Doctoring the Truth
Welcome to Doctoring the Truth, a podcast where two dedicated audiologists dissect the world of healthcare gone rogue. Explore jaw-dropping stories of medical malfeasance, nefariousness, and shocking breaches of trust. The episodes provide deep dives that latch onto your curiosity and conscience. It's a podcast for truth-seekers craving true crime, clinical insights, and a dash of humor.
Doctoring the Truth
Ep 55-Inside The Psychopath Test: Power, Labels, And The Cost Of Certainty (Part 2)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
A checklist that claims to measure danger. A hospital that tried to manufacture empathy with LSD and isolation. A courtroom that treats a number like destiny. We dive into the strange power of labels by tracing the psychopathy story from Oak Ridge’s “total encounter capsule” to Robert Hare’s PCL-R and the very real ways scores still steer sentencing, parole, and civil commitment.
We unpack the seductive clarity of risk tools—and the trouble that follows when dimensional traits are forced into binary verdicts. Tony’s story from a UK high-security hospital lays bare the diagnostic double bind: calm becomes “shallow,” protest becomes “manipulative,” and every reaction confirms the label. We contrast that with emerging neuroscience that finds differences in fear and emotion processing rather than emotional emptiness, and with longitudinal evidence that context and early intervention can shift traits over time. The point isn’t to deny danger; it’s to question certainty.
Then we pivot to medicine’s own reckoning with bias and overconfidence. In our chart note, pediatric clinicians and engineers use 3D CT and finite element modeling to interpret infant skull fractures, replacing gut feel with measurable patterns. The lesson carries back to courts and clinics alike: a red flag should prompt slower thinking, not shortcut it. We close with a gripping ER story from a listener in recovery whose pain was sidelined by an old label until one doctor listened, ordered the right tests, and changed the trajectory of the night. Across psychiatry, law, and emergency care, the throughline is clear: tools help, but certainty can harm. Let numbers inform judgment, not replace it.
If this sparked thought, share it with a friend, follow Doctoring the Truth, and leave a quick review—what’s one label you think we overtrust?
REFERENCES
The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson: panmacmillan.com
Hare, R. D. (1998). The Hare PCL-R: Some issues concerning its use and misuse. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 3(Part 1), 99
Don't miss a (heart) beat! Check out our Instagram @doctoringthetruthpodcast and email us your Medical Mishaps at doctoringthetruth@gmail.com. Join us on Facebook at Doctoring the Truth, and TikTok @doctoring the truth. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can keep bringing you more exciting content each week!
Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!
Don't forget to check out these fantastic discounts using promo code STAYSUSPICIOUS from our sponsors at:
*thecuminclub.com for 30% off
*https://strongcoffeecompany.com/discount/STAYSUSPICIOUS for 20% off
*www.handful.com for 30% off
*www.standshoes.com for 15% off
*www.oldglory.com for 15% off
*www.getcheeky.com for 30% off
*https://mollybz.com for 10% off
*www.RSRVCollective.com for 30% off
*klearprotein.com for 20% off
*www.torrain.org for 15% off
*www.cozyearth.com for 21% off
* www.yarokhair.com for 15% off
*www.loveindus.com for 21% off
...
Warm-Up, New Gear, And Laughs
SPEAKER_02Hello. We're back. And we've got internet.
SPEAKER_03Woohoo! Amanda! Jenna! You fancy pants. Hey girl. I know. Guess who's trying to figure out her new roadcaster mixer? Whoop whoop. That sounded awesome. Could you hear it? Yes. Ah. Anyway, how the heck are you? Oh, good.
SPEAKER_01I'm excited about this jazzy juzzy juzzy situation.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's probably gonna get a bit obnoxious before it gets better, but so be, you know, listeners, just consider yourselves informed. Yeah. Mama's got a new toy. Mama's got a toy. It's about time she figured it out since I got it in January. But yeah, yesterday we tried and failed miserably because I'm out in the boonies and there was no absolutely no internet to be had.
SPEAKER_01The Northwoods failed her with the internet.
SPEAKER_02Bears were probably blocking it because the weather's been decent.
SPEAKER_03They're waking up. They're coming out. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh no. Oh gosh. So are you ready for this really heavy subject part two? Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, so before we go on, I just want to say I'm really jazzed. Speaking of jazz, because I discovered a new comedian today, and she is so funny. And so I think everybody should give a listen to her. I think she actually has an HBO special, but I had never heard of her before. Her name is Robbie Hoffman.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I yeah. Yeah, she's hilarious.
SPEAKER_02Oh god, she is absolutely hilarious. And so just it was just giggling a minute ago because I watched a clip about how, you know, she's she's a Jew from Brooklyn who grew up with like nine siblings. So grew up poor. And so now she's kind of you know, very successful, not kind of, she's very successful and whatever. And a friend invited her over to to swim in the pool.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I've seen.
SPEAKER_03And she was like, She brought her own towel.
Sponsor: Cheeky Night Guards
SPEAKER_02So she brought her own towel, and then she starts the clip out with like, ever realize you're poor because you like yourself a hard towel? Yes, you know, and then she's like, she goes to her friend's house and they give her a nice fluffy towel. She's like, Oh, they got the towels, they got the towels, and then she's trying this fluffy towel. She's like, I don't know, is this thing like drying me or am I drying it? You know, who uh what's going on here? You know, and you're looking so cute, man. She's like, Yeah, my friend said, Aren't they nice? I just bought them. And she's like, black towels? I thought they came with the house, you know. She's just like, it's so relatable. Anyway, so a little chuckle before we head into our our first sponsor. Let's talk about Cheeky. Cheeky, Cheeky, Cheeky, which I originally thought was an underwear ad, but no, it's for your teeth.
SPEAKER_01Well, when we have a handful, why wouldn't you assume Cheeky was for booty cheeks? Right?
SPEAKER_02But even better, it is a mouth guard, and it's an excellent mouth guard, and which you can get at getche.com. So stop your teeth grinding and clenching with a custom night guard from Cheeky at a fraction of the cost of a dentist. It's easily affordable and guaranteed. Smile, sleep, and repeat. Cheeky offers affordable custom night guards that they deliver to your doorstep at a fraction of the cost charged by dentists. I mean, no offense to our dentist friends, but dang, that stuff's expensive. So this is not, and it's easy to use. They give you an impression kit that captures your bite from the comfort of your home, and you get dentist quality night guard that's tailored to your teeth. So you can protect your teeth from grinding by absorbing the forces of grinding, preventing headaches, jaw pain, chip teeth, and promote healthier gums and a more confident smile. We need those smiles out there to be confident. So you're gonna get free shipping, 100% money back guarantee. So try it today. Don't delay. This exclusive deal is limited. So visit getcheeky.com and use our promo code staysuspicious for 30% off your order today. Another great discount. So again, cheeky.com, use our promo code stay suspicious for 30% off your order today.
SPEAKER_01Sidebar, because I don't think this is a sponsor today, but is our bamboo sheet? I can't remember what it's called. Is it still yeah, cozy earth? Cozy earth.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we still list all those. Anything that's listed on the end uh uh like on the show notes is still viable. So I take them off if they don't work for us anymore. Oh maybe I should have known that.
SPEAKER_01LOL. We got our baby a like a bamboo sleep sack. Oh, and it's just like so wonderfully cozy. And so I had said to Adam, like, well, yeah, it's bamboo, it's like it's the best, you know. It is, and he I was like, We should get bamboo sheets for the bed, and so he looked them up and he was like, hot damn, those are expensive. Yeah, I was like, Yeah, they are, and then for a reason because they're really good.
SPEAKER_02But if you go to cozyarth.com, I feel like we still have a 30% code out there, so I feel like it was almost 40. Yeah, it was maybe it was 35. We'll split the difference. I feel like we've had this conversation before.
SPEAKER_01You know what? Somewhere in there, it was good. Well, I told him, like, yeah, bamboo sheets are expensive, but like all sheets are expensive. And then I was like, Yeah, those sheets we've been sleeping on all these years. Yeah, I spent a lot of money on sheets. Let's get the bamboo. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Hello, they didn't come with a house. I had to buy them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they didn't, they did not come with the house. Let me tell, let me tell you.
Cozy Earth And Bamboo Bedding Tangent
SPEAKER_02So we have a us we have a cheeky mouth guard and we have a sneaky little promo for cozy earth.com. So for 30-ish percent off, like a great percentage off. Go to cozyearth.com, get yourself some bamboo. Like I still run around in my bamboo jogging. I was like, you were gonna think I was saying run around in my sheets. I I could, they're very comfy, but they have joggers and all kinds of stuff. And I got the joggers for free for ordering a cheap sheet set. So they have good deals on top of good deals. Just use our promo code Stay Suspicious. Yes. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that was the promo specifically for Amanda, but y'all can benefit too.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I needed that. Thank you.
Part Two Setup: Oak Ridge Recap
SPEAKER_02Okay, here we go. We're gonna, this is part two about the psychopath test. And I don't have any new triggers. I mean, I'm gonna briefly like call back to what we talked about last week, which did include sexual abuse, rape, assault, and sexual abuse of minors and drug use. So it just be listeners should be aware those topics are covered. So, part two. Last week we stepped into one of the strangest corners of modern psychiatry, Oak Ridge, Ontario's maximum security hospital for the criminally insane, and a very bright green room with a name that sounds like a sci-fi prop, but was very real. The total encounter capsule promised something almost mythic that you could take young men, branded psychopaths, strip away the mask through confrontation, humiliation, and hallucinogens, and rebuild empathy from the inside out. For a moment it even looked like it worked. On camera, they seemed transformed, tender, articulate, emotionally fluent. Institutions love that kind of story. Redemption, neatly filmed, ready for a grant proposal. But then, the long-term outcomes landed like a cold hand on the shoulder. Treatment didn't just fail for many of the men labeled psychopaths, it actually may have made them more dangerous, teaching them the language and performance of empathy without the thing itself. And that forces the most unsettling question in this entire series. If someone can learn to act human, how do we decide who is and who isn't? Because Oak Ridge didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened inside a culture that was already obsessed with labeling the invisible, trying to name the kind of cruelty that can look perfectly sane from the outside. Which brings us to where this story actually began, with a book that nobody could explain. In the early 2000s, academics across the world started receiving a strange, authorless text in the mail. And not a text like a phone text, a textbook. It was dense, opaque, and impossible to place. Was it brilliant? Was it nonsense? Was it a prank? John Ronson followed that mystery expecting a rabbit hole. And John Ronson, again, is the author of the psychopath test, which is why I got into this episode to begin with. He was intrigued, and it led him straight into forensic psychiatry to his surprise. And to a man whose work has shaped who gets branded a psychopath, who gets locked away, and who gets a second chance. Today we're going to revisit Dr. Robert Hare's checklist that turned a slippery fear into a score and asked what happens when a tool designed to measure risk starts quietly defining a person's fate. But first, I have an activity for us, Amanda.
SPEAKER_01Um I kind of wish that I didn't already have a heads up on this because I feel like you guys would have appreciated my like, what? Yeah. You weren't supposed to give that away. No, I'm just teasing. Yeah. She did give me a heads up. Very kind. You're so honest. I'm sorry, but I can't, I like suck at lying, you know, so I didn't want to be like, OMG, really?
The Checklist’s Promise And Peril
SPEAKER_02People would have known I knew. Well, everyone wants to, you know, knowing that about you, Amanda, everyone wants to play poker with you. Okay. All right. But I have here a copy of the PCLR checklist, which is the test that this whole book is referencing, and is copyrighted. So we won't be able to put it out there. But I thought it would be super duper fun to give someone an armchair diagnosis. Can you think of anybody who might potentially qualify on this checklist that you'd like to run through?
SPEAKER_01I can think of someone in particular who most definitely would qualify for the capsule room for Shirley.
SPEAKER_03Well, let's see if if I'm assuming male. Male for sure. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03He, him, his pronouns. Yeah. All right. Well, let's put him to the test.
SPEAKER_02Let's see if he really is. If we really did or does belong there. So all right. First set of questions. I want you to rate these various factors based on zero, does not apply, one applies somewhat, or two definitely applies.
SPEAKER_01So is this like somebody would fill it out about somebody, or someone feels it out about themselves?
SPEAKER_02This is this a qualified psychiatrist who's undergone special training, interviews the person and determines the score. And then they interview them again later down the line and make sure it's consistent. So this is a whole thing that we're totally not qualified to do. So this is you as an armchair psychologist making the decision here. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Factor one. You know what? And I I was under this person's thumb for a long time. So I feel qualified to make this armchair diagnosis. I think you are. All right.
SPEAKER_02So all right. First one is first section of questions is about interpersonal effective. And this is 20 questions. So first one, glibness or superficial charm. The question: Does the individual use charm, flattery, or smooth talk to gain trust or manipulate others? Strongly agree. Is that an option? Yeah. So it's doesn't apply, applies somewhat, definitely applies. So we're saying definitely. Second one, grandiose sense of self-worth. Does the individual have an inflated sense of self-importance and believe they're superior to others?
SPEAKER_03Oh, definitely. Oh boy. Not looking good for you.
SPEAKER_02Mr. Mystery Man. Or should I say butt munch or something more appropriate? Yeah. Since I know who we're talking about. Need for stimulation, proneness to boredom. Does the individual crave excitement and easily get bored with routine activities? Maybe the middle one. Oh my gosh. I I kind of would score high on that question.
SPEAKER_03Do you think?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I get bored easily. I don't know. He has a really boring job. Yeah, no, I'm talking about myself. Myself.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
unknownUh-oh.
SPEAKER_02Pathological lying. Does the individual lie for?
SPEAKER_01Definitely.
SPEAKER_02Oh shit. Let me finish that one. Good, good. All right. Conning and manipulativeness. Does the individual exploit others for personal gain through deception or manipulation? Definitely. Lack of remorse or guilt. Does the individual lack remorse? Definitely. Shallow affect. Does the individual show a limited range of emotions or a lack of emotional depth?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I feel like I can't say definitely for all of them, so we'll give him a middle.
SPEAKER_02Callous lack of empathy. Does the individual lack empathy or concern for the feelings of others? Definitely. Okay. So now we're on to factor two, lifestyle antisocial behaviors. So the first question is poor behavioral controls. Does the individual lack impulse control and often engage in reckless or irresponsible behavior? I don't think so. Need for thrill or lack of responsibility. Does the individual crave excitement and risk risk taking and show little regard for the consequences?
Armchair PCL-R Scoring Exercise
SPEAKER_01That's a tough one to answer because like in their professional personal life, I feel like I would like not score them high, but in like in the personal life, then I would score. See, that's why this is hard to do. Because you know, like how they can fake. Okay, so let's just hit the middle of the road for that one. Because even though you just explained that to me, I'm still struggling.
SPEAKER_02Okay, no, that's all right. I mean, we're not gonna mail this to him. Maybe we should.
SPEAKER_01We should douche bed. Just kidding, I don't know where he lives.
SPEAKER_02Okay, parasitic lifestyle. Does the individual exploit others for their resources and avoid taking responsibility for their actions? Absolutely. Okay. This one I don't know if you'll know. Early behavioral problems. Did the individual exhibit conduct problems or aggression early in life? I I would say no. Lack of realistic long-term goals. Does the individual lack clear goals or aspirations for the future? No. Impulsivity. Does the individual act impulsively without considering the consequences?
SPEAKER_01I'm just thinking back to the last one because I'm like, no, they have work goals. And then I'm like, no, I'm not supposed to think about work, right? So like personal goals? Maybe we should hit the middle of the road with that one. The one before?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Gosh, you guys, I'm so sorry. No, you're doing great. Impulsivity. Do they act impulsively without considering the concept? No. You know, let's let's say if they wanted to just like go out and cheat on a person or oh, okay, yes.
SPEAKER_01Did it really take that example for me? I don't know. Pass out at the bar on a pool table? I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think there's plenty of examples, and I don't even know them that well. Irresponsibility. Does the individual fail to meet their obligations or commitments? Yes. Definitely. Juvenile delinquency, did they engage in criminal behavior during their youth? No. Adult antisocial behavior. Has the individual engaged in criminal or illegal activities as an adult? No. Well, not that they were in trouble for. So the question isn't if they got caught, it's if they engaged in criminal behavior during promiscuous sexual behavior. Does the individual have a history of many short-term marital relationships? Has an individual had multiple short-term marriages or relationships?
SPEAKER_01No. Relationships, yeah. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So, all right. Let's see. Whew, thank you guys for hanging in there.
SPEAKER_02Woo-duh. So he scored a 26. And scores of 21 to 30 indicate moderate to high levels of psychopathic traits, potentially impacting relationships and life functioning. So you gotta get to 31 to be a high level of psychopathy. But yeah, so out of minimal, moderate, moderately severe, and severe, he's moderately severe. Yeah. I feel like that tracks. So there we go. What a dude. You know what, Amanda? I hope he's having the day that he deserves. I do too.
unknownAll right.
SPEAKER_01Everyone's gonna be like, oh my gosh. Obviously, she was gonna say definitely for everything. No, I mean I didn't.
SPEAKER_03You didn't get it, put him at severe. Yeah. Well, this is we're not trying to teach to the test like we're just it was just cute.
Corporate Psychopathy And Context
Tony’s Story And Diagnostic Traps
SPEAKER_02Just an example of how subjective this is, though. Yeah, because we're gonna talk about that. Yeah. So similarly, Ron as Ronson started noting the noticing the traits of psychopathy everywhere. So this author that wrote this book. And you can see why. He observed powerful executives who displayed calm and ruthlessness. He met individuals who seemed unusually fearless, unusually self-assured, and unusually detached from the emotional consequences of their actions. And he starts to wonder whether psychopathy is confined to prisons at all. The idea that some corporate leaders might score highly on the psychopathic traits is provocative but not absurd. Certain industries reward boldness, emotional detachment, and comfort with risk. A surgeon who remains steady during crisis is praised. A hedge fund manager who makes ruthless financial decisions without visible distress is also described as decisive. In these contexts, traits that might appear pathological in one setting become assets in another. Ronson doesn't conclude that corporate boardrooms are filled with psychopaths. What unsettles him is how easily the checklist travels. A tool designed to identify extreme antisocial personalities begins to feel culturally portable, begins to feel like a lens that can be applied to anyone who makes us uncomfortable, and lenses shape what we see. The emotional center of Ronson's journey emerges when he visits a high security psychiatric hospital in the UK. There he meets a man named Tony. Tony! Tony! Tony insists that he's not mentally ill. He explains that he deliberately faked madness to escape a conventional prison sentence. He believed that a psychiatric hospital would offer better conditions than a standard correctional facility. According to Tony, he succeeded too well. He was transferred, evaluated, and labeled a psychopath. Now he cannot leave. Tony speaks coherently. He appears intelligent and self-aware. He argues that the diagnosis has become self-perpetuating. If he protests convincingly, then clinicians interpret that as manipulation. If he remains calm, they interpret it as emotional shallowness. If he becomes frustrated, they interpret it as poor behavioral control. So I mean every response that he makes in this framework confirms his diagnosis. Ronson finds himself suspended between interpretations. Tony may indeed be manipulative, he may also be telling the truth. The clinicians may be protecting society, but they also may be protecting their own certainty. What Ronson experiences in that hospital is not a dramatic revelation that the checklist is fraudulent. It's something more disquieting. He sees how a diagnostic label, once applied, can reshape every subsequent interaction. And in forensic settings, that label carries legal weight. A high PCLR score can influence sentencing decisions and parole outcomes. Courts have treated psychopathy as a marker of elevated risk. In some jurisdictions, it's been used to justify longer incarceration or civil commitment. The logic is straightforward. If someone is fundamentally incapable of remorse or behavioral change, then society must prioritize containment over rehab. That logic echoes older institutional assumptions. Places like Oak Ridge, the maximum security forensic psychiatric hospital in Ontario, operated within similar conceptual atmosphere. Patients there were often described as dangerous, resistant to treatment, and emotionally unreachable. The social therapy unit and the total encounter capsule were built on the belief that ordinary therapeutic boundaries did not apply to individuals that were considered fundamentally antisocial. Today, prolonged solitary confinement is widely recognized as psychologically harmful. Research has consistently shown that extended isolation produces anxiety, hallucinations, emotional dysregulation, cognitive impairment, and increased risk of self-harm, even in individuals with no prior psychiatric illness. Courts and human rights bodies have increasingly acknowledged these harms, sometimes decades after the evidence was already clear. What's striking is how closely these effects resemble what Oak Ridge patients described long ago before neuroscience or legal doctrine caught up. And the main difference is language. At Oak Ridge, isolation was framed as treatment. In modern correctional systems, it's often framed as security. And in both cases, the burden is placed on the individual to endure psychological damage for the sake of institutional order. Order. Different justification, same result. Modern neuroscience has complicated earlier assumptions about psychopathy. Research indicates differences in emotional processing and threat sensitivity, particularly involving neural circuits associated with fear and impulse control. These findings suggest variation in how emotional signals are processed, not an absence of emotion altogether. Longitudinal studies have also shown that psychopathic traits can change over time, particularly in response to environmental conditions. Early intervention, structured support, and context appear to matter. These developments introduce nuance into a diagnosis that once seemed definitive. So Ronson's discomfort arises precisely here. The checklist offers clarity in a domain that's defined by ambiguity. It reduces complexity to a number, and that number carries institutional consequences. I mean, the appeal of such clarity is understandable. I mean, courts need to make decisions, and prisons require classifications, and risk must be assessed. As Ronson continues his investigation, he becomes increasingly aware of his own susceptibility to the label. He catches himself silently scoring people in conversations. I could totally see myself doing this, and I have since I could since I got this list and read it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
Neuroscience Nuance And Legal Weight
SPEAKER_02He notices how quickly he can interpret behavior through the checklist framework. The tool's not only diagnostic, it's narrative. It provides a story about why people act the way they do. And stories are powerful. They can illuminate, but they can also confine. And the deeper Ronson goes, the more the book becomes less about psychopaths and more about power, the power to define, the power to score someone, the power to declare someone is fundamentally different. Psychopathy in Ronson's telling is not simply a personality construct, it's a social designation with institutional force. Ronson never proves that the psychopathy checklist is invalid. He doesn't accuse Dr. Hare of fraud, but instead he documents how even a well-intentioned, empirically developed tool can provide unintended consequences when it enters complex systems. He raises a question rather than delivering a verdict. But labels like psychopath can feel like a verdict, an easy way to explain cruelty, predict danger, and justify whatever comes next. But in modern mental health practice, psychopathy isn't a formal DSM diagnosis in the way that the public tends to imagine. It's actually a construct that overlaps with antisocial personality disorder and related trait patterns. And so the clinical debate has always been about what it captures, what it misses, and how responsibly it can be used. In courts and corrections, the label often arrives through the psychopathy checklist. And as we saw earlier when we were reading Amanda's previous acquaintance, it's very highly open to interpretation, right? And so it's supposed to be scored by a trained evaluator using a semi-structured interview plus collateral records to back things up. I read somewhere, maybe I talk about it later, but they have to do it more than once on different occasions to make sure that it's consistent over time. So to this day, it still remains a mainstream tool in forensic psychiatric hospitals, detention and correctional settings, and pretrial evaluations. It's still currently actively sold, trained on, and embedded in forensic workflows. A recurring criticism is that the PCLR can be used as if it's a crystal ball, especially when decision makers want clean certainty about future violence or dangerousness. A published statement of concerned experts argues that the PCLR cannot and should not be used to predict serious institutional violence with any reasonable precision or accuracy in high-stakes contexts like capital sentencing. And it highlights problems that include imperfect interrater reliability and variability in predictive validity. More recent legal scholarship also warns about the temptation to reify cutoff scores. You know, if you go into it knowing that 30 means you're you're in there for longer, you know, there's an argument that people might go lower or higher based on pre-bias, or, you know, like if you're from the government, you don't want to spend the money on this, you know, you're gonna he's gonna be a 29er. You know, that's that's what I took this to mean. Yeah. So they're turning this dimensional trait measure into a binary entity. You're 29 or you're 30, you know, because law often is black and white, it needs a yes or no answer, and science is messier than that. But now, welcome to the chart note. Welcome to the chart note segment where we learn about what's happening in medicine and healthcare. Last week I attended pediatric grand rounds at the University of Minnesota and it was excellent. And it was about infant skull fractures after low height falls. I know this sounds terrible. I mean, it is terrible, but what's interesting about this is kind of ties into what we're talking about today because it's a if an infant comes in from a low fall with a fractured skull, it's up to the, you know, the abuse, the pediatricians who specialize in child abuse or child protection clinicians. It's up to them to figure out, you know, is this was this an accident or was this abuse? And either side is, I mean, it's it's life-changing for for many people, depending on what they find. So they're trying to get more data to be able to determine this a little more effectively. So, like I said, this this is one of those areas where few inches of distance can turn into a life-altering investigation. So here's the tension that the clinicians who work with these situations deal with the short falls happen all the time. And skull fractures can occur from these short falls, but skull fractures also regularly show up in cases of abuse. So the question isn't can a short fall do this? The question is how do we interpret what we're seeing without defaulting to assumptions? So, what's new and genuinely hopeful is that this field is shifting from gut feel heuristics towards measurable patterns and biomechanical contexts. One major step forward comes from work led by a pediatric child protection researcher and was Dr. Tegrid Ruiz Maldonado, and she was the one giving the talk, and she was amazing. She studied 231 infant skull fractures from low-height falls using 3D CT reconstructions. So they weren't just counting fractures, they quantified measures like the fracture length and how nonlinear the fracture line is and other markers of complexity. And then they looked at what factors actually changed the patterns. So their results matter because they put numbers to something that clinicians argued about for decades. Younger infants and greater fall heights were linked with more complex patterns, including things like fractures spanning from suture to suture in the skull and even biparietal involvement, so either side of the head, and impact surface played a role in how many cracks were present. But this isn't consistent across even children, because there's so much that's changing the architecture of the skull during growth. The infant skull is not a mini-adult skull. Age and anatomy change the rules of what these fracture patterns look like, even in accidental falls. So here's the new school part that I think is really cool. Engineers are building models to help interpret fracture patterns, the way that accident reconstruction helps interpret car crashes. So in 2025, a biomechanics study used finite element fracture simulations to generate a data set of simulated infant skull fractures, and then used machine learning to predict fall parameters. So the headline is refreshingly honest. Predicting exact fall height was hard, but identifying potential impact sites worked much better. So it's not a courtroom magic trick, it's a tool that can add context when the history is unclear, missing, or disputed. And there's another nuance that biomechanics is surfacing that's huge for real cases. Infant skull fractures don't just depend on force, they depend on that skull architecture, the sutures and the fontanelles, including variations like accessory structures that influence how a fracture line travels. So a 2025 study modeling suture fontanelle variability found that these features can significantly affect head biomechanics, with fractures more likely to propagate along accessory sutures in the parietal bone. The bright spot isn't that we can tell accident from abuse with an algorithm. We're not there, but the bright spot is that medicine is finally building a shared language between clinicians and engineers, one that makes it harder for anyone to treat a single fracture pattern as a verdict. Because the best practice is still the boring truth. Interpretation comes from the whole picture, the history, exam, imaging, associated injuries, and context. But the more we understand the mechanics, the less we're forced to rely on myth. So some of this was a little convoluted, but I learned a couple of things, first of all, that the different parts of the skull, how they how they grow is it from in utero to you know infancy, is they grow out in like centrifugal pattern. So each bone plate is like a little asterisk or star that's growing out like a flower, right? Cool. So yeah, it's really cool. And so then the depending on what you know how soft the bone is, things are gonna react differently. So I thought that was really cool. And the other thing that was really very charming I found about this absolutely stellar speaker who's way too smart for me to understand most of what she was saying. But she would talk about how he had literal engineers, like architects, engineers that like know how to build a bridge, and then they're asking all these medical questions, like what is you know, what's a yes, what's a that? Because they know the science behind you know what happens to a structure. So I just thought it was a really cool merging of two very disparate disciplines that are getting along to figure this stuff out. So anyway, super cool. Thanks. Let's go back to the story. If you go to hair.com and and that I should spell it, it's H and Dr. Hare's name is H-A-R-E.com, like the rabbit. If you go to hair.com, you can find information about the checklist. And then there's a big old warning on the home page, and I'll read it. Quote In clinical settings, the PCLR is used for psychodiagnostic purposes. Because an individual individual scores may have important consequences for his or her whore. And a and a whore's future. I need some water. I'm sorry, my lips try that again. Well, I don't know where I was, but because an individual's scores may have important consequences for his or her or whore's future. The absolute value is of critical importance. The potential for harm is considerable, and this is bolded on the site. If the PCLR is used incorrectly or if the user is not familiar with the clinical and empirical literature pertaining to psychopathy, and then there's a whole list of like what qualifies you to be able to use this tool. So obviously, we pass with flying colors because we use it today.
SPEAKER_01Totally.
Chart Note: Infant Skull Fractures
SPEAKER_02But they have to have advanced degrees in social, medical, or behavioral sciences sciences. They have to register that they're using this tool with the American, you know, I would assume the American Academy of Psychiatry or something. They had to have some expertise with forensic populations and then only use the PCLR to the populations in which it's been fully validated. So I didn't ask you this. He may not even be someone who this was normed for, because I think you have to have, well, it used to be it was only allowed on adult male forensic populations. So people who are in correctional facilities, psychiatric hospitals, and then pretrial or detention facilities. But now they've decided equal rights. Now we can use them on women and adolescent offenders. But they again, these are it's used forensically. Oh, sex offenders also made the list. Anyway, so he warned about misuse because the PCLR doesn't live in a lab, it lives in courtrooms. But he's pretty clear about the basics. And he's saying, you know, you can't you can't diagnose somebody on the basis of an interview alone. But you know, misuse of the tool doesn't always look like somebody forging a score. It's often more subtle. So it's when the score gets built on thin records or presented without showing what actually supports the number. It's when a dimensional rating turns into a sticky identity, psychopath that follows someone like a permanent stain. It's when cutoff scores start acting like trapdoors. 30 becomes that red line, like we talked about, and suddenly the system drifts into managing the cutoff instead of honestly measuring the person. We heard about what happened to Tony and Ronson's book and how every reaction becomes evident. So you can you can see why this is dangerous. When the system wants certainty, a number could start functioning like a verdict. So here's some recent examples of this. In a New York civil management case where the state can try to keep someone confined even after their prison sentence, an expert testified that the respondent had met criteria for psychopathy and gave him a PCLR score of 30. But the court noted that he'd previously scored 22 and 28 by other evaluators and criticized the expert for not explaining what specifically in the records justified 30. In other words, if you're going to drop a number that heavy into a case that high stakes, you don't get to hand wave the foundation. And then there's the Texas case of Robert Roberson, a man convicted of capital murder in his daughter's death, whose supporters argue the conviction rests on disputed medical testimony around Shaken Baby syndrome. After he was found guilty, psychologist Thomas Allen evaluated him using the PCLR, told the jury he was a psychopath, and compared him to Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein, as if to place him in a pantheon of villains. The Marshall Project also notes a hard in limitation here. There are no available recordings of Allen's interview with Roberson, which means the public can't independently review what was asked, what was answered, and how the scoring judgments were made. And isn't that interesting that we're trying to determine whether it was shake and baby syndrome, you know, basically whether it was abuse or an accident. Yeah. And we just talked about that, and I didn't even think about the connection. And we just had a chart note about that. Yeah. Anyway, this is the point. Whenever you think about an individual case, that's the mechanism of harm. The label doesn't arrive as a neutral clinical term. So in the courtroom, psychopath lands preloaded with movie certainty. Once it's in the room, it can start doing the prosecutor's work for them. So when Hare talks about misuse, it's not academic nitpicking. It's a warning about what happens when measurement gets mistaken for fate. When a tool meant to structure judgment becomes a substitute for judgment. Oakridge shows what can happen when a system decides certain people are by nature untreatable threats and then treats that belief as permission. In Barker versus Barker, which is the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, that's where it was held. Held? Trying to considered held. The plaintiffs were involuntarily admitted patients at the Maximum Security Oak Ridge Division in Oh boy, I meant to look this up ahead of time and I forgot. In Penetanguishine. Penitanguishine at various times between 1966 and 1983. And the court examined three impugned programs carried out in the social therapy unit. The defense disruptive therapy, which was a mind-altering drug regime, the total encounter capsule, which, as we know, was that group isolation including LSD encounters, and then the motivation, attitude, and participation program, which is a strict physical disciplinary regime. The judgment describes, for example, that the capsule was soundproof, windowless, and constantly lit, and patients were locked in groups and monitored, and notes that Dr. Barker's own published descrip published descriptions of groups of naked mental patients. It's just so awful and observe. I'm absurd, I'm not laughing at them. I'm just laughing at the absurdity that this actually happened. But they were confined for periods of up to 11 days. It also describes how the discipline program exacted perfection and patients' accounts of being required to sit without moving for hours. So when a system decides you're beyond empathy, it starts treating you as beyond rights. Scary. So the takeaway as I see it is that the PCLR can be clinically informative, in the right hands, and in the right context. But major experts and legal scholars will still warn against treating it as a standalone decision or as a binary stamp that ellipses nuance uncertainty in the patient's humanity. In the end, the psychopath test is not a book about monsters, it's a book about categories. It asks whether the act of labeling changes the person being labeled. It asks whether the score becomes destiny. It asks whether institutions can resist the comfort of definitive answers and situations that resist simplicity. Before we close this out, let's circle back to that strange little book that started John Ronson's entire trip down the psychopathy rabbit hole. So you'll recall that in the early 2000s, academics around the world began receiving an anonymous book in the mail, postmarked Gothenburg, Sweden. It was titled Being or Nothingness and credited to an author called Joe Kaye. It wasn't marketed, it wasn't explained, and it wasn't written like anything that wanted to be understood. Every other page was blank, words were literally cut out of the paper, and the copyright page, the normally the one thing that tells you where the book came from, had been cut out completely. Ronson got pulled in because the mystery looked like an eccentric intellectual game. He followed the online chatter, he contacted people who'd received the book, and eventually called Douglas Hofstetter, whose work had made him an obvious suspect. Hofstadter told Ronson it wasn't him. And more than that, he said it felt less like brilliance and more like obsession. The break game from old-fashioned reporting. Ronson found a real name attached to a project in a Swedish archive, Petter Nordland, listed as the English translator. He flew to Gothenburg, knocked on the door, tied to that name, and learned that Nordlin was a psychiatrist. When Ronson met him, Ronson's conclusion was blunt. Nordlin was the person behind it, behind Joe Kay, behind the mailing campaign and the whole slow motion disruption. And the why is the most unsettling part. This wasn't a commercial stunt. It was a kind of a private project aimed outward, an attempt to pull brilliant strangers into his orbit, to force contact, to make other people carry the weight of his questions. Ronson doesn't frame it as a tidy reveal with a satisfying motive. He frames it as a glimpse of how easily smart communities can mistake fixation for profundity and how quickly we want to believe that there's a clever system behind something that might just be one person pushing and pushing on the world until it answers back. And that's why this belongs at the end of an episode about Oak Ridge, because the whole story, books in the mail, checklists, the capsule, the promise of transformation, turns on the same temptation, our craving to make the unknowable measurable, to turn fear into a framework, to turn a human being into a score, a diagnosis, and a type. Oak Ridge tried to force empathy out of people by breaking them open. The checklist tries to protect us by labeling the ones it says can't be fixed. And that strange book, Being or Nothingness, is the quiet prologue to all of it. A reminder that sometimes the scariest part isn't the monster, it's the certainty. Because certainty is how a system convinces itself it's doing the right thing right up until the moment the harm is already done.
Engineering Meets Pediatrics
SPEAKER_01Holy smokers. Great job with your research. It's always hard when you read a book. Right? Right? You want to put everything in. So shout out to John Ronson. Still struggling with separating that in my mind. Yeah. So completely agree that the tool definitely can have some biases as evidenced by my armchair diagnosis earlier. Although I do think I answered truthfully, but yeah. So beware. Beware of the PCLR. I still can't believe Oak Ridge was a real place. That is so wild to me. And I'm still hung up on the fact that people took children there for a field trip. It's outrageous. And it was like, oh, well, we don't want them to just be distracted, so let's have them wear this lanyard of a horrible scene on it. Like, I'm still like not over that from last week.
SPEAKER_02I kind of feel like the that psychiatrist, was it Barker? Must have been on heavy doses of his own meds. He had to have been on LSD to come up with this stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like, did you join the LSD party? It just got worse and worse. What would you think if you would have got one of those books in the mail?
SPEAKER_02I would have done the same thing. I would have gone on a treasure hunt, like, ooh, you know, because it was published. That's what's weird. And so it's very unsatisfying because I mean he did find the guy, but the guy's the psychiatrist Petter, his explanation, it kind of sounded like he maybe he himself was having a psych bit of psychosis. He was lost in his own deep thoughts and he wanted other people to suffer with him. Kind of thing is how it came out. So spread the misery. But I would think, ooh, if I got this and then a famous neurologist in, you know, Sweden got one, and you know, this this other super smart person got it, I would feel like happy to be part of the club as long as it wasn't sinister.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. Like, ah, everyone thinks I'm so smart. Got them fooled. And but then I would want to be like, who else got a book? Because what's your version like? Because they weren't all the same either. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. This whole episode, honestly, part one and two are just mind-bending. Yeah. And I great case. Thank you for covering it.
SPEAKER_02I hope you become as obsessed at using this filter lens to look at people that you learn about that could potentially be uh candidates for this evaluation, obviously responsibly, whatever. But to to ourselves, I like to think, oh yeah, that's one of those traits that uh here talks about.
SPEAKER_01Check. You're like, check definitely, definitely underline, underline.
SPEAKER_02And you know, after we get off the line here, I'm gonna test myself.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. Do you think you'll be able to accurately do it about yourself?
SPEAKER_02You know, when you see one, you're like, oh my gosh, so this need for stimulation and proneness to boredom, that's totally me. I mean, and I also sometimes be charming.
SPEAKER_01I think ADHD is different than psychopathy.
SPEAKER_02Let's hope so. Maybe that's a subject for another episode. But anyway, I've got to tell you, I've yesterday during our failed attempt at getting internet and recording, I flashed you something. Do you remember?
SPEAKER_01Yes, she did. She did. She said, make sure Adam's not looking. I gotta show you something. And her shirt went. Show me something, throw me something.
SPEAKER_02Listen, handful active wear. I, as I said earlier, I in an earlier episode, Amanda talked me into it. She was so raving about this underwear line. And oh my gosh, I've never before she's on the bandwagon. I I mean, I struggle to get something comfortable even when I'm there and can like see it before I buy it. So I've never been successful ordering online. So these are so comfortable. I feel like I could go to bed in them and not even notice, you know. Normally they're so cozy. Yeah. First thing when I come home, normally, sorry everyone, but normally, you know, the bra comes out, she flies. You walk in the door home from work, your armpits hurt, the thing goes off. Not today, baby. Well, actually, today. Don't let me forget I don't have it on because it's so comfy. I wouldn't know. But anyway, you guys go there. I'm not even gonna say anymore. Go to handful.com. It's not just bras. There's is there stuff for men? I didn't even look. I don't care about men I was shopping for me. I didn't look.
SPEAKER_01I doubt it because it's like made by women for women.
SPEAKER_02Maybe a guy wants to have his butt look a butt lift, you know.
SPEAKER_01Is that what they say a butt lift or a cheek or something for your butt?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, if you if you're feeling let's just say if you're feeling cheeky, either get yourself some.
SPEAKER_01I'm just saying when a man looks better in skinny jeans than me, yeah, goddammit. And also, so then stay away from my leggings.
Hare’s Warnings And Misuse Risks
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's we have to we have to stake our flag somewhere, right? So listen, ladies, this is for the ladies. Go to handful.com, use our code, or men who want to buy for the ladies, handful.com, use our code, stay suspicious, and this is another one that's 30% off. Guys, I'm telling you, and if you're interested in any of the others, they're listed at the bottom of our show notes every episode.
SPEAKER_01And the pattern you have is so cute. I don't think they had that pattern when I got mine. It's like a super cute, like floral, like it could almost be a bathing suit.
SPEAKER_02It was cute. But I'm I gotta go back on the same thing. So now I've kind of wet my appetite. I'm gonna try some different styles and oh god. And yeah, so I have kind of sloping shoulders, and so you know, I'm always messing with straps that don't stay up. This is perfect, nothing goes anywhere, everything stays where it's supposed to be, which is amazing. We love that about a bra. Yeah, you don't want those ladies out of control. All right, but let's talk about our sponsors real quick. Producing a podcast isn't free. So if you want to support us, we earn a commission when you use our promo code Stay Suspicious at checkout. It's a win-win. You get a great deal, as we've heard about, on fabulous products, and you get to support our show. Do it today, yeehaw.
SPEAKER_01Which is what I think I said last week or recently, or maybe only in my head. Not sure. It's a good thing to say whenever. Because we get the message.
SPEAKER_02Giddy up. Time for a medical mishap, perhaps.
SPEAKER_01Let's do it. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_03No, girl.
SPEAKER_01I just have to yawn really quick. Okay. I hope all of you yawned. If you didn't, you're a psychiatrist. Whatever on the checklist.
SPEAKER_02If you don't if you can't catch a yawn, that's it. You don't need the PCLR. You're that's it. We get your diagnosed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes, exactly. So, okay, the subject line reads the red flag that became a blindfold. Oh shit. Okay. Dear Jenna and Amanda, love your show and listening to you both. I have a medical mishap that I want to share on your podcast because I think it's an important reminder about bias and healthcare. I didn't come to the ER looking for drama. I came because something felt wrong in the way your body only gets wrong a few times in your life. Like it's quietly ringing an alarm bell from inside your organs. Oh God. Ouch. It was a Tuesday night. I remember because I'd been trying to act normal all day, like pain is a thing you can outpolite. By 7 p.m., I'd stop pretending. By eight, I'd stop standing. Oh. And by nine, my roommate was driving me to the hospital with one hand on the wheel and the other hovering, like, do I hold your shoulder or do I keep my eyes on the road? An intake or at intake, they asked me the standard questions: names, allergies, medications, then the one that always makes the air change in the room. Any history of substance abuse? I answered honestly, yes, opioids. I'm in recovery. And I watched it happen. The invisible stamp, the not in my mouth words that appeared on my forehead anyway, drug seeker. Oh, I hate this. I hate this too, because you were being honest, because what if it would have impact what's going on? But now your label.
SPEAKER_02Oh, this episode is uncanny. I I didn't do this on purpose. I just picked this email just like because I mean it, you know, it's there and it looks like an interesting title, but it is a lot about the strength, you know, the bias behind a label.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay, here let's keep going. Okay. The triage nurse nodded like she heard something useful, and the clipboard tilted just slightly away from me. Not dramatically, just enough for me to notice. I got put in a hallway bed, which it's so wild to me. Could you imagine going to the ER and not being in your own pod? You're in the hallway bed. Imagine it. I've been there. Oh, dang. Okay, I haven't.
SPEAKER_02Not me, but visiting a family member. I think we were up in Hennepin or somewhere where they're really super busy, and just the hallways are lined with people.
Court Cases And Cutoff Pitfalls
SPEAKER_01It's it's so demoralizing and I know the big hospital that I'm closer to right now, they have that. And I never have seen anyone in the hallway, but I know they have the capacity of doing that in this wild. Anyway, sorry, dear writer. Okay, so they're in the hospital bed in the hallway, and then they go on to say that's a special place in the ER ecosystem. Not quite a room, not quite a person. You're visible enough for everyone to glance at, not private enough for anyone to slow down. A nurse came by and asked me to rate my pain. Eight, I said. He made a face that said, We'll see. Any nausea? Yeah. Okay. And then time. I'm getting mad and red-faced. I know. Ah. I'm not saying no one cared. People were moving fast. The ER always looks like the world's busiest ant colony. True, I like that. But every time someone stopped at my bed, the same question floated under the words is this real? And also, if people are in hallway beds, I mean that place is packed. Yeah. They don't do hallway beds first for listeners that don't know that. Right. Yeah. It's overflow. I tried to be calm. I tried to be polite. I tried to be the kind of patient who earns help. That's the trap. You start performing for care. At some point I asked for something, anything for the pain. Not even opioids. I didn't say the word. I said, can I have something for this? And the nurse did this little laugh that wasn't cruel, exactly. It was tired. Let's get you assessed first, they said. Which would have been fine, except it had already been a long time and the pain was changing. It was moving. It felt sharper, like it had a point. Then the doctor arrived, young, efficient, eyes already scanning my chart before my face. He asked a few questions, pressed my stomach for about 12 seconds, and said, We can give you something for nausea. I swear to God, if this is an appendix, maybe another, I don't know. I waited for the part where he said, and I'm concerned about what's causing this. Instead, he asked, Are you under a lot of stress lately? I almost laughed, not because it was funny, because it was so familiar. In my chart, I'm not just a patient, I'm a story the system already knows how to tell. They give me anti-nause meds. The nausea eased, the pain did not. And once the nausea was gone, I could feel how much pain I was actually in, like lowering the volume on one alarm to hear the other one screaming. My roommate came back from the vending machine and said, They doing anything? I said, They're watching. Which is a weird way to say, wait, which is a weird thing to say about your health. Like you're the science experiment that hasn't started yet. Another hour passed. I started shivering, which I blamed on the air conditioning until I realized that I was sweating. Because once you have the wrong label, you learn quickly. Anger becomes proof. Calm becomes proof. Everything becomes proof. Finally, a different doctor came by. Older, quieter, the kind of person who doesn't rush because they've learned rushing is expensive. He asked me to tell the story from the beginning, and for the first time that night, someone listened to me like details mattered. He pressed on my abdomen and watched my face, actually watched. And when I flinched, he didn't say, hmm. He said, Okay. Not okay, like we're done. Okay, like I believe you. He looked at the chart and said, When was your last set of vitals? Then he asked the question nobody else asked, When did you last eat? And something in his expression changed when I told him. Within 15 minutes I had labs ordered. Within 30, I was getting imaging. Within an hour, the tone shifted in the ER, the way that it shifts when something becomes real to the system, that people moved faster, spoke less, and stopped smiling politely. It turned out I wasn't anxious, I wasn't seeking, I wasn't dramatic, I was sick. I won't do the medical detail play by play because that isn't the point. The point is that my body had been telling the truth the entire time. The delay didn't happen because nobody knew medicine. It happened because my history turned into a filter and the filter turned into a blindfold. Later, after the crisis part, I asked a nurse gently, was I taken less seriously because of my record? She paused long enough that the answer arrived before the words did. She said, People get cautious. Cautious is not the same thing as careless. I understand why clinicians are careful with opioids and I understand the epidemic. I understand the harm. But here's what I learned the hard way. When a system is afraid of being manipulated, it sometimes solves that fear by withholding care from people most likely to be disbelieved. And disbelief has side effects. So if you're listening and you've ever had substance use disorder or anxiety or borderline or non-compliant attached to your chart like a barnacle, here's what I wish someone had told me. You deserve pain control and a real workup. Those are not competing moral virtues. And if you work in healthcare, here's the system lesson. Ooh, I love this. Lesson for the listeners and lesson for those in the system. A red flag should be a prompt to slow down and verify, not a shortcut to assume. Because the most dangerous thing isn't the patient who might be lying. It's the diagnosis you stop looking for because you think you already know the story. Stay safe and suspicious of bias in the exam room. Love anonymous.
SPEAKER_02Listen, first of all, first of all, anonymous, you're an excellent writer. I mean, some of these descriptions just really hit home, like won't in my stomach. Like, thank you for sharing this.
SPEAKER_01I know. And I really like the line like stick with you like a barnacle.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for sharing and having the courage to share because there are people that will relate to this. And bias is everywhere. I think this whole episode is about bias, honestly, without me even being biased to create it that way. It just kind of all lined up. But thank you. Um and I hope you're better and I hope the system gets better.
SPEAKER_01I hope it wasn't your appendix. But you didn't mention anything about surgery, so maybe it wasn't. But anyway, anonymous, thank you for sending and being courageous to do that. And I will mention, I think the only true bias that you guys should listen to in this entire episode, since it's apparently a theme, is our bias that handful draws are worth it. Because they are.
SPEAKER_02Man, listen, I know you're gonna ask me what we can expect next week. And I'm gonna tell you, listen, the jury's out because I am chasing a story that I think might actually be crazy pasta. Is that what they call it? What? You know, I've never heard that. Yeah, like a story that's you know, clickbait that you go down a rabbit hole and it actually ends up not being true. But I don't care. And what's it called? Pasta Crazy Pasta.
SPEAKER_03Crazy pasta. Yeah. Never heard that before. Oh, I like it.
Oak Ridge Programs Judged In Court
SPEAKER_02You listen to, I think I heard it first on my favorite murder, but crazy pasta. I don't know where it came from. I think eons ago, probably before your time, somebody when the internet was just a thang and people were spinning yarns and pe other people were buying it. So I think it it has to do with that. But anyway, maybe that'll come up in correction section if I'm wrong. But any any hoozle. I'm following a story. I'm following this story that if it's actually true, is kind of freaking knock everybody's socks off. And if it's not true, then I might just talk about it anyway. No.
SPEAKER_01Then you guys, then you guys, we we don't know what's coming next week, but we'll all be on the edge of our seats. Surprise. But until then. Yeah, until then, don't miss a beat. Subscribe or follow Doctoring the Truth. I was just listening, like, okay, what's next week? Okay. Follow Doctoring the Truth wherever you enjoy your podcast for stories that shock, intrigue, and educate. Trust, after all, is a delicate thing. You can text us directly on our website at doctoringthetruth at bestsprout.com. Isn't that cool? It's like you can text us without having our phone number. Email us your own story ideas, medical mishaps, and comments at doctoringthe truth at gmail. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at DoctoringTruth Podcast and Facebook at DoctoringtheTruth. Shout out Rich. He's my staple uh follower on Doctoring the Truth Facebook page. We are also on TikTok at Doctoring the Truth and Ed Odd Pod. If you're new here, that's E D A U D P O D. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so you we can be sure to bring you more content next week, even if it's a surprise. Until then, stay safe and stay suspicious. Suspicious. Be suspicious. Goodbye. What?
SPEAKER_03What? What in the fiesta was that? I put crickets on by accident. Bye. Bye. I'm gonna go study my thing. Goodbye.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts
True Crime & Cocktails
Art19
True Crime Campfire
True Crime Campfire
Sinisterhood
Audioboom Studios