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Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all, so farewell. Oatmeal so long you strange soggy.

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Break up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with K tree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AM P M Too much good stuff.

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Today's episode discusses the death of an individual. If this type of information upsets you, this is not the show for you. Welcome to Mayhem in the Morning with your host, Dr. Kendall Crown. Over a decade ago, I started doing career days at my children's schools. I did this in part to hang out with my kids and see them at school and maybe go out to lunch with them. But my other reason was to tell people about the field of forensic pathology. Not a lot of people even fully realize what forensic pathologists do beyond what they've seen on tv. And they really don't know much about medical examiners. When I tell people I'm a medical examiner, a lot of people think I work in the meat industry, expecting meat, like for the fda. Other people think I work for funeral homes as an embalmer. People also think I'm a coroner. And a lot of people don't even realize I have a medical degree. I've had numerous career days where students were shocked to find out how much education they needed to become a forensic pathologist. I've even had medical students tell me in their last year of medical school that they had no idea forensic pathology existed and wished they had known about it when they got into medical school because they would have taken steps to go into forensic pathology instead of the career that they had chose to go into. The thing about it is, is there is a shortage nationwide of forensic pathologists. There are only 400 to 500 board certified pathologists in the United States. And every year more and more are retiring and not enough new forensic pathologists are graduating to keep up with the loss. After four years of med school, it is another three to four years of residency and a year of subspecialization to become a forensic pathologist. It takes longer to create a forensic pathologist than it does a baby elephant. My intention with the career days was not to just hang out with my kids, but to spread the word about how wonderful a job forensic pathology really is. And I figured by getting involved in career days I can inform kids about my job and get them interested in it. And maybe someone would find it interesting enough to pursue like I did way back when I was in ninth grade and was introduced to the field of forensic pathology. My career day presentation is a PowerPoint presentation full of pictures. So I have different versions of it depending on what grade level I'm teaching. I have one for grade schoolers, one for middle schoolers, one for high schools, and finally one for college. Basically, as the grade level goes up, the talk becomes increasingly more graphic and it is the most graphic once they get into the college age range. Now with grade schoolers, the most graphic thing they see is an X ray of a head with a bullet in it. How I went about deciding which pictures to use was partially based on an interview I saw with Steven Spielberg. He was discussing the movie Jaws in this interview and he stated that it built more tension and made the movie more scary to give the perception of the monster, in this case of course the shark, than it was to show the shark right from the beginning. The actual buildup is more frightening than the actual reveal of the monster. So I incorporated this concept into my talk. I show an X ray that shows a bullet. I show close ups of wounds. I show the actual bullets that were removed from the bodies. But I never show the whole body faces or any identifying features. So in a way, I give the perception of the injuries and the gore that people associate with this career. But they actually Never see the whole thing. By doing this, it makes my talk less frightening or horrifying, and the students think they have seen something crazy. But in reality, it was very tame. In the years I've done these presentations, I've never received one complaint from teachers, parents or children. So it must have not been too frightening, right? I have been asked back every year since I started doing this, and the teachers would tell their friends. So I was going to numerous different school districts and I only recently stopped doing these talks because my kids are all in college now and it just isn't the same for me. Fortunately, I have colleagues that have taken it over now, so the information does continue to get out there. But for me, I've kind of moved on. There's one other thing that I always enjoyed, which was the bizarre questions that children would ask. And that's what we'll be talking about for the rest of the episode, is one of the children's bizarre questions. My answer and the ensuing hijinks that my answer created. So on this particular day, I was talking to a group of fourth graders. The talk went reasonably well. I got my standard oohs and ahhs and ooh, that's gross statements and kids covering their faces. I got my standard questions like what does it smell like? My answer always is rotting trash mixed with blood. How much do you get paid? My answer to that is, I would tell them my salary and some would be impressed and some would say lame. Weirdest thing ever found in his stomach. Ballpoint pens. Was actually probably over 50. Weirdest weapon used to kill someone. A mini safe, like crushed in his head. Have you ever autopsied a baby? My answer to this is, I've autopsied a wide age range of people, from fetus to people over 106 years of age. Finally, when I got to the end of my presentation, I asked if there was any more questions. And one of the children asked, who is the most famous person you have ever autopsied? This is a question I get asked on almost every presentation, and the answer often depends on who I am talking to. With a group of fourth graders, I felt it would be best to discuss a movie star from a popular movie. It would probably be someone they would know. So I chose Richard Leponateer. If you don't know who he is, he was an actor in many movies, including who Framed Roger Rabb And Star Wars. The original one. Not the prequels, not the sequels, not the TV shows, but the very first Star wars movie from 1977. That's now been rebranded as, I think, the New Hope, or Episode four or something like that. He played a minor character in the Star wars movie, but in a very memorable scene. And when he dies, years after being in Star wars, he was 66 years old. He was in town visiting family. I believe he was going to a comic Con to sign autographs. His cause of death was from an intestinal cancer that had eroded into a blood vessel that caused him to actually bleed out. So his cause of death was complications of cancer, and his manner of death was natural. He was the famous person. I chose to tell the group. I told the group of children that I autopsied Richard Lepomatiere. And they said, who's that? And my reply, of course, was, have you ever seen Star Wars? The original Star Wars? And most of them said, oh, I've seen that movie. I've seen that movie. And I said, you know the guy who Darth Vader chokes with the force on the Death Star and says, I find your lack of faith in the force disturbing. And then one of the children screamed, wait, you mean Admiral Motti? At that moment, I thought in my head, wow. I didn't know the character's actual name, but I responded with, sure. At that moment, one of the children gasped, and he said, you mean Darth Vader really killed him? A wave of shock and realization spread through the room faster than lice with kindergartners. Several kids excitedly exclaimed, what? Really? And more and more kids were becoming excitable while this was occurring. I was standing there, not responding. Granted, it was only a few seconds, but long enough for chaos to ensue. The thing is, I have five children who are now all adults, but when they were little, occasionally they would say something absurd that I would get tripped up by. Logically, it made no sense, but they were sure it was real, and they were sure they were right. And there was no convincing them otherwise. You can't counter a young child with a logical argument because they just wouldn't understand. And this was one of those moments. I thought in my head, no, no, he didn't kill him. It was a movie. Plus, it was 1977, which was like over 35 years ago, and I was in grade school, so I would not have done his autopsy if he had died in 1977. But I thought that in my head. I didn't come up with a good response. I was standing there dumbfounded, just, well. And the chaos had taken over the classroom. The children were all talking about the murder committed by Darth Vader. And they couldn't believe that he had actually killed that. Thankfully, the fourth grade teacher stepped in and she calmed them down and got them to listen to reason. She explained how Star wars was just a movie, and the more logical children agreed with her with a resounding, yeah, I chimed in, and I said, that's right, your teacher's right. It's just a movie. And he actually died of cancer. Then that same child, whose name was Monty, by the way, started the chaos again when he said Darth Vader gave him cancer. And again that same wave of chaos spread across the room. This time I said, no, no, Darth Vader had nothing to do with it. And Monty again exclaimed, then it must have been something in the Death Star. Something made him get cancer in the Death Star. And I thought this was a reasonable assumption. If the Death Star was a real working environment that did not follow OSHA's safety guidelines, I mean, yeah, potentially he could have gotten cancer. But again, it was indeed false. And the teacher said, monty, that's enough. To which a chorus of girls said, yeah, Monty, enough. Thing about it is, as I have testified in court for years, I've testified in massive courtrooms in front of legislators, you name it, and I've never been derailed like I was by that statement from a fourth grader. After the teacher got the class calmed down again, she said, well, I think we're done asking Dr. Crowns questions, so let's all thank Dr. Crowns with a round of applause. And all the kids dutifully clapped and thanked me. And that ended it. I was a little relieved that it was finally over because Monte really had my number that day. So that incident happened probably well over a decade ago now. I don't really know what happened to little Monty. He'd be in his early 20s. Who knows what he's up to? He's probably getting ready to become a lawyer and getting ready to derail medical examiners across the country with his crazy logic. The one thing I'd have to say, though, is thank goodness for grade school teachers, because they actually understand the logic of children somehow. And that teacher, that day really saved me. That brings us to the end of the story. And I learned never to take too long to answer a group of grade schoolers because they are like sharks with chum in the water, and they will swarm in a feeding frenzy with any opportunity. I hope you learned something like Star wars is just a movie. I know that's difficult to believe, and I hope you were entertained until the next time.