A Convo With Mother Knows Death!

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Oh bank God, Nicole and Maria they finally made it.

Yay.

I love that.

Nicole and Jimmy and of course Maria q Caine. You get the whole name in there, Mom and daughter of course, the stars of our Mother Knows Death podcast on the Elvis Dran Podcast Network. May I'll just give give you a little business by the way, sure in all of our podcasts on our network, you guys are one of the best. You guys are doing so well, you're killing it.

Thank you.

Speaking of killing it, of your weekly podcast, of course, focuses on pathology, forensics, death, and you don't do it in an overly clinical way. You guys talk about all these incredible fun subjects in a way we understand what you're saying, and I appreciate it.

Thanks. I feel like when I was in college, I had a really hard time understanding all of these fancy medical words, so I had to dumb it down for myself. You know, I'm a high school drop well, so you know I had to bring it down to my level. But that I feel like that that helps me explain it to people better.

But both of you are I feel stupid after a moment. I'll show you both because you both are so educated, especially you know, hyper focusing on pathology. And it's just don't you feel like you learned something every time you hang out.

With them without a doubt. I mean, even if you just follow them on Instagram or follow Mother Knows Death and Missus and Jemmy on Instagram, you learned so much about like mister diagnoses and all kinds of other things.

Well, God, you brought them to us first. Yeah, you had them on your podcast. What was it that was so interesting to you about them that made us go, oh my god? So you know we were gonna steal them from you.

I love women in science number one, so that is always exciting to me. But this stories that they have, especially Nicole about her time doing you know, pathology assistant research and pulling things apart. And when she said, everything that gets taken out of a body comes to her and then she gets to analyze it and kind of break like figure out what happened here or what's going on with it. I was riveted, especially when you find out some of the things that come out of a body.

So you would go in with all the pathology team, and after someone passes away, you go inside to try to figure out why they died.

Two different there's two different divisions of our job, which is one is surgical pathology. So any single thing that ever gets taken out of a person's body goes to our lab. So that could be something as simple as teeth or a quarter a kid swallowed. Also really weird stuff people put in their bodies.

A lot of guys tripping and fallen in the shower.

Yeah, yeah, guys landing on things. What's the weirdest things ever come to you? I'm sure I've said this before. It's the half eaten pair.

I don't remember what there's a story behind it. Tell the half eaten pairs.

Oh yeah, some woman put a pair in her husband's rectum and started eating it and it got sucked up.

Okay.

They say, never put things in there that isn't connected, or.

It's a broad based.

Like a ball and chain like a tether ball. Wow, okay, but it was eaten and then.

But what's cool though, is like you know, she was talking about teeth, but also a bullet. You will take that and analyze that right. Or a breast implant, Oh yeah, we got anything.

I have gotten a bullet before. We don't commonly get them because they should go right to the medical examiner's office with the body. But yeah, I mean breast implants that fail, penis and plants that fail. Wow, things like and obviously we get other things like breasts entire breast if a person has breast cancer, colon if a person has colon cancer.

Oh so when I had my breast reduced, they said that they sent mine out to get checked, and that's how I found out I was higher risk for breast cancer because everything gets checked and they send it out when they take it out of your body.

Yeah, so it would come to me and we would weigh, especially in reduction cases. Sometimes the weight of it has to do if insurance will pay for it or not, if it's cosmetic, or if it's actually causing you medical problems. And we cut it up and we look for tumors and we have found incidental cancers and those.

Wow.

Yeah.

My thought is this, If I go into my doctor every year for my physical you know, they scan, they poke, and prod and that's as bed as far as they get blood. Of course, blood that helps. What is wrong with the thought here? I just want to go in as a somewhat healthy functioning guy. I want you to put me on the table and just start digging around in there and try to find something wrong. Is that?

Is that?

I mean? Is that a stupid way to try to see if anyone has a problem brewing inside? Or I mean it's very invasive, I would assume.

But an autopsy, I want to want to I want to as like being alive, you want I.

Want to be a living autopsy?

All right, So this is what I would recommend you. They have these full body ct and MRIs you can get as it doesn't have to be ordered by your doctor. You can go and and pay to get that done if you really want to find out. That's as close as you're getting. No One, no doctor is going to cut you open and just peek around and make sure everything's.

Why not, what's what's your problem?

What could possibly go wrong?

Anytime you open the abdomen or the chest, your you can cause scarring and adhesions, which is how Lisa Marie Presley died.

Actually what Lisa Marie Pressley died because of scarring.

Yeah, from surgical Wow.

Hey, let's talk about that for a second. Can we talk about the book. Yes, Okay, So Nicole's writing a book about celebrity deaths. This is gonna be fascinating because we're fascinated with celebrity anyway. Yeah, but when they pass away, sometimes we don't get the whole story.

Yeah, and it's often times wrong. So I've been writing about celebrity deaths actually for the past five years. So I have a collection of almost a hundred of them already because I do it every week. And yeah, I mean it's it's really interesting. So I started writing the book and I've only done nine so far because I have until next year to write it. So I've been just doing it every couple of days and I start.

Wait wait, back up. Wow, I know al Capone, I can see, But Gilda Radner died from so civil No, no, no, she.

Has a varying kid. I'm just.

What about Amy wine House.

Will she be in there, Amy Winehouse will be in there. Yeah. I wrote about her a couple of years ago because she died from effects of the alcoholism. So it's it's gonna be really awesome. Really, it's it's comprehensive, just people Alex Trebek, Steve Jobs, just Freddie Mercury, just really it's it's awesome, And it's just it's not a lot of reading, because I'm not a huge reader like that. You could read one and be done and go back to it and start off. It's not a continuous book.

Like a fun little anthology. Yeah, it's just like cliff notes.

You know.

One of the things that she said that I thought was so fascinating. I think about it all the time whenever we hear a cause of death now, is that cardiac arrest as a cause of death is kind of a cop out because everyone's gonna die when their heart stops, of course, but what caused the heart to stop is more interesting in what they kind of try to analyze that.

It literally just happened yesterday because I wrote it down because I want to put it in my book. So Michael Jackson was the most That's what they were saying he died of cardiac arrest. But cardiac arrest just major heart stops. So like, no, shit, that's how everybody dies, right. But yeah, so they just did it with Jane Goodall. They just came out and said her cause of death was cardiac arrest. I just saw it, and she died from complications of old age, which, well, that.

Was your favorite to you, right, because that's how they said the queen died old age.

Old age doesn't answer my question, like the body just gives out?

What is it?

Okay, what's the scientific term for the body just gives up?

And there's things that happen as you age, like your blood vessels become weaker, and you can get calcifications and things like that which can lead to stroke and coronary artery disease and things like that. But that would be what you put on the death certificate. That's what would be the cause of death, not old age.

Old age.

I love it and I use it in my lecture. Is an example of her actual death certificate. It says old agent.

That's wild that I wanted to stay in mind too.

And you know, in the hospital and stuff, we always have doctors that put cardiac arrest, and then we have to go up to them and say this is this is not a cause of death, like change it, figure out what happened and be more specific.

So it's funny though, because we had an episode coming out this week. Actually we had another expert, justin Scott Morgan on our show and the two of them are geeking out about causes of death, and we were talking about a story where a woman unfortunately was kicked in the chest by a student and died. And I said, as a layperson, I'm accepting a face value that she just got kicked and died. And they're talking about all this.

The kicked and died the certificate. I wanted to to say, just gave up. He just gave up, give up, he was done, so go ahead.

Is there a lot of conflict then between doctors and pathology teams when they put something like that on a death certificate and you guys come back and say no, no, no, you need to change that. Do you guys argue about it?

No?

They're usually pretty good it's just kind of a pain because we have to track them down and sometimes you know they're gone for their night, they're not coming back for two days, and things like that could hold up the process. But oftentimes they especially if they're getting an autopsy, they might think that they know what the cause of death was and then we open them and we change it because it's different. Well so and they don't get they don't argue with it, like we just can show

By the way, you're listening to Mother Knows Death with Nicole and her daughter Maria Stars from our podcast every week the pathology, forensics, death and fun stuff that goes along with it. In your book, though, of your anatomy book, yes, do you have Is there an an actual alphabet like as for anus? Can you recite every single letter?

No, it's because I had to do. I wanted it to be an alphabet and some things I had to there's there's not really an anatomical organ you would say for Z for example, So I use zygomatic bone, which is your dis bone in your face. Here your cheekbone, so that sometimes I used a whole organ like the heart. Sometimes I used I might used circulatory system just to just to fit it in. But yeah, it was very hard. I used X chromosome okay, yeah, but it just it

This is my point. I need for you to nail down the official out for bet get back to me next time and.

First light it by hard. Yeah. I'm just like, I know, there's anus, extramity. Everything's there, every single part of your body and every organ, adrenal, gland, elvis. I didn't write that book for like three years. My memory is just the best memory and the worst memory.

It's weird and funny what the brain will hold on to and what it was. So let's talk about that. As far as the body goes, you can see how a tendon works, you can see how a bone works or whatever. But when it comes to the brain, that's a whole other world. That's a it's like it's like deep sea diving. It's you're you're you're diving down to the bottom of the ocean, and it's it's a world that we're still finding out more and more every day.

Well, most people don't realize this, but they're specific. You know, there's specific brain surgeons. Well, there's specific pathologists that just do brain and spinal quarter or the nervous system. And so when we look when we take out a brain and look at it autopsy, we're looking for something that's blatantly obvious, like they had a stroke and aneurysm, there's a tumor or something like that, but the very specific

Yes, are you saying you didn't go to class on brain day.

Day?

People? Exactly, Like it's a whole other field of medicine accent. It's just and it's it's very hard to tell. When they slice the brain, they'll just look at it and say, oh, this minute little thing is this and this. I mean, you can't see things grossly with your naked eye, like schizophrenic or something like that. But you could see Alzheimer's. You could see CTE. The chronic traumatic encephalopathy is the one that you associate with football players, you know, hitting

Wow, I bet well. One of the things I learned from her about the brain, and our dentist, Elvis, he listened to the podcast and was so happy she brought it up, was how very closely your mouth is connected to your brain, and if you do not take care of your mouth, what can happen to your brain.

Maybe that's my problem.

I'm positive.

I'm going today. I'll have them do me right, chick that up.

I mean, essentially, covity can kill you, right.

Yeah, it really can.

Talk about how they can kill you.

I actually had a really crazy case of a young girl in her early twenties that had a wisdom tooth pulled out and then she just got a terrible infection and we got her whole entire jaw resected that they sent down to the lab because she had osteomylitis, which is an infection in the bone, and they had to remove her entire jaw because of it. A lot of times people take for granted these minor procedures that we get done, and there could be really bad complications with

What's up scary?

You know, I'm fascinated with the liver because I know that that's associated with drinking and stuff. Could you tell right away when you see a liver, like, oh, that person drink a lot over their lifetime, and what does that look like.

So first, when you drink a lot, you get your liver starts to get replaced by fat and it gets it actually gets bigger than it normally should get. And it's really cool because sometimes when you open the body, the liver's so big that you could see the impressions from the ribs because it's pushing up against the ribs. It's really I mean, it's not cool for them obviously, but it's cool scientifically. And then once it has so fatty,

That's how my system was after college.

A little bit difference between like the fat the fat because that's the omental fat. That's the fat that sits on top of your organs that acts as not only protection for your organs, but it insulates and keeps them to your body temperature.

As well, so, as you know, mother and daughter doing a podcast together, how much fun do you have when you sit in front of those microphones both of you talk to me about a topic or two you've had recently on the podcast, where you just go on and on because you're so excited about where you're going. You have way too much material because you just get so passionate about how much fun you're having something.

This is the memory thing. It's like people say, would you, I'm like, I don't even know what we talked about.

I mean you like to go down the morose, gross avenue from time to time, and.

Oh yeah, we have fun. You know. We have some stories where we end up going on tangents where we start talking about personal stuff. We really love making fun of my grandparents. They're such easy targets and our listeners love hearing the stories. So those are always fun. And then we fight sometimes and the listeners.

Seem to like that, so we do. We fight, and then they and I'm just like, she's my kid. I'm sorry, I'm gonna put her in a place, but she's like, you're a boomer. Stop it.

Like also, just two Italian women talking to each other, So I think people think we're always fighting, but it's.

You should see our family parties. It's everyone is talking over each other and it's really loud.

No.

I mean yesterday though, I went on especially a tangent about Kevin Federline's book for probably way too long, and everybody didn't want to hear about it. But we get passionate about things, and I feel bad for Brittany so good.

Yeah, and I have a different opinion, are you too? Yeah? So that was a like I was just like, nah, so yeah, I just look at it like like he he bowled her out. And this is some of the stuff that that was in that book, if it's true, is like if that was a person that was living in your neighborhood, you'd be like that person's scumbag.

And she have their kids, right, like, this is the mother of his children, thank you, And she already has issues that he has said she's helped with, so putting this out there is not helping the woman.

And what are the kids thinking? How can you do that to your children?

I agree, I think he's exploiting a mentally unwell person, thank you. And it doesn't matter if the kids are five or forty five. I just think there's a point where you don't keep talking about it.

But but she said she wanted them dead, So I think that they're like.

How do we know?

She said that it's not there?

Now do we know?

She's evolving into hell?

Here we go?

He said.

She said, are there any celebrities that you look at or people in general that you look at and you can tell before you cut into them, before anything comes out, that person has something going on? They're a little sick, and you know what it is?

Oh yeah, lots of different things.

Why you look at me like that?

And sometimes I see certain things like one of one thing is is clubbing of the fingertips, right, So it's very unusual and I could pick it out on a person if their fingertips, it's the certain way that their fingernails look on the on the tips of their fingers. And you can look at a person and just say, Okay, they might have some kind of lung pathology or hard

But it is something talk about like look at my okay, don't look at that one. A nail went thro that fingernail to ignore that one.

Yours look fine. They look they look very specific. I don't think anyone here if you had them, I would be like, yo, she'll have telling you good, that's good, save your life. Yeah I did. I will tell somebody if I see something that I think is alarming and she yells at me, because I'll just say something to somebody at the.

Mall, say.

I told a strangers, hey, by the way, what will you see on someone? Give it us An example of this.

Guy that was checking us out once he had this this baker cyst. I saw that. I was just like, oh yeah, baker systo.

It wasn't like that for every twenty buying the kids clothes and she just goes baker cysts.

That develops and you know, like in your wrist there. I just thought it was I do. I see people all the time, and especially with the when I was writing the book, I see such rare pathology sometimes that I'm like, oh God, I really just I'm not trying to be rude, like I will. I want them to tell their story. And I feel like I feel like I do that because a lot of times people look really unusual and people are not nice to them, and

Yeah, I get that, and I've I've been really interested and I've talked to her about this before because she sees all kinds of things. I said, is there something that you would never allow your children to do because of what you see? The aftermath is when people come out.

Yeah. I mean there's lots of different things, Like some parents are crazier than me as far as like the trampoline park and stuff. I don't really care about that stuff,

I remember you specifically saying motorcycles are an absolutely for you.

That's a no now. These e bikes, yeah, we're the scooter rentals when we go travel and things. I'm like, no, now,

Like it's bad, you know, Puse there's no helmet laws there.

I don't think I don't think so either.

No, I see people in Miami ripping at one hundred miles an hour on ninety five with no helmet on whatsoever. Yeah, that's frightening.

Wow, honestly, like the helmet is not going to do anything. Like if you're going slower, definitely, but if you're going nine to miles an hour, I don't know that that's saving your life. It's kind of a false sense of security.

Have you ever in your time in a pathology session? What would you call that when you're actually doing the autopsy right, Sorry, you actually get emotional and had to leave the room, and you're thinking, if only this person had made this different decision, they wouldn't be here right now. Do you ever get that wound up with it? Or do you just look at the body parts as body parts and try to figure it out.

I mean, I've had certain situations where I've gone home and been maybe a little upset about something, but not to the point where I couldn't do my job or had to set aside, you know, Like, so you're heartless. Yeah, that's exactly why I'm not a nurse, because I just can turn it off pretty easy.

But don't you feel like you become numb because you see so much of this.

No, it's I don't know that it really ever bothered me. It's very it's very easy for me to disconnect from it. And I feel like if I was too connected, it would be I wasn't doing my job or something.

You know.

Yeah, I mean there's certain cases like we had a guy that was that and this is just like a kind of boring death. The guy at pneumonia, he was forty, but then his wife had had made sure in his body bag, like his Eagles hat was with them, and I just like, you know, that makes it like more personal, and you're like, oh god, this guy was going to watch the game this weekend and his and his wife and he's my age, or you know, stuff like that. And one time we got a colon in the lab

So if you have advice for us how we stay alive? What is it that we need to do that? You see constantly people are messing up.

What mistake are we making? Over and over?

People aren't gonna want to hear this. But alcohol's terrible. Okay, it's just terrible.

Well are you looking at me like that?

It's I feel like the as the most recent study that there's no amount of alcohol that is is I don't want to sound like like like a what's a fun sucker from Debbie down? Yeah, like straight, yeah, I mean in moderation everything, you know, besides crack or something.

But yeah, there was so many, so many years I would go by saying, you know what, you need to have a glass of red wine every single day whatever. But now the news studies are saying no, you should have nothing with alcohol at all.

To say nothing is is just kind of It's like the same theory I have with taking YouTube away from my kids, like if I take it one hundred percent away from them, that it's just gonna make them want it more. Kind of. So I think people can do it once in a while, but just a lot of people drink and multiple days a week, multiple drinks and think that they're not an alcoholic, when in fact that would be the definition. So and then that's when I mean the social and the and the brain damage you're

It's all the fun stuff, the smoking, the drinking. Are you gonna say sugar, No, I mean moderate.

I don't know moderation. I don't want to be like that because like please like look at me, like I eat a lot of sugar, you know, like, I'm not. I'm not like trying to. I don't drink, though, I'm kind of I'm not. I've seen enough. I used to do liver the liver transplants or the explants, which is the bad liver that they took out of someone before they put the new liver in. And I just saw a lot of it and it was enough to you know,

You know.

So I don't want anything if I don't have to get it taken out or put in exactly good.

So, So coming up on some future podcasts, I know you have no memory whatsoever. Maybe it's a lack of alcohol, too much sugar, I don't know. Do you have any podcast topics coming up that you are just excited to push play on and let the world here.

Yes, we are interviewing the prosecutor from the Golden State killer case, and that's one of my favorite true crime cases.

Talk about it.

Do you know about this crime at all a little bit?

But I'm nowhere near as much as you know obviously.

So these crimes took place in California back in the seventies. For a very long time, they believed it was three different perpetrators. So one was just a man burglarizing houses, the second was somebody committing sexual assault, and the third was a murderer. And through all these years they were able to tie them to one person.

Really through the.

Help of Pat and Oswald's former wife, Michelle McNamara.

Wow.

So she really helped reopen that case and get some traction behind it, and she unfortunately passed away before they found the killer. But just in twenty eighteen, I believe they were able to take DNA from a rape kit and they found the man and he was in his seventies living with his daughter and they arrested him. So that was kind of a groundbreaking case for forensics using DNA in that type of way, and we were very fortunate to have the prosecutor coming on our show.

Wow, it's exciting.

Yeah, So next time Nate's out murdering someone, give him a little tip, what like what are they leaving behind? And maybe not your specialty, but I'm sure maybe you've seen as far as evidence on a body. What are we leaving behind that's gonna get us thrown in prison?

Hair is number one? And then in the Idaho murder's case, he left behind a fingerprint on the knight's sheath. They were able to extract DNA from that.

What else are people leaving?

But you know, people think they're just such good criminals, and you would think they would get better over time with all the access to internet and these stories we have, but they're just getting worse.

Sloppy, sloppy work, Nate.

Sorry, I'll do better next time.

Curely any DNA left behind, bad idea. Well has matt suits to kill people's This is.

Why they say if you ever get attacked or anything, to make sure that you scratch the you know them, to get DNA because that can really that's really gonna be the way to really catch anyone for sure, because a lot of stuff is circumstantial and you don't want somebody getting off you know who else? Oh we have So do you remember Gabby Petito case?

Yes?

Yeah, so, I'm interviewing her stepfather this week and that will be on next next week. We're doing that, Yeah, so, and he's awesome. Jim Schmidt. So he's also a fireman, so we have this like connection to talk about things, and so he's we're going to really just talk about that case and just all of the trauma their family has been through a lot of it. I haven't heard really on the news or that perspective, So I'm looking forward to that the podcast.

Of course, Mother Knows Death, of course Mom and Daughter. It makes sense to me. You guys are always so interesting when you come see us. Thank you so much all day. Thank you. We didn't get as gross in ichy this time.

There's still time.

Well, ask a Nike question, a question. What's the ichiest thing you've been studying lately?

What did you just see on my instagram?

Oh? Yeah, on the instagram, the first thing you see.

Is it was the word smegma, which we're not sure if it's smegma or smegma, but there was a what was a hairball amegma covered hairball that you were covered someone.

Covering someone's i U D That was removed so when they so. An i U D is an inner uterine device that is put up inside of the uterus as a birth control and it has little strings that hang off of it. Like little plastic sutures that hang off of it, so it could be pulled out if it needs to. It's also really important that that thing stays in place because that's considered a foreign body, and they like to your body likes to attack it, and it does.

How did it get up there?

Yeah, we understand the Smegma part.

Central intercourse.

Yeah, I would. I would say yes, through through sex. I mean, if you have hair around the hole, it's found to get off there, is it? I mean, I I don't know. I would just like one one.

Together, fascinating.

I love it.

There's so much good stuff.

Nicole and Maria, thank you so much for coming in today. The podcast, of course, Mother Knows Death, a part of the Elvis DRAN podcast network and doing brilliantly.

By the way, the Elvis da Ran after party

MHM