Side Stories: CTE Stories w/ Dr. Chris Nowinski

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left – Side Stories: CTE Stories w/ Dr. Chris Nowinski

Original Air Date: December 31, 2025
Host(s): Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski
Guest: Dr. Chris Nowinski

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the real-life horror of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in sports, particularly wrestling and football, with Dr. Chris Nowinski—former WWE wrestler, Harvard football player, neuroscientist, and co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. Marcus and Henry use their signature irreverent humor to frame a serious, heartfelt conversation about head trauma, the mounting evidence around CTE, how it connects to mental health, and the urgent need for public education and change in youth sports.

---

Key Sections, Discussion Points & Timestamps

---

1. Opening: New Year's Resolutions, Life Updates & Setting up the Interview

• [02:12] – [06:58]
• The hosts riff about the New Year, joke about bizarre gifts, and share personal reflections on relationships and self-improvement.
• Marcus introduces his new posthumous cause—donating his brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation—and sets the tone for the interview.
• Marcus emphasizes the significance of landing Chris Nowinski for the show:

  “This is one of the… handful of people… looking into CTE, and Chris Nowinski is one of them.” ([06:38], Marcus)

---

2. Dr. Chris Nowinski: Background & Personal Injury

• [07:36] – [11:14]
• Nowinski’s transformative journey from WWE wrestler and Harvard football player to neuroscientist and CTE activist is described.
• He recounts wrestling concussions, the onset of post-concussion syndrome, and long-term effects:

  “With the post-concussion syndrome, you basically get a brain injury where you don't recover the same way… some people are just left with permanent symptoms.” ([09:39], Nowinski)

• Outlines symptoms: headaches, REM behavior disorder, and years-long recovery.

---

3. The Hidden Toll in Sports Culture

• [11:45] – [14:45]
• The hosts discuss social resistance (especially in football and wrestling culture) to confronting the dangers of concussions:

  "The NFL did a good job of making this not about player safety, but about anti football…” ([13:38], Nowinski)

• Nowinski laments that as athletes, “we didn’t take care of each other.”

---

4. Life Inside Football and Wrestling (Hazards, Denial, and Personal Accounts)

• [14:45] – [18:52]
• Marcus and Dr. Nowinski recall violent practice drills and locker room culture.
• Description of pivotal concussive events, and athletes’ reluctance to self-report injuries due to stigma or reputation fears.

  “I wrestled for five more weeks basically lying about how horrible I felt, thinking I was doing the right thing.” ([16:51], Nowinski)

• Explores dangerous changes in wrestling due to the ECW & MMA’s influence, leading to “the most dangerous time in wrestling.”
• Notable anecdote: Mick Foley was forced into retirement after failing memory tests due to repeated head impacts ([18:05], Nowinski).

---

5. CTE in Wrestling: Case Studies & Prevalence

• [19:08] – [20:33]
• Difficulties in estimating CTE prevalence due to small sample size, and the role of other contact sports.
• Discussion of famous cases like Chris Benoit, and Nowinski’s personal interactions:

  “He was the only guy in the locker room who asked me about the book I was writing... he said, ‘I want to talk about concussions, because I’ve had more than I can count.’” ([21:14], Nowinski)

---

6. Research, Brain Donation, and the Process

• [30:06] – [31:27]
• Protocol for contacting families after a player’s death (critical 48–72 hour window).

  “We’ve made brain donations so normal. We get more offers... than we can afford to study at the brain bank.” ([30:46], Nowinski)

• Demand and expense for brain donation research has greatly increased.

---

7. CTE Mechanisms, Genetics, and Drugs

• [33:15] – [35:04]
• Explains the science: CTE is linked to repeated “rotational acceleration” or twisting of the brain—not just single impacts.
• Discusses uncertain link between concussions, steroids, and other drugs; drugs and alcohol contribute to decision-making deficits in those with CTE.

  “You cannot battle addiction with a damaged frontal lobe…” ([54:54], Nowinski)

---

8. Football, CTE, & Quantifying Risk

• [34:38] – [37:52]
• CTE risk correlates with years played and total brain impacts, not just diagnosed concussions (“number and strength of head impacts—it’s a math problem” [35:44], Nowinski).
• Positions at higher risk include linemen and those participating in special teams.
• Most CTE in football is caused by repetitive sub-concussive hits, not the “big” visible concussions.

---

9. High School Players, Youth Sports & Epidemic Concern

• [41:22] – [45:44]
• CTE is not limited to pro athletes—30% of brains from high school-only football players showed signs of CTE ([41:22], Nowinski).
• Deeply personal stories: Marcus shares his and his father’s football experiences and subsequent behavioral struggles.
• No significant genetic resistance found; “almost everybody” with high exposure gets CT (but severity may differ due to genetics).

---

10. Stop Hitting Kids In The Head Campaign

• [47:29] – [51:21]
• Nowinski’s central call: raise the age for contact in youth sports—“stop hitting children in the head.”

  “It is completely abnormal to hit children in the head hundreds of times a year, but some sports are still doing it…” ([47:29], Nowinski)

• Recommendations: No heading in soccer before 14, flag football until adolescence, avoid tackle football, boxing, MMA, etc.

  “Please don’t let anyone hit your kids in the head.” ([50:09], Nowinski)

---

11. A Path Forward: Treating CTE, Hope & Ongoing Research

• [52:15] – [55:36]
• While symptoms are treatable, there’s no cure yet, but ongoing research on early detection and targeted drugs (“we can develop a cure in 20 years if we work now” [53:04], Nowinski).
• Common theme: addiction and behavioral issues caused or magnified by CTE.

---

12. Links to Crime: Serial Killers, Mass Shooters & Head Trauma

• [73:29] – [74:44]
• Dr. Nowinski affirms increased efforts to examine CTE in mass shooters and serial killers, revealing high rates of brain trauma in prison populations.

---

13. NFL, The Coverup, & Change

• [62:51] – [67:09]
• The NFL’s history of denial, manipulating studies, and discrediting researchers:

  “...if they retired from a concussion in the study, they would drop out ... so you could only study the healthy people.” ([63:57], Nowinski)

• Despite public acknowledgment, the NFL “still recruits children to start playing as young as five” ([66:03], Nowinski).
• Ineffectiveness of helmets/guardian caps against rotational injury is critiqued ([66:41], Nowinski).

---

14. Final Reflections—Sports, Parenting, and CTE Legacy

• [70:03] – [76:22]
• Nowinski, surrounded by “football players dying and suffering,” says he wouldn’t let his own child play football.
• He advocates finding other ways to teach team-building and resilience without causing brain damage:

  “We need to learn how to teach kids all these valuable lessons without giving them brain damage.” ([70:34], Nowinski)

• The Concussion Legacy Foundation is rebranding to the Concussion and CTE Foundation to better reflect research aims ([71:16], Nowinski).
• Marcus pledges to donate and sign up for brain donation, urging listeners to do the same.

---

Memorable Quotes

• “I keep telling guys, like, look, you can develop a cure in 20 years easy, if you get things right, if we invest in this thing.”
  — Dr. Chris Nowinski ([53:04])

• “You cannot battle addiction with a damaged frontal lobe as well as you could with a healthy brain.”
  — Dr. Chris Nowinski ([54:54])

• “It's all about the behaviors will kill you, not the disease.”
  — Dr. Chris Nowinski ([52:32])

• “It is completely abnormal to hit children in the head hundreds of times a year, but some sports are still doing it.”
  — Dr. Chris Nowinski ([47:29])

• “Stage three [CTE] to me, helped make sense of this bizarre behavior that [Aaron Hernandez] exhibited.”
  — Dr. Chris Nowinski ([61:11])

---

Notable Moments

• Nowinski rides the line between humor and gravity, using wrestling and football anecdotes to humanize the risk ("I literally wrestled for five more weeks basically lying about how horrible I felt, thinking I was doing the right thing." [16:51])
• The effort and personal impact involved in securing brain donations—especially from the families of recent mass shooters and infamous criminals ([73:29])
• Harsh critique of the NFL’s misleading safety measures and continued recruitment of children ([66:03])
• The deeply felt moments as Marcus reflects on his own and his father's head trauma, connecting the science to lived experience ([43:41])
• Call to action: the rebranding of the foundation and the campaign to “Stop Hitting Kids in the Head” ([71:16], [47:29])

---

Takeaways for New Listeners

• CTE is a pervasive problem impacting both pro and amateur athletes in contact sports.
• The symptoms are insidious and often misunderstood, with behavioral consequences including addiction, aggression, and even criminality.
• The show highlights the need for major cultural change in how we approach youth sports, advocating for delayed introduction of contact and a focus on brain health.
• Listeners are encouraged to support research and consider brain donation.

---

For More Information

• Concussion and CTE Foundation (formerly Concussion Legacy Foundation): concussionandcte.org
• Dr. Chris Nowinski’s book: Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis (documentary also available)
• Follow Dr. Nowinski on Instagram for updates.
• To learn about brain donation, visit the Foundation’s site above.

---

The hosts encourage sharing this episode with parents, coaches, and anyone engaging with youth sports—especially football—to help spread awareness and protect the next generation.

---

Transcript

[Marcus Parks]

What's wrong with Ben? In Primate, a beloved family chimp suddenly turns everything they taught him, he's now using against them. Primate is smart, intense, and packed with jaw dropping moments. Ben is calculating, powerful, and disturbingly human. This is the kind of horror film that shocks you when you least expect it. It's already sitting at 92% on rotten tomatoes and premiered to reviews at festivals worldwide. Go see Primate in theaters January 9th when it hits theaters. Do not wait. Grab a seat and bring someone you can squeeze during the scary parts.

[Adrian]

Looking for a last minute gift for your people? You know, your people, that weird bunch of friends and family that you love dearly. Well, here's an easy idea. Oregon Lottery holiday Scratchets. Because your people, they're the ones that, amidst all the holiday crowds and endless notifications, help you find the fun. Which calls for a little gift that brings big cheer. Oregon Lottery holiday scratchets. You know where to find them. Grab some today. Must be 18 or older to play. Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for Entertainment only.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

The McDonald's Snack Wrap is back.

[Marcus Parks]

You brought it back.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Ranch snack wrap. Spicy snack wrap. You broke the Internet for a snack? Snack wrap is back. There's no place to escape to.

[Marcus Parks]

This is the last podcast on the left side stories. That's when the cannibalism started.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Side stories. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

All right.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

We are rolling, boys.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, well, it's New Year's Eve. Henry. Wow. You believe that?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I got my lingerie on.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I'm still wearing the same clothes that I wore three weeks ago. You believe that?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Haven't changed once.

[Marcus Parks]

I hate it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I like to. I've sat in this chair.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

For three weeks. I haven't moved.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you have a New Year's resolution?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I actually have a real one.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I do. My goal for 2026 is to get better at texting friends for friend things.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. I love this. I did this two years ago and my life has been way better. That's phone calls. I do one call a week.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. I'm going to try to be. Do more optional communication.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because I'm very. I get very. We talk all the time and I forget about the friends that I don't.

[Marcus Parks]

See all the time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I miss them.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, no. I love you. And I. I know we exchange Christmas gifts, but I did get you a gift to say goodbye to. 2025.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What is it? A revolver. Oh, you fucking piece of shit.

[Marcus Parks]

It's.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it's sliced conch.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I got it for you. It's in a can. Piece of can, dude, that's yours.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I hate you.

[Marcus Parks]

I put that. I got it. It's been. That's why you luck has been so bad, because it's actually been sitting in the studio for months.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I hate you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I got it from Pinocchio's down the street.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's all. Bro, it's all dented.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, yeah, it's trying to get out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did you.

[Marcus Parks]

I used it as a hammer, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, did you? Because then we can't eat it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He uses a hammer just now, like a few minutes ago.

[Marcus Parks]

Great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Actually. Really? This speaks a lot.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, if you have multiple computers, you're allowed to buy a hammer.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, no, no, no, no. I like the idea that it was cameras. I had to either walk upstairs.

[Marcus Parks]

Multiple televisions. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It shows the strength of lamonica's Canning Industries. And I seem really proud of them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. It kept this Queen Julie in there. It did. So what's a prisoner?

[Henry Zebrowski]

What is your New Year's resolution?

[Marcus Parks]

My New Year's resolution? Let me think about this. Well, I found my cause, and I really am gonna get behind it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. What is it?

[Marcus Parks]

My cause is I really, like, it's weird because I've been doing this show for a little while, and I always said that once I found any type of success, I would try to find something to support and get behind. And I recently found my cause, which.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is breast implants for divorced women.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's amazing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I know. And it's really 10.99amonth. You can help support this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And honestly, and some of us, like, listen, the panel of husbands get together, and what they do is they help shape the perfect breasts for your divorced woman. So the husbands get together, we look at your divorced woman, we decide what size she should get.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Sometimes it's a reduction. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because sometimes. Well, very rarely.

[Marcus Parks]

Sometimes we remove the breast completely, put in two little penises.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very rarely.

[Marcus Parks]

Very rarely, because it's expensive.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very rare.

[Marcus Parks]

It has been done. No. What is it? For real?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Welcome to side Stories. My name is now going to reveal his actual.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, no, I, I, I want to get. I'm starting to support. I put some. I, I donated some money. This interview that's about to come up is all about it. I am, I, I've donated my, My brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So you just given in installments?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. It's really. They take it in little pieces. It's really nice.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Have you not noticed I've been dumber? Yes. Okay. That's why that's why I've been peepee.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, my pants.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's why I asked.

[Marcus Parks]

It's so funny when I pee. Pee my pants.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I know you like it, but the rest of us are getting alarmed by the smell and the color.

[Marcus Parks]

But I've. So this interview we're about to do is with Dr. Chris Nowitzki. He is, if you remember, from the Aaron Hernandez series, he. He is the guy who collects the brains. He's the guy with the cooler. Yes. So when a player dies, he's the one who gets. And he goes and he finds the player. And I really wanted to interview him. It was like I was the whole time, because he's also. He's a. He was a football player at Harvard. He was a. A wrestler in wwe. And then he eventually had too many concussions where he had to stop. And so I was really. I had our people reach out to his people. And then finally, like, I just jumped in his DMs and he got back to me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I really can't say enough how hard Ed worked to. To secure this interview. It means a lot. Is actually extremely interesting. A very deep look into this issue.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

From somebody that is at the very forefront.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, this isn't just like, this is one of the. It's really. No one's looking into cte. It's like. It's really a handful of people, and Chris Nowitzki is one of them. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like the people that, like, just discovered that women get perimenopause, you know, I mean, they just discovered that, like. Like, they're like, we should look at this women's health thing, you know?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, consider donating to the Concussion Legacy foundation, whether it's money or your own brain. I did both. And I love this man immensely, and I can't. I can't tell you enough. But please listen to the interview. Dr. Chris Nowitzki, rise from your grave. All right, thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this very important episode of last podcast. On the left. I'm sitting here with the man, Dr. Chris Nowitzki. He's one of the leading authorities on CTE. That's chronic traumatic Encephalopathy. Did I say it right?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yes, sir.

[Marcus Parks]

All right, You're a neuroscientist. You've had multiple TED talks on the subject. You wrote the book Head Games, which led to the documentary, the same title. You have organized and formed the Concussion Legacy Foundation. Foundation, a brain donation registry with Dr. Cantu. You've worked extensively with Dr. Ann McKee at Boston University and the Unite Brain Bank. You've played football at Harvard University and you were a wrestler at wwe. Chris Harvard, the Ivy League snob. Welcome to last podcast on the left. Before we get started, I think you're amazing. I, I love everything you've done. It means the world to me. Your work has made me cry multiple times. I'm trying to hold it together in this moment. I played football for nine years. It's. It was, it was a. I didn't realize it was a traumatic experience till decades later when I started to like thinking about it a lot. And everything that you've done is a beautiful thing. And so let's start with how you got into this. When you were wrestling at wwe, you got a couple injuries once from Bubba Ray Dudley, Big mean looking dude. Actually for a big friendly dude, looking friendly. He looks friendly. That's what. But he's, but you know, I wouldn't fight him. And. And then he kicked you in the head and. And then that led to your retirement. And before that I believe it was edge fell on you off of the top rope or jumped on you off the top rope during a royal Rumble. And that was a major concussion as well. And now you have permanent post concussion syndrome, correct?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean I'm, I'm mostly better, but there's still some things I wish weren't there.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. What. So can you explain? Like what. How does it so permanent? Like how. What happens when. How do you still feel this? How long ago was this?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

This is 2003. And so brain injury is a funny thing for most, most of the time you have a brain injury, you feel symptoms for a while and you get better and you sort of never notice it. Although now we know they sort of add up over time and they can cause long term problems. For me though, with the post concussion syndrome, you basically get a brain injury where you don't recover the same way. And that's partially because when you have a hit to the head, a million things can go wrong. So it could be actual physical, structural brain damage to your brain. It could be damage to the nerves that go into your brain, the dura mater, around your brain. And we don't have the tools to figure that out. And so some people are just left with permanent symptoms that they slowly might get better over time. They might need rehab. And I, I don't know why I developed permanent headaches or I developed a sleep disorder, but, you know.

[Marcus Parks]

And you still have those problems.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

The sleep disorder is actually finally quite rare. I developed REM behavior disorder, which means I acted out my dreams. And at the beginning, like, it was like I was jumping off of beds and I was, you know, putting people in chokeholds. And, like, it was. I couldn't differentiate sleep from reality for, like a minute. The first minute I woke up.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Which was bizarre and scary for me and anyone who's with me. And then. And the headaches, like, it took me 15 years to get them under control, but now they're mostly under control.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. And do you think that it's. Obviously, you're a neuroscientist, so you know how to do this better than anyone else. A lot of people probably go with this, like, undiagnosed.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah. I mean, you know, you think back not, you know, because now my whole world is people who had years of symptoms after injuries. But, you know, in the. In the 90s, I don't remember that being a thing. And I honestly, like, we look back and go, these things were happening, but people didn't have a name for it. I wonder if these are the people we were used to call, like, burnouts or people, you know, we just figured out, like, they just disappeared from the world. And we thought there was something wrong with them or psychiatric, but in reality, they developed permanent symptoms and just didn't know. It wasn't worth telling anyone about because who wants to hear it?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, of course I've dealt with this just because we just did the Aaron Hernandez series. And I've been dealt dealing with this even with my own friends back home, people I. I love, like, they're like, oh, you're really talking against football. You're really, like, bringing up these things. You, like, people don't like it. It's because. Well, not just that. Not just the fact that everyone gathers for football. It's a family thing, including with wrestling. People gather to, like, watch wrestling together. Wrestling's a great outlet for people who, I don't know, in my experience, don't have many friendships. You know, it's like. It's like. It's soap opera, you know, so it's a very powerful thing for people. And it's. It's. It's inherently good to, like. If form is, like, forming bonds with everyone, but we don't realize that the toll that it takes on people and also the amount of money that is based around these sports. If you go just straight, I mean, forget about ticket sales and. And beer sales and stuff like that, but like, sports bars, merchandise, there's like, Rally House is like a Whole. It's a. It's a sp. It's across the nation now as a sports store. You know, everyone's got jerseys. It's. There's so much money, I don't even know how to calculate it. So do you get in trouble when you're poking holes into these industries?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I mean, I wouldn't say in trouble. I mean, I've made a lot of enemies and I'm not very popular. And I remember, like, I've. I've been invited to, like, NFL owner suites as guests, and they won't put my name down, they'll put someone else's name down. You know, they still want me to come, but they don't want to be known to be associated with me.

[Marcus Parks]

So.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

But honestly, like, being a heel as a wrestler was, like, great preparation for, like, being disliked in this. I'm very comfortable being disliked if I think I'm doing the right thing.

[Marcus Parks]

How many years were you wrestling?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I wrestled for three years and I still work for wwe. Injured when I was injured for four. So I was part of the company for a long time. And. Yeah, it's just. It was interesting, though, what you mentioned about how the NFL, how your friends reacted. The NFL did a good job of making this not about player safety, but about anti football, to talk about the bad parts of football, you know, and so what we have spent the last 20 years trying to do is sort of try to make it about, you know, this isn't anti football. This is. It's all about the bonds that you form in football and your teammates. And it's about doing the right thing. You know, look at the bright side, because I now have two teammates we've lost to ct and I keep their photos on my desk.

[Marcus Parks]

Who are they?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

This is my starting strong safety. We just released that he died at 45 with CT. And, you know, this is me on the COVID of the Harvard program and this is our captain. He died in 2001 and had stage two CTE and so. And both died horrible ways that they didn't. They weren't. They weren't trying to. So it's. For me, it's not anti football, but it's. It's. It's more about. We didn't take care of each other.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, exactly. There was a lot we were taught. I grew up playing football in the 90s as well. We were taught to lead with our heads. You know, that's, That's. You know, but it was like, it was a. Put your face mask first, you know, and then I Was told, knock them out, you know, and it was like, you were almost rewarded for it. You know, this is. You know, this is. And the thing is, you. It's. Maybe it's not like that at the higher level, but these lower levels, no one's monitoring us. No one was. Anyway. In the 90s, we were just. We were beating the crap out of each other, doing bull in the ring and Oklahoma's and all these crazy drills that are just basically punishing people. Like, I remember if someone got in trouble or, like, had, like, didn't show up for practice, they'd put them in the middle of the ring and they'd have us all beat the crap out of them, you know. And so it's just. It's part. It's part of what stuff that happens. And I know this isn't anything that you subscribe to personally. This is just my own personal experience, but I want to get back into wrestling because when this happened, like, did you know in this incident, like with Dudley, did you know that you were messed up in that moment?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I knew that I had, for the first time, forgotten how the match was supposed to end. But I didn't know that that really meant much. And so I remember just telling him, like, hey, guys, I. I can't remember what's next. Tell me what you know, tell me what to do. And so we. They just kept telling, you know, you can call matches in the ring. We called the match. My head was throbbing like crazy. The athletic trainer thought something was wrong because I was acting funny. And I was like, leave me alone. I'm fine. Because I came from the football culture where you don't admit anything's wrong.

[Marcus Parks]

No.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Because then you get.

[Marcus Parks]

You take you out of the game. Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And it's bad for your reputation. And so I. And I thought. I just assumed the headache would go away. And the next day when I woke up and it was still there, after I drove three hours to the next show, I was almost going to tell them. And then I walked into the training room and I, like, saw other guys there, like, with real injuries and, like, getting ready with fused necks and, like, you know, they're, you know, knee braces for torn ACLs. And I'm like, I'm not going to tell them. My head hurts. And so I wrestled for five more weeks, basically lying about how horrible I felt, thinking I was doing the right thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. How bad is a chair hit to the head?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

As bad as you can. As bad as you think it is.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

When. If you put your hand up like we did in the, in the 80s. It's nothing because it never touches your head. But we forgot that, you know, like. And then part of that was, I think, the ECW influence of, you know, like, you know, there became an audience for hardcore. And then most people think the Internet, when the wrestlers could read, when the fans knew stuff was fake and that they felt pressured to make it real. And also UFC was coming, MMA was coming around then. And so there's also that competition. So there's all these influences that drove us to, let's all just hit each other for real. While I was there. It was like the most dangerous time in wrestling.

[Marcus Parks]

I remember when I realized as. Even as a young man that this was kind of messed up was the halftime show between Rock and Mankind when he hit him in the head with.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

The chair seven times.

[Marcus Parks]

Seven times.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Mick Foley talking about this at our gala because he spoke for us.

[Marcus Parks]

Really?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Does he think he has it? I mean, because he put himself out there just as much as anybody, if not more.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Well, so the reason he was there and the story told was in 2013 he was gonna make a comeback match, but he was noticing nothing was sticking in his memory anymore. And so he went to the same doctor who retired me. And I said, go see Dr. Cantu. He's always the best guy to figure this out. And he told this wonderful story on stage about how he did all his tests and he came back two weeks later. And Dr. Cantu said, you seem like a bright guy. I don't think you should ever wrestle again. And you could probably find someone to clear you, but I will not clear you. And Mick said, my career ended not with a great match, but with a handshake from a guy who clearly cared about my long term health. And the night before he spoke at our gala, he did one of his stand up shows. Because his brain is still working.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, no, he's hitting the road hard. Yeah. I love going to a club and seeing his face. Yeah, yeah. So.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So he saved the, you know, the next 10, 20 years of his life because he convinced him to stop getting hit in the head so much.

[Marcus Parks]

What percentage of wrestlers do you think develop CTE?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

You know, we only have like, there's only like 10 brains in the brain bank. There's a lot of guys who've pledged.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And so I think, you know, so also there, Natalia spoke because we diagnosed her dad, Jim, the Anvil Neidhart with ct and she's now talking about that in her book. He got it primarily from football he played football from like 10 to the NFL. So the reality is I, you know, there's, I don't want to speculate because it's, I can speculate on some of the sports where you have really good data. It's certainly a good, decent percentage of, of wrestlers have it. It's not all from wrestling because there's a lot of ex football players who go into it, ex other context sports. But it's, it's a problem. Like, you know, it started with you. Chris Benoit was the first sort of window into the fact that we knew like, oh gosh, like, like getting, you know, this. Wrestling can cause this, but if you do it wrong, essentially.

[Marcus Parks]

So out of the 10 that you got, how many had it. That pl. That you said you've studied 10 wrestlers so far?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, well, I mean, I can only really speak to the, the public ones because the other thing about wrestling is that it's a, it's an industry where a lot of people who've donated the brain, you know, they, people stay in that, that culture, in that business still. Some sometimes make money. So we, I can only. So it has, I think it's been less than half.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

That, that we've studied have had it, but it's, it's been a handful of folks.

[Marcus Parks]

Now you mentioned Chris Benoit. We, I don't know, back in the day before I was a part of last podcast and he left, they did an episode on Chris Benoit. So I imagine the listeners are going to want to hear about that. Do you, did you ever wrestle with him? Did you know him personally? I didn't.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Why? So we, we crossed over and the, the, the first time I met him, the time I got to know him was he just got his neck for fused back in 2002 or so. I was in Heartland Wrestling, just had been signed and, and so he came in and I remember there's a wrestler named Ray Steele who was tighter with him and, and sort of got him back into wrestling shape and he, and he invited me to be like the other guy. So we took bumps, you know, and I spent like, you know, a few, you know, a few hours with him, just three of us. And I remember at one point he was, he started helping me and so like my most vivid memory of that is that like I, I didn't know how to throw a forearm at that point. I'd been in wrestling for a few months and he's like, well, he's like, anything I can help you with? And I'm like, my forearm sucks. He Goes, show me. And he dipped his head and I, you know, hit him and I whacked him because I couldn't control it yet. And he's like, all right, that wasn't a good one. You know, and it was like that. He was just a very generous guy with his body and his time to me. And so the other part of that was that when I was injured and I was working on the book, he was the only guy in the locker room who asked me about the book I was writing and all these questions about concussions. And he. And that was the first time he gave me a cell phone number was this, you know, it was months or a year before, before the murder suicide, where he said, give me a call. I want to talk about concussions, because I've had more than I can count. And. And then when I called him, he. He sounded like he was in the middle of an argument with somebody, and he's like, I'll call you back. And he never did. And I just had no idea, like what he, you know, now I know he was going to be asking for help, and he just. He didn't. And I didn't call him back because I was intimidated by him and I missed out on prob. Intervene on that.

[Marcus Parks]

That's. That's very intense.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

But it's been. Well, it drives why I still do this. I mean, I literally was doing that today with somebody, you know, an Xboxer who's a friend of a friend and like, you know, wandered out into the snow without his shoes in. In a up north and nearly died last night. And trying to get him to care.

[Marcus Parks]

That is as heartbreaking. Thank you so much for talking to us. I know you're extremely busy and you were just on the phone with this guy, and so you definitely could have just said, ed, you know, we'll do this another time.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

But we got it done. We got it done.

[Marcus Parks]

That's amazing. Thank you very much.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sling is changing the way live TV works by putting viewers in charge of their entertainment. Pay only for the months when TV is actually needed and skip the ones when it's not. For short term needs, Sling passes provide live TV access without commitment. A day pass for 4.99 offers 24 access. A week pass, blah, blah, blah. Who cares? Unsling is the only place that you can watch your pretty faces going to hell on an app. It's the only place where you can do it. And so therefore it has become my favorite app. So you go to wherever the Sling is, find sling, and you can go to see your pretty faces going to hell on it. And that's all that matters. We're show people your pretty faces going to hell. Okay, so go get Sling. Great app. How I've organized my channel lineup as I put your pretty faces going to hell five times on it. So go check it out, choose and customize your channel lineup or pause and watch for free. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com to learn more. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help your business stand out and succeed online. Every dream needs a domain, which is why I finally solidified the borders of my own animals URL register.com you will bend to my will thanks to the power of Squarespace, I have been quantifyingly organizing every single available animal based creative business URL that is around and I'm coining them for myself. Wonderful things such as buffalosaucesauce.com such as kangaroo hats.com such as many different chickens shoes.com and it's all held behind the giant iron powerful Squarespace fueled gates ofAnimals URL register.com and any one of you that dares defy me or the unilateral power of Squarespace with their blueprint AI Squarespace AI Enhanced Design Partner, which sounds like the hand in hand we will march across the graves of URLs that people have been trying to steal from under me using the canons of animalsurl register.com me AI my old buddy Jeff Bezos. We're coming for you. All right. Squarespace is gonna help me. Squarespace is my bullets. Squarespace is my canvas. Squarespace is my God. We like Squarespace here. Head to squarespace.com left for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code left to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Don't let the overpriced phone bill suck the joy out of the holidays this year. Right now, all of Mint Mobile's Unlimited plans are 50 off. You can get 3, 6 or 12 months of Unlimited Premium Wireless for 15 bucks a month. Isn't that nice to look forward to? Normally, with the holidays, there's so many bad things that happen. So much bad news. Everything bad happens in snows.

[Marcus Parks]

It's the worst weather.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But you know what's nice is Mint Mobile's looking out for you. And at least someone is. Because other than that, you were completely and utterly alone. The only person that can help you.

[Marcus Parks]

Now is Mint Mobile.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So turn off your expensive wireless present into A huge wireless savings future by switching to Mint shop Mint unlimited [e-mail] LPOTL that's mintmobile.com LPOTL Limited Time Offer Upfront payment of $45 for 3 month, $90 for 6 month or $180 for 12 month Plan required $50 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only. Over 35 gigabytes. May slow when network is busy. Capable device required availability, speed and coverage varies.

[Marcus Parks]

See Mint mobile.com now Chris Benoit. He was known of course for his move the Crossface Crippler, but also the Flying Headbutt. And the Flying Headbutt. What is from my brief research on it, that move, people who do that move are linked to trauma and they've no, they've all had to retire early, correct? Or.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Oh, I mean, I haven't done that research. Who else has done it?

[Marcus Parks]

Man, you know, I should have wrote it all down. But there was a short list of the Flying Headbutt and everyone who did it and they're like, yeah, we quit. We had to quit. I had horrible concussions.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I mean, the reality is, you know, we forget like, you can't cheat physics. And so if you are going to come off the, like I, I've come off the top rope. Like, it's horrible, it hurts. And if you actually are going to go down with your, your arms can't brace or control the energy because you'd want to go slap the mat. You can't. All that energy is going to your head. And then the question is, did you really miss him? Because if you do hit, if you make contact with your head, you're sending a huge impulse of energy in your.

[Marcus Parks]

In your brain, especially when it's the leading force. It was Harley Race, the Dynamite Kid and bam, Bam Bigelow, all.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, I know Dynamite Kids died young. Harley Race, I think had dementia when he died. So I mean, it, it, you know, I'm certain like certainly that that contributed to the whole thing. I mean, I will say that the only note I'll give to teach about the science is that we think CT is mostly caused by rotational acceleration in the sense that when we see the lesions in the brain at the bottoms, you, the surface of your brain, your cortex has hills and valleys because basically you've evolved to fold as much cortex as you can. We see the CT at the bottom of the cortex and it's because when you twist the brain rapidly, your axon is create centripetal force. Axons pull apart, you get tiny Tears around blood vessels. When it's just a linear acceleration, your brain compresses a little bit, but doesn't really stretch and you don't get that tear. But you do get. You can't get a concussion. You do get a brain injury. It's not good for you, but it's a different mechanism. So I don't think the headbutt necessarily would have caused the CD unless they were twisting at the end.

[Marcus Parks]

Interesting. Michael Benoit, Chris Benoit's father, saw, thought that it was a sudden change in his personality. Did you. Did you notice that? Because you said he was a nice guy and he was a lot of fun to be around.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I didn't have enough interactions to see the change. But I will tell you, like, I just saw an interview with Nick Dinsmore talking about how he saw the change. Basically, once we diagnosed him him, all the wrestlers started to try to tell me, like, yeah, in the last year, I. I found him crying in the hallway on the road. He. He stopped calling matches because I don't think he could remember them. Like, he definitely changed.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And now. So whenever a wrestler dies, do you just reach out to the family immediately or, you know.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So for brain donation, you have 48 hours. 48 hours to get a hold of them in 72 hours to get the brain taken care of, put in a formal and solution to be studied. So I don't make as many calls anymore because the reality is we've made brain donations so normal. We get more offers of brains than we can afford to study at the brain bank. We're studying about 150 brains a year, and that's all we have the staff and the money to do. And what's one of the most busy brain banks in the world? Because each one is so expensive and so time consuming. So. So I don't. I call cases that are in the public interest. I certainly call when it's people I know or people I'm one person away from. Like, I do. But I also don't tell. Speak about the cases that turn us down. So I'm never that specific because I don't want anyone to feel pressured that they have to do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I see. I see.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

But I mean, yeah, make a lot of calls.

[Marcus Parks]

I had a specific question about Hulk Hogan, but you can't answer. But I would think that he changed a lot. I think in my lifetime, he was a different dude by the end of his life. And so I think that would have been an interesting one to study if you. If they were willing. But obviously that's too late at this point. It's been way more than 72 hours.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, I got it. I got a kayfabe, all that stuff. Yeah, the best use of KFAB there.

[Marcus Parks]

So we said a chair hit to the heads really hard. But you also mentioned a soccer ball can be very bad to the head. Yeah. And so. So you've seen a lot of CTE and soccer players as well?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, we've seen some in the US where they're seeing a ton of it is in England, in Scotland.

[Marcus Parks]

Really interesting.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So that basically there's. There's a. There's not that many old soccer players in the US because it wasn't cool for. Yeah, it wasn't normal mainstream. But the. There's been a few hundred brains donated in the UK and they have a ton of guys with CTE now.

[Marcus Parks]

Going back to Chris Benoit for two seconds, do you think steroids mixed with CTE is an issue?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, there's no research on it. So when it all went down, knowing what he had told me and knowing that the killings were over two days and the Bibles and the weird things like it didn't speak to steroids, certainly steroids are not going to help. Yeah, but there aren't enough cases with the interaction to know. I don't. And steroids are not going to cause the brain damage. Like the steroids might cause hormonal, impulsive behaviors, but it's speculation.

[Marcus Parks]

What about drugs? Just like cocaine, molly, stuff like that. Do you think that affects if someone with CTE takes drugs? Do you think it changes the way they can't.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Again, it can't help. It's all about. When you have ct, you have frontal lobe brain damage, so you become what they call disinhibited. Your prefrontal cortex is helping you make good decisions, and when that starts malfunctioning, you start making worse decisions. You want to layer on drugs and alcohol, decisions are going to get worse.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, I, I know that the. Why does the brain not heal itself? Because I know some organs do, like, over time, kind of heal themselves a little bit, you know, but the brain doesn't seem to heal itself.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I don't know if we have a scientific answer. The Brain. If you kill a neuron. Yeah. Another one doesn't grow in its place.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I don't, I don't. You know, we don't exactly know why that is other than it's not designed to. There's probably a bad side to that. Your. Your recovery, if you have physical damage is rerouting around it, you can build other connections, dendritic connections between, you know, create new circuits and work around the injury. But basically you kill a neuron. Microglia comes and clears the area, and you're born with about nearly 100 billion neurons. And then they just, you know, you start losing them. You start losing them in your. In midlife.

[Marcus Parks]

When it comes to football players in particular, I'm going to focus on football for most of the rest of the interview. How many concussions do you think is okay for a player to have before they're like, like, I'm not even Dolphins fan. I'm from Boca Raton. Tua. Like, do we think he should still be playing?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So the interesting thing is that we now have nearly a thousand football players brains.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And we have all their medical records. We, we've talked to their families. We know how many concussions they told their family they had. And what we find is there is no number of concussions you were diagnosed with or the number of concussions you told your family about or you think you had when you self report. Do not predict cte.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

What predicts CTE is in our models is how many years you played, because that is a rough proxy for how many hits you took and how hard they were. And we published a study in 2023 that actually laid sensor data from helmets by position, by year over the historical careers of everyone in our database. So if you were a college lineman, offensive lineman, you averaged 860 hits, 24 GS. And in high school, if you're also a linebacker, you took 750 hits over this. We laid that over and that predicted who got ct.

[Marcus Parks]

Interesting.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So it's like a math problem. It's number and strength have had impacts. It's not unlike smoking and lung cancer. Like, how many packs a day for how many years is going to predict your, your, your lung cancer risk? What position, not concussions.

[Marcus Parks]

What positions are most likely to experience the cte?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So we don't have in those, in those models because there's no difference in part because the, the linemen take more hits, but they're not as hard.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Because they're so close.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Right, but. And then we also, we don't. Nobody remembers what special teams they were on and kickoff and kickoff returning to be the worst.

[Marcus Parks]

The wedge busters.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And that changes week to week. And so it's really hard to build those in the model. Yeah, exactly. The wedge busters are going to be worse. But like, how many. Yeah, that I can't remember how many times I was a wedge buster. I was, but I remember how many which seasons and how many times I did it. So the models don't predict by position, Although I am aware of a study that looks at at death rates and finds that the non line interaction will worse off.

[Marcus Parks]

Linebackers.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And it is the extreme hits that are probably causing ct. But one other important piece of data I'll give you is that concussions aren't always the hardest hits you take. So if you think about CT is a physics injury, concussions are usually the 90th percentile and what that means. And they put this in a study, for every one concussion a college football player has, they take 341 hits harder than that concussion. And that's probably where the CT risk lies. The asymptomatic. I think I'm fine. But you got crushed. You're creating microscopic brain damage you can't feel.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, because it's basically. It's when the brain inside of your skull like hits the skull basically.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

No, it's that twisting your brain never really hits your skull. And we can see contusions when you die. There are some people who have contusions, but is really rare among football players. That's like car accident stuff. No, it's the twisting. It's that rotation that's really the culprit.

[Marcus Parks]

And do you think like, as far as, like that as you mentioned, car accidents. Oh, at one single head injury, is that, can that cause cte or is it more of the. The repeated over and over and over again?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

In theory, like in theory it has to be true. But when you look through brain banks of people who've had one severe brain injury that put them into a hospital, we almost never. Almost never never see ct. So it's like your brain is meant to take one hit. It's just not meant to take 100 hits a week.

[Marcus Parks]

And so you studied some of the first, some of the first people involved in this you were able to get. Obviously there was Mike Webster and Terry Long were the first two people.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And before me.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that was before you. But then you went and then you went to see Andre Waters family and get his brain.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I had to call the medical examiner and then. Yeah, then called his mom. Eventually met her.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Do you have like a, I don't know, lack of a better word, spiel, like when you call a family like, like how do you do that? Like it's such a personal thing.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, I do, I do. Cultivated over time. And I was just having that conversation because in 2006 at our annual gala, I was with my boss from 2006, who. He was in the office next door. And I was like. And I just finished the book, but there was no foundation. And I was like, I think this Waters thing is ct. And the medical examiner just gave me Andre Waters mother's phone number, and I've got to call her and ask for the brain. And so we wrote out a script together of how do you explain to somebody fast enough the relevant information before they hang up on you or think you're an absolutely insane person? Because I'm not a doctor. This has never been done before.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And it's within two days of them passing away.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Well, this one was. This one was even worse because I went back and forth, the medical examiner, for weeks. He was kind enough to entertain the idea that Andre could have had ct. And I sent him literature. Andre, they. They had buried Andre. Yeah, but in Florida law, when somebody dies of unknown circumstances, like, we think it's suicide, but maybe it's something else. They keep brain tissue. So they had kept parts of his brain. And so I had to also tell her, by the way, his full brain was not buried with him. And we can study it. It's just sitting at the medical examiner's office, which is a strange thing to tell a mother who lost her son but had to do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Did you work on Shane Tamura?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

No. Is that. That was a. That was someone else who studied him. How many organizations are studying brains?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And that was an organization. So that was the New York City Medical examiner's office.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Which is the busiest medical examiner's office in the country.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And they brought in CT experts from Manhattan. I know. I know who did, but. And they were part of the team that developed CT criteria, so they know it.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay. And of course, Shane, tomorrow, for those of you who don't know, is the. Was the person who recently went into. Tried to shoot up the NFL, made a mistake, shot some other people, and then claimed he did it because he had CTE from playing high school football. And then he did, in fact, have it, even though people were very skeptical, including myself, because you don't think that someone who just played high school football could have. This could happen to them. Do you think that. But I know it's very personal. Do you think that you might have.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

It from how much the odds are I have it. I mean, really, the two guys who've had it from my team were not the guys we thought would have it. Like, I was a guy who led with my head like one of those guys was not. And I, you know, and I also had the post concussion, you know, brain damage. So I'm. The only thing I have going for me is I waited till 14 to start, but. So I played eight seasons of football, three years of wrestling, headed a lot of soccer balls, but, but on that high school front, which is, again, it's gonna be tough to communicate, but the high school rate is actually much higher than people want to imagine. Shane, I think, is a canary in a coal mine, but We've studied nearly 100 high school players and 30% have had it in our brain bank. We just don't know how biased our sample is. But we also just had our first brain donor die. It was part of the bank CTE study, which means he gave blood while he was alive and then he died. So you try to diagnose CT through the blood and we're still enrolling for bank cte if you want to Google it. Chip Collins, he was his high school captain, played eight seasons of football. Never played after high school, got dementia in his mid-50s. His family went on an odyssey of misdiagnoses for a decade. Finally ran into one of my board members at an event and started the conversation and, and he had, he only had ct. That's all he had from high school football.

[Marcus Parks]

You think now I know I'm going back into it, but now I'm just like, now I'm just like thinking about myself.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

That's part of the problem. Like, it's, we can't, like we can't go back and take the hits back. And so communicating the fact that there might be, you know, more than a million former high school players that have this.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

You know, if that's true, like, you know, we're trying to sort of figure out how to get those numbers. It's going to be hard. It's really hard to think about.

[Marcus Parks]

Personally, I worry about it because, you know, I, the nice guy, you know, I got a good, I got a good head on my shoulders. I'm very, you know, like, I'm friendly, but like, I randomly flip out sometimes, you know, and so, and then I think about, I, I started playing football at 8 years old and, and then I played all the way through 16. And I know that's not as long as a lot of other people, but you. Frankly, it worries me because I was such a big guy that I was the biggest baby born in Florida. Not bragging, just telling you who I am.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Oh, wow.

[Marcus Parks]

And, and so they threw me in pads immediately and so that was like my father, he just saw dollar signs when I was born, you know, and. And so. And he played football for University of Missouri. And I'm. I'm. I. Nothing kicks me harder than not getting his brain studied because he had to quit in the 60s from too many concussions. He had a literal dent in the front of his head, you know, and so I was.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And then he noticed any behavioral problems.

[Marcus Parks]

The whole family had, you know, so it wasn't. You know, he. He basically excommunicated me for my entire family, you know, and so. And then everyone that he loved him growing up end hating him by the time he died. And so I really do believe he. He didn't have any good relationships except for the people that, you know, he married his wife young, later in life, and they. He was very peaceful at the end of his life. So that, you know, I will say that. But the.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

But the rest of it, I mean.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, who knows? But I worry about myself is what I'm saying, because. Do you think that it could be in. In. You can. Certain people are more prone to it. Like, you can inherit it in a weird way. Like, some people who smoke, like, die sooner than other people.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, well, you inherit it culturally, right. In the sense that, you know, if dad played and is still healthy when. When you're. When it's up to you, you get it. So we have a ton of father sons in the brain bank. It's kind of sad and. But then. No, there's. I mean, it's not. What we have shown is that there's no. There's no, like, huge genetic predisposition. So, like, you know, we've looked at 500 NFL players brains, and 90% have had it. Right. So there's no amazing magic genetic protection because it's basically almost everybody if you get to 20,000 hits in your life.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

But we have shown very clearly that there are a number of genes that are going to modify how bad it hits you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So there's a lot of people who are completely fine until their 70s, but not. Not everyone.

[Marcus Parks]

We covered it in our. In our episode. And I'm sorry. Wyatt Bromwell, 18 years old. He ended up taking his own life in 2019. And then he had. And he had CTE. When you were. Did you work on that case?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, I mean, that was our case. He was the youngest person out of stage two, so he was 18. We thought. We've published that there's an average of 13 years between stages. So you see stage one as late as someone's 40s. And then earliest stage, like Aaron Hernandez was earliest stage three and is 27. Wyatt's our earliest stage two at 18. So he probably got it like 10. And it had been already progressing in his brain. He had massive mental health problems in high school. He knew he had it. He'd asked to donate his brain. I actually met his parents for the first time last month at our dinner. They're the sweetest people. Dad was his coach. We all thought we were doing the right thing. So it's a very sad case.

[Marcus Parks]

Is an extremely sad case. And it's honestly what worries me immensely about what's happening in society today. Right now, you're working on something, and I do want to get to Aaron Hernandez. Trust me, that's what everyone really wants me to. But I want to talk about one of your. What you're doing right now, because I watched your TED talks. Very good. The stop hitting children. So this is. Can you just explain this? We have a lot of listeners where True Crime podcasts. A lot of our listeners are women in their 40s. So make your plea to them to make sure that their children are doing sports the correct way.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Oh, I appreciate that. So, yeah, the campaign is called Stop Hitting Kids in the Head. So we're trying to very, very clearly make the case that it is completely abnormal to hit children in the head hundreds of times a year. But some sports are still doing it and try to just make it sort of very clear. Like, you don't hit your own kid in the head because you worry about the consequences. Therefore, don't let other kids hit your kid in it. Just because it's culturally acceptable to do that in youth football does not mean it's right. The human brain, when it's developing especially young, is going through enormous physical changes every day. And these hits are going to disrupt that development, and they're going to turn your kid into somebody different than they were supposed to be without the head impacts, and it does not ever go in a good direction. Brain trauma is never good for you. And so now that we know that there's a straight line with ct, now that we know that concussion, just concussions increase your risk of mental health disorders. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, like, don't let people hit kids in the head. And so our plea to sports is to say just raise the age at which we start saying open season on your brain. So that's why we got heading band till 11 in the US which is still not young enough. We say at least 14 and go as long as you can without hitting your kid in the head.

[Marcus Parks]

So you can't, you can't put on a helmet and play till you're 11.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Now again, had a soccer ball.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, had a soccer ball.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

It's illegal in the game, sorry. Yeah, but the problem is tackle football is the one sport where there's no national governing body and it's a bunch of small capitalist organizations who, you know, just are just trying to compete with each other for kids. So there's no age minimums. The only reason the age minimum is five is because that's how old you have to be to remember where to line up. Like. And so it's insane that we take a 40 pound kid, put a four pound helmet on their head and ask them to run into people. That's like an NFL player wearing a 30 pound helmet. Like, just imagine how stupid that would be. And the physics to your brain. And also like your axons, your long one 20th the width of a human hair. Axons aren't protected from trauma when you're young. You're building a type of cell around it that will protect it. Like, why? Like coating on a wire. And so it's just like the worst idea ever to be whacking these kids. And now that we put sensors on the helmets of youth football players, they actually, because they're little human bobbleheads, are getting hit as hard as college football players. It doesn't look like it's big, but it's not that they're bringing a lot of energy into the hit is they can't slow their head down when they get hit or they can't stop their head from striking the ground when they fall. So, yeah, so please don't hit your kids in the head or don't let anyone else hit your kids in the head.

[Marcus Parks]

Head.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Choose sports that are, that just worry about athleticism. They can run into each other once in a while. Again, the body's meant to take that, but this repetition is. Is insane.

[Marcus Parks]

What sports are good? Basketball, everything.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

40. 40 sports are good. There's like four sports that are bad, right? Like the tackling sports are terrible. Rugby and football when you're young, the ones where you hit a projectile with your head, like soccer, ice hockey with checking is insane at a young age. And now it's banned till 13. And then boxing in MMA with head strikes, like terrible ideas. But after that it's like everything else is pretty good. Lacrosse has been pretty aggressive in trying to reform and be safer, you know, so I don't have any Problems with it. Every head contact is supposed to be a penalty before 14. My kids are playing basketball. They're playing T ball. They're, you know, they're doing taekwondo. There's no head strikes.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, what age should you be allowed to start football? All in your opinion.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So our. Our campaign is called play flag until 14. You know, for the p. You know, then I talk to my buddies who, like, still, you know, love football and want to protect their kids. I say, all right, well, middle school at 12, 13, it's a gray area. Right? Like. But yeah, there's no reason to start before 12.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I mean, I think about it, like, how scared I was because not just I was 8, playing with 12 year olds because of my size. And then, like, you know, it's because I was a big boy. It's. But these kids are obviously stronger than me. I'm just fat, you know, and so it's like. And so they're beating the crap out of me. I'm the only white kid on the team. They love hitting me. Good for them. I'm glad they had fun. But the. The.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Did you also have to play both ways?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, man, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I was center and defensive tackle, you know, and I was just. Because I was so big and like the first year. And then I got good by the end of the season, and then both ways until 16, and then I eventually quit it just because I loved weed and theater too much. Thank God. But. But yeah, man, it was. It definitely terrifies me that it's. It's.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

It.

[Marcus Parks]

It comes. It could be a something that happened.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

That's good news. Is, I'll tell you this, that what I tell everyone, like, you know, the guys of us who are like, midlife, like, at risk. Yeah. Like, notice things that we don't like about our behavior and our ability, you know, that you, you know, treat the symptoms aggressively. You can treat the symptoms, you know.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Addiction issues are a lot of things that kill people. Like, get that. You got to have that under control. You're not going to die from this. Like, it's all about the behaviors will kill you, not the disease. Okay, so standard control work on your brain health.

[Marcus Parks]

How do you. One of the things I've done is lion's mane. No.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Supplements are all garbage. I. I have started losing. I've. I've started losing weight. I've actually, I'll tell you, I haven't told anybody. I'm taking GLPs. I'm taking Zepbound.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I'm on it, baby. Let's Rock. Yeah. No, I lost 60 pounds. I feel like a new man.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Oh, great. I'm down 35, and I'm actually, like, weaning off blood pressure medication because, like, I'm. Hold on to whatever you can. Heart health is brain health. You know, you gotta eat like champs. And we get. We have to be vigilant. But also, like, I keep telling guys, like, look, you can develop a cure in 20 years easy, if you get things right, if we invest in this thing. And so now it's like, just trying to build this army of ex football guys and ex rugby guys and people who are at risk going, do it for you. Do it for you. Like, we can fix this thing before it gets bad, but we have to work now.

[Marcus Parks]

Any leads on a cure?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Well, so we're basically at this point where I think we're on the cusp of diagnosing CT and living people. And at that point, we can start clinical trials. What we've learned in the last five years is that we've been. We've been trying to draft off Alzheimer's disease research because they're both. The same protein is going wrong in the brain. What we have learned, though, is tau protein, right? Yes, exactly. But it misfolds with these injuries. We've learned that the misfolding of CT and misfolding of Alzheimer's is slightly different. And that means that the tests for Alzheimer's don't work for CT to image it on PET scans and the blood tests. So we have to build our own biomarkers, and then we'll probably have to build our own drugs, but we'll use it using Alzheimer's technology. And Alzheimer's technology has made huge leaps. There's a drug now for the plaque. We just need to get a drug for this protein.

[Marcus Parks]

And you said, you mentioned a moment ago about addiction and cte. Do you think that CTE can lead to people being. Just more chance of them becoming. Dealing with addiction, whether it's alcohol or drugs or gambling.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

It's hard to prove scientifically based on a brain bank sample, but you wouldn't believe the number of brain donors that we have who are uncontrolled alcoholics who died of liver failure.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And including. Including, you know, my old roommate Chris Eitzman, who was captain of the Hart football team three years in the NFL. NBA from Dartmouth, investment guy, doing amazing until alcohol took over. And. And. And within five years, he was dead and his frontal lobe was shrunk. And so it's like, you cannot battle addiction with a damaged frontal lobe. As well as you could with a healthy brain. So like, so I, yes, I absolutely think you would not believe that. The stories I could tell you about the uncontrolled alcoholics that were the worst alcoholics you ever heard that have died to ct.

[Marcus Parks]

Interesting. That makes a lot of sense to me because you're trying to dumb the pain down as well.

[Adrian]

Looking for a last minute gift for your people, you know, your people, that weird bunch of friends and family that you love dearly. Well, here's an easy idea. Oregon Lottery Holiday Scratchets. Because your people, they're the ones that amidst all the holiday crowds and endless notifications, help you find the fun, which calls for a little gift that brings big cheer. Oregon Lottery Holiday Scratchets. You know where to find them. Grab some today. Must be 18 or older to play. Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only.

[Sponsor Voice]

They say if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. At Amica Insurance, we're built for our customers and prioritize your needs. Call 877-41-America and get a quote.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Today the holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal.

[Marcus Parks]

Info in more places that could expose.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

You more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year.

[Marcus Parks]

Visit LifeLock.com Special offer terms apply. I did a documentary and one of the subjects I touched on in the documentary was about gambling addiction. And I talked to Dr. Danny Danley, she's a gambling counselor in Reno. And she said in her studies though, there's no one's funding this research but you know, just her as a human being. She said that there is a definite link that she could see between head injuries and gambling addiction. And so do you think that this is something that like a lot of people have been like multiple car accidents and stuff like that? Football players, obviously, they, they, they love gambling. I watched Brian Cox spend a lot of money on a cruise ship once.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, no, it's good. I, I don't doubt that for a second. The traumatic, I mean traumatic brain injury just lowers your, your, makes you more impulsive. You know it again, that disinhibition. So, yeah, there's no, I mean, yeah, I don't, I don't, I haven't looked up specifically the Brain injury, gambling stuff, but I don't doubt it for a second.

[Marcus Parks]

Awesome. And Aaron Hernandez.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So you listen to the series. Thank you very much. I appreciate you listening.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

It was, it was wonderfully entertaining.

[Marcus Parks]

What'd I get wrong?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Not get nothing wrong. I was, I was like, this is really incredibly well researched. I was very bright.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes. Shout out to Grant Gordon. He did a lot of work. He's also a big fan of yours. Oh, my buddy Grant, who helped me write the CTE stuff, he wanted me to ask, what's your favorite type of cooler?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

My favorite type of what?

[Marcus Parks]

Cooler.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Cooler.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What kind of cooler do you use? What is it? You got a yeti? Like, when you go get a brain, like, what's it like? Oh, geez, I love a barbecue. You know, I'm always trying to get, like, the best cooler possible, you know, like, what do you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I got.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah, I, I mean, I, that I, I have transported a brain once in a styrofoam cooler. Like, it's, It's.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, my God.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Like. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That's insane.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

How do you. How does it not. Like, is there. But is there like a certain, like, type of cooler that you're supposed to use?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

No, no, it's. It will usually. Usually they're transferred. Transmitted. Well, there's two ways. There's two ways the brain gets to the brain bank. One is that it's a courage. Like if, if you get there within hours of them dying, it's actually a courier that gets it right to the brain bank in Boston within hours. Because that allows you to flash freeze it to all these amazing genetic tests and things you can't do usually. So I don't know what the couriers are using.

[Marcus Parks]

Do they just put it on like a commercial flight or like, this is FedEx or like, what is it?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Commercial flight? Like, we're literally, like, our team is literally working with the services who show up to the, you know, somebody gives them the brain and then they bring it to us.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, so you're sitting on a Delta flight with a brain in your lap.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I, you know, I haven't done that role, but God blessed, there are people who do that for us.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah. And then there's. And then the other way is that you have to put it in a formalin solution, like formaldehyde type of thing. And, and, and it's literally in a, A receptacle and it sits and it has to harden for weeks because the brain is so soft. So it can be transferred without getting damaged. And Then. And then it gets shot, shipped.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. So Aaron Hernandez, he takes his own life in prison. How fast are you with that phone call? Who do you call? Who'd you call? His mother?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Oh, I. You know, I. I don't know. I don't know what's public here, but that was. I. I believe they initiated that.

[Marcus Parks]

They initiated that, you believe? Okay. And. And so how. So you get it. You study it, you see it. He had more advanced than anyone at his age at the time. Correct, correct. And. And so what. What do you do with that information? Do you immediately run to the press? Do you. Like, how is. Like, what's the. What do you do? Like, that's just, like, such valuable info that this man who just killed multiple people, you know, over time, you know, he. He suffers from this disease that is a reflection of football. Like, that is very valuable information. Like, what. What do you do once you find out? Do you. Guys, guys. Is it, like. Because I hear it last podcast, like, crazy news happens, you know, you start to get, like, a morbid, like, way of looking at it. You know, like, we're like, oh, my God, there was, you know, high five, you know, like, not. You know, you're not happy it happened, but you're like, oh, we got something to talk about, you know, And. And so, like, what is this, like, the crazy. Is that your biggest case? Like, I don't even know what I'm.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Asking more attention than. Than any other case. And so, yes, I mean, I'll tell you what happened. When we got the call, we're like, oh, gosh, like, we're gonna find, like, a couple little spots of disease, and it's not gonna explain anything. And we thought it was just gonna be like a, you know, not. Not help. Not help advance our understanding. But then when. When Dr. Ann McKee studied it, said, no, no, this is stage three. It's like, oh, now I can understand how somebody who might have had some behavioral issues, might have gotten in a little bit of trouble, turned into somebody who just signed a $40 million contract, but yet chooses to murder people over small things. Things, right? Like, that makes no sense. Like, stage. Stage three to me, helped make sense of this bizarre behavior that exhibited. And then the question was, well, this is a public health issue, and I'm coming from the perspective of. I've already seen this with Chris Benoit. We have other murder suicides in the brain bank. Like, people need to know what's happening here, because this is entirely preventable, entirely optional, and we're giving this brain disease to kids like White Bramble. Well, so, so we actually had our, an annual CT conference coming up and I, and I suggested to Dr. McKee that she present this as a case study. We actually had, we had a few dozen of our brain donor family members in the audience for this event because we had a dinner afterwards. So like she presented at this conference to all these families with a room full of press and, and luckily everyone heard about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow, that is, it is mind blowing. How, how is the NFL? Because you, at one point it was 110 out of 111 NFL players you examined had CTE. And I don't know what the numbers are at now because the last one time has happened.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

345 out of 376.

[Marcus Parks]

345 out of 3 76. So that's 90 something percent. And so how many players do you think have it that play professional football percentage wise? Percentage wise. Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Well, we've proven it's at least 10% of all NFL players who've ever played.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And I think we're about to update that number.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. How is the NFL covered up ct?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

You know, League of Denial is probably the best way to get that window into that. So the, the, at the beginning they were trying to sort of COVID up the concussion issue by. When Aikman and Steve Young had to retire, they started a concussion committee. And then that committee designed research that I figured out when I wrote my book could only find negative results. Basically they were tracking people over their careers, but if they retired from a concussion in the study, they would drop out of the study because they couldn't get in touch with them for follow up studies. So they would just say, oh, it didn't matter. So you could only study the healthy people.

[Marcus Parks]

People.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And so they, they concluded from these studies of only healthy people there are no long term effects. And then when the CT stuff started to happen, they first tried to get the Benedemalu papers, you know, pulled out of the journal. They wrote these scathing letters saying this is ridiculous. It's not, it's misdiagnosed. It's all this stuff. And then they did a real hit job on him.

[Marcus Parks]

It seemed like. It seemed like they did a hit job on him. They tried to discredit all of his research. Well, it seemed like to me, yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

They, so they did.

[Marcus Parks]

As from an outsider.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

As an outsider, he also was not, was not a classic researcher.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So there were things to pick apart.

[Marcus Parks]

Gotcha.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And that's in part why I started at an academic, started the Unite brain bank at Boston University with the foundation and Dr. McKees because this needs to be real academics who, who just did research all day. He was a pathologist and a medical examiner and did a great thing by finding these cases. But he's never been full time research. But yeah, they attacked him. And then they kept rolling out prestigious doctors who would say that we're completely wrong and we're stupid and we're liars and they said some crazy things over the years to try to discredit us every chance they got.

[Marcus Parks]

And obviously I think Paul Tagliabu was, was way worse at it than Roger Goodell. But has there been any improvements made in the last couple of years? Like do you feel like they're actually taking it seriously?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So they, you know, they were sort of forced to acknowledge it in front of Congress in 2016. But it's not like they're trying to raise awareness of it. They are making more reforms to the game now. But honestly, like if you actually look at it, if they've changed the kickoff and they've done all these things, but a lot of that's about keeping players healthy on the field to make a better product. They're still recruiting children to start playing as young as five. Like they've got these ads with Peyton Manning and Eli Manning coaching against each other where they're recruiting to tackle football, but they never show the kids colliding.

[Marcus Parks]

They're playing at halftime at the stadium.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah. And so you can't be serious about preventing CTE if you're also telling everyone to start at 5 years old old.

[Marcus Parks]

Right.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

If they use their influence to say there should be an age minimum. And therefore if we put the age minimum in and we teach everybody to not tackle in practice at the college and high school level like we're doing, then you would actually have future NFL players without ct. But changing the rules for the last two or three years of their career is not going to stop the CT train.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Can helmets be any safer than they are or it just doesn't even matter how if what you do with helmets it a little bit.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I mean because the problem is getting rotational acceleration. A helmet's not going to do that much for rotational acceleration. Yeah, it's really good for linear or decent for linear. So no, the helmet, I mean the helmet stuff and the guardian cap is all a distraction. And the USA Today just exposed that the NFL has been not been fully transparent about how effective guardian caps are.

[Marcus Parks]

And guardian cap, that is that the headband, that's.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

That's the padding you put over it that they mandated for the preseason.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

They were saying that the guardian cap was responsible for 50% reduction in concussions. Then they pub. Then they studied it. Then the reviewers told them to isolate only the hits to the helmet, not just the face mask, because the face mask has a pad on it. It turned out that reduction was no longer statistically significant when you just focused on when they hit the guardian cap itself. And they never changed their talking points. And USA Today called them out for going, listen, your own research debunked, dunked your talking point. Why are you still saying the talking point?

[Marcus Parks]

Can you watch football?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I watch it. I watch it for research. I. I like to monitor, like, how they talk about the big hits and all that stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I don't watch it for fun. I don't carve out my afternoons anymore. I don't necessarily. I don't encourage my kids to watch. I mean, I still can watch it for fun because football has become completely sanitized, you know, from what we played. Like, you no longer. Like, they shine up and. And paint everyone's helmets every week now, so. See the gashes we used to see?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I love the gu. You know, the chip face masks, all that stuff. So everybody looks fine and you looks like a safe game until you see that big hit. Until you see in the, like in the Patriots game Monday night, a guy's helmet chip off.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And you realize, oh, my God, if you hit someone hard enough to chip the surface of their helmet, like, you have destroyed their brain.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. There's no question about it.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

No, that's just that, I mean, I, I still love the players. I still support the players and all that stuff, but it's just.

[Marcus Parks]

It's like you don't support war, but you love the soldiers. It's the same thing, you know, it's. It's. That's how I look at it. It's weird because I think about, like, the. I just been so. Ever since going through this series and, and studying what you've studied and stuff like that. I think about everything so much. It. Like, even down to, like, celebrating, we would always smash our heads against each other, like in a friendly way. You know, it was, It's. That was committing it. Like, you get. Those aren't counted. You know, those are hard. Practice is insane. You know, I. Most of my. What I believe my concussions were happened in practice, you know, and so. Yeah, exactly.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Why would the hell we hitting in Practice at all. Like, we can't you teach us how to play football without smashing our brains?

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Using your head to headbutt people is interesting in part just because I just did my annual trainings for WWE wrestling and AW wrestling. And one of the videos I show is Goldberg doing an interview about how this match he had with the Undertaker in Saudi Arabia, he had. He liked to headbutt the locker before he went out to his match, and he did it this time in Saudi Arabia, and he hadn't done it a while and concussed himself. And then he went out and did the match, gave himself another concussion and.

[Marcus Parks]

Nearly killed Undertaker, of all people. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

But he had.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's so. Oh, it's so. What would you do if your son was like, I want to play football?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I don't think at this point, like, I'm just surrounded by football players dying and suffering every day. So I would tell him, no. Like, there's other ways to have sports and build teams. And you mentioned theater. Like, when people say, like, I learned all my best lessons in football. Like, I actually think I learned a ton of my lessons in the theater, too. Like, yeah, you know, like, I learned a lot in football, but, like, you.

[Marcus Parks]

Know, there's where the chicks are, too, by the way.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

So I'm thinking things going through my head. I'm not gonna say the. Yeah, I mean, it's.

[Marcus Parks]

It's.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

It's just one of those things that, like, we need to learn how to teach kids all these valuable lessons without giving them brain damage. Like, that's my position.

[Marcus Parks]

That is very. That is very sweet, man. I love it. And so your organization, Concussion Legacy foundation, you are looking for brains. You're at all times. So you. You have, like, a backlog of brains that you guys have to get.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

We have a 15, 000 person brain donation registry of people who signed up and told their families. And so they're. They're coming in now on a regular basis, and then everyone else calls when their dad's in hospice or something. When. When will this air?

[Marcus Parks]

This is going to air around Christmas.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Okay. So we are. By then, we will have rebranded ourselves.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, okay. Please tell me about it.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

On. We are becoming. Because of the advancements that we think are coming next year with CTE, we are becoming the concussion and CT foundation. We're going to give equal billing to CTE, equal billing to concussion. And we'll [e-mail] of our 1700, our families are predicting CTE accurately. About 60% of the time.

[Marcus Parks]

Time. Wow.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

That's why NFL families are predicting at 90 of the time, but everyone else at 60. And to put that in perspective, less than 1% of the population has this.

[Marcus Parks]

So do you ever say no if someone's like, I want to donate a brain or I do anything like that?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

We actually have to turn away more now than we can take because of that limit of doing 150 a year. There's certain criteria you have to meet of exposure. Like, we're not, we're no longer like, interested in like the low exposure cases. Like we, we need the CT tissue because we're sending it to research researchers around the world try to figure this thing out.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, okay. So I, you know, at risk, at risk of making myself look stupid. You want my brain? Do you need it?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

You would qualify, unfortunately.

[Marcus Parks]

I would. I would qualify. Dude, I'm signing up. You could totally have my brain. I don't need it. I don't understand why people are so. It's trash and I'm done with it. It's. It's just going in the garbage. You might as well not feel it.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

When we go in there and get it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, no people. You really could, right? And a lot of people, Ken, a lot of people start playing football at such a young age. I'm definitely going to sign up. I'm putting you on my every. At the end of the year, I do lots of donations. You guys are definitely going to be on the list. Make sure that you're donating to them. And before we go, there's one thing if last podcast on the left. I feel like it would be rude of me to not bring this up. In our studies of doing this, studying evil people alive and dead. It is so often that serial killers and mass shooters have head trauma, have experienced some sort of head injury, were abused by their parents, you know, and stuff like that. Have you ever thought about trying to get serial killers brains and studying them for ct?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yes. In fact, a lot of the mass shooters we've reached out to, including like, we got Robert cardsbrain, who killed 17 in Lewiston, Maine, who was a grenade instructor in National Guard.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

And he, he had a lot of brain damage. Not ct, but a lot of different types of brain damage. So yes, no, we, we, we do. In fact, you know, you can view my eyes and ears on this. Let's. We can work together and, and grab some.

[Marcus Parks]

Gary Ridgeway is about to die guy. He's the, the go. The Green river killer. Killed 50 people on record up to 80. He's about. He's about to. He's about to pass away. They're saying he's like, days from death. So that's. That's one to keep on the books, but, yeah. Richard Ramirez, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Martin Bryan, Fred West, Kraft, Rolling Pickton, the Hillside Strangler. Stark weather. These guys. It's like, I went and asked my buddy who works on the show with me that's, like, off the top of his head. Head. He was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so it's very prevalent as far as, like, serial killers and spree shooters. I feel like this is something that.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

No surprise, we should do something with this. I mean, it's dramatic. Rangers well known in the. In the criminal, you know, convict community. People in prison, way overpopulated by. Over. More like likely to have brain injury histories than the population.

[Marcus Parks]

All right, I'm giving you my brain. We're getting Gary Ridgeway's brain. I'm telling you, we're starting a new thing here. Chris. Dr. Nowitzki. Sorry, I. I like you a lot. Sorry called you Chris. But, but Dr. Nowitzki, thank you so much. Guys, go check out his book, Head Games. There's a documentary about the subject. Check that out. It's made by the same. It was directed by the same fellow who directed Hoop Dreams, right?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah. Steve James. Legend is awesome.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Legend. So it's. I haven't seen it myself. I did. I. I can't wait to watch it. I just bought your book. I'm gonna. So next time I talk to you, because I'm gonna find you, and then.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I'm glad you can still find it.

[Marcus Parks]

Where can people find it if they want to check out?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I mean, you know, like, you know, nowhere. I mean, you can get the Kindle. Get. You get the Kindle. I just read it.

[Marcus Parks]

It's more important.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

Yeah. I mean, it's out of stock. I think my publisher went out of business. There's. There's some in my closet. I'll say. I'll send you a box.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, wow. Okay. That's not a horrible idea. The Concussion Legacy foundation is being rebranded. To what again?

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

How do people find Fiction and CTE Foundation.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. And then you could just go ahead and follow Christopher Nowitzki on Instagram. It stays very up to date. I love following your Instagram. All the work you've done with the brain donation registry with Dr. Cantu and Dr. Anne McKee over at the Boston University has been incredible. I, I honestly, you're a hero to me. And it is an honor to talk to you for an hour and get to know you and keep doing your work, man. And anything you need from me or last podcast on a list left, you hit me up. I got your back forever. So you.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I'm so honored.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we. We got you, man. Well, fundraisers, I'll show up and donate. We'll do a comedy show and raise some money for you. Anything you need, man. I'm all about it.

[Dr. Chris Nowitzki]

I'm in for all of it. And hit me up when next time you're back home. Boca, like, thrilled. Honored to meet you. Appreciate you so much.

[Marcus Parks]

Back at you, buddy. Keep up the good work. That's my man. I love that dude.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's very interesting.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. So please, if you enjoyed this episode, I'm going to share with my nephew who plays high school football. They have him going both ways because he's really good because he was related to me. So obviously he's gonna be a good football player. But they. So but they have him going both ways. I'm gonna try and talk him out of it. I'm gonna make him listen to this episode as a way to like, hey, man, at least just play one side of football. Share it with your families. You know, anyone who has a. A, a young boy who's thinking about getting into football, send him this episode. Stop hitting kids. That is like. That is the whole thing with. With Chris Nowitzki. Thank you so much. Go donate to the Concussion Legacy Foundation. Be a part of it. This is something that is near and dear to my heart. I love you, Mr. Nowitzki, Dr. Nowitzki and everyone else who cares about this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Also just slightly strangle kids.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. See, is that easy comer Simpson. Yeah. This Sunday I'm gonna be in Oxnard. Come and see me if you got nothing to do. It's. It's gonna be amazing. That is going to be Sunday, January 4th, Oxnar, California levity live. It's gonna be me, Carolina Hidalgo, Holden McNeely, Jake Young, and Julia Johns. Is gonna be a blast. Come hang out with me. Start your new year off right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, baby. Happy New Year.

[Marcus Parks]

All right. See you next year.

[Henry Zebrowski]

See you next year, you idiots.

[Marcus Parks]

Unless you already. You're listening to this tomorrow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

See you 2026, you morons.

[Marcus Parks]

It's already 2026 and you missed it because who really listen to a podcast on New Year's Eve?

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're late.

[Marcus Parks]

I asked it on a different day. They're like, no, we are contractly. We have to do it on the wrong day. So there you go.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Rock and roll.

[Marcus Parks]

Hell yeah. Please be good people. Try.

[Adrian]

Looking for a last minute gift for your people. You know, your people, that weird bunch of friends and family that you love dearly. Well, here's an easy idea. Oregon Lottery Holiday Scratch. It's because your people, they're the ones that, amidst all the holiday crowds and endless notifications, help you find the fun. Which calls for a little gift that brings big cheer. Oregon Lottery Holiday Scratchets. You know where to find them. Grab some today. Must be 18 or older to play lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only.

[Sponsor Voice]

Save over $200 when you book weekly stays with VRBO this winter. If you need to work, why not work from a chalet? If you haven't seen your college besties since, well, college. You need a week to fully catch up in a snowy cabin open. And if you have to stay in a remote place with your in laws, you should save over $200 a week. That's the least we can do. So you might as well start digging out the long johns because saving over $200 on a week long snowcation rental is in the cards book now at verbo. Com.