Nicole Noble is currently in her first year of Dental School at Midwestern University Glendale campus. She is an AZ native who grew up in Show Low, AZ with 5 siblings. Her father graduated from University of Pacific in 1975 and opened a practice in Show Low where Nicole started assisting him during high school. She went on to pursue marriage, motherhood and a cosmetology license. After 4 years working in a salon, she decided dental assisting was where her heart was. She was an assistant at an office in Glendale for many years, and after her divorce in 2010, she was inspired to become a dentist. She had her heart set on Midwestern University. A single mother of 3 girls she was working part-time and taking classes full-time. It took her 6 years, an AS, BS and MA and 3 application cycles to finally be accepted at MWU. She is truly living her dreams now and she feels very strongly that girls and women should be encouraged and supported in dental careers. She is interested in giving back to the community by working in the non-profit realm to provide dentistry for single mothers. She strives every day to inspire her daughters to work hard and set goals to make themselves better people.
VIDEO - DUwHF #966 - Nicole Noble
AUDIO - DUwHF #966 - Nicole Noble
Howard: It is just a huge honor today to have Nicole Noble in the house. Thank you so much for coming by.
Nicole: Thank you, Howard.
Howard: You’re a D1 student at Midwestern.
Nicole: Yes.
Howard: We’d like to talk to people at every part of the journey. We’ve done a thousand shows now, and we’ve done like twenty-five endodontists, twenty-five paediatric dentists, we’ve done every one of the nine specialities, we’ve done all this, but... in the journey… I’m so honored that you came, first year of dental school.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: First of all it takes a lot of guts. Most people in first year of dental school, “I’m too scared to go on the deal.” But I wanted you to come on because number one, the older guys need to know how you think because they’re trying to employ you as an associate when you get out of school. Everybody wants to know how everybody is in the journey. So let me read your bio.
Nicole: Okay.
Howard: Nicole Noble is currently in her first year of dental school at Midwestern University, Glendale campus. So I’m right here in Phoenix right now, in our home and Glendale is about… how long did it take you drive from Glendale?
Nicole: About an hour.
Howard: About an hour. Glendale, Arizona. That’s where the University of Cardinals stadium is.
Nicole: It’s nearby. Yes.
Howard: The hockey stadium, the Coyotes. She’s an Arizona native who grew up in Show Low, Arizona with five siblings. Her father graduated from University of Pacific in 1975 and opened a dental practice in Show Low where Nicole started assisting him during high school. She went on to pursue marriage, motherhood and a cosmetology licence. After four years of working in a salon, she decided dental assisting was where her heart was. She was an assistant at an office in Glendale for many years, and after her divorce in 2010, she was inspired to become a dentist.
She had her heart set on Midwestern University. A single mother of three girls she was working part-time and taking classes full-time. It took her six years, an AS, BS and MA and three application cycles to finally be accepted at MWU, Midwestern University. She is truly living her dream now and she feels very strongly that girls and women should be encouraged and supported in dental careers. She is interested in giving back to the community by working in the non-profit realm to provide dentistry for single mothers. She strives every day to inspire her daughters to work hard and set goals to make themselves better people.
Her daughters are seventeen, fourteen and twelve. The reason I invited her to come on the show is because, oh my God, it was love at first tweet. I tweeted the speakers for the townie meeting and this little D1 girl replies back, ‘ten men one woman, come on, Howard, you can do better than that.’ I thought, ‘I’m already in love with this girl’. So I said, ‘you’ve got to come on this show’. So what did that tweet mean to you? When you saw that?
Nicole: Okay.
Howard: It obviously touched a sore nerve.
Nicole: Well, what I see lately is there’s kind of a push with feminism to get more exposure in the sciences. As women we have panels that are all men and they’re starting to call them ‘manels’.
Howard: Manels.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Never heard that word. Are you talking about in dentistry or just in society?
Nicole: Science in general, and technology, and dentistry obviously falls under that quite a bit. So there’s just not enough representation of women, and you did have more than one woman on your tweet promoting the townie meeting. But most of them were dental hygienists, office managers.
Howard: Right.
Nicole: But all the men were dentists.
Howard: All the dentists were men.
Nicole: Well, yeah.
Howard: Yeah.
Nicole: Okay.
Howard: Yeah. Well all the dentists were men and the women on there were hygienists or consultants.
Nicole: Right.
Nicole: When I tweeted that, like I said, my tweets are like a tree falling in the forest because I don’t expect anyone to ever read them. It’s more of a catharsis for me, and when you replied I just about died because it made me respect you quite a bit, because you’re actually motivated to change it. You’re seeing a problem, and you’re seeing, ‘okay, let’s fix this’, and you brought me into your team to have a discussion over email and I thought that was very amazing.
Howard: Yeah, I copied the tweet and tweeted to the staff. The reason I did it was because it was the first time in my whole life that I was ever…wrong. I mean I can’t even say it.
Nicole: Hurts.
Howard: Because it’s the first time I ever said the word. But, yeah, I sent it to the panel. I like that manels. I sent that to the staff. So I can tell you on my journey when I was fresh from dental school, the senior class had one woman.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: You know what her name was? Everybody called her man/woman.
Nicole: Oh my gosh.
Howard: Because no-one could really really tell if she was a man or a woman.
Nicole: Wow.
Howard: Then in my class, when I tell you the story you’re not going to believe it. So my dean, through the chancellor of the University of Missouri, was under a lot of political pressure to get these classes from all white men....
Nicole: Right.
Howard: To half women, and ethnic minorities, and the whole nine yards. Basically if he didn’t have this quota of women, he was going to be fired. So on the first day of dental school he was going to be fired. So he went into the hygiene class, to the girls who did hygiene and said, ‘hey, any of you girls want to switch over to freshman year of dental?’ These girls raised their hand.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Then they were just moved.
Nicole: Absolutely.
Howard: A lot of people were really against that. When you tell a white male that there’s white privilege, they’re in complete denial.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: That just means they don’t read, write, or have any empathy or sympathy. I mean you’ve got to start somewhere and I just think it’s a beautiful thing.
Nicole: Yes.
Howard: As much as people complain about America, the women in Saudi Arabia just got their right this year to drive a car.
Nicole: Right. Yeah.
Howard: Then in Iran they’re starting to take off the… what is it called?
Nicole: The hijab.
Howard: The hijab.
Nicole: Or the scarf.
Howard: The first ones were arrested.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: But now that they’re sensing a mass movement, the government’s very… by the way I’m very romantically involved with the hijab. Is that how you say it?
Nicole: I think.
Howard: Because I went to catholic school. My two older sisters were nuns, they wore all that. Everytime I see a Middle Eastern woman wearing a hijab, I fondly think of all the nuns that taught me and my sister. My older sister Mary Kay who’s name is now Sister [inaudible 00:06:11], I mean she wears the same thing. To me it’s a very familiar look.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I actually like that look. You know you’ve gone to too much catholic school when you think it’s a rocking hot look. Your freshman class, what is it? Probably half men, half women.
Nicole: It’s about half and half, I would say. Yeah. We have some really remarkable women in my class, it’s been fun to be surrounded by such amazing people. I thought I was special, and then I got into dental school and now I’m like these people are amazing.
Howard: Yeah.
Nicole: They’re remarkable.
Howard: Every time I go on a charity dentistry event, last one I went to was in Mexico with about ten kids from AT Still, one before that was climbing Kilimanjaro with four or five kids from the local dental school. You spend time in these dental schools you’re like, ‘my God, this profession is awesome’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Because leaving this profession in the hands of you kids, dentistry is probably in a better place then than it is today. I cannot tell you how many dentists practice today and think they’re all that and a bag of chips, and they couldn’t even get accepted in dental school today.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s hard. It’s very hard.
Howard: They got accepted in dental school with three two, three four.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Three six average. So many dentists out there, they couldn’t even get in.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s really hard, and I thought with all the experience that I had in dentistry as a dental assistant I would kind of be a shoe in, and then I was really humbled. Because when I was going through school I was, like I said, a mom and I was working part-time. So my GPA wasn’t anything to write home about, it was about three point two five. I took the DAT the first time and had about an eighteen, had that application. Immediately denied. But I kept trying.
Howard: Eighteen out of what? What is it? Thirty-two.
Nicole: I think it’s thirty.
Howard: A thirty.
Nicole: But nineteen is kind of like the base. I just thought, ‘well I have all this experience and I know a lot about dentistry, so that should count for something. But it didn’t really, so I kept going. Retook the DAT, raised my GPA, got into the masters program at Midwestern in Biomedical Sciences, and that’s when I realised that I really wasn’t ready with my undergrad degree. When I did that masters program it was so rigorous, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it prepared me for dental school in such a way that I know how to study now, I know so much more about the systems and the stuff that we’re studying in Basic Sciences now. But it is really difficult to get into dental school now.
Howard: Yeah.
Nicole: So we’re surrounded by a amazing people.
Howard: That’s another thing that dentists are always saying, ‘why do the dental schools keep raising their tuition?’ ‘Why do they keep opening up more schools?’ Because they can. Ten years ago the dental schools figured out that when they raise their tuition ten thousand a year, nothing happened on the supply side.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: The same number of applicants.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So they thought, ‘well, I’m going to raise another ten thousand,’ and you think, ‘oh, they’re immoral, they’re bad, they’re whatever.’ Then what do you bitch about? That thirty years ago I used to send my claim to Delta of Arizona, and I set my own fees. Thousand bucks for a crown, they pay half. Now Delta tells ninety-five percent of the dentists their fee, and I think that fee in my office from Delta is like seven hundred or something. Well, if you could raise your crown fee from seven hundred to a thousand would you go do it? Yes. So why’re you being hypocritical to dental schools? Why do they do it? Because they can. If every dental school raise their tuition to a hundred and twenty-five thousand a year, so it would be half a million to go four years. They’d still fill all their classes with qualified candidates because there’s that much demand.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: What percent of your classmates is daddy a dentist?
Nicole: I’m not really sure. My dad is a dentist.
Howard: Right.
Nicole: I think probably, if I were to spitball, maybe twenty percent. Fifteen percent.
Howard: Usually with dental schools it’s a quarter to a third.
Nicole: Okay.
Howard: Out of that, say quarter, what percent is dad paying the tuition?
Nicole: I have no idea.
Howard: It’s pretty high.
Nicole: I would imagine.
Howard: It’s pretty high.
Nicole: It’s pretty high.
Howard: Well all four of my kids got accepted to dental school, I mean I not even sure what they charge.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Because you just want them to go into the family business.
Nicole: Right. Yeah.
Howard: So basically what we’re saying, it’s very pricing elastic. What is price elastic? The price has a very elastic effect on demand. So a Lamborghini is a great car, but at three hundred thousand dollars they don’t even sell a hundred. So what do they sell more of? A Ford Taurus, because it’s thirty thousand. When your car is thirty thousand it’s a more selling car in America. When it’s three hundred thousand, it’s just some unique novel thing. So when you raise your price you are taxed or regulated, you get less of it. When you lower your price, unregulated, untaxed, you’ll sell more of it. It’s just simple economics.
If a man talks about a woman, he’s a sexist. If an Irish guy talks about other races, he’s a racist. I can’t say that like black people run faster than white people, that would be racism. But if you watch the Olympics everyone who’s ever got a gold in the hundred metre was not Irish. So I keep hearing all these men say that now that the class is half women it’s going to change everything, particularly they think that the DSO’s who want all these employees are going to fill it all with women, because women don’t want the hassle of owning their own business. They’d rather work at Heartland, or Pacific, or Aspen, because they’re going to have families and you’ve got three daughters.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: So do you buy that? Because as a man, in my sexist thoughts I’m thinking, ‘well the ultimate super mother would be the woman running her own business.’
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Because if your kid fell off her bike and was in the hospital you could just tell your staff, ‘hey cancel all my patients’.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Or you could hire an associate. I think a super mom would want full control and own her own business. Open interview this, do you think dentistry going from all males to half women, will that change the profession?
Nicole: Absolutely.
Howard: How?
Nicole: Well, first of all there’s still quite a bit of inequality within dentistry. I think it was last May, the Journal of American Dental Association posted an article that there’s about on average a seventy thousand dollar disparity between male dentists and female dentists.
Howard: When was that study?
Nicole: It was in May of 2016 I believe, or May 2017.
Howard: May of 2016. In what journal?
Nicola: In JADA.
Howard: In JADA.
Nicole: Is it JADA?
Howard: Oh, I don’t know.
Nicole: I don’t know.
Howard: All I know is no-one reads it because I’ve been published in it four times.
Nicole: Have you?
Howard: To this date no-one’s ever come up to me and said, ‘hey, I read your article on JADA’.
Nicole: It’s like my tweets.
Howard: So when I was published the fourth time in JADA, I’m not making this shit up. I thought to myself, ‘you know what? Why has no-one ever mentioned that?’
Nicole: Right.
Howard: So I said one day, ‘I’m going to talk to my homies I went to dental school with.’ I went to dental school four years living in the three storey house.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: With five of the funniest guys in the world. So I just called them up and just shoot the shit, ‘hey what up’, ‘what up, George’ and we talk and everything and it never came up. So right at the end I said, ‘so by the way did you see my article in JADA?’ ‘No, really what is it?’ I’m convinced that no-one reads the damn magazine.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: But anyway, so they said that male dentists made seventy-five thousand dollars more?
Nicole: On average. Yeah. They accounted for all the different things that they could think of, like males go into specialty more, oral surgery, endo are more male dominated. Like you were saying that women may want to stay home more, and they’re more altruistic, they want to go into community health more often. After they accounted for all that stuff there was still that huge disparity, and I think it’s once we get this fifty fifty equity with just the amount of dentists we’ll have some collective bargaining power with the women. We’ll be able to demand more for pay, and the other thing that bothers me a lot is disability insurance is forty-five percent higher for women.
Howard: Really?
Nicole: But why?
Howard: Because you guys drink and drive all the time. You’re just crashing cars all the way to work.
Nicole: We have lunch and learns all the time when I’m in school.
Howard: Did you ask to do them?
Nicole: I ask and they just say, ‘oh, women make more claims’.
Howard: Okay. So they’re actuarial.
Nicole: I tried to do a deep dive on researching that.
Howard: So email me that question, because we had Arizona’s… who’s that disability guy? Is Edward Cumetz a black headed guy? Yeah, so email me that.
Nicole: Okay.
Howard: I’ll reply back to you with his email.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah.
Howard: Yeah, there it is right there.
Nicole: This is so [inaudible 00:15:25], we’re going to watch a podcast while we’re filming a podcast.
Howard: We’re on the podcast watching a podcast. This is the twilight zone.
Nicole: This guy.
Howard: So we get him in on that.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: That would be a great article, maybe you and him could write up then.
Nicole: There we go.
Howard: So continue.
Nicole: Yeah, so if you have those two things together.
Howard: You make seventy-five thousand dollars a year less.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: You pay forty-five percent more for disability.
Nicole: Pay more. Right, so it’s like I mean you think of this all the time. The trajectory of your life, when you’re working forty years how is that going to add up by the time you’re retiring? When you’re a woman dentist compared to a man dentist. So I’m right there with you saying women should be going for ownership for sure. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We can do that if we want to, and then you have more control over the situation and as far as like who you employ, you can treat your employees with more empathy because a lot of time dental assistants are female. So if you have a female doctor that you get to work for you might have more to relate, and that’s not always true, that’s a sweeping generalisation.
Howard: That’s why I changed. My favourite orthodontist in the world is Ann Marie Gorczyca, she’s in the Bay area, and when she went to ortho school she was the first woman.
Nicole: Orthodontist?
Howard: Orthodontist.
Nicole: Nice.
Howard: She had to cringe a lot.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I mean it’s a very male environment, it was a cringing environment. Now she’s so excited because now she goes [inaudible 00:17:05] it’s almost all women.
Nicole: Yay.
Howard: So when I was little all the OBGYN’s were men, and now they’re all women. I’m predicting the first trillion dollar company to be Amazon, I think Facebook’s going to be contracting because I’ve already seen this already with MySpace and Friendsters and all that stuff. I’m predicting the first of the nine specialities in dentistry to go like OBGYN did, will be public health in pediatric dentistry.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I’ll tell you why. When anybody asks me what’s the major difference between men and women in dentistry, lecturing in fifty countries wherever there’s a lot of money you always find the men.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: With suits and ties. So in America where there’s no money, like teaching.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: It’s all women.
Nicole: Right. Right.
Howard: They do it from passion and the heart. When I go to very poor places like in Asia and Africa where there’s no money in dentistry, it’s all women. Just like ours is all teachers, and in meagre poor countries the men want to get into the government, and military where they get money and titles.
Nicole: Power.
Howard: Power. So I think that translates back to trust, something that no-one wants to talk about in America is that women do not trust men. Period. I’ll give you three examples, if a woman’s engine light comes on and she goes into the place and he says, ‘oh you need a whole new transmission’. How many times does a woman think, ‘I wonder if I really need a new transmission?’
Nicole: All the time.
Howard: All the time.
Nicole: Yeah. All the time.
Howard: When you go in to have a oil change and it says right there on the sign nineteen ninety-nine oil change and you go I’ve got a twenty. He comes out here and he goes, ‘well we’ve got to change your air filter…’
Nicole: Right.
Howard: ‘Flush your transmission’. What percent of the time do you call that bullshit?
Nicole: Like I need to see the air filter, is that actually my air filter?
Howard: There’s no trust. There’s no trust.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So when a man tells you, and you’re a woman and you have four cavities, and you’re like, ‘I just came in here for a cleaning’.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: ‘He said I can’t have a cleaning, I’ve got to have a deep cleaning’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: ‘I’ve got four cavities’.
Nicole: That’s harsh.
Howard: ‘Dammit, I just want my teeth cleaned’. She’s not used to communicating that with her dad.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: So she holds it in, doesn’t communicate and says, ‘okay’, and then she leaves and she never comes back. But when it’s a woman there and it’s Nicole, I say, ‘well, Nicole, I just want my teeth cleaned. I don’t think I need a deep cleaning’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Well then she’s communicating, so you have engagement.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: So then you can start going over your x-rays, and the digitals, and the periodontal, and the bleeding.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I just see that in the industry where you sell the invisible, whether it’s an auto mechanic, an oil change or a dentist. Like when I go in there and they say, ‘you need this’, I only go back to Lexus because the guy who sold me that car in 2004. When I first went in there he was single, then he was married, now he’s on his third kid. I just trust the guy.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I mean I grew up with five girls, five sisters playing Barbie dolls until I was twelve. I never changed a spark plug or any of that stuff.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So when you sell the invisible I think women dentists have a huge advantage, and they only look at the fact that the easiest way to divide the American market is half will pay out of pocket, and half will only do what the insurance says.
Nicole: Sure.
Howard: But half are scared and half aren’t scared, and I noticed with my four boys biological, I was their dad it was all great until they got hurt. When they come to dad and they’re bleeding I say, ‘come here’, and they’d run clear around me between my legs.
Nicole: Not you.
Howard: They’d go to mom.
Nicole: Yes.
Howard: Then mom would kiss it.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: When they were scared or needing nurturing or loving it wasn’t the guy with whiskers.
Nicole: No.
Howard: It was soft mom.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I just think that half the market’s afraid of the dentist.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: So if they’re looking out there in dental world and say, ‘I’m scared of the dentist’, they see Nicole and Grandpa. They’re going to you.
Nicole: It’s a no brainer.
Howard: Then if it’s a woman who says, ‘I don’t believe you’.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Who’s she more likely to tell that to? Me or you?
Nicole: Probably you if it’s a woman patient.
Howard: No, she doesn’t believe either of us.
Nicole: Oh yeah.
Howard: Who is she more likely to communicate that to? Me?
Nicole: Me.
Howard: Me or you?
Nicole: Me.
Howard: You.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I mean women should crush this profession.
Nicole: Yes, we should and we will. It’s going to be great.
Howard: What do all women think when their air-conditioner goes out and George Brasil shows up at your door with a man with a suit and tie and says, ‘well I can’t fix your air-conditioner, you need a whole new one for eight grand’. What percent of mom’s say, ‘I don’t believe that?’
Nicole: I think all.
Howard: Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Yeah, all.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: That’s something they don’t want to talk about.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: I mean look at the Me2 Movement. I mean how did all these people not know about Harvey Weinstein? I mean how is this a secret.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s a fantastic conversation and I’m really glad that it’s happening.
Howard: Yeah.
Nicole: Because, like you said, these men that can’t see their privilege because privilege is invisible, and you don’t know that this is happening all around you unless it’s put up into your face sometimes.
Howard: Yeah.
Nicole: I feel sorry for my partner sometimes because he’s a white man.
Howard: Your partner.
Nicole: My husfriend I call him.
Howard: Your house friend, okay.
Nicole: Husfriend.
Howard: Okay.
Nicole: We’re not married. I feel too old to have a boyfriend so I call him my husfriend.
Howard: Oh my God. It’s hilarious [inaudible 00:22:43].
Nicole: I made up the word. He’s a white man and he’ll hear me.
Howard: You’re racist.
Nicole: He’ll hear me talking about this whole thing and he can’t help but take it personal. It’s only been in the last year that he’s stopped taking it personal. I’m not talking about him, this is just in general. But it’s really good for men to hear about what it’s like to be a woman, and experience these things and we aren’t sweeping it under the rug anymore. We’re actually having a conversation about it and that’s always going to be a good thing. We can start moving the needle a little bit here only when we talk about it. So I’m really happy about that.
Howard: The men are victims too.
Nicole: Absolutely. Yes.
Howard: Because number one when you’re raised that way.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I don’t know how many times I’ve had this conversation. Girl gets out of dental school goes and work as associate for the man.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Works for him three years, buys the practice. For three years the old man would say to his dental assistant, ‘hey get me a cup of coffee’, and ‘can you order flowers for my wife?’ So then she buys the office and she goes, ‘will you get me a cup of coffee?’ They’re like, ‘what am I, your bitch?’
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Anyway, why was that? Their dad would sit there in front of the TV and say, ‘grab me a beer’.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Mom would jump.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: She’d tell dad, ‘go clean the dishes’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: He’d laugh.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: But it’s really measurable, because in the United States for the first time ever you’re seeing a decrease life expectancy for white males.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: All the other European white countries life expectancy is going up, but in America it’s going down.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: A lot of it is the emancipation of men because you’re a male, there’s seven species of great apes. There’s humans, gorillas, chimpanzee, orangutans, bonobos. Bonobos is a female society, they’re matriarchs. All the rest are patriarchs.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: We’re in a patriarchal society.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So when someone says why are all the president's men? Because we’re not bonobos. But when you look at the blue whales, the little female half the size is the head and the men swim on the outside. Women need to do a lot more research about bonobos.
Nicole: Yes.
Howard: Because all the way up to the industrial revolution, the man went to the job that we need a man, coal mining, manufacturing.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Made more money so they felt masculine.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Those jobs are disappearing and now his wife’s making more money, so he feels emancipated.
Nicole: Emasculated.
Howard: Emasculated.
Nicole: Yes, there you go.
Howard: He feels emasculated.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: He doesn’t feel manly. He gets biology 101.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: In fact you know what many men have said to me in private? Where they’ve said it just feels weird and bad that his wife is a dentist and makes twice as much money as him.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I always say, with empathy, just don’t think about it while you’re vacuuming.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Just put your apron back on and load the dishwasher.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So they’re dying, their suicide rates going up.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: The opioid addiction is multifactorial.
Nicole: Yes.
Howard: But one of those multifactorial causes is that the men are losing their jobs.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Out of the jobs hiring are hiring women who have different skill sets. Your bicep and your quads doesn’t matter that much in jobs.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So it’s tough for everyone.
Nicole: I’m glad that you’re talking about that because I can kind of point everything I’ve found to toxic masculinity. It’s kind of like my castall.
Howard: Toxic masculinity.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: You taught me ‘manels’, all man panels. What’s this one?
Nicole: Toxic masculinity.
Howard: Toxic masculinity.
Nicole: It’s what we see in the school shootings, it’s the President, it’s Rambo, it’s the army with the NFL. The military is putting money into the NFL, it’s the video games are using guns that are real in their video games. The gun manufacturers are working with the video games.
Howard: I don’t know anything about that.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: But on the school shootings, we just had another one yesterday.
Nicole: Yes.
Howard: All the shooters have been males.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Serial killers.
Nicole: They’re emasculated. When a girl breaks up with them they’re defaced or whatever.
Howard: Defaced?
Nicole: Yeah, why are they reacting like that? It’s because they have been taught that they have to be the powerful, masculine. But it becomes toxic when it turns outward and violent, and that is the root of all of it I think. Because all the stuff that you’re talking about, if you don’t feel like a woman can earn as much as a man. Why are you thinking that? Where is that coming from? Where is that thought process coming from?
Howard: Will you Google what percent of prison population is men? What percent of these gun shooters at schools are men?
Nicole: Ninety-nine.
Howard: What percent of serial murderers are men?
Nicole: I don’t know.
Howard: Yeah.
Nicole: As far as like domestic violence.
Howard: Yeah, and ninety-three percent are male and the seven percent I’ve read is all because of drugs.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So they’re all in there for a medical reason,addiction, and the men are all in there for violence.
Nicole: Or circumstantial.
Howard: You ask an innocent grandma, ‘what do you think the number one reason is people call 911?’ They say heart attack.
Nicole: Choking.
Howard: Yeah. They always say it’s a medical issue.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: The number one reason, in every state, since 911 is domestic violence. If a woman is murdered, ninety-six percent of the time it’s her lover.
Nicole: Intimate partner violence. Yeah.
Howard: The other four percent it was a robbery or they stole something.
Nicole: Right. Right.
Howard: So if they go in there and it’s a dead woman, and she wasn’t raped or they didn’t steal all of her stuff, Ryan her purse is right around that wall, she’s a dental student. She’s got more cash, and diamonds, and gold bars.
Nicole: I don’t even have cash because I have kids and you can’t have both.
Howard: So it’s toxic masculinity.
Nicole: Toxic masculinity. Now that I’ve said that to you, you’re going to start seeing it, and you’re going to start noticing it when you see things on TV and when you watch movies, and you see commercials, and you read articles, a lot of it points to that.
Howard: You’re never supposed to talk about, on a podcast or a column like my staff when I do my Howard Speaks they edit out anything that has to do with politics, religion, sex and violence.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: So I’ll submit like three thousand words and they’ll come back to six hundred and it’ll be like a eunuch wrote it. But I do, I allow that stuff because like I don’t argue with religion. I mean my mom and sisters think any form of birth control is a mortal sin if you use it, you’ll go to hell for eternity.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I’m not going to argue with them because it’s pointless.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: But so many listeners got so mad at me because I openly supported Hillary.
Nicole: Okay.
Howard: I mean I don’t believe that there are Republican versus Democrat, I mean I’m fifty-five, one robbed the bank, one drove the getaway car, they all lie, cheat and steal.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: When I go back to Ronald Reagan, he campaigned that he was against this nine hundred million dollar deficit.
Nicole: Right. Now look at him.
Howard: Then he added one point eight trillion. Cole said that Nafta has to go and all that sort of thing, and he would touch food stamps or welfare. What’s the first two things he did? Nafta and gutted welfare. I mean in my fifty-five years they all lie, cheat, and steal. For you to say my lying, cheating, stealing politicians better than yours.
Nicole: No. I don’t…
Howard: I don’t even care. When I turned fifty my oldest boy, Eric, made me my first granddaughter. I had four boys, I grew up with five sisters.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: My fifty employees, all my senior management are women and been with me twenty years except for one guy, Ken, the programmer. I did not want my granddaughter growing up in a world where all the presidents had wieners.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Then there’s an MBA from ASU, I’m looking at the Fortune 500 and you can count all the women CEO’s on one hand.
Nicole: Right. Yeah.
Howard: I figured they all are disgusting, vile, grotesque animals in Washington DC. I mean they are. I mean both sides of the party have broken my heart so many times.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I’d rather watch the Cardinals play football.
Nicole: That’s tough.
Howard: I’m not going to watch politicians, you know what I mean? So I voted for Hillary for Taylor.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: You know dentists, ‘I’ll never listen to your show again’, well, whatever.
Nicole: Right. But why?
Howard: But you see that’s bullying.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: That’s bullying.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: They can’t tolerate.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Another [inaudible 00:31:51], but if you ask them ‘are you open minded?’ Oh yeah.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Well explain this email you sent to Howard.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: In a way people that I will argue religion, sex, politics, or violence. They’re almost always having graduated from undergrad. The only time they really have an open mind is high school and college.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: But God dang, everybody I’ve met at twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine who thought this, thirty years later where are their thoughts.
Nicole: It’s totally different.
Howard: Yeah. You say different.
Nicole: Oh yeah, for sure. For me anyway I don’t know. I completely changed my worldview in my early thirties and I’ve seen a lot of friends that do that sort of thing.
Howard: I wonder if that’s a woman thing.
Nicole: Maybe.
Howard: Because my male friends it’s like if these are your religious, political views.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: At twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, that’s what they are at fifty-five.
Nicole: They just intrench more as they get older.
Howard: Yeah, and some of it’s so weird like you talk about the army and the NFL like this whole deal about the national anthem and taking in the [inaudible 00:32:56].
Nicole: Oh right.
Howard: When I go see a movie I don’t have to start with the pledge of allegiance, that seems like Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany.
Nicole: It really…
Howard: I don’t want to go to a Broadway play and first they ‘will you please stand for the national anthem?’ Why is the government in the NFL game? The easiest solution to that is get out there.
Nicole: Recruiting.
Howard: Recruiting young boys to go die sent by a bunch of politicians whose children are never sent.
Nicole: Right. Yeah.
Howard: How many presidents sent tens of thousands of boys to die who never sent their own boys to go die?
Nicole: Right. Or they themselves.
Howard: Or they themselves. Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So I hate, I don’t want to say I hate anything, but I have almost no respect for politicians or the media. Like they’ll cover 9/11 around the clock.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Where three thousand six hundred people died. But in the American pharmaceutical market where two hundred thousand Americans die each year in our healthcare system, not only related to any disease that they have.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: From all these big firms, but who’s all the commercials? Big pharmer. You watch and it’s big pharma, big pharma, big pharma. So what do they not cover?
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Why two hundred thousand Americans die each year, and they call it polyphagia. By the time you are on five different prescription medications your disease and complications are off the chart.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Compared to dentists who has taken health histories for thirty years, I can tell you when you’re sixty-five if you’re on five prescription medications you’re not going to be here at seventy-five. All my patients who are ninety to a hundred and three, what’s the only thing they have in common? They don’t take any prescriptions.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s convoluted.
Howard: They say they’ll never be covered.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Because [inaudible 00:34:47] these are probably treated. They sell commercials.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: They sell ads, and if you say we just got a big contract to sell a prescription pill and then you’re the journalist ‘I want to do a story on how this is killing tens of thousands of people’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Guess what happens?
Nicole: They’ll buy that story and kill it.
Howard: Yeah. Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah. It’s interesting.
Howard: So you’re really philosophical.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Usually the greatest comedy, I did stand-up comedy for years.
Nicole: You did? No way.
Howard: I did every comedy club in Arizona.
Nicole: Awesome.
Howard: Five times or more. I love stand-up. But they say the greatest comedy comes from pain.
Nicole: Yes.
Howard: The greatest philosophy, like all the people who wrote the constitution and everything, they lived through what it was like not having a leader with checks and balances. They lived through absolute power corrupts absolutely. You don’t really ever want to use the word old to a woman you see. But whenever I say he’s an old soul it [inaudible 00:36:04] from pain.
Nicole: Yeah. Yes.
Howard: So you must’ve had a life of a lot of pain to have these many deep thoughts.
Nicole: Well I mean…
Howard: About so many things.
Nicole: I’m a consumer of information I can help it, I’ve always read for as long as I’ve known as much as I could. Anything I could get my hands on I read, and I want to learn everything there is to know. That’s what I love about dentistry is that it’s always changing, it’s always forward thinking, it’s dynamic. We’re trying new technologies all the time, we’re totally going towards evidence based dentistry now, like that’s the trend is what we’re learning at Midwestern is evidence based. Like we want to know why we’re doing this and how it’s affecting, and I don’t know that I’ve had a lot of pain in my life. I’ve always consumed a lot of information.
Howard: An evidence based country, like America talks about truth, liberty and justice, and really America’s about money’s the answer what’s the question.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: The most advanced countries in dentistry, I’ve lectured in all the top rich countries, every continent but Antartica because penguins still won’t hear what I have to say. The oral surgeons today it’s Germany, Liechtenstein, and Austria which used to be all greater Germany whatever. But anyway they’re pulling like only one third of the wisdom teeth they pulled thirty years ago.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Americans pull all four your wisdom teeth because they exist.
Nicole: Because why not? They’re there.
Howard: I don’t have any tonsils, you know why?
Nicole: Yeah.
37.51 Howard: Because in 1962 there was an insurance code that paid thousands to remove tonsils.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: First time my mamma took me or my five sisters to the doctors with a sore throat, what did they do?
Nicole: Yeah. You don’t need these.
Howard: They put me under and ripped out all my tonsils, I don’t need that. So that there was no insurance code for removing tonsils in the ‘60’s and adenoids, guess what I’d have?
Nicole: You would have your tonsils. Yeah.
Howard: Yeah. What year did Roentgen come out with the x-ray machine? November 8th 1985?
Nicole: 1895.
Howard: 1895, and what was his first name Wilhelm Conrad. But when Roentgen developed the x-ray, and by the way that was a sad story because he died from that. Did you know that?
Nicole: Was he the guy in the text books with his hand. Yeah.
Howard: He kept x-raying his hand.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Then he got hand cancer.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: He couldn’t feel the pain with opioids.
Nicole: Oh.
Howard: Back then all the meds were… all the potions were a mixture of heroine, cocaine.
Nicole: Poppy seeds.
Howard: Alcohol and stuff. So he finally put a bullet through his head.
Nicole: Oh no.
Howard: Yeah. But anyway that came out in 1895. So when was the first dental insurance? It was right after World War II, people say that war is good for the economy. Yeah, if you blow up all of your competition, so the only people making stuff was Germany, and Japan, and somewhat Italy. It was all levelled. So if you want to buy a washing machine, a dryer or a car in the United States, it was the biggest economic shift in fact it was the bigger economic shift to America than it was than to the Middle East when they discovered all this abundant oil.
Nicole: Wow.
Howard: But still people believe that war is good for the economy.
Nicole: Yeah. Depends.
Howard: Well how’s that Iraq and Afghanistan working out for you?
Nicole: Right.
Howard: But he came out with the x-ray in 1895, so the insurance company started three years after World War II, the Longshoreman's Club Union controlled everything that was shipped in and out of the country. They were making bank and they had the muscle, and they said give us dental insurance. Well that was 1948 and no dentist had had this x-ray machine that was taken in 1895, so what is that? I took calculus and trig and geometry. Forty-eight minus 1895. Fifty-three. The point is fifty-three years, half a century no dentist needed an x-ray machine.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Then they come out with this Longshoreman’s insurance was eventually up in the Oregon, Washington area. Which eventually turned into Delta Dental.
Nicole: Oh.
Howard: They covered a hundred percent of x-rays.
Nicole: Okay.
Howard: So guess what every dentist bought.
Nicole: An x-ray machine.
Howard: I know, it was like a domino effect.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: The dealer just had to walk in there and say, ‘do you know if you buy this machine the insurance will pay a hundred percent?’ Ryan, what was a thousand, go get an inflation calculator, what was a $1,000 in 1948 in real [inaudible 00:40:33] from a $1,000 in 2018?
Nicole: It’s going to be depressing.
Ryan: $1,000 in 1948?
Howard: Would be worth?
Ryan: Basically $10,000. $9,958,58.
Nicole: Oh.
Howard: Nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight?
Ryan: Yeah.
Howard: That would be a great meme for you to make today, saying ‘do you know when dental insurance was started in 1948 the maximum was $1,000? In 2018 that would be nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight.
Nicole: That’s crazy.
Howard: Then also do another calculation, I graduated in 1987 with $87,000 of student loans. What would that be in 2018?
Ryan: A hundred and eighty-three thousand eight hundred and eight. So let’s say a hundred and eighty-four thousand.
Nicole: That’s not bad, I’d pay that.
Howard: So what would your student loan debt be?
Nicole: It’ll be about half a million.
Howard: It’ll be five hundred thousand?
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Yeah, but have’nt you’ve got this new man witch guy.
Nicole: Yeah, well.
Howard: Is he going to start paying for your school?
Nicole: I’m an independent woman.
Howard: You’re an independent woman. So basically the bottom line is behaviour is very incentivised. So the American men will pull all four your wisdom teeth because they exist, and they all bought insurance machines. Like you could take America off the grid... Like another political thing that’s just silly, when all these democrats are talking about how concerned they are with global warming.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Well that’s a total lie, they’re not concerned at all. I mean right now twenty percent of electricity was nuclear, you could’ve scaled during anybody’s four year presidency. When Obama was elected he had a democratic senate, congress, whatever. You could’ve scaled twenty percent nuclear to a hundred percent like that. But they said we’re not going to do nuclear, we’re going to do solar. Okay, well solarwinds not even one percent, so you’re going to go from one percent solar to a hundred percent. We only get twenty percent nuclear and there’s countries like France that are almost all nuclear. So say you’re Belmar and you’re so concerned about global warming but you won’t do the obvious, nuclear, so you want to do solar well how does that work at night? You want to do wind, how does that work when the winds not blowing? You’ve got nuclear, every nuclear power plant in existence, by the way the largest nuclear power production facility is the one we’ve got. Did you know that?
Nicole: Not really.
Howard: Yeah, and it’s got three reactors. It’s the biggest one in the United States, I mean every nuclear power plant that exists you could just say ‘okay, make four more across the street’. The exact same plant and we’ll be off all coal, gas, well they didn’t want to do that. If they wanted solar, just like dentists, nobody had insurance machines, and the government said your payment, your electric bill is say a hundred dollars a month and so here’s the company we’ll put all solar and that hundred dollar a month payment will be seven years, and in seven years it would be paid for and then you’re off the grid.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Did they do any of that?
Nicole: Well, they were kind of… yeah.
Howard: They have so many obvious solutions in front of them.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: To do anything.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: They would never do anything.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: The biggest paradox for me is that if you ask anybody ‘why is this the greatest, richest, most powerful country in the world?’ They say ‘well for five hundred years people voted with their feet and moved here from every country on Earth.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: That person is very motivated, has an idea. I mean to leave the country you were born in, you are motivated and passionate. That’s what made America great again. Okay, great so then open back up Alice Island. Oh hell no. No immigrants today. So if there’s no immigration we would be a country just like Venezuela, we’d have a country of fifty million native American Indians.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Would that be the greatest country in the world? You needed the Italians, the Spanish, the Germans, the Chinese.
Nicole: Immigration. Yeah.
Howard: You needed the brain drain of everybody. Why is Japan declining? Because the population’s declining no-one will immigrate there. The whole country was built on immigration, and where are all the politicians? Against immigration. In fact I’m convinced that fifty-five years old, I’m the only normal person in America.
Nicole: I feel the same way.
Howard: Guaranteed. Are you normal too?
Nicole: I’m one of you.
Howard: We should start the Normal Admiration Club.
Nicole: You guys.
Howard: We’ve only two members. I’ve got to have them invited.
Nicole: I’m the president.
Howard: You’re the president? Okay I’m the CEO. No, I’m the chairman of the board.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So this is where I’m at, my physicians are all women.
Nicole: Right on.
Howard: Because it’s the only legal place I can go to give a woman money and take all my clothes off without getting arrested. You know the scariest thought, the scariest statement I’ve ever had? When I ask a very good friend of mine physician, I said look I’m fifty-five, I’m fat, I’m bald, I’ve got a belly.
Nicole: It’s all downhill from here.
Howard: I should go get my heart checked out.
Nicole: Definitely.
Howard: Maybe get a stent or something like that. Do you know what he said to me? He goes ‘dude, you’re fifty-five, you’re fat, you’re a grandpa, every single cardiologist would just stick stents in there. I don’t know anyone who would actually really only do it if you really needed it’.
Nicole: If you need it. Yeah.
Howard: Because everyone else would say ‘well he’s rich, he’s a dentist, he’s got insurance, he’s fat, he’s bald, he’s old’.
Nicole: It’s a ticket.
Howard: ‘Shit yeah, he needs four stents’. He goes ‘I can’t really think of anyone that I can honestly say would tell you the truth’, and I thought ‘God dang’. So who do I trust? Women.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Your natural maternal instincts and I’m serious.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I mean women call that sexist as well.
Nicole: No.
Howard: If you don’t believe in maternal instincts you’re kind of not right in the head. I mean a female cheetah has never been seen eating her cubs. A male cheetah, when he runs out of food and he hasn’t caught anything for three days, eats his children. So do lions, so do tigers. A female polar bear when she has her baby, the first thing she has to do is ditch her husband because why would he chase a seal if Domino’s has delivered a pizza right inside the cave, and he’ll just eat his own baby. So do you agree that you have maternal instincts?
Nicole: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Howard: Do you believe it translates into more empathy and sympathy?
Nicole: Yeah, I would say so.
Howard: So more trust.
Nicole: Yeah, I don’t know necessarily that it’s like maternal as in mother. I think it’s more just like being a woman you have a different experience, it’s kind of like we’re living in two different worlds men and women. We walk through the same space but we’re not treated the same way, we’re not reacted to the same way. But going back to your heart stent thing, they did a study this year that they did a sham surgery, half and half.
Howard: A sham surgery.
Nicole: They put the person under that they were going to get a stent put in, half of them they put the stent in, and half of them they didn’t. There was no difference in how the patients felt afterward. So that wasn’t done in the US, I can’t remember where it was done.
Howard: Well I did go get my heart examined.
Nicole: That’s good.
Howard: He just took one look at it and said ‘you’re divorced, right?’
Nicole: You’re free.
Howard: He said ‘dude, your heart is messed up bad’.
Nicole: You know what, you could actually die from a broken heart. That is a thing, I read about that.
Howard: Yeah, the FDA approved that oxytocin drug which is the love hormone.
Nicole: Okay. Yeah, I hadn’t seen that. But we were doing cardiovascular systems last week and I was reading about different heart [inaudible 00:48:17].
Howard: I am going to remarry someday, but I’m waiting for artificial intelligence and the robot.
Nicole: There you go.
Howard: I’m going to marry a droid. I’m not marrying a monkey without a tail ever again, I’m waiting for that perfect droid.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: She’s just going to be ‘Howard you just sit there’ and take your remote and turn it off.
Nicole: Then she’s going to turn on you.
Howard: She’ll turn on me. Yeah, I do believe that though.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I believe the only thing humans will be responsible for in the big picture is that we were the connection between the biological and the electronic brain. I mean right now everything that we have out there on other planets and other solar systems, they’re all droids and as soon as that droid can think fifty thousand times faster or better than us and has opposing thumbs or whatever. They will get rid of us.
Nicole: That’s it for us.
Howard: What is more likely? That you send a droid across the galaxy, or a human monkey?
Nicole: Right. Yeah.
Howard: That only lives a hundred years and has to carry a baby for nine months. Yeah. I totally believe that and a lot of people do, Elon Musk does. I mean it’s so obvious, if you really think that humans will be smarter than droids a thousand years from now, you’re out of your freaking mind.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: As soon as they can play you, you’re gone.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So we’re just the intermediate between a mouse that survived the great extinction and the droids. I mean right now you have a tesla.
Nicole: Yeah, Starman.
Howard: You know it’s driven by a male because it’s totally lost driving outside the solar system and he won’t ask for directions.
Nicole: That was so cool though, wasn’t it? Did you see the footage from the car when he’s floating around and you can see the Earth in the background behind him? You’ve got to watch it, it’s so cool.
Howard: Yeah, I’ve seen it. Yeah.
Nicole: Four hours of the camera on the tesla, it was amazing.
Howard: Now Elon Musk and Bill Gates, they came out with a new Viagra pill. Did you see that?
Nicole: No.
Howard: It’s called ElonGates.
Nicole: You’ve got to go back to stand-up.
Howard: The problem I can’t do stand-up is I don’t have any clean jokes.
Nicole: Well that’s perfect for stand-up.
Howard: I mean every dental joke I have I can’t even say on my own podcast.
Nicole: Oh yeah. I know, it’s terrible.
Howard: Plus the problem I’ve got to be clean on my podcast, so many dentist say ‘dude, I’m always listening to you in the car and taking my kids to school’.
Nicole: They’re learning new words.
Howard: ‘Come on, dude. Lighten up.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So remember that, Ryan, when you’re editing. If you hear anything bad it’s Ryan.
Nicole: It’s Ryan.
Howard: He didn’t hear the bad joke because he’s dead inside working with his dad, he no longer even cares. So what percent of your class is a single parent with kids?
Nicole: Oh, I think just me.
Howard: Just you?
Nicole: Actually, yeah.
Howard: I must start calling you Uniqua.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Not unique, that’s not unique enough, I’m going to call you Nicole Uniqua.
Nicole: There we go.
Howard: Noble. So what’s that like?
Nicole: It’s interesting.
Howard: Do you have family help? I mean do you have mom, dad, sisters, ex-husband, do they all help?
Nicole: Well my ex-husband has my kids half the time, so I have week on week off with my girls and my partner Will is his name, he is really really helpful. Like he’s the guy that takes care of the house.
Howard: So he’s gay.
Nicole: He’s androgynous.
Howard: He’s androgynous.
Nicole: There you go. Yeah, he’s my biggest supporter.
Howard: Nice. His name’s Will?
Nicole: Yeah, he has a masters in psychology.
Howard: He’d be great.
Nicole: So we have fantastic conversations and he’s always willing to listen to what I’ve learned in school that day, and we’re just sharing experiences from our day all the time, and he’s a good sounding board for me. I have five siblings, like you said in the intro, a couple of them are in town. My mom and dad live in Mesa and we talk on the phone a lot.
Howard: So they left Show Low too.
Nicole: Yeah, everybody left Show Low.
Howard: So your dad’s a retired dentist or is he still practicing?
Nicole: He’s retired. He actually as alzheimer’s disease.
Howard: How old was he when he got that?
Nicole: He’s seventy-two now, it was about eight years ago.
Howard: That’s early.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So sixty-four.
Nicole: Yeah, and we all thought my mom was going to get it because she had two sisters that had it.
Howard: I’ll be.
Nicole: When my dad got it and not her, because my dad was brilliant. He practically had photographic memory, he was like me he read all the time but it’s the worst disease. If you want to like bring down a room tell someone that your dad has alzheimer’s, it’s so depressing. But none of us ever want to think about what’s going to happen, it’s terrifying.
Howard: But he’s okay, it’s not like he’s suffering.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah, he’s not. He’s not suffering.
Howard: So it’s everybody suffering around him.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: My friend, Mike Murphy, like pointing it out. He runs a rehab center for down syndrome.
Nicole: Oh okay.
Howard: They’re the happiest people in the world.
Nicole: Right. Yeah.
Howard: I’d be like so sad for them.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: It’s like ‘dude they’re happy, they’re out on the swingset getting graham crackers’. So they’re happy.
Nicole: Yeah. Well my dad, it’s resetting every ten seconds.
Howard: Yeah.
Nicole: But I would imagine it’s probably scary if you are in a place and you don’t know where you are, but then ten seconds later it’s resetting again anyway.
Howard: Does he know who you are now?
Nicole: He did the last time I went to see him about two months ago, but my brother went to see him last week and he didn’t recognise my nieces. The first question that people ask when they hear about someone with alzheimer’s is do they remember you?
Howard: So he was the first in his family to get it, there was no family history?
Nicole: Actually his sister has it now as well and she’s about five years older than him. But before that it’s strokes and things like that, so a lot of times people in my past in my family were dying from other things before alzheimer’s could get a foothold.
Howard: We’re talking about what’s different with girls, you have an interest for community health.
Nicole: I do.
Howard: You’re interested in pursuing a non-profit situation, why don’t you man up and go for the profit? Just make it all about money.
Nicole: I do want to do both. I want to do both because I don’t know if there’s a way that you can do one all the way, I don’t know if you can do community health all the way. I mean there are people that do it, I have a cousin who has a non-profit currently and she’s about ten years older than me. She just had an experience last year where she had had an underlying infection in her teeth, a lot of her teeth were root canal treated. She had been several years without having any x-rays and all of a sudden she had a toothache and all of her teeth, all her posterior teeth had to be extracted.
It was super life changing for her because A she didn’t know that that could happen, it was going to be thirty thousand dollars and right away just to extract all the teeth and do bone grafts it was five thousand dollars. She’s like fifty years old and where am I going to come up with five thousand dollars tomorrow? She’s not poor but it was just this epiphany that she had, so she approached me when I was about to start dental school and said ‘let’s get this going’. Because she realised this is a problem and she has the non-profit experience, I have no non-profit experience whatsoever but I’ll be having dental experience.
Howard: But I’ve got to call checks and balances on that.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I’m going to take the opposing side.
Nicole: Yeah, please.
Howard: The great thing about dentistry is like okay a root canal [inaudible 00:56:24], so I’ve only got twenty-five hundred dollars.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I’m going to extract it for one fifty. I mean you have at eight sixty-five, at eight sixty-four for the actual data for the CDC. Ten percent of Americans don’t have one tooth in their head, times two is missing half. By seventy-four twenty percent will have no teeth in their head. I have so many denture wearers where I said to them ‘when I started placing implants [inaudible 00:56:52], this was back in the late eighties, to get experience I was always asking people who had dentures ‘well I will do your implant case, I’ll do it free, I’ll admit to you that I haven’t done any yet, and I’ll do yours for free or whatever whatever’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Some of them were family members.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Uncles, cousins, whatever. I could barely get any takers.
Nicole: Really?
Howard: I don’t know where you’re from, why don’t you send me an email howard@dentaltown.com and tell me who you are, where you’re from, why you watch the show. By the way I’ve got emails from every continent.
Nicole: I’m sure.
Howard: Every country. This is such an amazing [00:57:34], but some of them send me ‘how can I eat corn on the cob?’ I can eat flipping anything, and one of the most romantic things about dentistry is that if you have cancer and you don’t have any insurance, you want to go to the best doctor in town. Let’s say you go to Mayo, you need a hundred grand.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: But there’s no alternative treatment, and in dentistry there is All on four, twenty-five thousand an arch, fifty grand.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Or you can go to Denture World in downtown Mesa and get dentures for five hundred.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: In the healthcare debate, one of the reasons I blow total smoke on the healthcare debate, is only about five percent of the whole healthcare budget is actually insurance. Where you have auto insurance in case you wreck your car, well how many people in your dental school class have totalled their car this year? Hardly anyone totals their car. We all have fire insurance on our house, [inaudible 00:58:34] twenty thirty years, I’ve only seen three houses burn down. All three of them are women dentists smoking in bed with vodka that caught fire. All three. So insurance is we’re going to spread around the risk.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: It’s an actuarial risk analysis.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Risk is the moral hazard of lying, cheating, and making a false claim. Well in healthcare everybody’s covered, so then what do you start covering? Oh we’ll cover all your exams, all your visits, all your wellness checks. So if my little baby has snot I’m going to take him to the emergency room.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: The doctor says ‘well it’s snot, have him blow his nose it’s a virus’. But when someone falls down and breaks a leg, they get cancer, they actually have a big claim.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: That they didn’t see coming. So if you went to health insurance and made all the routine stuff, you have a five percent co-payment. Like Medicaid, Medicare, you know it’s growing crazily because they have no co-payment. So they have no co-payment no-one’s shopping around on prices. If you went into a five percent co-payment, when they told mom ‘oh you need an artificial hip, it’s fifty thousand’, and your five percent. What’s five percent of fifty thousand?
Nicole: Twenty-five hundred.
Howard: You’re good.
Nicole: It was an easy one. The years have been hard.
Howard: Fifty thousand times point oh five. Damn good. You just have a younger [inaudible 00:59:57].
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: They say your co-payment’s twenty-five hundred.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Half the hips in America say ‘screw it I’m not going to pay twenty-five hundred’.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: I’ll take Ibuprofen.
Nicole: I’ll just steal a wheelchair.
Howard: They’ll take Ibuprofen.
Nicole: Right. Yeah.
Howard: They’ll take whatever whatever. That would totally cut Medicaid and Medicare, because anybody trying to control cost. No, they get tax cuts.
Nicole: No.
Howard: We have twenty trillion dollars in debt, when the roosters are going to come home to nest.
Nicole: Oh yeah.
Howard: When I got my ASU at MBA the one thing that every Phd economist has taught me is that, that deficit it’s not a matter of if that bond bubble will pop.
Nicole: It’s when.
Howard: It’s when.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: There’s no question of if. But when they said they want to cut the deficit, well do they have a five percent co-payment on Medicaid and Medicare? Then they say ‘well you can have a five percent co-payment on these Medicaid clinics or on the indian reservation’, what are you? A Nazi? Then I’m a practice management consultant I can go there, and I go to every clinic that’s totally free in Arizona and guess what the number one problem is. Fifty percent no show.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah.
Howard: They can’t even call and cancel their appointment. Why? Because it’s not a right or wrong.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: It’s how do you manage people.
Nicole: Exactly.
Howard: If you said ‘oh well to make an appointment for you free cleaning, exam, x-ray, everything.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: On the Medicaid clinic, the Medicare clinic, the Indian Public Health Service you need to give me five dollars. They say ‘screw that’ then they walk across the street and buy a pack of Marlboro Light for nine dollars, and a twelve pack of Coors Light is exactly.
Nicole: I don’t know.
Howard: Oh, don’t play dumb on me, Nicole.
Nicole: Eleven ninety-nine probably.
Howard: Don’t play dumb on me, Nicole. I found a dime bag in her purse and now she doesn’t know what a case of [inaudible 01:01:37].
Nicole: I don’t even know what that is.
Howard: But the point is it’s not right or wrong.
Nicole: yeah.
Howard: It’s how you manage people.
Nicole: Well yeah.
Howard: It’s like in my dental office, if you don’t have a bonus system why are you expecting your dental assistant to dive for the ball out of bounds and throw it back in. When she’s paid like a communist, you will get ten dollars a day no matter what the hell happens.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Well it’s not right or wrong, that’s just not how you manage people.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: If you were to manage people with a bonus system they’d go to a communist socialist country. You need a bonus system. Poor people need to have skin in the game.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: At this point I don’t even know what the question was that we’re talking about.
Nicole: Well we were talking about non-profit.
Howard: Yeah, non-profit.
Nicole: I think that you have a really good point there, there’s definitely something to not getting something for free because there’s no value in it to that person.
Howard: They won’t value it.
Nicole: Right, they do have a skin in the game.
Howard: Right.
Nicole: I’m not about to just be like ‘oh yeah, I’m going to go do free dentistry all the time’ that’s not anything that I…
Howard: In dentistry the people want free, they want a Mercedes Benz.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: Like they’re like ‘oh my God in Heaven someone else should pay for this’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: ‘My employer, the government, a non-profit, give me a Mercedes Benz now’. We’ll say ‘no, but you can take the bus it’s called a denture’ and they’re like ‘well I don’t want to take the bus, I want a Lexus’. So it’s irrational expectations.
Nicole: Right. Yeah, for sure. If you pay for something you’re going to treat it better.
Howard: Right.
Nicole: I have kids, if I buy them something they don’t care, they’re going to break it, they’re going to lose it, they’re going to get a stain on it. If they buy it, it is precious cargo they are taking good care of it. So I definitely believe that if you’re getting something you should have an investment in it, you’re going to brush your teeth more if you paid for your fillings.
Howard: Right.
Nicole: Whereas opposed to if you just got them for free then whatever.
Howard: So what it’s entering is like when people say ‘are you conservative or liberalist?’ Humans are very multifactorial, and he’ll come with his psychology, a little bit of fatherly love, motherly love.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: You need a little bit of economics.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: You need this very multifactorial deal to manage your staff, your relationships with your parents.
Nicole: Yes.
Howard: Your family, your team, your patients.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: It’s so complex. I’ve been calling successful dentists walking out of dental school for three decades, you’re going to crush it. No, you will.
Nicole: Thank you.
Howard: I’ve never told anyone else that they’re going to crush and they don’t crush it.
Nicole: Really?
Howard: Because if you get the people stuff right, that’s how you manage your staff, and if you treat your staff right they treat your patients right.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: It’s not about selling your dentistry.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I’m just going to totally, empathetically explain where you’re at. So then they’re more likely to ask questions, engage and buy.
Nicole: Absolutely.
Howard: You’re going to absolutely crush it.
Nicole: Thank you.
Howard: As far as non-profits go, the first dvd player came out at eight hundred dollars and it sucked. Four for five years later it was two hundred dollars, and it was a lot better. Now they’re perfect at thirty-five dollars, and I think the best charitable dentistry is just going into any community and doing dentistry faster, easier, higher quality, lower cost.
Nicole: Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Howard: The thing about charitable dentistry in America is like for example I’ll tell you this, poor women will come into my office. I’m in Phoenix, I’m across the street from the Guadeloupe Indian Reservation.
Nicole: Sure.
Howard: Well when I go over there several times over the last thirty years and run into patients where their house, they do floors, and they come in there and you think they have no money, so you tell them ‘okay well, the silver filling is only a hundred dollars’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: ‘It’ll last thirty years, the tooth coloured one is two hundred dollars and it’ll last six and a half years’.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: She’s got a dirt floor, and what does she buy? The tooth coloured. Then her dad comes in and needs a root canal, build-up and crown. He laughs, he doesn’t care if he’s missing a tooth. Every one of his brothers, and grandfathers, and uncles are missing damn tooth.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: The girl, you tell her you’re going to pull a tooth that’s visible, she’ll start crying.
Nicole: yeah.
Howard: Then the dad’s like ‘oh dang it’, he pulls out a wad of cash this thick. Because the little girl in Guadeloupe, I don’t care if she’s on a dirt floor, she’s in a dress, she’s beautiful, she’s got bows in her hair, and she needs a root canal, build-up and crown. So when you go to really poor countries, like go to the Philippines. The women are all root canal, build-up and PFM, canine to canine, upper and lower, have no back teeth. The men just pull them all.
Nicole: Yeah. Because it doesn’t matter they’ve got a smile.
Howard: We’re talking about is alzheimer’s genetics. You’re never going to believe this but my dad is short, fat, and bald. So they don’t care.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So in poor countries, there’s no man in Vietnam who gives a shit that he lost a tooth whether it’s visible or not, they just don’t care because everybody they know is like that. But the girls in the middle tier countries in economic development like Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, only the women get root canal, build-up, and crowns, and they only do the front six teeth. When they look in that two dimensional mirror that’s fine.
Nicole: That’s good.
Howard: It reminds me of the girls in Kansas, they always looked in the mirror the front of their hair would be perfect, and then at the back it had like a birds nest and it’d be like eggs and squirrels running around. So when they look at their front teeth they see [inaudible 01:07:01].
Nicole: Looks great.
Howard: They think they look perfect. So what are you going to do when you graduate?
Nicole: I don’t know yet.
Howard: Are you thinking speciality? Non-speciality?
Nicole: No, I really like all the different aspects of dentistry, like when I was a dental assistant I was assisting for a general dentist. So I got to be an assistant on root canals, on oral surgery, not a lot of ortho or anything but I love doing it all. I feel like a speciality I would be missing out on the other aspects of it, and I’m old.
Howard: You’re old. I thought you said you were… can I say your age?
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Forty-one.
Nicole: Forty-one.
Howard: I’m fifty-four.
Nicole: Time is of the essence.
Howard: I was fourteen years old when you were born, so don’t tell me you’re old. You probably don’t look at me as old, you probably look at me as dead. It’s like this guy [Inaudible: 01:07:54]
Nicole: Weekend at Bernie’s.
Howard: He’s a dead man and he’s still talking.
Nicole: No, I just want to hit the road.
Howard: So you don’t want to do a speciality because you like doing it all.
Nicole: I like doing it all. Yeah. I want to do root canals, I want to do molar root canals, I want to do wisdom teeth extractions, if needed, I want to do implants really badly. I am excited that they’re allowing the dental students at Midwestern to place implants, it’s pretty cool. So I’m ready to do that.
Howard: I’ll tell you what I witnessed when I got out of school, when I was in dental school the one oral surgeon placing implants, back then it was blades, ramus frames, sub-perio, they outwardly talked about him as the butcher.
Nicole: Oh.
Howard: Then when I got into dental school the guys doing all the blades, and subs, and implants, first case that went bad they take their licence away.
Nicole: Oh my.
Howard: Now, thirty years later it’s kind of like two other subjects. We don’t want to get into politics, sex, or religion, but when I was little you could leave catholic mass and hear guys joking about last night they went to the park and beat up gay people or smoking pot. If they caught you drunk with a bottle of Jack Daniels, Ryan has a relative, we both do, he was run over by a drunk driver in ‘86.
Nicole: Oh gosh.
Howard: But it was in 1962, he didn’t even get a ticket.
Nicole: Oh jeez.
Howard: You can beat up gay people and you go to jail for marijuana. Now, marijuana is legal in half a dozen states and gay people can get married. So tides change.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: One of the biggest tides that changed in my life, not only was marijuana and homosexuals getting married. I mean if you were to ask me that when I graduated from high school 1980, that those two things were ever going to be legal I would’ve laughed at you, like what are you an idiot? So I don’t really believe in leaders to begin with. When the people change their mind, say they’re all going left following that guy.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: The herd stops, they see a wolf, they turn around, they run the other way. Well what of the guy [inaudible 01:09:52] oh he’s a great leader, no he’s not. There is no great leader in 1980 that can convince America to legalise weed and gay marriage.
Nicole: No.
Howard: When I got out of school placing implants, you were a wack job, you were a butcher.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: You really need to have your licence taken away.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: That’s what they did. I think of so many [inaudible 01:10:13], I know one man in town who they did that, went from being a very successful millionaire dentist to living in a trailer in Apache Junction.
Nicole: Oh dang.
Howard: Now explain to me what Apache Junction is.
Nicole: You drive by it on the way to the mountains.
Howard: I mean what percent of the trailer parks in Apache Junction have at least one working meth lab.
Nicole: I don’t know, it’s all opioids these days.
Howard: Come on, you buy meth at Apache Junction. Now she’s denying buying meth at Apache Junction. Just come clean, come clean. The bottom line is, again, I don’t really believe in leadership. I really believe that when the herd realises that they’re running toward a cliff.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: They always get to the very edge of the cliff and look down and they say ‘wow, shouldn’t go that way’. Then they try and run the other way full speed ahead.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So it’s very interesting.
Nicole: But we’re placing implants now and that’s exciting.
Howard: It’s placing implants now and to hear thirty years later that you’re in dental school and they’re placing implants it’s like ‘yeah, what a long journey I’ve been on’.
Nicole: It’s awesome. Yeah.
Howard: I mean thirty years ago you’d be sitting in an endo class, or restorative class and the lecture guys openly bad mouthing the one guy in the oral surgery department placing implants. You’re wondering and cringing like would he say that in front of his face?
Nicole: I know.
Howard: I mean he just said it to a hundred and twenty students, you know it’s going to get back to him.
Nicole: Yeah, the rumour mill is awesome.
Howard: Of course I ran up there and told the guy and it’s tough, and a lot of things were wrong back then.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: Like when they were doing TMJ disc replacements, [inaudible:01:11:47] TMJ?
Nicole: Oh. Yeah.
Howard: They came out of LSU by one of the most famous oral surgeons ever, I’m not going to say it to tarnish his name. Turned out that the artificial disc disintegrated and was showing up all over the body, they’d find it in knee caps, and macrophages around.
Nicole: Oh jeez.
Howard: The lawsuits went crazy. I mean I don’t even know how many millions of dollars LSU lost in lawsuits from that one.
Nicole: They were just opening it up and putting in new disc.
Howard: Yeah, taking out the disc and replacing it. Because I mean you got TMJ you’ve got bone on bone.
Nicole: I didn’t know they did that.
Howard: So they put in a fake one. Remember, and breast implants.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: It’s kind of that same type of thing.
Nicole: Okay.
Howard: Which, by the way, turned out to be totally safe.
Nicole: Totally fine.
Howard: Yeah, and by the way these are not breast implants. I am all natural, I get so mad when people accuse me of having a bunch of cosmetic surgery and breast implants.
Nicole: It’s embarrassing.
Howard: I’m all natural. But I want to tell you one of the problems I have.
Nicole: Let’s hear it.
Howard: When you said that all the dentists were men and all the women were…
Nicole: Oh, when your townie thing.
Howard: We were doing full circle over [inaudible 01:12:58].
Nicole: There you go.
Howard: Even though you’re a woman dentist in America and you marry a male dentist, guess who still does the homework, the cooking, and the cleaning. We have been on a mission to get more editorial, online CE, and lectures by women and most of the women, unless they’re single, or their kids left home ‘dude, I’m doing both torches, I’m the super mom’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: ‘I’m working during the day, at night I’ve got to do all this’, and I said where is your husband and she goes ‘he’s an oral surgeon he doesn’t do shit around the house’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: ‘I told him to do the kids homework and he says, “my mom and dad never helped me with my homework”, I mean I don’t even have the balls big enough when I was little to go to my dad and say will you help me with my homework.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I don’t know if he would’ve laughed or slapped me.
Nicole: That’s toxic masculinity, Howard, it’s right there.
Howard: I mean I couldn’t even have asked him for that.
Nicole: Right.
Howard: I mean it would’ve been just the stupidest question on Earth. So now she’s married to a prosthodontist and he’s like ‘well my mom and dad never helped me with my homework and I’m a prosthodontist’.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: So it’s tough.
Nicole: It is.
Howard: So to tell you the truth we want more editorial, in fact you live in the town of Dentaltown. I hope someday you go visit and meet with editorial.
Nicole: Yeah.
Howard: I hope someday you get more involved with our media company, because we have always been trying to recruit women and I think you’re a superwoman.
Nicole: Thank you.
Howard: I do. This was love at first tweet and I will tell you Nicole thank you so much for driving an hour down to the poor part of town. She’s in rich Glendale where they have football arenas, and hockey arenas.
Nicole: Trickle down economy.
Howard: Did you strap a gun? Did you have to carry a gun when you knew you’d have to drive through Phoenix? Did you like roll your window down and have your [inaudible 01:14:49]. But thank you so much for coming down, I totally enjoyed podcasting with you. It was an honor to podcast with you. I hope you have a rocking hot day.
Nicole: Thank you.