April 29, 2026 • 13 mins
By all rights there should be three sets of molars in your mouth. But it turns out that our skulls aren’t really set up to accommodate that many anymore. Exactly why depends on who you ask.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave. So this
is short Stuff, the uh uh Hurts Edition.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Did you have your wisdom teeth come in? And did
you have them removed?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I had them removed.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Oh okay, I had mine removed. Kind of at the
now that I'm reading this sort of a standard time,
I was probably seventeen years old.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Oh no, no, appreciate the sitation.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, that was my first experience with that, and I
was like, oh wow, yeah that was the gateway drug.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah. I remember like just kind of looking around, like
trying to play it off because it wasn't connecting in
my head that they were the ones who were making
me feel this way. Yeah, like I was in public
or something.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, very strange, but yeah, we're talking about wisdom teeth
aka the third molar, which sometimes start to in there.
By the way, I'm very turned off by how many
times you type the word erupt in this thing.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
You don't like that, huh?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I think there were like five or six erupts. Oh yeah,
so yeah, it was not pleasant to read that over
and over, but I will use it once just to
honor you. They can erupt from the gums. Well, they
can start to come in as early as like five
years old and as old as fifteen. But when they
actually erupt this twice that can usually come that's usually
(01:31):
like a later thing, like seventeen, maybe all the way
up to mid twenties.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And that, friends, is why they call them wisdom teeth.
That moniker, I hate that word, but it works. Yeah,
it dates back to the Greeks. I don't know if
the Hellenic Greeks or the post Bronze Age Greeks, who knows,
but their word for wisdom teeth was odantius sophius, and
(01:55):
that is the teeth of wisdom, is what that means.
And the whole point is is that these teeth come
in much later than your other teeth. You've got some
experience in life by the time your wisdom teeth come in.
So that's why they call them wisdom teeth.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
That's right. And if you're wondering why we even have
these teeth that are many times removed to begin with,
there's been a lot of debate in theories over the years,
but it seems pretty clear to me, and I think
most people basically agree is that we needed them back
then when Tiktook was out and had a bigger jaw
(02:29):
to fit these things and was gnawing on nuts and
raw meat and stuff like that, not cooked food in
other words, not soft stuff. That they needed these things.
They had larger jaws, they had bigger teeth, and they
needed them to chew and grind all this stuff down
to palatable sized, swallowable stuff. And we just don't need
(02:51):
that anymore.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
No, because usually people place it around the time of agriculture.
You can make a case it's much later than that.
But say with them, the last like several thousand years,
the human diet changed dramatically, so much so that our
skulls change shape. My question is this, chuck, didn't our skulls,
the skulls of modern humans change shape much further back
(03:14):
than just a few thousand years.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh, buddy, you know, I don't know the answer to.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
That, Okay, but I feel like, yeah, I feel like
it's it's definitely older than that the skulls are. But
the people, when you start researching wisdom teeth, they're like, yeah,
the human diet got soft, so our teeth got kind
of woos and our skulls got shorter and smaller, and
hence when we get wisdom teeth, there's just not enough
(03:40):
room for them because we don't need them anymore. But
stupid natural selection isn't caught up yet and keeps producing
wisdom teeth in modern Homo sapiens that don't need it
because we eat a devil ham.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Right, I mean that makes sense to me. Right, you're
just saying the timeline doesn't match up.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, the whole Yeah, it makes sense. Sure, it's the timeline.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I don't question the timeline. That's your mistake.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
You know what, though, when I was researching this, I
found there's apparently a creationist argument. They used the wisdom teeth,
like as a vestigial thing, as an argument for creationism,
because apparently a lot of people are like, well, it's
clearly evolution. Explain that creationists, and they're like, how about this.
(04:28):
You're supposed to have three molars, but because of this
modern human diet that we all agree is making the
third molar superfluous. That's what did it. You're supposed to know.
But it's the human intervention that kept us from being
able to use it, and that's the problem. So I
thought that was kind of fascinating.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Interesting take that podcaster, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Because they took the argument that people who believe in
natural selection use and turned it on them. They flipped
us script that very well put.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
All right, so we have four of these, not all
of them irrupt?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
What else are you going to say?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Poke, present themselves?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Okay, kind of coming out party, No, present themselves.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Debutante ball show up, Yeah, show up, and about eight
of ten people, usually one tooth will not come in.
And the teeth that don't come in are called impacted teeth.
If you've ever heard like, oh you have impacted wisdom teeth,
that's what they're talking about. Sometimes they don't develop at all,
and some people that's called a genesis. But the impaction
(05:39):
is sort of the start of the show here, because
that is why you will generally have them removed. Either
they're impacted or they're coming through and just crowding things
and making life a problem for your other molars.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Like poor Lisa Simpson when they showed that age progression
of what she would look like if she didn't have
dental insurance.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
The braces. I say, we take our break and then
come back and talk about wisdom teeth.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
All right, let's do it. Job. So the main reason
(06:40):
why they're impacted to begin with is kind of what
we've been talking about. There's just not enough space back
there for some people. And when they're developing that space
is like you know, there's teeth there and for most people,
and so those teeth can get really well impacted by
the wisdom teeth not being impacted.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Wow, that was great, man. Yeah, there's just not enough
room because your other teeth have shown up, right, another one.
This is the thing that really kind of comes home
to me. Your jaw might not actually be the size
that it would be if you ate harder foods. And
(07:23):
in fact, I saw it recommended to make sure that
your kids have a nice set of chompers as they
get older, like once they start eating solid food, start
getting giving them stuff that challenges their teeth because as
you're chewing, the more you chew, that promotes bone growth
in your jaw, and it can actually make your jaw
a little longer, so that if your jaws just slightly longer,
(07:45):
you're going to have that room for the third molar
that you otherwise wouldn't. Well, again, we come back to
the Western industrialized diet that is soft enough that the
teeth aren't challenged quite as much, so the jaw doesn't
grow quite as well to accommodate the third molar. I
think I might have just I think I might have
(08:05):
just been born again. I guess did you square the timeline? Yeah,
and so you have room for the third molar after all.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
That's right. But space isn't like every bit of this.
It's not just about space. There is some stuff about
it that science really hasn't explained why they might become impacted.
Because apes don't have impacted wisdom teeth, which I don't
think we mentioned. Some of our primate friends, you know,
have wisdom teeth still, which is great, good for them.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
There's that natural selection thing.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, exactly. The extraction has become a really common thing.
Like you know, I don't know about numbers, but I
feel like most people these days, at least in the
United States, will have their wisdom teeth removed. But you
don't have to. It's not like you really need to
talk to your dentist and eventual oral surgeon if it's
(09:01):
really really necessary. Because I don't know, I'm not a
conspiracy theorist, but sometimes I get the feeling that they
push this on people who don't necessarily need it, because
that's their business.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
After our orthodontia episode, my eyes were kind of opened
a little bit too. Yeah, supposedly your dentists should essentially
tell you, let's take a wait and see approach to this,
you know, like, get your teeth checked every six months
and we'll keep an eye on it, and if they
start to come in wonky, we'll get rid of them.
(09:31):
But wisdom teeth can come in normal healthy, can actually
help promote like further bone growth and stabilization and development,
to help your teeth stay in your head better. And
in that case, you shouldn't remove your wisdom teeth. You
shouldn't also, I think, prophylactically remove them just in case
(09:53):
they come in wonky. Right, So that's supposedly the consensus,
or that should the consensus, that you shouldn't take them
out proactively, and this University of Sayskatchewan evolutionary anthropologist Julia Bonner.
She's basically comparing getting your wisdom teeth removed unnecessarily to
(10:14):
what we used to do with kids getting their tonsils removed.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Oh yeah, interesting, you know part of the problem with
my teeth that are no longer a part of my
body was bone loss. So I'm wondering if I would
have benefited by leaving those wisdom teeth in there.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Probably sure, I mean, like it definitely helps you keep
generating bone. But also, like I was saying earlier, you
have to also eat hard foods too, nothing but like
rock candy.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah. I also don't remember my deal. I just remember
they were like, you need your wisdom teeth out, Like,
I don't remember if they were impacted or what the
deal was. I feel like I remember them coming erupting
a little bit, but I also don't trust my memory
of that. The only thing I remember is coming out
of the anesthesia and hallucinating. Don't ever tell the story.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
It sounds vaguely familiarbody, you should definitely tell me.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, I came out when I was seventeen of my
first anesthetic experience and hallucinated a poster on the wall
that said locomotive Lasagna and then later on obviously it
was a poster of whatever, like some sort of dental poster.
But my theory is is that they were screwing with
(11:33):
me and switch out this weird poster for children coming
off their first drug experience.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's awesome. That would be a fun thing to do.
I'll bet the cursing dentist does that.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, and I don't know why none of my bands
that I've ever been in or Locomotive Lasagna. That was
just right there.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah. I think that's a either a song name or
an album name. I don't know about a band name.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Okay, Oh well it's not over. Then I can just
write a song for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I can't wait to hear that one.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I already got a lyric local Locomotive Lasagna. What do
you mean?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
How about this? Let's write this together. I'm Bernie Topping
Locomotive Lasagna. What's going on you right?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Oh? Man, genius?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
This thing just writes itself, It really does. We should
say there's another reason besides this surgery being potentially unnecessary,
for why you should wait and see keep an eye
on your wisdom, teeth, throat and have them taken it out.
There's risks to having oral surgery, like you can damage
nerves and tissue and your jawbone like sometimes I know
you mean, She said her oral surgeon was sweating. He
(12:40):
was having so much trouble pulling hers out. She just
got local anesthetic and she regretted it quite a bit. Yeah,
and the guy was working hard so that it can
actually cause damage to get your wisdom teeth removed, which
is why they say if they're healthy and they're in,
just leaving them alone.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah. And uh, she should have known this is coming
because he had a baseball cap on that said never
let him see you a sweat and he just turned
it around backwards when she got in the chair.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
That's right, man. Can you imagine having your dentist sweat
on you.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
No, that's not a good look.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
No, I guess short, stuff's out, don't you agree?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
I think so. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave. So this
is short Stuff, the uh uh Hurts Edition.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Did you have your wisdom teeth come in? And did
you have them removed?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I had them removed.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Oh okay, I had mine removed. Kind of at the
now that I'm reading this sort of a standard time,
I was probably seventeen years old.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Oh no, no, appreciate the sitation.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, that was my first experience with that, and I
was like, oh wow, yeah that was the gateway drug.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah. I remember like just kind of looking around, like
trying to play it off because it wasn't connecting in
my head that they were the ones who were making
me feel this way. Yeah, like I was in public
or something.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, very strange, but yeah, we're talking about wisdom teeth
aka the third molar, which sometimes start to in there.
By the way, I'm very turned off by how many
times you type the word erupt in this thing.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
You don't like that, huh?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I think there were like five or six erupts. Oh yeah,
so yeah, it was not pleasant to read that over
and over, but I will use it once just to
honor you. They can erupt from the gums. Well, they
can start to come in as early as like five
years old and as old as fifteen. But when they
actually erupt this twice that can usually come that's usually
(01:31):
like a later thing, like seventeen, maybe all the way
up to mid twenties.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And that, friends, is why they call them wisdom teeth.
That moniker, I hate that word, but it works. Yeah,
it dates back to the Greeks. I don't know if
the Hellenic Greeks or the post Bronze Age Greeks, who knows,
but their word for wisdom teeth was odantius sophius, and
(01:55):
that is the teeth of wisdom, is what that means.
And the whole point is is that these teeth come
in much later than your other teeth. You've got some
experience in life by the time your wisdom teeth come in.
So that's why they call them wisdom teeth.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
That's right. And if you're wondering why we even have
these teeth that are many times removed to begin with,
there's been a lot of debate in theories over the years,
but it seems pretty clear to me, and I think
most people basically agree is that we needed them back
then when Tiktook was out and had a bigger jaw
(02:29):
to fit these things and was gnawing on nuts and
raw meat and stuff like that, not cooked food in
other words, not soft stuff. That they needed these things.
They had larger jaws, they had bigger teeth, and they
needed them to chew and grind all this stuff down
to palatable sized, swallowable stuff. And we just don't need
(02:51):
that anymore.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
No, because usually people place it around the time of agriculture.
You can make a case it's much later than that.
But say with them, the last like several thousand years,
the human diet changed dramatically, so much so that our
skulls change shape. My question is this, chuck, didn't our skulls,
the skulls of modern humans change shape much further back
(03:14):
than just a few thousand years.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh, buddy, you know, I don't know the answer to.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
That, Okay, but I feel like, yeah, I feel like
it's it's definitely older than that the skulls are. But
the people, when you start researching wisdom teeth, they're like, yeah,
the human diet got soft, so our teeth got kind
of woos and our skulls got shorter and smaller, and
hence when we get wisdom teeth, there's just not enough
(03:40):
room for them because we don't need them anymore. But
stupid natural selection isn't caught up yet and keeps producing
wisdom teeth in modern Homo sapiens that don't need it
because we eat a devil ham.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Right, I mean that makes sense to me. Right, you're
just saying the timeline doesn't match up.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, the whole Yeah, it makes sense. Sure, it's the timeline.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I don't question the timeline. That's your mistake.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
You know what, though, when I was researching this, I
found there's apparently a creationist argument. They used the wisdom teeth,
like as a vestigial thing, as an argument for creationism,
because apparently a lot of people are like, well, it's
clearly evolution. Explain that creationists, and they're like, how about this.
(04:28):
You're supposed to have three molars, but because of this
modern human diet that we all agree is making the
third molar superfluous. That's what did it. You're supposed to know.
But it's the human intervention that kept us from being
able to use it, and that's the problem. So I
thought that was kind of fascinating.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Interesting take that podcaster, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Because they took the argument that people who believe in
natural selection use and turned it on them. They flipped
us script that very well put.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
All right, so we have four of these, not all
of them irrupt?
Speaker 1 (05:08):
What else are you going to say?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Poke, present themselves?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Okay, kind of coming out party, No, present themselves.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Debutante ball show up, Yeah, show up, and about eight
of ten people, usually one tooth will not come in.
And the teeth that don't come in are called impacted teeth.
If you've ever heard like, oh you have impacted wisdom teeth,
that's what they're talking about. Sometimes they don't develop at all,
and some people that's called a genesis. But the impaction
(05:39):
is sort of the start of the show here, because
that is why you will generally have them removed. Either
they're impacted or they're coming through and just crowding things
and making life a problem for your other molars.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Like poor Lisa Simpson when they showed that age progression
of what she would look like if she didn't have
dental insurance.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
The braces. I say, we take our break and then
come back and talk about wisdom teeth.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
All right, let's do it. Job. So the main reason
(06:40):
why they're impacted to begin with is kind of what
we've been talking about. There's just not enough space back
there for some people. And when they're developing that space
is like you know, there's teeth there and for most people,
and so those teeth can get really well impacted by
the wisdom teeth not being impacted.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Wow, that was great, man. Yeah, there's just not enough
room because your other teeth have shown up, right, another one.
This is the thing that really kind of comes home
to me. Your jaw might not actually be the size
that it would be if you ate harder foods. And
(07:23):
in fact, I saw it recommended to make sure that
your kids have a nice set of chompers as they
get older, like once they start eating solid food, start
getting giving them stuff that challenges their teeth because as
you're chewing, the more you chew, that promotes bone growth
in your jaw, and it can actually make your jaw
a little longer, so that if your jaws just slightly longer,
(07:45):
you're going to have that room for the third molar
that you otherwise wouldn't. Well, again, we come back to
the Western industrialized diet that is soft enough that the
teeth aren't challenged quite as much, so the jaw doesn't
grow quite as well to accommodate the third molar. I
think I might have just I think I might have
(08:05):
just been born again. I guess did you square the timeline? Yeah,
and so you have room for the third molar after all.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
That's right. But space isn't like every bit of this.
It's not just about space. There is some stuff about
it that science really hasn't explained why they might become impacted.
Because apes don't have impacted wisdom teeth, which I don't
think we mentioned. Some of our primate friends, you know,
have wisdom teeth still, which is great, good for them.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
There's that natural selection thing.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, exactly. The extraction has become a really common thing.
Like you know, I don't know about numbers, but I
feel like most people these days, at least in the
United States, will have their wisdom teeth removed. But you
don't have to. It's not like you really need to
talk to your dentist and eventual oral surgeon if it's
(09:01):
really really necessary. Because I don't know, I'm not a
conspiracy theorist, but sometimes I get the feeling that they
push this on people who don't necessarily need it, because
that's their business.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
After our orthodontia episode, my eyes were kind of opened
a little bit too. Yeah, supposedly your dentists should essentially
tell you, let's take a wait and see approach to this,
you know, like, get your teeth checked every six months
and we'll keep an eye on it, and if they
start to come in wonky, we'll get rid of them.
(09:31):
But wisdom teeth can come in normal healthy, can actually
help promote like further bone growth and stabilization and development,
to help your teeth stay in your head better. And
in that case, you shouldn't remove your wisdom teeth. You
shouldn't also, I think, prophylactically remove them just in case
(09:53):
they come in wonky. Right, So that's supposedly the consensus,
or that should the consensus, that you shouldn't take them
out proactively, and this University of Sayskatchewan evolutionary anthropologist Julia Bonner.
She's basically comparing getting your wisdom teeth removed unnecessarily to
(10:14):
what we used to do with kids getting their tonsils removed.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Oh yeah, interesting, you know part of the problem with
my teeth that are no longer a part of my
body was bone loss. So I'm wondering if I would
have benefited by leaving those wisdom teeth in there.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Probably sure, I mean, like it definitely helps you keep
generating bone. But also, like I was saying earlier, you
have to also eat hard foods too, nothing but like
rock candy.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah. I also don't remember my deal. I just remember
they were like, you need your wisdom teeth out, Like,
I don't remember if they were impacted or what the
deal was. I feel like I remember them coming erupting
a little bit, but I also don't trust my memory
of that. The only thing I remember is coming out
of the anesthesia and hallucinating. Don't ever tell the story.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
It sounds vaguely familiarbody, you should definitely tell me.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah, I came out when I was seventeen of my
first anesthetic experience and hallucinated a poster on the wall
that said locomotive Lasagna and then later on obviously it
was a poster of whatever, like some sort of dental poster.
But my theory is is that they were screwing with
(11:33):
me and switch out this weird poster for children coming
off their first drug experience.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's awesome. That would be a fun thing to do.
I'll bet the cursing dentist does that.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, and I don't know why none of my bands
that I've ever been in or Locomotive Lasagna. That was
just right there.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah. I think that's a either a song name or
an album name. I don't know about a band name.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Okay, Oh well it's not over. Then I can just
write a song for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I can't wait to hear that one.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I already got a lyric local Locomotive Lasagna. What do
you mean?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
How about this? Let's write this together. I'm Bernie Topping
Locomotive Lasagna. What's going on you right?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Oh? Man, genius?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
This thing just writes itself, It really does. We should
say there's another reason besides this surgery being potentially unnecessary,
for why you should wait and see keep an eye
on your wisdom, teeth, throat and have them taken it out.
There's risks to having oral surgery, like you can damage
nerves and tissue and your jawbone like sometimes I know
you mean, She said her oral surgeon was sweating. He
(12:40):
was having so much trouble pulling hers out. She just
got local anesthetic and she regretted it quite a bit. Yeah,
and the guy was working hard so that it can
actually cause damage to get your wisdom teeth removed, which
is why they say if they're healthy and they're in,
just leaving them alone.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah. And uh, she should have known this is coming
because he had a baseball cap on that said never
let him see you a sweat and he just turned
it around backwards when she got in the chair.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
That's right, man. Can you imagine having your dentist sweat
on you.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
No, that's not a good look.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
No, I guess short, stuff's out, don't you agree?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
I think so. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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