Introducing: No Such Thing

No Such Thing is a show where three best friends and journalists settle their dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. Hosted by Manny Fidel, Devin Joseph, and Noah Friedman, each episode begins with a simple but often heated debate, such as are dentists scamming us?

Are outdoor cats happier than indoor cats? Kids can't read anymore, does it matter? The hosts then discuss the topic amongst themselves, using their own knowledge and gut feelings, leading to constant debates and expressions of opinion about the selected topic. Then they go out into the world, investigate,

Talk to experts and conduct some experiments. Finally, the guys bring their findings back to the group to see if they can change minds, enlighten each other, and move past their emotional truths. Here's a sample. This is Devin. In today's episode a question Are dentists scamming us? We dig into the dental industry's surprisingly dark history. A lot of the the replacement teeth were from corpses. We hear from someone who uncovered a dentist drilling healthy teeth for profit.

How did I let this happen to me, twenty eight root canals? I must be stupid. And I talk with a startup founder who's trying to blow up the entire industry. Going to the dentist is one of the biggest scams of our modern time. No. Thank you. All right, so in the studio today, we're joined by a friend of the pod. A licensed therapist and a writer of the reality test newsletter, Lily Kaplan. 嗨大家 How's it going? So happy to be back.

You may remember Lily from uh the Do I Need Therapy episode. Um, so we're glad to have you back for a discussion that has nothing to do with therapy. I love that. But Lily, actually specifically we wanted you on this episode because uh at Mani and Mia's baby shower a few weeks ago, um, at the after afters, uh we were all gathered around the table. And I was complaining about dentists and saying, Hey

I think they're trying to scam me. I think dentists were scammers. We had some other people in the group saying, Yeah Dentists are scamming us. And we had one dentist defender at the table. We had one person who said, Guys, they're doing what they think is best. They care about your oral care. They're trying to prevent things from getting worse. And that was you, Lily. Mm.

You were you were defending the dentists. Which was which was I thought a an interesting take to have. Um because I feel like brave dentists have, as we'll talk about in this episode, a pretty negative reputation. But you you came in there, you you know, s supporting them and speaking up for them. Giving voice to the voiceless.

So I think that my take on dentistry Is a bit of a defense, um a bit of a yo-yo from where I used to sit. So I I've struggled with a bit more than a bit of uh of what one might call dentophobia throughout my life. Um so I've been super, super, super avoidant of dentists. Um, which has caused some problems for my teeth. And I had to get like a whole bunch of work done on my mouth, um, which

um, was pretty painful and terrible and I had to really overcome my fear of dentists um and going to the dentist. I find it a very vulnerable experience to go to the dentist. Um and yeah, so I think coming off of that, like I was not, especially that night, and probably still I'm not emotionally prepared. to have the view that dentistry is a scam because I was so far in the other direction of like, I will not go to the dentist, I cannot go to the dentist, I can't handle the dentist. Mm-hmm.

that the dentist did become truly necessary. Um and now I would say I'm of the mind that like You should go so that you don't end up like me two summers ago. Yeah. Noah, talk us through what what are your dentist interactions been like over the years? Um over the past few years. None. Okay. I'm go I'm booked I'm booked to go Soon, long wait list. Um that was news to me'cause in the past I've been able to hop right over there. Um Yeah.

Yeah, so I didn't have any trauma with dent I never minded going, but I never It was just more of a inconvenient thing to do, but I did feel like my teeth were cleaner after. Yeah. So basically you're going in for cleanings, not regularly as we Yeah. It's more laziness than uh than anything else. You know, than like uh Mistrust, distrust. Okay, so the reason we're doing this episode um is because of my experience with the dentist.

Um, for most of my life up to un up into high school, I had pretty limited interactions with dentists, never had cavities, besides when I was like a kid. So I was just going for cleanings until my senior year of high school. Well we're transport ourselves to a the bowling alley in New Jersey. Thank you. Where it's the final frame. It's me and my friends. We're going head to head.

And I am tied for last place. Mm. And if you're a bowling head, you know the one rule of bowling with your friends is you don't want to come in last. So there I just need to hit one to not come in last. So I said, okay, I just don't just don't get a gutter ball. That's pretty easy. I don't know why in my mind, you know, I think I want to be a little bit of a jokester too. So I was like, let me let me granny bowl it. So are you familiar with granny bowl? Is that where you do it between your legs?

Yes, yes. You put two hands on a ball, you sort of get your legs nice and wide and you sort of pull it the ball between your legs and then push it out. Yep. So I did that and I slipped. Fell on my face. Cause my hands were up. Remember, when you granny bowl, your your hands are going sure. So they're above my head and chipped. three or four of my teeth. Like on a on a diagonal. And I know it sounds horrific. It did not hurt at all.

I d I knew immediately that my teeth came out because I could feel there was a gap. Um but I wasn't bleeding and there was no pain. And the worst part is I went over the line. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. So, So it didn't even So you also lost? You lost more than your four teeth. Little did I know um the trajectory that that would put me on because replacing teeth is very, very expensive. Um so even with insurance at the time I ended up having to spend like three or four grand.

out of pocket for it. Um and the thing that people don't think about when you get dental work is that it's not a one and done. If you get teeth replaced, you have to get those teeth replaced If you get it done right, like every 10 years or so. So, and you're paying thousands of dollars every 10 years or so to get those teeth replaced. So I've gone in to just replace the crown, but my dentist has been really, really

trying to get me to replace all of my fake teeth because she's like, I just wanna do'em all, make it all look, you know, the color will match better. I can make them match better. Mm-hmm. And I was like, Okay, theoretically that sounds fun. Like, let's find out. How much is that gonna cost? She's just like, Okay, they run through the insurance, they get an estimate, it's like seven or eight grand. Okay, now let's just do the one thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking.

If they're already all the tools are out. If it's only gonna be slightly more expensive, you know, like why not do Well then they're all on the same timeline. Exactly. So I told him no. Then it you know, they're trying to convince me you can do a payment. I was like, I don't care if it's paying it right now or over a year, I don't wanna pay seven or eight grand on teeth just for fun. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

By now, pay later. It's like I'm still paying. So no thank you. So they you know, they seem to get the message. I come back and the thing when you're getting teeth replaced, you have to as you know, when you're getting work done, you have to go in multiple times. So I had to go in like three or four times for this crown.

And every time I would go in, it was as if I had not had the conversation with them that they were only doing the one tooth. Mm-hmm. So they would down to the last time I was going in to get my permanent in The dentist was like, Okay, so this is gonna take a bit longer'cause we're doing, you know, all these teeth and I was like, No, no, no, no, no. No, we're not. So

It just felt and I had liked I've been going to this dentist for like two or three years now. I've liked that dentist up to this point. But it just to me felt very scammy. in a way of that like I've been very clear of you that and I was I was pulling that I can't afford it. Yeah. You know, I was like, I that's gonna shut it down. Like, you know, you could say whatever you want about like the cosmetics of it. I was like, I can't afford this right now. I just I just cannot afford to do it.

And the fact that they were still bringing it up every single time. I was like, something's going on here. And I I have talked to other people who've been like, Oh yeah, I've been going to the dentist for years. It's been fine. I go to this random dentist. He says I have all these cavities, so I had to get all these cavities filled. So

I guess with this episode what I want to look into is Is there a dental standard? What are dentists actually doing when they're in your mouth, right? How do they determine you need a cavity filled? Right? Is is there some sort of standard or are they just freestyling?

Um, and then I also want to deal with this idea of dental insurance and why with all these experiences that I've had, I've always had dental insurance and I'm still paying thousands of dollars out of pocket. Why doesn't dental insurance cover more of my oral So we're gonna take a break. Yeah. Right. I'll talk to a dentist who found out a college. And I chat with a guy who says his startup All that after that.

All right, we are back. We have a lot to get into in this episode, but first I wanted to try to learn how the hell we got here, so I called up journalist AJ Jacobs for a history lesson. Well, I like the premise'cause for instance I went to the dentist and they told me I had to get my tooth out. Like how am I supposed to know whether that's true or not? So AJ used to write this column for this magazine called Mental Floss.

And the column was called The Bad Old Days, because the premise was that the good old days were not good. They were terrible. They were dangerous, they were racist, sexist. Smelly, they were just horrible, painful, And every month he would cover a new topic, and one of his most memorable months was when he covered dentistry. You know, I don't like going to the dentist, but I certainly don't like reading about the history of dentistry, because it is just horrible.

So let's say it's the seventeenth century, you're having an issue with one of your teeth. As you said you would typically go to a barber surgeon. Which was a combination of a barber and a surgeon and dentistry was often lumped in with surgery because you're taking Stuff out of the body. That was basically surgery. And an important thing to note is that during this time period, doctors did not perform surgery. So the church viewed surgery as being unclean because you were touching bodily fluids.

So barber surgeons were seen as being more similar to something like a blacksmith. So back to our roleplay. If you have a toothake, Navy would rip your tooth out basically with no anesthetic at all. Or maybe they'd give you some whiskey. Or something even weirder. For some reason in the seventeenth, eighteenth century

Medical practitioners were obsessed with enemas. There's not a huge overlap between your teeth and your butt, but they just were like, let's shoot things off the butt and see if that helps the teeth. So barber surgeons were basically your best case scenario back then because there were also some straight up grifters. Are dentists scamming us? Listen to the full episode to hear about the dark history of dentistry, the story of a dentist who uncovered widespread unnecessary procedures.

And why even experts say the dental healthcare industry isn't built in your favor? Listen to no such thing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday.