Featured Podcasts

Featured on Dentistry Uncensored

Episode #1724: Make Patients Say Yes
Guest: Dr. Paul Homoly
Dr. Paul Homoly spent 20 years in clinical reconstructive dentistry before turning to what he argues is the real ceiling on complete care: not clinical skill, but conversation. He has made that case in books including Dentists: An Endangered Species, Isn't It Wonderful When Patients Say “YES!” and Just Because You're an Expert… Doesn't Make You Interesting, and he brings it to Howard as a challenge to what he calls the gospel of patient education. His polling of thousands of general dentists found that fewer than 5% of patients facing a fee above $10,000 are ready to start the first time they hear the plan, and that more than 70% hold back on offering complete care for fear of blowing patients out of the water. Dentists talk occlusal planes and standard of care, he says, when value lives in what the patient wants, not the doctor.

His alternative starts before diagnostics. Acceptance begins at hello, he argues, in a five- to seven-minute private conversation that establishes what he calls the “four chiefs”: the condition, the disability it creates, the behavioral benefit the patient wants, and how treatment fits a life with kids in college and a business to run. Opening with perio probing is the “periodontal detour,” since about 1% of new adult patients arrive with perio as a chief concern. He separates wanting care from being ready for it: The goal is not a yes but an offer made so well that patients return when circumstances change. His Treatment Acceptance Mastery curriculum now includes an AI Accelerator Coach that role-plays the patient side of those conversations on the premise that conversational competence must grow alongside clinical skill.


Episode #1713: The Right Way to Root Canal
Guest: Dr. Randolph Cross
Dr. Randolph Cross, a private practice endodontist in Watsonville, California, joins Howard to argue that dentistry seals root canals without ever confirming they are clean. Culturing bacteria takes two weeks, so during residency Cross adapted ATP testing to endodontics. In his device, the EndoCator, a canal sample hits the enzyme luciferase, and the light it gives off scores from 1 to 100 in five seconds, picking up anaerobes and fungi that cultures miss. What convinced him was a side-by-side in residency: An obturation that looked textbook tested dirty while his own squiggly-looking fill tested clean. He credits full-strength sodium hypochlorite and contact time with doing the real work.


Episode #1725: What’s the Risk?
Guests: Wes Read and Paul Lipcius
Wes Read and Paul Lipcius, CPAs and advisors at PracticeCFO, join Howard to reframe risk for dentists whose largest asset is a practice rather than a portfolio. Risk is not volatility, they argue, but a mismatch between a portfolio and the life it has to fund. Read notes that roughly 35% of S&P 500 returns now come from seven companies, so a dentist who assumes indexing means diversification has quietly bought concentration and hype. He frames the job as timing a life rather than a market: a 70-year-old living on a $3 million portfolio held 90% in stocks is over-risked no matter what comes next. Lipcius gives each goal its own time horizon and risk level rather than running one blended portfolio.

Featured Townie Podcasts
Check out your fellow Townies’ podcasts!

The Dental Marketer with Michael Arias
Episode 619: Relationship-based dentistry: Treat the person, not the tooth
Dr. Brett Kessler, a past president of the American Dental Association, makes the case for a practice built on relationships rather than volume or technology. His fee-for-service startup practice opens with a one-hour discovery session, and he does not offer treatment at the first visit, reasoning that patients commit to conclusions they help reach rather than ones they are talked into. Grounded in Pankey philosophy, he describes the work as treating the person attached to the tooth, using patient homework and handwritten notes to connect oral health to function, aesthetics, and overall wellness. He also credits a business coach who required six weeks of vacation in the practice's first year, after which he says production doubled, less from working harder than from thinking clearly.


The Bryan Laskin Podcast
Episode 196: The biggest AI trend in dentistry isn't in the office
Dr. Bryan Laskin argues that the most consequential AI shift in dentistry is not happening inside the practice but after the patient leaves. Patients who once sought a second opinion from another dentist now take their treatment plan to a chatbot, and they do it without the clinical context that would make the answer reliable. He calls the result a new form of “patient leakage,” driven less by the technology itself than by uncertainty a practice left unresolved at checkout and follow-up that never happened. His case is that this is a leadership problem rather than a software one.

Find your new favorite podcast on Dentaltown!
New episodes are released every month at dentaltown.com/blogs, which can be viewed on an iPad, Android, and other mobile devices as well as standard desktop and laptop computers. If you want to join Howard's show as a guest, send a request to podcasts@farranmedia.com!