whites,
0:28
Speaker 1: because when they made me my new set of four
0:30
Speaker 1: teeth to go upfront to replace my four teeth, they
0:34
Speaker 1: were too white and they looked weird. Oh really, And
0:36
Speaker 1: they said we can send them back and have them
0:39
Speaker 1: staining them just a bit more, and I went, yeah,
0:41
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to do that.
0:42
Speaker 2: Like Matt Dylan, and there's something about Mary.
0:46
Speaker 1: They weren't quite chick lit white, but they were enough
0:51
Speaker 1: to where they looked a little different than the others.
0:53
Speaker 1: And the others are just gonna, you know, as teeth
0:55
Speaker 1: do continue to stay in a bit. So yeah, it's like, yeah,
0:58
Speaker 1: why don't we go ahead and knock it down?
0:59
Speaker 2: And you should have just smoked a bunch of cigarettes, right,
1:03
Speaker 2: done it yourself, saved some money.
1:05
Speaker 1: I don't think these implants will. That's the problem is
1:08
Speaker 1: they don't stain, while the others are.
1:10
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well then yeah, you definitely need to hand
1:13
Speaker 2: those off for staining in the lab.
1:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like, well, I was just smoked eighties cigarettes,
1:19
Speaker 1: so today another and I thought we were done with forensics,
1:22
Speaker 1: But who knew that lurking out there was the topic
1:25
Speaker 1: of forensic dentistry, which we will learn very quickly as
1:30
Speaker 1: in right now kind of can be divided up into
1:33
Speaker 1: two things, which is identification of deceased people or peoples
1:41
Speaker 1: from dental records, like when you hear like you know,
1:43
Speaker 1: they perished in the fire, but they were able to
1:45
Speaker 1: identify the body, and the much more controversial bite mark
1:51
Speaker 1: analysis that had been widely used in court and is
1:56
Speaker 1: now generally thought of by most dentists and people in
2:01
Speaker 1: this line of work as junk science.
2:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, just from researching this, it's like,
2:06
Speaker 2: what kind of judge is still allowing this in as evidence?
2:09
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
2:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I guess I just revealed my take on
2:14
Speaker 2: forensic dentistry or bitemark analysis specifically, because the other version
2:18
Speaker 2: you said identifying deceased people is really no, it's not.
2:24
Speaker 2: It's pretty much set. Most I didn't read anybody who
2:29
Speaker 2: was challenging it or it's legitimacy, And apparently it's been
2:32
Speaker 2: really useful over the years because the teeth are the
2:36
Speaker 2: strongest part of the body. They can survive fire, they
2:39
Speaker 2: can survive exposure to chemicals that could just get rid
2:42
Speaker 2: of the rest of the body. They can survive explosions
2:47
Speaker 2: up to I think two thousand degrees fahrenheit. They can
2:50
Speaker 2: take heat up to that as anyone who's made it
2:53
Speaker 2: far enough in breaking bad nose that eventually, if it
2:55
Speaker 2: gets hot enough, they'll pop like popcorn. But most of
2:59
Speaker 2: the time, if a dead person who's unidentifiable comes into
3:03
Speaker 2: a medical examiner's office, they have not been exposed to
3:05
Speaker 2: that level of heat.
3:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even if the teeth themselves are struggling to
3:11
Speaker 1: hang in there, tooth pulp or dental tissue on the
3:14
Speaker 1: inside of that tooth is very resistant to environmental attacks
3:19
Speaker 1: like incineration, immersion, like you can be underwater for well,
3:23
Speaker 1: I was about to say a million years, but that's
3:25
Speaker 1: probably not true, but immersion, trauma, decomposition, So extracting DNA
3:32
Speaker 1: from the inside of a tooth is a pretty viable thing.
3:35
Speaker 1: But before nineteen seventy four, all you really had going
3:40
Speaker 1: was identifying victims of a disaster, usually a natural disaster
3:45
Speaker 1: or human cause disaster. They did not really get into
3:50
Speaker 1: crime scene stuff. Because in nineteen seventy five is when
3:54
Speaker 1: that first became permissible in court, where a murder victim
3:58
Speaker 1: had a bite on her nose and three forensic dentists
4:01
Speaker 1: came along and said, hey, it's pretty clear this bite
4:05
Speaker 1: came from this person. It should be maybe the exception
4:09
Speaker 1: to the rule, but we should allow it in court
4:11
Speaker 1: this time.
4:12
Speaker 2: Yes, And that was a very fateful decision because as
4:16
Speaker 2: that case made its way through appeals and a final
4:19
Speaker 2: appellate court upheld it, that also simultaneously not only convicted
4:24
Speaker 2: the killer, it also it said, this is legitimate. Bitemark
4:30
Speaker 2: analysis is admissible in court. It's set a precedent, and
4:34
Speaker 2: that exception that those three forensic dentists in their defense,
4:38
Speaker 2: you know, went to batfor for use in this particular case,
4:42
Speaker 2: became the rule. And there was no longer like, hey,
4:45
Speaker 2: this is not actually that great of an idea. It was, hey,
4:48
Speaker 2: we've got this new way of prosecuting scumbags. Let's use
4:52
Speaker 2: it to the max. And there was a really famous
4:55
Speaker 2: case within just a couple of years of it becoming
4:58
Speaker 2: widely used in American court sorts. That's still celebrated today.
5:02
Speaker 2: Is one of the great successes of bitemark analysis because
5:06
Speaker 2: it's not like every single case is worse than the last. Yeah,
5:10
Speaker 2: but there's enough bad cases and enough people who've been
5:13
Speaker 2: wrongly convicted and later exonerated based on bite mark evidence
5:17
Speaker 2: that it should not It's not it should not be allowed.
5:20
Speaker 2: You just go figure out who did it some other way.
5:23
Speaker 2: Stop using bite mark analysis.
5:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, dozens of people, according to the Innocence Project. And
5:32
Speaker 1: we should point out from nineteen seventy five until just recently,
5:35
Speaker 1: like twenty sixteen is when they finally made affirm decision,
5:40
Speaker 1: which you know, we'll hold onto that one, but that's
5:42
Speaker 1: really when things changed. But I think the case that
5:45
Speaker 1: you were talking about is I've forgotten Ted Bundy. In
5:49
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, a notorious serial killer Ted Bundy would
5:53
Speaker 1: sort of wind up his serial killing career by wandering
5:57
Speaker 1: into the Kyomegas already house at Florida State University and
6:03
Speaker 1: bludgeoning and killing for students at sorority sisters there, including
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Speaker 1: one victim where he bit her and left very clear
6:12
Speaker 1: bite marks. And those bite marks were instrumental in Ted
6:16
Speaker 1: Bundy's conviction.
6:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, the two Kyomega women were who were who died
6:21
Speaker 2: who did not manage to live with Lisa Levy and
6:24
Speaker 2: Margaret Bowman. But he did some pretty terrible damage to
6:28
Speaker 2: some the other the other two, I guess. But that
6:32
Speaker 2: bitte mark apparently Ted Bundy had extremely crooked front teeth,
6:37
Speaker 2: so much so and the bite mark was clear enough
6:39
Speaker 2: that they used that bitemark analysis in part to convict
6:43
Speaker 2: him for those murders. Those were he apparently admitted to
6:47
Speaker 2: killing thirty women, possibly killed as many as one hundred
6:51
Speaker 2: and so one of the one of the cases he
6:53
Speaker 2: was prosecuted for were the Kyo Omega murders.
6:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So that's a good setup. We should
7:01
Speaker 1: just mention sort of as far as the identification, the
7:04
Speaker 1: non controversial part. Adults usually have thirty two teeth, foreign sizers,
7:09
Speaker 1: four canines, eight pre molars, twelve molars, and four wisdom
7:12
Speaker 1: depending on if you still have those. And when you
7:15
Speaker 1: go to the dentist, they you know, we've been to
7:17
Speaker 1: the dentist, and they do a lot of notating. They
7:21
Speaker 1: notate your teeth variations in your teeth changes in your teeth,
7:25
Speaker 1: if you chip a tooth, any dental work you've gotten,
7:28
Speaker 1: like crowns or fillings or bridges, or in my case
7:30
Speaker 1: for implants, periodontal disease, receding gums. There are x rays
7:37
Speaker 1: and there are just the tooth charts. And these are
7:39
Speaker 1: the dental records that we speak of when they say,
7:42
Speaker 1: you know, a body was identified, you know via dental records.
7:46
Speaker 1: It's because of all this work that you get over
7:49
Speaker 1: the years at the dentist. I guess if you, well,
7:53
Speaker 1: this doesn't have so much to do with bitemark analysis,
7:56
Speaker 1: I guess it could, but the records that seem like
7:58
Speaker 1: are mainly about identification.
8:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also by laws, I think every state requires
8:04
Speaker 2: dentists to keep dental charts on their patients, and then
8:08
Speaker 2: they also have to retain them for set number of years,
8:11
Speaker 2: depending on which state demands what. So they do come
8:14
Speaker 2: in handy just the charts alone. Well, like, there's not
8:18
Speaker 2: going to be x raysed with them necessarily, there's not
8:21
Speaker 2: going to be any photographs just from the charts, and
8:24
Speaker 2: the the coding systems that they've worked out to codify
8:29
Speaker 2: teeth can conceivably give you enough information that you could
8:35
Speaker 2: use it in some form of forensic dentistry. That's how
8:38
Speaker 2: accurate the charts are meant to be.
8:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So you know, we mentioned all the
8:42
Speaker 1: ways teeth can hang in there and stay you know,
8:47
Speaker 1: a part of your skull, and when other parts of
8:49
Speaker 1: your body have deteriorated, teeth can shrink, they can become fragile,
8:55
Speaker 1: but if you handle them gently and with care, you
8:59
Speaker 1: can preserve them and lacquer. And what will happen if
9:03
Speaker 1: you need to identify corpse usually is a dentist will
9:06
Speaker 1: go to the morgue. They will surgically expose the jaw
9:10
Speaker 1: and examine things. That's if you have, like you know,
9:14
Speaker 1: a pretty recent dead body that hasn't decomposed too much.
9:18
Speaker 1: If all you've got is a handful of teeth, that
9:21
Speaker 1: still maybe enough due to those X rays and charts.
9:24
Speaker 1: But if it's mass casualties, a dentist is gonna and
9:29
Speaker 1: these are forensic dentists, by the way, it's a specialty.
9:32
Speaker 1: They get a list of possible victims and then you know,
9:36
Speaker 1: you start comparing different records of the different people to
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Speaker 1: try and sort out who is who.
9:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it takes a special kind of dentist to
9:43
Speaker 2: do this kind of work, because by the time the cadaver,
9:47
Speaker 2: the corpse has made it to the forensic dentist, everybody
9:52
Speaker 2: else upstream has said, like, no, they don't have fingerprints,
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Speaker 2: their face is unrecognizable. It just keeps going on and
9:59
Speaker 2: on and on until finally your last chance of identifying
10:03
Speaker 2: the person is forensic dentistry. And they'll often, i mean,
10:07
Speaker 2: like if it's a mass casualty, you know, you know
10:09
Speaker 2: who is on the plane. Apparently that's when it comes
10:12
Speaker 2: in handy a lot for plane crashes. You know, all
10:14
Speaker 2: the passengers on the plane, You go get their dental records,
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Speaker 2: You hand them over to the forensic dentists and say,
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Speaker 2: good luck, can you match any of these teeth with
10:22
Speaker 2: these charts? And they're they're i mean, they're a huge
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Speaker 2: part of a forensic team in like mass casualty events.
10:29
Speaker 2: They're they're really important because again they're like the last
10:33
Speaker 2: hope of some families getting closure, being able to like
10:36
Speaker 2: give their loved one a funeral or something like that.
10:39
Speaker 2: Like that's the role that they're they're playing. They're not
10:42
Speaker 2: doing this because they like just playing with dead people's
10:45
Speaker 2: teeth or anything like that. Like they are helping other
10:48
Speaker 2: humans with their work by identifying disaster victims. I'm not
10:53
Speaker 2: extending that to bitemark analysis.
10:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's a lot of things you
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Speaker 1: can sort of glean from looking at a person's teeth
11:02
Speaker 1: about that person. It's not the most exact science, but
11:07
Speaker 1: we know generally how fast teeth grow, about four micro
11:10
Speaker 1: meats per day, So you can estimate someone's age based
11:13
Speaker 1: on their teeth.
11:14
Speaker 2: Well, not only that, you can also like when your
11:18
Speaker 2: teeth develop as a human, it follows a set pattern. Yeah,
11:21
Speaker 2: so you can go and look at somebody's development, especially
11:25
Speaker 2: if they're underage, I think twenty something or thirty five,
11:29
Speaker 2: and say, well, they have they've developed this tooth, but
11:31
Speaker 2: they haven't developed this tooth, so they're yeah, probably eighteenish.
11:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. They can get it in a wheelhouse. Sometimes
11:39
Speaker 1: you can learn a little bit about someone's ethnicity because
11:43
Speaker 1: you know, some ethnicities have teeth that are a little different.
11:46
Speaker 1: Apparently some Native Americans and some Asian people have incisors
11:51
Speaker 1: that have scooped out backs. You can determine sometimes some
11:56
Speaker 1: socioeconomic background. If there's you know a lot of really
12:00
Speaker 1: expensive restoration work, that'll tell you that they probably had
12:03
Speaker 1: a lot of money or you know, at least money
12:05
Speaker 1: to afford that. Also, the methods that are used are
12:09
Speaker 1: used in some parts of the world and not in others,
12:12
Speaker 1: like some geographic areas. Person's lifestyle, like if they were
12:17
Speaker 1: a smoker, this is kind of fun. If you're a
12:19
Speaker 1: pipe smoker, man, if you play the play the bagpipes, Yeah,
12:22
Speaker 1: you have a very distinctive wear pattern on your teeth.
12:25
Speaker 2: Did you see any pictures of a skull with a
12:28
Speaker 2: with a where from pipe smoking? Yeah, it's crazy. It's
12:32
Speaker 2: like the person's teeth like curve up at some point,
12:37
Speaker 2: like I'm basically I think it was the right side
12:39
Speaker 2: of their face just from holding a pipe in their
12:42
Speaker 2: teeth for years and years and years.
12:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then just sort of the obvious stuff like
12:47
Speaker 1: a family member saying like, no, they were definitely missing
12:50
Speaker 1: that tooth or that that you know, that distinctive crown
12:53
Speaker 1: with the diamond CWB for Charles W. Chuck Bryant, I know,
12:59
Speaker 1: I can't believe you got that. Still that was definitely
13:02
Speaker 1: their mouth or that tooth was broken. So beyond just
13:07
Speaker 1: dental records, like family members can sometimes help out.
13:10
Speaker 2: I also saw another lifestyle. One was something called a
13:12
Speaker 2: tailor's notch. This is pretty arcane, but if you find
13:18
Speaker 2: a tailor's notch, there's a chance that this was a dressmaker,
13:20
Speaker 2: a tailor or something like that, because they hold pins
13:22
Speaker 2: in their mouths.
13:24
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, as part of their.
13:25
Speaker 2: Profession, usually in their teeth, and when you do that
13:27
Speaker 2: enough times, it actually wears a little indentation in the
13:31
Speaker 2: tooth that you normally hold the the sewing needle in. So,
13:36
Speaker 2: do you want to talk about the Black Death or
13:38
Speaker 2: just keep moving on.
13:40
Speaker 1: Let's take a break. Okay, all right, we'll take a
13:42
Speaker 1: break and we'll talk about the Black Death and then
13:45
Speaker 1: dive into the more controversial bitemark analysis.
14:14
Speaker 2: So we promised talk about the Black Death. Apparently one
14:17
Speaker 2: of the high profile I guess forensic dentistry cases recently
14:23
Speaker 2: was a study that looked at the teeth of or
14:28
Speaker 2: I think it extracted DNA from the pulp of the
14:30
Speaker 2: teeth of medieval villagers who died from the plague. And
14:35
Speaker 2: I guess they were able to exclude the plague in
14:37
Speaker 2: some cases, like people had died and it was falsely
14:41
Speaker 2: attributed to death from the plague. That seems almost inconsequential
14:46
Speaker 2: to me because the other thing that they did was
14:48
Speaker 2: definitively prove that you're seeing a pestis, which is a
14:53
Speaker 2: bacteria I think, a bacteria that's carried by fleas typically,
14:58
Speaker 2: So the rats came to town, the fleas around the
15:00
Speaker 2: so the bacteria was on the fleas, and that's what
15:03
Speaker 2: spread the black death, that's what they've long said. And
15:06
Speaker 2: they extracted that from the DNA of the pulp of
15:08
Speaker 2: teeth of medieval people who died from the plague definitely
15:11
Speaker 2: died from the plague, and said, yep, here's your smoking gun.
15:16
Speaker 1: There's your problem, right, Yeah, And it was something this old.
15:21
Speaker 1: A DNA isn't readily available. M DNA mitochondrial DNA can
15:25
Speaker 1: also be very useful.
15:26
Speaker 2: And I also saw the oldest tooth that they successfully
15:30
Speaker 2: sequenced a genome from by extracting DNA from the pulp
15:33
Speaker 2: was six thousand years old, from about four thousand BCE.
15:36
Speaker 2: Back in two thousand and five. They managed to do that,
15:39
Speaker 2: and you know, those people are still talking about, like
15:41
Speaker 2: I did I ever tell you about the four thousand
15:44
Speaker 2: BCE tooth we extracted DNA from?
15:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh boy, the smell of that toothbulp O Oh good.
15:51
Speaker 2: God, that was awful. I was not expecting that.
15:55
Speaker 1: All right. So now this is where things get a
15:57
Speaker 1: little hinky, because we're going to talk about the other
16:00
Speaker 1: aspect of forensic dentistry, which is the very controversial, very
16:04
Speaker 1: complex bite mark analysis, which and we'll get to the
16:09
Speaker 1: admissibility of it now in a bit. But they still
16:13
Speaker 1: do collect the evidence, which you know you should do.
16:16
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's saying, like, hey, stop even doing
16:19
Speaker 1: this as far as evidence collection goes. But here's how
16:22
Speaker 1: they do that. If you see a bite mark or
16:24
Speaker 1: anything you think is a bitemark in a like a
16:27
Speaker 1: murder case, Let's say you call in that forensic dentist
16:31
Speaker 1: who's just sitting around like so happy. They don't have
16:34
Speaker 1: their hands in a live human being's mouth at the time, right,
16:38
Speaker 1: And they got to do it quick because time is
16:40
Speaker 1: of the essence, because bite marks can change a lot
16:44
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, and especially if a body has been deteriorating
16:46
Speaker 1: for a few days, like the location of that bite
16:50
Speaker 1: may be entirely different because the skin is slipping and shrinking.
16:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one. Also, bruising and lividity can
16:59
Speaker 2: also obscure a bite mark or change it or alter it,
17:03
Speaker 2: so they often have to wait for the bruise to
17:05
Speaker 2: heal if the humans still alive, or wait for the
17:08
Speaker 2: lividity the pooling of blood to just kind of come
17:12
Speaker 2: and go before they really examine it.
17:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're going to take pictures with a ruler next
17:18
Speaker 1: to it. You've probably seen that in some movies I have.
17:20
Speaker 2: I saw in Silence of the Lambs.
17:23
Speaker 1: Right, oh, yeah, that's right. Bite photography is very specific
17:26
Speaker 1: and very precise, or at least it should be, and
17:29
Speaker 1: then you can magnify those photos and stuff. But while
17:32
Speaker 1: they're doing this, the first thing that they're going to
17:34
Speaker 1: identify is like was it a human bite or not?
17:37
Speaker 1: And seems like a no brainer, like I could even
17:40
Speaker 1: tell sure, But you found a study from twenty fifteen
17:42
Speaker 1: that doesn't quite hold up. I mean, that's about animals
17:46
Speaker 1: and human differences, right.
17:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a twenty fifteen study that found they
17:50
Speaker 2: used thirty nine experts. These were Board certified Forensic odontologists
17:58
Speaker 2: or members of the American Board of Forensic Odeontologists, the
18:02
Speaker 2: crediting body. I don't know why I went into that
18:05
Speaker 2: much detail, but there you have it. The official people
18:08
Speaker 2: in this study with this thirty nine experts. They showed
18:10
Speaker 2: one hundred photographs of bite marks and said, okay, we
18:13
Speaker 2: want some information about this. Are these Let's just start
18:17
Speaker 2: with is this a human bitemark or an animal bitemark?
18:21
Speaker 1: The easiest thing in the world. Was this a dog
18:23
Speaker 1: or an adult human biting this person?
18:26
Speaker 2: Exactly? And only eight percent of the photographs, so eight
18:31
Speaker 2: of one hundred photographs. I just did that, meth and
18:33
Speaker 2: I'm quite confident it's correct.
18:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, you nailed it.
18:36
Speaker 2: Could ninety percent of those experts. I don't know what
18:40
Speaker 2: ninety percent of thirty nine is come to consensus that yes,
18:44
Speaker 2: this is definitely human or yes this is definitely animal.
18:47
Speaker 2: They did not believe. Yeah, they did not agree on
18:51
Speaker 2: the other ninety two photographs.
18:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would think human and animal would be pretty
18:56
Speaker 1: easy to tell the difference of you know, apparently not.
18:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually if the animals wearing human dentures at the time, right,
19:05
Speaker 2: good point. Yeah, like that. You know that cartoon wolf
19:09
Speaker 2: from the old timey nineteen thirties cartoon. I don't think
19:13
Speaker 2: I know that, Oh, sure you do. He was always
19:15
Speaker 2: like his eyes would pop out of his head and like.
19:17
Speaker 1: He was oh yeah, you know, like uh yeah, yeah,
19:19
Speaker 1: I gotcha.
19:21
Speaker 2: So what else, Chuck?
19:23
Speaker 1: Well, this is a pretty disturbing but I guess helpful
19:27
Speaker 1: thing that I never knew. After they inspect the body
19:30
Speaker 1: for the bite marks and all that stuff, they will
19:33
Speaker 1: actually cut out the bike mark and preserve it.
19:37
Speaker 2: They're like, can I take this home?
19:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they will cut the bipe mark from the skin,
19:41
Speaker 1: preserve it and formaldehyde, and then make a silicone cast
19:45
Speaker 1: of the bite mark, which makes total sense. I just
19:47
Speaker 1: never thought about how gross that would seem.
19:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is pretty gross. I mean, the whole process
19:54
Speaker 2: from starting to finish is fairly gross.
19:56
Speaker 1: In that case, what kind of bite marks though they
19:58
Speaker 1: can they make?
19:59
Speaker 2: Well, I'm based on the kind of transfer pattern is
20:03
Speaker 2: what they call it. And it's not just specific to
20:06
Speaker 2: forensic idontology transfer patterns or what you're looking at when
20:09
Speaker 2: you look at the rifling on a bullet to try
20:14
Speaker 2: to identify what gun it came out of, which also
20:16
Speaker 2: apparently is junk science fingerprints. You're transferring your fingerprints, so
20:20
Speaker 2: it leaves a transfer pattern. Same thing with forensic idontology,
20:24
Speaker 2: and the different kinds of forensic patterns are based on
20:26
Speaker 2: the damage that the bites do. So if it scrapes,
20:30
Speaker 2: like if you're I don't need to put it any
20:33
Speaker 2: other way. That's considered an abrasian bite.
20:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.
20:36
Speaker 2: And artifact is when, yeah, when there's an actual part
20:41
Speaker 2: of the body missing from because of the bite. It's
20:44
Speaker 2: not just a bite mark, there's actually tissue or something missing,
20:47
Speaker 2: like an ear lobe. I think is like Evander Holyfield's
20:51
Speaker 2: ear lobe.
20:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was, I'd say mac Tyson bite.
20:54
Speaker 2: So he's got a fight on Friday.
20:57
Speaker 1: Oh is he fighting that guy Friday on Netflix? Shoot,
21:01
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna be here. I want to see that.
21:03
Speaker 2: I'll tape it for you on the VCR.
21:05
Speaker 1: You take it all right to me the tape. We
21:08
Speaker 1: also have evulsions, that is when just some of the
21:11
Speaker 1: skin is removed, and I guess not an entire piece
21:14
Speaker 1: of the body. You have contusions, which is of course
21:18
Speaker 1: a bruise. If it's profusely bleeding, it's a hemorrhage. If
21:21
Speaker 1: it's a nice clean neat wound, then you have a
21:23
Speaker 1: very precise spider and they call that an incision. And
21:26
Speaker 1: then a puncture wound is a laceration.
21:28
Speaker 2: Yes, And then there's also the different like depths or
21:34
Speaker 2: the obviousness of the bite mark is another category that
21:38
Speaker 2: they use, and it starts from lowest to highest. It
21:41
Speaker 2: took me a minute to figure this out because I
21:44
Speaker 2: don't think the wording they used is really good. Agree,
21:47
Speaker 2: a clear impression means that there was significant pressure used.
21:50
Speaker 2: That's the lowest of the three categories. Yes, an obvious
21:55
Speaker 2: one signifies medium pressure, which that to me just just
22:00
Speaker 2: like shows that this is not accurate science. Medium is
22:04
Speaker 2: a type of fry order, French fry order, not the
22:09
Speaker 2: you know, depth of a bite mark, like medium is
22:11
Speaker 2: so subjective, right, Yeah, all three of these are and
22:15
Speaker 2: then noticeable. That seems to me like that would be
22:17
Speaker 2: the least of the three. That's the most, the most
22:22
Speaker 2: pronounced bite mark of all, because the biter used violent
22:26
Speaker 2: pressure to bite down.
22:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, it should be obvious. Oh my god, and holy crap,
22:35
Speaker 1: for the love of god, what was this person doing?
22:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. There's also some some other things that
22:43
Speaker 2: the bier can do during the biting, if they you know,
22:49
Speaker 2: if they like use their jaw a bunch. It's not
22:51
Speaker 2: just like one bite where they clamp down. If they
22:53
Speaker 2: bite in succession a few times, that was going to
22:57
Speaker 2: leave a totally different mark from one that is going
22:59
Speaker 2: to where they just clamp their jaw down or something.
23:03
Speaker 2: If they move their tongue, it will move the skin
23:05
Speaker 2: around and will affect the bite mark that's left behind.
23:09
Speaker 2: We should have probably given like heads up at the
23:11
Speaker 2: outside of this episode. Huh.
23:14
Speaker 1: Well, I think forensic dentistry is a creepy enough title, okay,
23:17
Speaker 1: or maybe I'll title it forensic Dentistry colon enter at
23:21
Speaker 1: your own Risk or something like that.
23:22
Speaker 2: Oh good one. And then there's another one too. If
23:24
Speaker 2: the victim is being is still, it might which to
23:28
Speaker 2: me means dead because nobody's gonna sit still. Well, they're
23:31
Speaker 2: being bitten hard enough to leave a bite mark that
23:33
Speaker 2: could be used against you in court. But you know,
23:36
Speaker 2: if they're moving, that's going to affect the bite mark
23:38
Speaker 2: that's left behind too. And then of course also the
23:41
Speaker 2: kind of tooth profile they have too.
23:44
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, for sure. I mean if you're if I
23:48
Speaker 1: would have bitten somebody in a violent episode when I
23:52
Speaker 1: had my front tooth or my two front teeth missing,
23:56
Speaker 1: it would be pretty obvious when you saw that bite mark.
24:00
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy, like you said, had crooked teeth, and so
24:02
Speaker 1: that will leave a crooked impression obviously you need chips
24:05
Speaker 1: on your teeth, are gonna make a more sort of
24:08
Speaker 1: jagged impression.
24:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if you ate a bunch of chips and
24:10
Speaker 2: they're just stuck between your teeth, is that what you meant?
24:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's an ear lobe and some doriedo, So let's
24:20
Speaker 1: put that in an evidence backing.
24:22
Speaker 2: You're welcome for the plug.
24:25
Speaker 1: And then braces. You know, if you braces or implants
24:28
Speaker 1: or something or a bridge, that can leave a pretty
24:31
Speaker 1: distinctive impression for sure. Once and this is sort of
24:36
Speaker 1: how it used to work, but once they identify a subject,
24:39
Speaker 1: they're going to get a warrant to take a mold
24:41
Speaker 1: of a suspect's teeth so they can compare it. They'll
24:45
Speaker 1: take a lot of pictures of their mouth and stuff opening, closing, biting,
24:48
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and then in the old days, they
24:51
Speaker 1: would go to court and compare those and a forensic
24:54
Speaker 1: dentist would take the stand and say, hey, that that
24:58
Speaker 1: bitemart looks like that person's mouth me jury. That can
25:03
Speaker 1: be a major reason why you convict.
25:05
Speaker 2: And in some cases they would say things like with
25:08
Speaker 2: one hundred percent certainty.
25:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.
25:11
Speaker 2: Another thing that they say too, that we'll find that
25:13
Speaker 2: seems to not be at all true, is that each
25:17
Speaker 2: person's arrangement and teeth, like your mouth, everything inside your
25:21
Speaker 2: mouth is totally unique, like your fingerprints. And that apparently
25:26
Speaker 2: is not true at all, But you'll find it all
25:29
Speaker 2: over the internet as fact.
25:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there are some professional dentists, in forensic
25:35
Speaker 1: dentists that still believe that. I mean that thing I
25:39
Speaker 1: sent you was from last year, yeah, and is on
25:41
Speaker 1: the National Institutes of Health US government website, and those
25:45
Speaker 1: four accredited dentists dental experts flat out say like a
25:50
Speaker 1: person's bite mark is unique like DNA or fingerprints. When
25:56
Speaker 1: and I guess we should probably take a break and
25:57
Speaker 1: get into the studies and stuff like that. But it
26:00
Speaker 1: seems like study after study is kind of confirmed that
26:02
Speaker 1: is just not the case.
26:04
Speaker 2: Well, let's take that break and we'll come back and
26:06
Speaker 2: we'll talk about all the controversies surrounding bitemark analysis as
26:09
Speaker 2: a part of forensic odontology.
26:12
Speaker 3: Man, that's a mouthful, all right.
26:40
Speaker 1: So you did some extra digging, and you know it's
26:44
Speaker 1: pretty clear from doing the research that this is basically
26:46
Speaker 1: known as junk science now to most people. Despite those
26:50
Speaker 1: four people who wrote the article on the National Institutes
26:53
Speaker 1: of Health. But there was a review in twenty twenty
26:58
Speaker 1: two in a report from the NIST. What does that
27:02
Speaker 1: stand for?
27:03
Speaker 2: The National Institute of Standards and Technology. They're like a
27:06
Speaker 2: federal agency, if I'm not mistaken.
27:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So they released this report that said and
27:14
Speaker 1: there were previous reports that we'll talk about too, I guess,
27:16
Speaker 1: but this is the most recent that said BYTEmark, analysis
27:19
Speaker 1: is not real science, and it's based on these three
27:23
Speaker 1: sort of faulty premises, one which you already mentioned, which
27:27
Speaker 1: is that a person's dental pattern is unique to that person.
27:32
Speaker 1: And you know, there haven't been any studies that really
27:35
Speaker 1: confirmed this. There was a twenty thirteen study from the
27:38
Speaker 1: United Arab Emirates that found I think there's is that
27:42
Speaker 1: sort of a dental capital of the world because I
27:47
Speaker 1: saw a lot of dentists from like Saudi Arabia and AE. Yeah.
27:50
Speaker 2: No, I didn't know that. I didn't see that.
27:52
Speaker 1: Maybe I have a hunch that that's the case, so
27:54
Speaker 1: maybe someone will confirm or deny that. But that study
27:58
Speaker 1: found that fifty one percent of the two thousand dental
28:02
Speaker 1: charts that they examined were unique, some one more than
28:05
Speaker 1: half and the rest were identical to at least one other.
28:09
Speaker 1: The only thing I'll say in defense is that it
28:12
Speaker 1: may not be truly unique, but if forty nine percent
28:16
Speaker 1: are unique, then that's unique enough to talk about. Maybe
28:20
Speaker 1: not to be used in court, but enough to talk about.
28:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
28:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, in my opinion, yeah for sure.
28:28
Speaker 2: But the fact is that study, and we should also
28:31
Speaker 2: caveat that with the fact that this study used dental
28:35
Speaker 2: charts only, and they made sure that they were highly
28:39
Speaker 2: high quality dental charts that they examined. But the fact
28:44
Speaker 2: that they were able to find dental charts that were
28:47
Speaker 2: identical between two people totally undermines the the idea that
28:53
Speaker 2: everybody's mouth is unique, everybody's teeth arrangement is unique.
28:57
Speaker 1: It seems like about half of them are. Yeah, if
28:59
Speaker 1: you go by the data here.
29:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was two thousand dental charts. They didn't
29:02
Speaker 2: choose like three. Like this was a pretty decent, high
29:06
Speaker 2: quality study, And yeah, I think it totally undermines that.
29:10
Speaker 2: But like you said, yes, there's also enough uniqueness that
29:14
Speaker 2: you can kind of use this. And I think, like
29:17
Speaker 2: you said, nobody's really saying, like stop doing bitemark analysis entirely, right,
29:24
Speaker 2: and the actually in their defense, the American Board of
29:26
Speaker 2: Forensic Odentology says, they basically admit, like, hey, we made
29:31
Speaker 2: some mistakes in the past, we've cleaned up our act,
29:34
Speaker 2: we've revised our guidelines, and now if you're a legitimate
29:38
Speaker 2: forensic odontologist, the furthest you will go is to make
29:43
Speaker 2: three different calls. One exclude, meaning that this person's teeth
29:50
Speaker 2: could not have possibly made the bite mark that you're
29:53
Speaker 2: showing me, cops.
29:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, not exclude.
29:57
Speaker 2: Which is only saying it's pos I'm not going to
30:01
Speaker 2: go any further than that, but it's their their teeth
30:04
Speaker 2: resemble enough this bite mark pattern, this bite pattern, that
30:09
Speaker 2: it's possible that this person made it, and then inconclusive,
30:13
Speaker 2: and that's as far as they're supposed to go. They're
30:15
Speaker 2: not supposed to in that sense, they're not I guess
30:17
Speaker 2: you could testify those three things. But if the prosecutor's like, okay, so,
30:21
Speaker 2: so not exclude, you're saying it's his right, They're they're
30:24
Speaker 2: supposed to bail essentially at that point. They're not supposed
30:27
Speaker 2: to go any further than that. That's the standard in
30:29
Speaker 2: the guidelines for forensic dentists doing biite analysis bite mark
30:33
Speaker 2: analysis today, but there's still plenty of people out there
30:36
Speaker 2: who are going beyond that.
30:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know that's the kind of situation too
30:40
Speaker 1: where you also have to really educate a jury over
30:45
Speaker 1: like the data on what that really means, you know
30:48
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, and say like, hey, half the time,
30:52
Speaker 1: these aren't unique, So you have to understand that going in.
30:57
Speaker 1: So you know that that was the first thing, and
30:58
Speaker 1: you know that there was that one case that you
31:00
Speaker 1: sent where and this kind of factors into number two.
31:06
Speaker 1: And number one was that they're they're unique. Number two
31:09
Speaker 1: is that the patterns can be accurately transferred to the
31:11
Speaker 1: human skin, because we've already talked about the fact that
31:14
Speaker 1: there can be a lot of distortion by skin's elasticity,
31:18
Speaker 1: and if the person like sort of does a sawing motion,
31:21
Speaker 1: it completely distorted the bite mark. But you sent that
31:24
Speaker 1: one case of the guy who was convicted who was
31:27
Speaker 1: missing a tooth entirely, which should show a pretty clear like, hey,
31:31
Speaker 1: we can exclude this one because the bitite mark didn't
31:35
Speaker 1: have a gap. But they were like, yeah, but if
31:37
Speaker 1: he grinded his teeth and kind of did a sawing motion,
31:40
Speaker 1: it could look like this, and he was found guilty,
31:43
Speaker 1: you know, and he was not guilty.
31:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was sentenced to jail, I think, was that
31:47
Speaker 2: Roy Brown?
31:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, in two thousand and seven.
31:50
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, he spent almost twenty years in jail,
31:54
Speaker 2: fifteen years from ninety two to two thousand and seven,
31:57
Speaker 2: largely based on that bite mark analysis testimony.
32:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the both forensic dentists that worked on that
32:05
Speaker 1: case recanted their testimony, right, like completely.
32:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big one too. I think maybe
32:10
Speaker 2: in one of those cases where they were appealing it.
32:13
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was Roy Brown's, but there
32:15
Speaker 2: have been plenty of forensic on ontologists who have gone
32:18
Speaker 2: back and been like, what I was saying apparently is
32:20
Speaker 2: not right or grounded in science. I recant my testimony,
32:24
Speaker 2: and at least one judge that I read was like, well,
32:27
Speaker 2: we didn't really need you. The jury could have come
32:29
Speaker 2: to the same conclusion that the bitemark matched their teeth.
32:33
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to overturn this case, which is
32:36
Speaker 2: nuts in and of itself. But Roy Brown is far
32:39
Speaker 2: from the only person who has been exonerated after being
32:42
Speaker 2: convicted on bitemark analysis too, right, Like, haven't there been
32:47
Speaker 2: like at least twenty six people.
32:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least twenty six That DNA evidence is now cleared,
32:53
Speaker 1: where bite mark analysis was, if not the smoking gun,
32:57
Speaker 1: like a pretty key part of the jury's you know finding.
33:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, remember when I was saying, some expert witnesses on
33:04
Speaker 2: the stand say like this, it's one hundred percent match.
33:07
Speaker 1: That happened.
33:07
Speaker 2: A good guy named Roy Cron he did ten years
33:10
Speaker 2: based on BikeE mark analysis. Because you got to understand,
33:13
Speaker 2: if you're a juror and the prosecution is saying, like
33:16
Speaker 2: this person is an expert in forensic odentology, and that
33:20
Speaker 2: expert tells you, the jurors, there is one hundred percent
33:23
Speaker 2: match between that man's teeth and this bite mark on
33:26
Speaker 2: this murder victim, it's going to be tough to overlook
33:29
Speaker 2: that For the average jur I would.
33:31
Speaker 1: Guess, yeah, for sure. And you know, the big change
33:35
Speaker 1: that you were talking about with just excluding that came
33:38
Speaker 1: about in twenty sixteen. We've mentioned some other studies. There
33:42
Speaker 1: was one we didn't mention in two thousand and nine
33:44
Speaker 1: when the National Academy of Sciences released a report about
33:47
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with a lot of forensic science,
33:50
Speaker 1: but one of those was bitemark analysis, and they basically said,
33:55
Speaker 1: and this was in two thousand and nine and it
33:56
Speaker 1: still took till twenty sixteen to make that change official,
33:59
Speaker 1: was they said, there's no scientific studies that support the
34:03
Speaker 1: assertion that bite marks provide sufficient detail for positive identification.
34:09
Speaker 1: And then a few years after that, doctors from the
34:13
Speaker 1: American Border Forensic Identology, like, we said, that's the sort
34:16
Speaker 1: of the main body or is the main body? Participants
34:20
Speaker 1: in a study there of certified dentists, an overwhelming number
34:23
Speaker 1: of them couldn't even agree whether they were looking at
34:25
Speaker 1: a bite mark at all.
34:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was another thing too, I think from that
34:29
Speaker 2: same study where they took the same experts and went
34:32
Speaker 2: back to them eight weeks with the exact same photos
34:34
Speaker 2: they'd shown them eight weeks before, and some of those
34:37
Speaker 2: experts didn't even agree with their previous assessments.
34:40
Speaker 1: Wow.
34:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was and they weren't like, hey, you
34:43
Speaker 2: said this before, what do you think now? It was
34:46
Speaker 2: like they I think they thought that this is a
34:48
Speaker 2: new set of bite marks and they were just basically
34:50
Speaker 2: guessing is what they found. So it's been pretty thoroughly debunked,
34:57
Speaker 2: but people still use it. The Innocence Project really taken
35:00
Speaker 2: an interest in this, and I think rightfully. So we
35:04
Speaker 2: did an episode on that with guess Paul Is on
35:08
Speaker 2: Remember Correctly and Yeah. So they're a group that go
35:12
Speaker 2: around and basically free people who were railroaded or wrongfully convicted,
35:17
Speaker 2: usually based on DNA evidence that wasn't heard in their case.
35:21
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that they've done is
35:22
Speaker 2: taken interest in bite mark analysis. And one of the
35:25
Speaker 2: roles they play now is I don't know how they
35:27
Speaker 2: keep their finger on the pulse, but if a prosecutor,
35:29
Speaker 2: which is very rare these days from what I understand,
35:32
Speaker 2: tries to introduce bite mark analysis into a case, the
35:36
Speaker 2: Innocence Project will show up and be like, we object
35:39
Speaker 2: to that. This is not science, this should not be admitted.
35:43
Speaker 2: And I think they're fairly successful.
35:45
Speaker 1: They throw tomatoes at them, for sure. There was another
35:49
Speaker 1: case you found pretty striking when a guy named John Kunko.
35:54
Speaker 1: He was convicted of rape and assault in nineteen ninety one,
35:58
Speaker 1: and the main evidence that got him convicted was identification
36:03
Speaker 1: of his voice by the victim, a comment he supposedly
36:06
Speaker 1: made at a party, and then bite mark on the
36:09
Speaker 1: victim's shoulder. All the evidence was a problem. The comment
36:15
Speaker 1: that the party that he supposedly made was not corroborated
36:18
Speaker 1: by I always have trouble with that word.
36:19
Speaker 2: It's a hard one.
36:21
Speaker 1: Corroborated by any other people at the party. The voice
36:24
Speaker 1: ID was made from a police officer's imitation of Kunko
36:29
Speaker 1: and his lisp to the victim, so I have no
36:32
Speaker 1: idea how that got through. And then I believe the
36:37
Speaker 1: bite mark was infrared light analysis of a bite mark
36:42
Speaker 1: that had already healed.
36:43
Speaker 2: This is a big one. So there was a forensic
36:45
Speaker 2: onontologist from Mississippi named Michael West, and he essentially just
36:50
Speaker 2: changed careers to be an expert witness in forensic onontology.
36:53
Speaker 2: That's how he made his living. And he came up
36:56
Speaker 2: with a technique called the West phenomenon, wherein you can,
37:00
Speaker 2: according to him, using some special goggles and a UV light,
37:04
Speaker 2: you can basically resurrect a bite mark that's healed years
37:09
Speaker 2: later and see it well enough that you can compare
37:13
Speaker 2: it to a suspect's bite and use it to convict.
37:17
Speaker 2: He totally made it up, apparently, at least in the
37:20
Speaker 2: first case that he used it on. He took photographs,
37:23
Speaker 2: but he wouldn't share him with anybody, So it was
37:25
Speaker 2: just his testimony that this person was convicted on, and
37:28
Speaker 2: it became a tool of the trade. So other people,
37:31
Speaker 2: including John Conco, were convicted in part because of this
37:35
Speaker 2: West phenomenon, which was part of an overall junk forensic science.
37:39
Speaker 2: So this is the junkiest of the junk that people
37:42
Speaker 2: were being convicted on.
37:44
Speaker 1: Did he also sell the special goggles on his website?
37:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he sold them as X ray goggles that
37:50
Speaker 2: you could look right through people's clothes with.
37:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a picture of him with his uh
37:56
Speaker 1: looking at his hand and the bones.
37:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, with exclamation points come up off of his head.
38:01
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, I mean this is everything changed in
38:05
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. One of the big things that happened, and
38:07
Speaker 1: I think there was a case in Texas a guy
38:10
Speaker 1: named Stephen Cheney was released by the Texas Court of Appeals.
38:14
Speaker 1: And this is the Texas Court of Appeals. They're not
38:16
Speaker 1: big on releasing, right, you know, convicted criminals. I noted
38:20
Speaker 1: that too, But the Texas Forensic Science Commission in twenty
38:24
Speaker 1: sixteen because of this you know, kind of fraudulent bitemark
38:27
Speaker 1: evidence in Stephen Cheney's case, they were like, we need
38:29
Speaker 1: to stop this, and I think that was kind of
38:32
Speaker 1: a big case that kind of, you know, really jump
38:34
Speaker 1: started the whole We maybe not scraped the whole thing,
38:37
Speaker 1: but where they ended up, which is it can exclude,
38:40
Speaker 1: but it can't positively identify.
38:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just use it to exclude. That's what most
38:45
Speaker 2: people can agree on for bitemark analysis is as far
38:47
Speaker 2: as they Yeah, Chuck, to ever tell you about Paul
38:51
Speaker 2: Revere in forensic id antology, No.
38:56
Speaker 1: But hey, it's a good little historical cherry on top, right.
38:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Paul Revere in addition to being a blacksmith,
39:02
Speaker 2: he was a dentist too, and one of the things
39:04
Speaker 2: he did he was one of the first forensic ononologists
39:09
Speaker 2: who used dental records based on his own knowledge too.
39:12
Speaker 2: He made, you know, dental work for a lot of
39:15
Speaker 2: people in the Revolutionary War, and he identified some of
39:18
Speaker 2: those people, including doctor Joseph Warren, the man who sent
39:22
Speaker 2: him on his fateful ride where he shouted the British
39:24
Speaker 2: are coming, the British are coming.
39:27
Speaker 1: Boom pal.
39:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty amazing. Huh.
39:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good one. Thanks.
39:32
Speaker 2: I think that's it for forensic onontology, right.
39:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, and man, that may be it for our long,
39:39
Speaker 1: long running forensic suite. I can't believe that there could
39:42
Speaker 1: be anything else, But I also said that last time.
39:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I disagree, but yes, we'll find out. I think
39:48
Speaker 2: I'm going to go find something.
39:50
Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean someone will write in and be like, guys,
39:52
Speaker 1: you've covered crimes and clean up. That's better analysis, fingerprinting.
39:56
Speaker 1: I mean, the list goes on and off.
39:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, you forgot forensic foot smelling, Go do that one.
40:00
Speaker 1: Maybe what I didn't know about that's it. It was
40:03
Speaker 1: the dog I smell Frido's right.
40:05
Speaker 2: Nice. Oh, actually I can do this old school too,
40:08
Speaker 2: because if you want to know more about forensic demistry,
40:10
Speaker 2: you can go check out a how stuff works article
40:12
Speaker 2: that we use in part for this episode. That is
40:16
Speaker 2: kicking at old school, isn't it.
40:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the rare articles that we didn't cover
40:20
Speaker 1: that is still good for us.
40:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. And since I kicked at old school, then it's
40:24
Speaker 2: time for listener mail.
40:28
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to call this another ADHD follow up.
40:30
Speaker 1: This is a this is a good one. Hey, guys,
40:33
Speaker 1: I had to write in after the ADHD episode. During
40:36
Speaker 1: the first episode, I had to pull over into a
40:38
Speaker 1: parking lot because, honestly, guys, I started crying. Oh wow, Yeah,
40:43
Speaker 1: I have ADHD and I have never had my life
40:46
Speaker 1: explained on a podcast before. Everyone's experiences are different, for sure,
40:51
Speaker 1: and I think you did an incredible job explaining the
40:54
Speaker 1: base challenges. I also appreciated Chuck's hesitancy to call it
40:58
Speaker 1: a disorder. It is to find it disorder, but so
41:01
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong medically with calling it one. But it
41:03
Speaker 1: does hurt just a little, even as an adult, when
41:05
Speaker 1: people call it a disorder without thinking about the person
41:09
Speaker 1: who has it. I appreciated the optimism with which you
41:13
Speaker 1: both spoke about the challenges and how they can be managed,
41:16
Speaker 1: especially Josh. The only thing I would add to that
41:19
Speaker 1: is the subtopic would be to find people who accept
41:23
Speaker 1: you before they try and change you. When I feel
41:25
Speaker 1: that people love and accept me as me, I am
41:28
Speaker 1: far more willing to accept their help with managing my ADHD.
41:32
Speaker 1: Don't approach someone like you're going to fix them. Approach
41:34
Speaker 1: them because you love them, and they will receive your
41:38
Speaker 1: honest offer to assist.
41:39
Speaker 2: Man. That is some good ADHD advice right there.
41:43
Speaker 1: And just good life advice. Your podcast reminded me that
41:46
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people out there like me,
41:48
Speaker 1: and I hope that a lot of people out there
41:49
Speaker 1: are trying to take this particular challenge do amazingly positive
41:54
Speaker 1: things with it. And that is from Steve.
41:56
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Steve, what a great email.
41:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, appreciate it, Steve. That those episodes were a big
42:03
Speaker 1: deal for us for a lot of reasons, and it
42:05
Speaker 1: seems like people responded, so we're proud of.
42:07
Speaker 2: Them for sure. If you want to be like Steve
42:10
Speaker 2: and tell us that you had to pull over because
42:11
Speaker 2: you were so overcome by something we did or said,
42:14
Speaker 2: we love that kind of thing, especially if it was positive,
42:17
Speaker 2: not because it was so terrible that you had to
42:19
Speaker 2: pull over. But even if that was the case, you
42:21
Speaker 2: can still email us either way. Send it off to
42:24
Speaker 2: Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
42:29
Speaker 3: You Know, Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
42:33
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
42:36
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.