Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Speaker 2: A few weeks ago, on Mother Knows Death, we talked
Speaker 2: about a story where a forensic anthropologist I don't know
Speaker 2: if you heard of this story, but a forensic anthropologist
Speaker 2: shift was shopping at an antique store and they stumbled
Speaker 2: across a human skull. And I thought the story was
Speaker 2: funny because they said, oh, luckily it was a forensic pathologist,
Speaker 2: and I thought, like, okay, I think that most people,
Speaker 2: even if they didn't have training in forensic pathology, would
Speaker 2: know if it was a real human skull or not
Speaker 2: because they're just so specific looking to a human. And
Speaker 2: also on my website, The Grocerroom, we talked about a
Speaker 2: book called Death's Acre, which is about the field of
Speaker 2: forensic anthropology. So I thought it would be awesome today
Speaker 2: on the podcast to interview a real forensic anthropologist and
Speaker 2: his name is doctor Daniel Westcott.
Speaker 3: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It's an honor to have you here today. He is
Speaker 2: a professor of anthropology at Texas State University, which has
Speaker 2: the largest body farm in the country. And thanks so
Speaker 2: much for being here today.
Speaker 3: Is an honor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2: I anthropology when I was in college in my undergrad
Speaker 2: and I thought it was the coolest class that I
Speaker 2: ever took. I really didn't know about it, and it
Speaker 2: was mostly cultural anthropology, but he touched a little bit
Speaker 2: on a physical anthropology, which I think is a branch
Speaker 2: of what you're doing. So can you describe to us,
Speaker 2: like how what did you originally go to college for
Speaker 2: and how did you even become interested or know about
Speaker 2: this field?
Speaker 4: Okay, oh, yeah, So biologically apology is one of the
Speaker 4: subdisciplines of anthology. See so culture anthropology obviously looks at
Speaker 4: the cultures of people, and archaeology looks at past cultures,
Speaker 4: and biological anthology looks at the biology of people. And
Speaker 4: we're interested in biological variation and how humans interact with
Speaker 4: their environment and with their culture on a biological point
Speaker 4: of view. So I've actually always been interested in both.
Speaker 4: And so, uh, when I when I when I started college,
Speaker 4: I the same thing. I took a four filled course, uh,
Speaker 4: in pro course in anthropology, and I it was very
Speaker 4: interested in doing. It wasn't my major or anything like that,
Speaker 4: but I was very interested in that fourfilled approach. And
Speaker 4: then so then I took another UH course. But when
Speaker 4: I was taking those courses, there was a the if
Speaker 4: Bulget department had a library attastitute. It's a little small
Speaker 4: student library, and so I would go in there and
Speaker 4: study before class. And one day one of the professors
Speaker 4: came in and said, you know, somebody brought in some
Speaker 4: human remains and is there anybody's interested in you know,
Speaker 4: helped me with them, and of course you're like the
Speaker 4: Champson that was pretty much. Yes, that was pretty much.
Speaker 4: Yet you know, a week later I changed my major
Speaker 4: and been doing it ever since.
Speaker 2: I love stories like that because I think that everyone
Speaker 2: has this pivotal moment. Well not everyone, I guess, but
Speaker 2: people that are doing really cool jobs and they love
Speaker 2: their job, they have this pivotal moment that they're like, wait,
Speaker 2: I'm not in the right thing, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: change over to this right away because this is something
Speaker 2: that feels more right for me. When I was in
Speaker 2: PA school, i interned at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office,
Speaker 2: and that was really the first time I ever had
Speaker 2: kind of a simil situation that happened with you. They
Speaker 2: would from time to time have the police call and say, hey,
Speaker 2: there's bones that are in the woods and we need
Speaker 2: someone to look at them. And they didn't have a
Speaker 2: forensic anthropologist that was there all the time, so when
Speaker 2: they had cases like that, they would have to call
Speaker 2: someone in to look at them. But in this particular case,
Speaker 2: I'll never forget that there was it was a trash
Speaker 2: bag and the emmy dumped out all the bones onto
Speaker 2: the autopsy table and he said, oh, that's barbecue. It's
Speaker 2: probably pork or something, and didn't even call one of
Speaker 2: you guys to look at it. And I remember thinking
Speaker 2: how cool that was that he could just look at
Speaker 2: bones that fast and know that they weren't human. And
Speaker 2: he explained to us like the weight bearing joints and
Speaker 2: all this different things. But I thought that was really cool.
Speaker 2: So obviously that's one of the jobs that a forensic
Speaker 2: anthropologist can have, is working on real cases and being
Speaker 2: a consult But what are what are some other things
Speaker 2: you can do once you go to school and become
Speaker 2: a forensic anthropologist.
Speaker 4: Well, so, you know, if if you look at kind
Speaker 4: of modern friends of anthropology, there's a couple of things
Speaker 4: that there's a couple of different approaches, I guess, or
Speaker 4: different tracks that you could go into. So there's obviously
Speaker 4: the academic side, which is where I'm at, where I,
Speaker 4: you know, a college professor and I teach friendsic anthropology,
Speaker 4: I do research associated with friendsic anthropology, you know my
Speaker 4: and have students and in things of that nature. And
Speaker 4: then there's the side where you have people that are
Speaker 4: on the track where they mainly are focusing on working
Speaker 4: at a medical exeveritor's office. And I know that that
Speaker 4: wasn't was not common in the past, but it is
Speaker 4: becoming more and more common where you have friends againsthropologists
Speaker 4: that are doing casework in the medical exemveritor's office. Not
Speaker 4: only are they doing when there's actually skult or remains,
Speaker 4: but they're also assisting with like looking at blood force
Speaker 4: trauma and actually analyzing the bones even if there's a
Speaker 4: plush person the And then the third track I guess
Speaker 4: would be working for the government and as a friends
Speaker 4: against all. Mainly that's associated with locating and identifying US
Speaker 4: war dead and so, uh, there are a lot of
Speaker 4: people that well that's their their career focuses on, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, trying to identify people that died in the
Speaker 4: in different wars, and they got pretty much any war
Speaker 4: as long as the US was involved.
Speaker 3: Interesting, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: So you're a professor at Texas State University, and this
Speaker 2: is a question I have. I know that you have
Speaker 2: a doctorate, but can people Are there different levels that
Speaker 2: people we can go to school to work in the
Speaker 2: field of forensic anthropology or do you have to have
Speaker 2: a doctor to do that particular career.
Speaker 4: No, you don't have to have a doctor. I would
Speaker 4: say that, you know, a large majority of forensic anthabologist
Speaker 4: have a doctor, but not all of by any means.
Speaker 4: A lot of the investigators that work in medical examiner's offices,
Speaker 4: for example, will only have a master's Usually, if you
Speaker 4: don't have at least a you know, some kind of
Speaker 4: a graduate degree, you tend to do more like crime
Speaker 4: scene investigation and you might get involved with you know,
Speaker 4: the obviously shelter remains in that sense. But same thing
Speaker 4: with the US Army is that, you know, we have
Speaker 4: a lot of our students that have gotten a master's
Speaker 4: degree and then gone on to work for the government
Speaker 4: with assisting in the identification of war dead. So it's
Speaker 4: possibleVarious levels and then the same thing there, you know,
Speaker 4: if you're wanting to go into just teaching. Yep, you
Speaker 4: can get the job, said like community colleges and things,
Speaker 4: teaching friends against pology with a master's.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's that's good to know.
Speaker 2: I like to introduce everyone to all these different jobs
Speaker 2: they can get because I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: just think there's only one thing you can do and
Speaker 2: you have to do a lot of education for it.
Speaker 2: And a lot of times, like sometimes I hear from
Speaker 2: young mothers that want to go back to school, but
Speaker 2: they really can't dedicate like eight years of their life
Speaker 2: to go into school, but they do have interest. So
Speaker 2: it's nice to know that there's lower levels that people
Speaker 2: can do it. I know that you did get your
Speaker 2: doctor from the University of Tennessee and that the book
Speaker 2: that we read this month called Death's Acre was about
Speaker 2: doctor Bill Bess, who created the first body farm. And
Speaker 2: so for everyone listening that doesn't know what a body
Speaker 2: farm is, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 4: Sure? So if they're really kind of decomposition laboratories or
Speaker 4: what really was called a taphonomic laboratory book, an outdoor
Speaker 4: laboratory uh tefonomy is the study of anything that happened
Speaker 4: to a once living organism from the moment it dies
Speaker 4: to the moment it's discovered. Originally, it kind of came
Speaker 4: out of paleontology, and the idea was, or the original
Speaker 4: definition actually was from from the biosphere to the lithosphere,
Speaker 4: so basically from a living organism to a bostle. And
Speaker 4: the idea was to understand, you know, why you don't
Speaker 4: find a complete body, right, what are the processes that
Speaker 4: resulted in that. You know, if you find if you're
Speaker 4: looking at a dinosaur, for example, and you have a
Speaker 4: handful of bones and some teeth and stuff, what happened
Speaker 4: to the rest of it and what were the processes
Speaker 4: that occurred there? And so forensic anthopology we're doing the
Speaker 4: same thing. We're just doing the very beginnings of that, right,
Speaker 4: a very shortened version of it. Uh. And so the
Speaker 4: idea is is to conduct research that looks at what
Speaker 4: affects the rates of decomposition, uh, if there's anything that
Speaker 4: affects the processes of decomposition. And also you know, to
Speaker 4: be able to understand the uh, the scene better to
Speaker 4: understand you know, movement of the body, you know, what
Speaker 4: causes it to become disarticulated because of it to become spread.
Speaker 4: What kind of damage do you have from the from
Speaker 4: the skeleton that might be caused by a tafonomic process
Speaker 4: rather than something that actually had to do with individual's deaths.
Speaker 4: Uh So those are the things that go on in
Speaker 4: uh decomposition facilities. The other thing too, is that they
Speaker 4: are also a training ground, and so we utilize these
Speaker 4: facilities to train law enforcement and medical legal investigators to
Speaker 4: where they can actually work with real remains and they
Speaker 4: can we can send up scenarios, you know, or we
Speaker 4: can you know, teach them how to excavate or teach
Speaker 4: them how to locate remains. And it gives them the
Speaker 4: opportunity to learn that. But also if they're going to
Speaker 4: make a mistake, to make a mistake, you know, during
Speaker 4: the training and not in a real life.
Speaker 2: Situation, that's interesting because I and then of course the
Speaker 2: other thing. Oh sorry, I was going to say, I
Speaker 2: did my first autopsy on a decomposed person, because they
Speaker 2: were like, listen, this person's not going to have viewing
Speaker 2: and I mean really decomposed maggots up to my arms
Speaker 2: and everything. But that's they said, Okay, well you can
Speaker 2: practice your first cuts on this person because you know
Speaker 2: they won't be having a viewing.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting that you say that.
Speaker 2: Right, So, so you have this is cool because it's
Speaker 2: you have a lab where you're studying how humans decompose
Speaker 2: and you're actually using real humans. So where so all
Speaker 2: I picture is because I've never been to a body farm,
Speaker 2: I just picture huge acres of field with just dead
Speaker 2: bodies laying all around in certain situations. Where do where
Speaker 2: do these human bodies come from?
Speaker 4: Right? So, the studies that are you know, operating now
Speaker 4: are all tied to or for the most part, tied
Speaker 4: to a willed body donation prop and so, and they're
Speaker 4: all pretty much the same as that the one in
Speaker 4: the Texas State, and that is is that people donate
Speaker 4: their bodies specifically to us. We don't draw them from
Speaker 4: some kind of you know, like a an atomical pool
Speaker 4: or something like that. The other thing, too is that
Speaker 4: we primarily what we prefer is people that pre register
Speaker 4: with us before they die. So we refer to these
Speaker 4: as our living donors, and and so we can we
Speaker 4: get more information about them that will help us in
Speaker 4: the research. But it also we know for a fact
Speaker 4: that this is what they wanted and they're comfortable with that,
Speaker 4: and so all that kind of makes a big difference
Speaker 4: to us. You know, we really want people that well
Speaker 4: our donated their bodies because they wanted to participate in
Speaker 4: this kind of research and education. And as a result,
Speaker 4: you can imagine we get a lot of people that
Speaker 4: were you know, prior law enforcement. We get a lot
Speaker 4: of people that were teachers while they are alive, and
Speaker 4: you know, just people that are interested in in science.
Speaker 4: But you know, we also get people that are you know,
Speaker 4: want for example, a green burial and they want you know,
Speaker 4: they don't want to be cremated, they don't want to
Speaker 4: be buried in a coffin and you know, preserved in
Speaker 4: that steps. So there's different reasons, but that's the main
Speaker 4: thing is that they all have know what is going on,
Speaker 4: you know, you know what kind of research they would
Speaker 4: be involved with.
Speaker 3: And where that this is. I have a million questions.
Speaker 2: I'll try to get them out. So do you have
Speaker 2: to do you take every single person that wants to
Speaker 2: donate themselves to you or is there do you have
Speaker 2: a criteria, Like we're going to talk about a little
Speaker 2: bit later, some research that you've done on bones of
Speaker 2: obese patients versus or not patients of disease versus not
Speaker 2: obese people. But so like, if you're doing you're trying
Speaker 2: to look for a specific thing that you're doing research on,
Speaker 2: do you do you try to recruit more of those
Speaker 2: those bodies or do you just take all of them
Speaker 2: and then kind of separate them into what you're doing.
Speaker 4: We we, we don't. We don't recruit in that sense.
Speaker 4: It'd be kind of hard to do, I think to
Speaker 4: some to some except but we we we don't. Also,
Speaker 4: we don't accept everybody that applies, but we you know,
Speaker 4: but if it's a person that we have registered and
Speaker 4: they're a living donor, then we will accept them no
Speaker 4: matter what. For next to kin donations, which is where
Speaker 4: the family can donate the body. Uh, in those situations, yes,
Speaker 4: it's pretty much. Part of the decision about whether or
Speaker 4: not we would accept the individual is whether or not
Speaker 4: they will fit into some kind of research protocol that
Speaker 4: is going on at the time.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: And so you did say some people want to do
Speaker 2: like a green burial, So are there situations where you
Speaker 2: would just leave their body out there until it's completely
Speaker 2: decomposed and just not like this is this is my question.
Speaker 2: Let's say you're just trying to you're trying to research
Speaker 2: a specific person just to see like moderate decomposition. When
Speaker 2: you're done with that person, do you then give the
Speaker 2: remains back to the family or do you just continue
Speaker 2: to use it for other things and just let them
Speaker 2: all naturally decomposed on the farm.
Speaker 4: So we we we do not return any of the remains,
Speaker 4: but we don't necessarily let them all just decomposed out there.
Speaker 4: So what we will do is after the research is done,
Speaker 4: they will get processed down to a skelton. And so
Speaker 4: that which is also part of the training is that
Speaker 4: you know, it allows us to teach students their osteology
Speaker 4: and they get to see a lot of variation. But
Speaker 4: then we we curate the skelptor remains, and those skeletons
Speaker 4: then are used for research. And as you were talking
Speaker 4: about with the obesity project I have going on right now,
Speaker 4: that's what utilize those skeltaling me, there are a couple
Speaker 4: of situations where we've had bodies that have been out
Speaker 4: there for you know, coming on ten years or so,
Speaker 4: and most of those there are long term studies that
Speaker 4: are looking at like how does how does DNA degrade, Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, where what bones are best to recover from,
Speaker 4: what portions of the bone or best to recover from,
Speaker 4: and whether or not, you know, just destruction of the
Speaker 4: bone due to the sun can give us an estimation
Speaker 4: of postporum interval in longer you know, in older cases.
Speaker 4: So those are the kind of reasons that they would
Speaker 4: be left out there for a long time, but at
Speaker 4: some point they all come back in.
Speaker 2: So you're in Texas right now. I've never I do
Speaker 2: want to go to Texas, but I've never been there.
Speaker 2: But it's pretty The environment from what I understand, is
Speaker 2: like pretty dry and hot correct very hot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the summer we have you know, sixty to
Speaker 4: ninety days of over one hundred degree weather. So it's
Speaker 4: it's a shoot, but it's not not dry like New
Speaker 4: Mexico dried, you know, with humidity, low humidity. We have
Speaker 4: high humidity. Where we're actually located at is right on
Speaker 4: the edge of the coastal plains in the hill country.
Speaker 4: So we're actually in the hill country a little bit.
Speaker 4: So you know, you get a lot of cactus and
Speaker 4: juniper and you know, stuff of that nature. As far
Speaker 4: as planets, go, but it's but it's not dry like
Speaker 4: you might see like in New Mexico, Arizona.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well my question is is because.
Speaker 4: But we don't get young rain.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's that was my question.
Speaker 2: Because when you're recreating kind of recreating the decomposition process,
Speaker 2: how do you how do you account for it? Because
Speaker 2: I know the environment has a lot to do with
Speaker 2: how bodies are breaking down. Because if you had a
Speaker 2: body decomposing in Texas, it wouldn't be the same as
Speaker 2: it decomposing in let's say, like Savannah, Georgia in the
Speaker 2: summer where it's just hot and super swampy, or in Alaska.
Speaker 2: There's all different variation, even the desert. So do you
Speaker 2: have do you have certain ways that you could mimic
Speaker 2: a different environment, like a cold, dry environment versus a hot,
Speaker 2: humid one. Do you guys study that we.
Speaker 4: Can't really mimic a different environment, but what we can?
Speaker 4: But you know, there are facilities in other areas that
Speaker 4: we can you know, do studies in collaboration with each
Speaker 4: other and get some ideas what's going on. You know,
Speaker 4: there there are certain things that you can take into consideration.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that we look at instead
Speaker 4: of like how long somebody's been dead in calendar days,
Speaker 4: we look at how long somebody's been dead in accumulated
Speaker 4: degree days, which is basically the thermal energy that would
Speaker 4: be available for the decopposition process and also for you know,
Speaker 4: the development of maggots and bacteria and things of that nature.
Speaker 4: So we can control that to some extent. But you know,
Speaker 4: decomposition is a drying process, and so you know what
Speaker 4: could happen different in you know, for example, in Georgia
Speaker 4: versus Arizona, is that the body is going to dry
Speaker 4: out a lot faster, uh, which is going to slow
Speaker 4: down decopposition. Where in Georgia you're not drying the body
Speaker 4: out as fast, and because it's so hot, humid, and
Speaker 4: so it allows for that remove all the soft tissue
Speaker 4: a lot wrap and so you can control for that
Speaker 4: to some extent.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you were talking about how sometimes that you
Speaker 2: have people that are cleaning off the bones so you
Speaker 2: could study them for other things. So that was my
Speaker 2: next question. I when I did intern at Theme's office,
Speaker 2: I had never I'd never I've only saw regular autopsies
Speaker 2: at the hospital, so I'm used to that, just like
Speaker 2: fresh smell of a dead body, and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: The office was an older office in Philly. It was
Speaker 2: their old office. And I walked in and it was
Speaker 2: it was a situation where you walked in, the lobby
Speaker 2: was on the on the ground floor, and then the
Speaker 2: morgue was in the basement and you had to walk
Speaker 2: down the super creepy metal, old spiral staircase and I
Speaker 2: went down about halfway and I got punched in the
Speaker 2: face with this smell that I've never smelled in my life,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what is that? And it was
Speaker 2: it was a d comp was downstairs, and I just
Speaker 2: was mind blown because right at the bottom of that
Speaker 2: staircase all the investigators sat there and they're like they
Speaker 2: have their legs up, They're drinking coffee, eating donuts, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, hell, is anybody eating around this? It's just
Speaker 2: it's just the most disturbing smell. But then obviously, like
Speaker 2: by the end of the week, I was eating Chinese
Speaker 2: food with them for lunch. You know, you get used
Speaker 2: to it, but there are people that that just can't
Speaker 2: ever get used to that smell and everything. So when
Speaker 2: you hire somebody to work there and help out do
Speaker 2: you have to kind of give them a test in
Speaker 2: a certain kind of way, like, hey, this is not
Speaker 2: like a regular dirty job, it's on another level.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So you know, what we're doing is you know,
Speaker 4: working with people that you know, hire as far as
Speaker 4: people that were hiring, we've we're hiring people that have
Speaker 4: been in the build and know what they're getting into.
Speaker 4: As far as students go, you know, that is actually
Speaker 4: one of the things that is beneficial about a facility
Speaker 4: like this is that a lot of times students realize
Speaker 4: that this is not what they want to do, is
Speaker 4: that they can't handle the Sometimes it's the smells, sometimes
Speaker 4: it's the the appearance. You know. So it's different for
Speaker 4: different people, but you know, it's it's a good thing
Speaker 4: to learn before you know you're out in the field
Speaker 4: for the first time. You know. We also do the
Speaker 4: same thing for what we do a day of training
Speaker 4: for some of the local police cadet and part of
Speaker 4: the reason for that is is just so that they
Speaker 4: they know what decomposition is going to be like. But
Speaker 4: they also the first time they ever see a dead
Speaker 4: body is not when they're you know, doing an investigation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't imagine I remember the first time that
Speaker 2: I ever went on a scene to see I had
Speaker 2: to go pick up a dcomp with the with theme's office,
Speaker 2: and I thought, like, how upsetting that would be for
Speaker 2: a family to see one of your family members in
Speaker 2: that condition, because it's just so it's not only the smell,
Speaker 2: but just the way that they look and everything. So
Speaker 2: I think that's cool that you teach cops and stuff
Speaker 2: that because they're going to come across that kind of
Speaker 2: stuff all the time. My husband's a firefighter. He sees
Speaker 2: that stuff all the time, you know, and it can
Speaker 2: be really disturbing, especially if you're kind of at work
Speaker 2: when it happens and you're not really prepared for it.
Speaker 3: So that's cool.
Speaker 2: And I was going to ask you that like, cause
Speaker 2: when I was doing autopsies at an academic center one time,
Speaker 2: I had a nurse that was observing and I before
Speaker 2: we started the autopsy, I went up in surgical pathology
Speaker 2: and was just showing the students some stuff and I
Speaker 2: pulled a placenta out of a bucket that had been
Speaker 2: fixed in formaldehyde already, so it had really no like
Speaker 2: real blood on it, just like a brownish color. And
Speaker 2: I pull this thing out and put it on the
Speaker 2: cutting board, and she turned white as a ghost and
Speaker 2: had to like sit down on the floor and do
Speaker 2: deep breathing. And I was like, you might not want
Speaker 2: to be a nurse because this is nothing compared to
Speaker 2: what you're going to see in real life, you know.
Speaker 2: So I was gonna ask you, like, have you had
Speaker 2: students drop out because they do class work and they're
Speaker 2: totally fine and then they say it in real life
Speaker 2: and just like can't handle it.
Speaker 4: It happens occasionally, not very often, but occasionally it does happen.
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Speaker 2: So let's get into your research and everything you One
Speaker 2: of the things I so, I I know a little
Speaker 2: bit about the research you're doing on obese bones versus
Speaker 2: not because not because I have done any research on it,
Speaker 2: but just doing autopsies on I would say, you know,
Speaker 2: ninety percent of patients or either overweight or obese that
Speaker 2: I would do autopsies on. And one case I had
Speaker 2: this I did we would have patients that were called
Speaker 2: super obese, like a BMI over fifty or something like that.
Speaker 2: And this guy had this large penis that was hanging
Speaker 2: to one side, like a big thick section of belly skin.
Speaker 2: And even when I did the autopsy and laid them
Speaker 2: on the table, it was just kind of hanging to
Speaker 2: the one side. And I was shocked when I opened
Speaker 2: I did the y incision and his ribcage was completely
Speaker 2: distorted from all of that weight bearing on the one
Speaker 2: side for years and years of his life. It was
Speaker 2: like the one side of his ribcage looked totally normal
Speaker 2: and the other side was huge. So it was it
Speaker 2: was really cool. So what what are what's some work
Speaker 2: that you've been doing with that, because it's it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, we're we're really interested in trying
Speaker 4: to figure out at least whether or not we can
Speaker 4: tell whether somebody's obese or not. And then of course,
Speaker 4: the other the other reason for doing this is that,
Speaker 4: you know, we know a lot about clinically about gate
Speaker 4: patterns and obese individuals and how they shift their weight
Speaker 4: and and so it also helps us understand how bone
Speaker 4: bonds to mechanical loading. But the idea, like I said,
Speaker 4: is that I think currently about forty percent of people
Speaker 4: in the United States are obese, and if you include overweight,
Speaker 4: it jumps to about sixty percent. And so you know,
Speaker 4: knowing if an individual is obese has a you know,
Speaker 4: is telling us a lot about that individual. And it
Speaker 4: also the the other thing that we know is that
Speaker 4: carrying that extra weight has an effect on adult age indicator,
Speaker 4: for example, because most of what you're looking at for
Speaker 4: adult age indicator is actually wear and tear on the joints,
Speaker 4: and so you're going to get some variation in that.
Speaker 4: And so what we're doing is taking approach where we're
Speaker 4: looking at how does obesity affect the shape of the
Speaker 4: overall shape of the bone, and then how does it
Speaker 4: affect the cross section of the shaft for example, there's
Speaker 4: a you know, if you think about the shaft being
Speaker 4: a beam, you know it's going to need to be thicker, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, heavier beam to to hindle the wheat that's
Speaker 4: associated with that. And then also the trabecular structure, which
Speaker 4: is the uh, the fine straton bone that you have
Speaker 4: in your joints that it absorbs a lot of energy
Speaker 4: associated with you know, ground force reactions. And so by
Speaker 4: looking at these different structures we can get a pretty
Speaker 4: good idea whether the individual was obese or not. And
Speaker 4: like I said that, right, there can be a major
Speaker 4: factor of the biological profile because weight has been pretty
Speaker 4: much ignored in the biological profile because in the past
Speaker 4: it's been relatively hard to determine. And one the arguments too,
Speaker 4: is that, well, you know, what's affecting the skeleton is
Speaker 4: the lean body mass, and that is true, but if
Speaker 4: you have individuals that were obese, especially if they are
Speaker 4: obese most of their life, then they actually have a
Speaker 4: log and slow it does affect the structure.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting what you're saying about about the bones.
Speaker 2: I'd never even really thought about that actually, So when
Speaker 2: you are trying to age bones. You look at like
Speaker 2: the articular surface to see if there's if there's any
Speaker 2: kind of degenerative joint, which you would normally see in
Speaker 2: an older person, but you're saying that in a younger
Speaker 2: person that's obese, you might you might see something like that.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, you And in reality, right now, what we
Speaker 1: are finding is that until we get some better data
Speaker 1: is that we really can't even tell.
Speaker 4: We really just have to have a broader age range
Speaker 4: if we're looking at somebody that's obese, because what we
Speaker 4: what we found was that, you know, when we first
Speaker 4: started doing this research, we were thought, well, when we
Speaker 4: when we look at obese individuals, we're going to be
Speaker 4: overestimating their age all the time because of wear and tear.
Speaker 4: But it turns out that that's not always true, you know,
Speaker 4: especially in people that are you know, like you said
Speaker 4: to have a BMI O woe or fifty or something
Speaker 4: like that that are you know, very very obese. A
Speaker 4: lot of times they're actually not moving around that much
Speaker 4: and so they're not actually putting that much uh you know,
Speaker 4: stress on those joints, and so we can have you
Speaker 4: can get where you're actually underestimating their age as well,
Speaker 4: so that you get a lot more variation now, you know,
Speaker 4: to have some kind of idea of how active they are.
Speaker 4: If you have a way that's obese and active, they
Speaker 4: are probably going to have greater wear and tear on
Speaker 4: those joints.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's there's just so many things to think of.
Speaker 3: It's just it's just it's just so cool.
Speaker 2: That's why your job is just really cool because there's
Speaker 2: there's just all these little nuances that that just make
Speaker 2: it really interesting. So now so you're at a Texas
Speaker 2: State University and obviously you're you're a professor there and
Speaker 2: you're doing some active research or you're working on anything
Speaker 2: like cool that you could talk about with us.
Speaker 4: Uh, Well, we're you know, constantly involved in different research.
Speaker 4: So you know, out of the facility. Part of the
Speaker 4: research that I do is actually using you know, how
Speaker 4: do we use remote sensing to locate clandestine remains? And
Speaker 4: so you know, in our case, we we primarily take
Speaker 4: you know, weag just uh using a drone just because
Speaker 4: it's easy to move around and you can get you
Speaker 4: know up and down, you know and move around on
Speaker 4: different things. But trying to figure out what kind of
Speaker 4: imagery you need depending on the plain of year that
Speaker 4: you're looking, the time of day, you're looking in the
Speaker 4: those state of decop of your body, whether it's buried
Speaker 4: or on the surface. And so we can use you know,
Speaker 4: just normal red, blue, green, video or or imagery, you know,
Speaker 4: but you could also use different spectrums where you're looking
Speaker 4: at for example, near infrared or infrared. So infrared obviously
Speaker 4: will give you a heat signature, and there's and nearer
Speaker 4: for red is really near a bread is really good
Speaker 4: for example of looking at vegetation. So one of the
Speaker 4: things when you're looking, especially for buried remains, you're not
Speaker 4: actually looked for the remains, you're looking for some kind
Speaker 4: of environmental disturbance. And so UH, the vegetar the we
Speaker 4: can use what's called the vegetative index, and that is
Speaker 4: uh kind of gives you an idea of the help
Speaker 4: of the thing because it reflects the floor filled differently.
Speaker 4: And so we can usually utilize differences in the vegetative
Speaker 4: index UH to you know, find areas of interest. We
Speaker 4: can also use if you have a body that's in
Speaker 4: a decomposition process, uh, buried, you can use near our infrared,
Speaker 4: but there you have to do it during the you know,
Speaker 4: the like the early morning before the sun comes up,
Speaker 4: we can on the surface for example, it actually turns
Speaker 4: out that you can use things like, uh, the algorithms
Speaker 4: that are used in automated vehicles because they have to
Speaker 4: be able to recognize people. Well, those same algorithms will
Speaker 4: recognize a dead body on the surface if it's you know,
Speaker 4: looks like a body still. So the part of what
Speaker 4: we're doing, we are working at a big, large collaboration
Speaker 4: between Colorado State University and then a bunch of the
Speaker 4: other facilities looking at the microbiome associated with decomposition and
Speaker 4: how that microbiome changes over time, and whether or not
Speaker 4: that can be used to estimate the postpart of interval
Speaker 4: or give us any more about the individual. You know.
Speaker 4: I think one of the key things that we'll find
Speaker 4: as time goes on is that, you know a lot
Speaker 4: of how the rate at which you decomposed is associated
Speaker 4: with the microbiome that you already have in your body.
Speaker 4: For example, let's see, well, so we're doing fire death
Speaker 4: investigation training and research there. So what we're looking at
Speaker 4: is can you tell, for example, for it is a
Speaker 4: body in a state of decomposition when it was burned
Speaker 4: versus burned relatively fresh up and also then just looking
Speaker 4: at the pattern of burning on the bone and along
Speaker 4: the same lines looking at obesity and that does does
Speaker 4: fat actually act as a buffer? You know, I mean
Speaker 4: it's later I'm sorry, Uh, up to the fire or
Speaker 4: does it act as a fuel source?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 4: Does it depend on the types of buyers and it's
Speaker 4: been on, how long it's burned, things of that nature.
Speaker 4: So we have a lot of things like that going
Speaker 4: on as far as in the lab goes. We have
Speaker 4: the large obesity research going on. We have actually a
Speaker 4: project that I have a student that just finished our
Speaker 4: dissertation on looking at immobility and how that affects the
Speaker 4: skeleton and the remodeling rates that you would see. So
Speaker 4: all kinds of research going on pretty much at all times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just it all sounds like so exciting.
Speaker 2: Honestly, when I hear you talk about this stuff, it's
Speaker 2: it's just cool, especially because when you were first talking
Speaker 2: about the the using the camera and infrared and everything,
Speaker 2: I was my first.
Speaker 3: Thought was like, well, how could you tell the.
Speaker 2: Difference between a dead deer versus a human? And it's
Speaker 2: cool that you're that you could use algorithms and and
Speaker 2: like probably some kind of AI technology at some point
Speaker 2: to to be able to help because I'm like it,
Speaker 2: I'm like one of these most anti AI people because
Speaker 2: I think it's just going to be.
Speaker 3: Really bad, like more bad than good.
Speaker 2: But but then you hear things like this that you say, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: well if this could help police and investigations, that that
Speaker 2: would obviously.
Speaker 3: Be better for for humankind. But I don't know. I
Speaker 3: still don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm still on the fence about thinking if we need
Speaker 2: that stuff or not. But yeah, the other stuff that
Speaker 2: you're talking about is really cool too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the case of you know, finding the Claniss remains
Speaker 4: a lot of that has to do with just narrowing
Speaker 4: the search area, even if you can't for sure tell
Speaker 4: whether it's a human or not, if you can narrow
Speaker 4: down the possibilities of where someone could be because you know,
Speaker 4: we do a lot of searches where for example, you know,
Speaker 4: we know that person was last seen at us at
Speaker 4: a ranch in Texas well that ranch is five thousand makers.
Speaker 4: That's a lot of searching that do. And of course
Speaker 4: you know the research with the Sculpton that is, you know,
Speaker 4: understanding sculptal variation and stuff. That's one's always excited me
Speaker 4: as far as you know kinds up and then you
Speaker 4: know or the research has application beyond and even forensics,
Speaker 4: so we can use it in to understand archeological remains,
Speaker 4: but we can even understand it to understand remains, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, flies remains. So we've done research looking at
Speaker 4: body masks, for example, and then using that emission to
Speaker 4: look at body mass at home Erectus and other species.
Speaker 2: One of the cool things about this is that you're
Speaker 2: the evolution of humans in general. I always like love
Speaker 2: this from a scientific perspective of that you're studying all
Speaker 2: this obesity stuff that's kind of new in our evolution
Speaker 2: as far as as what you would see changes in
Speaker 2: bones and different things like us using like devices and
Speaker 2: just sitting at computers all day versus how life used
Speaker 2: to be. Right, I mean, now you don't even need
Speaker 2: to go to the store, leave your house to go
Speaker 2: Christmas shopping. It's insane. So I think the skeleton is
Speaker 2: going to be gradually changing. It's kind of cool, like
Speaker 2: just in your lifetime that you can be able to
Speaker 2: work on this stuff and study it.
Speaker 3: It's really neat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have a student that is actually looking at
Speaker 4: how all occupations affect with skeleton. And so you think
Speaker 4: about just even the last one hundred years, you know,
Speaker 4: you've had If you had somebody who was a a
Speaker 4: dock worker, for example, oh you know, one hundred years ago,
Speaker 4: that would have meant that they would have been, uh
Speaker 4: utilizing their muscles a lot. They would have you know,
Speaker 4: had which would have given them really strong bones. Uh,
Speaker 4: and you'd be able to tell that from their skeleton.
Speaker 4: But a dock worker today is basically driving a fortanly. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, so they're there. They're there. It's the same occupation,
Speaker 4: and yet because of technology, uh they it, the way
Speaker 4: it affects their skeleton is completely different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just it's so cool. I love it. Are
Speaker 3: you working on any other projects?
Speaker 2: Like not not even necessarily anthropology related, but like what
Speaker 2: are you This is just personal question, like what else
Speaker 2: are you into besides looking at dead people decomposing?
Speaker 4: You mean as far as polity, just your life?
Speaker 2: Like I just I'm curious because every everyone always thinks,
Speaker 2: like people that don't know me, they'll just think that,
Speaker 2: like my whole life is is like skulls and dead
Speaker 2: people and stuff, and I like I have, Like I'm
Speaker 2: a normal person. I like other things. Besides I love
Speaker 2: my job, but I also like other things.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, so I'm a woodworker, so I do a
Speaker 4: lot of word working. I have a shop here at home.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 4: I enjoy doing that kind of.
Speaker 3: What kind of things have you made?
Speaker 4: Oh, I've made all lots of different kitchen cabinets, and
Speaker 4: but I also make furniture occasionally. Before I went in
Speaker 4: and have polity, and I actually was a cabinet maker
Speaker 4: and so now I just do it, you know, for enjoyment.
Speaker 4: But before that, I did uh, you know, custom cabinets
Speaker 4: and worked on things like uh, you know, bars for uh,
Speaker 4: you know, restaurants, cash register stands for you know, different
Speaker 4: retail outlets, things like that. Of that nature.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. I love that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm really into It's funny too because I
Speaker 2: do a lot of like home stuff too. I'm more
Speaker 2: into painting and things like that and just doing little
Speaker 2: tiny projects around the house.
Speaker 3: But I I love that so much. It's cool. I
Speaker 3: think it.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes a job like ours is like really heavy,
Speaker 2: and it's nice to just have something completely separate that
Speaker 2: that you can wind down with and not have to
Speaker 2: think about all of all of the sometimes horrible things
Speaker 2: that are going on in the world. It's just like
Speaker 2: a nice thing for your mind. Sure, well, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for being here with us today. It was
Speaker 2: awesome and really informative. And I hope one day I
Speaker 2: could come visit you there and go check out the
Speaker 2: body farm because I've never seen and obviously I'm so
Speaker 2: interested in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'd love to have you. It's it's definitely an
Speaker 4: interesting and you know, it's it is. Ah, it's turned
Speaker 4: out to be, you know, a very rewarding career. I
Speaker 4: enjoy going to work, you know, and and because of
Speaker 4: the fact that I you know, the with the outdoor
Speaker 4: facility and everything, I also get a lot of different
Speaker 4: variety of the you know kind of research that I do.
Speaker 4: I'm not you know, stop doing one single thing, you know,
Speaker 4: And I also get to work with lots of different people,
Speaker 4: you know, so we do you know, all kinds of things. Actually,
Speaker 4: for example, we have a mass grave project going on
Speaker 4: where we actually have people from five different countries working
Speaker 4: on the project and they those include you know, apologists, biologists, microbiologists,
Speaker 4: dog handlers, drone operators, you know, geophysicists, all kinds of
Speaker 4: different people, so I get to see this different, different
Speaker 4: perspective that I that I would otherwise, you know, in
Speaker 4: most academic settings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's cool too.
Speaker 2: It's always cool to make friends with people that are
Speaker 2: like kind of in your field but not and then
Speaker 2: you could just learn all these other things that you
Speaker 2: don't normally do at your job. But it's I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, when you're when you like, if you and
Speaker 2: I went out to dinner, we would just have a
Speaker 2: lot to talk about because we kind of do the
Speaker 2: same thing, but not really, but you know, all right,
Speaker 2: well cool, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you for listening to Mother Knows Death. As a reminder,
Speaker 2: my training is as a pathologist assistant. I have a
Speaker 2: master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
Speaker 2: I am not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed
Speaker 2: or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
Speaker 2: a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
Speaker 2: media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
Speaker 2: on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
Speaker 2: healthier decisions regarding their life and well being Always remember
Speaker 2: that science is changing every day, and the opinions expressed
Speaker 2: in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
Speaker 2: subjects at the time of publication. If you are having
Speaker 2: a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
Speaker 2: medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent
Speaker 2: care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and
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Speaker 3: Thanks M