Today's episode discusses the death of an individual.

If this type of information upsets you, this is not the show for you.

Welcome to Mayhem and the More with their host, doctor Kendall Krans.

Over a decade ago, I started doing career days at my children's schools.

I did this in part to hang out with my kids and see them at school and maybe go out to lunch with them, But my other reason was to tell people about the field of forensic pathology.

Not a lot of people even fully realize what forensic pathologists do beyond what they've seen on TV, and they really don't know much about medical examiners.

When I tell people I'm a medical examiner, a lot of people think I work in the meat industry, expecting meat like for the FDA.

Other people think I work for funeral homes as m bomber.

People also think I'm a coroner, and a lot of people don't even realize I have a medical degree.

I've had numerous career days where students were shocked to find out how much education they needed to become a forensic pathologist.

I've even had medical students tell me in their last year of medical school that they had no idea forensic pathology existed and wish they had known about it when they got into medical school because they would have taken steps to go into forensic pathology instead of the career that they had chose to go into.

The thing about it is is there is a shortage nationwide a forensic pathologists.

There are only four hundred to five hundred board certified pathologists in the United States, and every year more and more retiring and not enough new forensic pathologists are graduating to keep up with the loss.

After four years of med school is another three to four years of residency in a year of sub specialization to become a friends of pathologist.

It takes longer to create a forensic pathologist than it does a baby elephant.

My intention with the Career Days was not to just hang out with my kids, but to spread the word about how wonderful a job forensic pathology really is.

And I figured by getting involved in Career Days, I can inform kids about my job and get them interested in it, and maybe someone would find it interesting enough to pursue like I did way back when I was in ninth grade and was introduced to the field of forensic pathology.

And my career day presentation is a PowerPoint presentation full of pictures, so I have different versions of it depending on what grade level I'm teaching.

I have one for grade schoolers, one for medal schoolers, one for high schools, and finally one for college.

Basically, as the grade level goes up, the talk becomes increasingly more graphic, and it is the most graphic once they get into the college age range.

Now a with grade schoolers, the most graphic thing they see as an X ray of a head with a bullet in it.

How I went about deciding which pictures to use was partially based on an interview I saw with Steven Spielberg.

He was discussing the movie Jaws in this interview, and he stated that it built more tension and made the movie more scary to give the perception of the monster in this case, of course, the shark, than it was to show the shark right from the beginning.

The actual build up is more frightening than the actual reveal of the monster.

I incorporated this concept in in my talk.

I show an X ray that shows a bullet, I show close ups of wounds.

I showed the actual bullets that were removed from the bodies, but I never show the whole body, faces or any identifying features, So in a way, I give the perception of the injuries and the gore that people associate with this career, but they actually never see the whole thing.

By doing this, it makes my talk less frightening or horrifying, and the students think they have seen something crazy, but in reality, it was very tame.

In the years I've done these presentations, I've never received one complaint from teachers, parents, or children, so it must have not been too frightening, right.

I have been asked back every year since I started doing this, and the teachers would tell their friends, So I was going to numerous different school districts, and I only recently stopped doing these talks because my kids are all in college now and it just isn't the same for me.

Fortunately, I have colleagues that have taken it over now, so the information does continue to get out there, but for me, I've kind of moved on.

There's one other thing that I I always enjoyed, which was the bizarre questions that children would ask, and that's what we'll be talking about for the rest of the episode.

Is one of the children's bizarre questions, my answer, and the ensuing hijinks that my answer created.

So on this particular day, I was talking to a group of fourth graders.

The talk went reasonably well.

I got my standard oohs and ahs and ooh, that's gross statements and kids covering their faces.

I got my standard questions like what does it smell like?

My answer always is rotting trash mixed with blood.

How much do you get paid?

My answer to that is I would tell them my salary and some would be impressed and some would say lame, we're just saying.

Ever found in the stomach ballpoint pins was actually probably over fifty where this weapon used to kill someone a mini safe like crushed in his head.

Have you ever autopsied a baby?

My answer to this is I have autopsied a wide age range of people, from fetuses to people over one hundred and six years of age.

Finally, when I got to the end of my presentation, I asked if there was any more questions, and one of the children asked, who is the most famous person you have ever autopsy?

This is a question I get asked on almost every presentation, and the answer often depends on who I am talking to with a group of fourth graders, I felt it would be best to discuss a movie star from a popular movie.

It would probably be someone they would know, so I chose Richard Lapalmeittier.

If you don't know who he is.

He was an actor in many movies, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

And Star Wars the original one, not the prequels, not the sequels, not the TV shows, but the very first Star Wars movie from nineteen seventy seven that's now been rebranded is I think the New Hope or Episode four or something like that.

He played a Mayan character in the Star Wars movie, but in a very memorable scene.

And when he dies years after being in Star Wars, he was sixty six years old.

He was in town visiting family.

I believe he was going to a comic con to sign autographs.

His cause of death was from an intestinal cancer that rode it into a blood vessel that caused him to actually bleed out.

So his cause of death was complications of cancer, and his manner death was natural.

He was the famous person I chose to tell the group.

I told the group of children that I autopsied Richard la Palmeteer, and they said, who's that?

And my reply, of course, was have you ever seen Star Wars?

The original Star Wars?

And most of them said, oh, I've seen that movie.

I've seen that movie.

And I said, you know the guy whom Darth Vader chokes with a force on the Death Star and says, I find your lack of faith and the force disturbing.

And then one of the children screamed, wait, you mean Admiral Maddy.

At that moment, I thought in my head, wow, I didn't know the character's actual name, but I responded with sure.

At that moment, one of the children gas and he said, you mean Darth Vader really killed him.

A wave of shock and realization spread through the room faster than life with kindergarteners.

Several kids excitedly exclaimed what really, and more and more kids were becoming excitable.

While this was occurring, I was standing there not responding.

Granted it was only a few seconds, but long enough for chaos to ensue.

The thing is, I have five children who are now all adults, but when they were little, occasionally they would say something absurd that I would get tripped up by.

Logically, it made no sense, but they were sure it was real, and they were sure they were right, and there was no convincing them Otherwise.

You can't counter a young child with a logical argument because they just wouldn't understand.

And this was one of those moments.

I thought, in my head, no, no, he didn't kill him.

It was a movie.

Plus it was nineteen seventy seven, which was like over thirty five years ago, and I was in grade school, so I would not have done his autopsy if he had died in nineteen seventy seven.

But I thought that in my head.

I didn't come up with a good response.

I was standing there dumbfound it just uh well, and the chaos had taken over the classroom.

The children are all talking about the murder committed by Darth Vader, and they couldn't believe that he had actually killed that person.

Thankfully, the fourth grade teacher stepped in and she calmed them down and got them to listen to reason.

Explained how Star Wars was just a movie, and the more logical children agreed with her with a resounding yeah.

I chimed in and I said, that's right, your teacher's right, it's just a movie.

And he actually died of cancer.

Then that same child, whose name was Monty by the way, started the chaos again when he said Darth Vader gave him cancer, and again that same wave of chaos spread across the room.

This time I said, no, no, Darth Vader had nothing to do with it.

And Monty again exclaimed that it must have been something in the Death Star, something made him get cancer in the Death Star.

And I thought this was a reasonable assumption.

If the Death Star was a real working environment that did not follow OSHA's safety guidelines, I mean, yeah, potentially he could have gotten cancer.

But again it was indeed false, and the teacher said, Monty, that's enough, to which a chorus the girls said, yeah, Manty enough.

The thing about it is is I have testified in court for years.

I've testified in massive courtrooms in front of legislators, you name it, and I've never been de raded like I was by that statement from a fourth grader.

After the teacher got the class calm down again, she said, well, I think we're done asking doctor Crown's questions, so let's all thank doctor Crowns with a round of applause, and all the kids dutifully clapped and thanked me, and that ended it.

I was a little relieved that it was finally over, because Monty really had my number that day.

So that incident happened probably well over a decade ago.

Now I don't really know what happened to little Monty.

He'd be in his early twenties.

Who knows what he's up to.

He's probably getting ready to become a lawyer and getting ready to derail medical examiners across the country with his crazy logic.

The one thing I'd have to say, though, is thank goodness for grade school teachers, because they actually understand the logic of children somehow, and that teacher that day really saved me.

That brings us to the end of the story.

And I learned never to take too long to answer a group of grade schoolers because they are like sharks with chum in the water, and they will swarm in a feeding frenzly with any opportunity.

I hope you learned something like Star Wars is just a movie.

I know that's difficult to believe, and I hope you were entertained until the next time