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

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Henry & Eddie bring you a very special episode of Side Stories as Eddie sits down with neuroscientist and co-founder of The Concussion & CTE Foundation - Chris Nowinski joins the show to discuss recent advancements in CTE Research, brain injuries in Wrestling & Football, Aaron Hernandez, Chris Benoit, and MORE! For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last podcast. On the left. Side stories? That's when the cannibalism started. Side stories. Yes. Oh, shit!

All right, where are rolling, boys? Oh, well, it's New Year's Eve, Henry. Wow! You believe that? I got my lingerie on. Yeah, I'm still wearing the same. clothes that I wore three weeks ago. You believe that? Haven't changed once. I've, I hate

it. I like, I've sat in this chair for three weeks. I haven't moved. Do you have a New Year's resolution? I actually have a real one. Okay. I do, my goal for 2026 is to get better at texting friends for friend

things. Yes, I love this. I did this two years ago and my life has been way better. That's what I'm trying to do. Phone calls. I do one call a week. Yes. I'm going to try to do more optional communication. Yeah. Because I'm very, I get very, we talk all the time

and I forget about the friends that I don't see you all the time. And I miss them. 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. What is it, a revolver? Oh, you fucking piece

of shit. It's schoonchili. Yeah. It's sliced conkunk. Yeah. I got it for you. It's in a can. You fucking piece of fucking shit, dude. I fucking hate you. I put that. I got it.

It's why you luck has been so bad because it's actually been sitting in the studio for months. I hate you. Yeah, yeah. I got it from Pinocchio's down the street. It's all, bro, it's all dented. Well, yeah, it's trying to get out. Did you? I used it as a hammer.

Oh, did you? Is that what happened? Fine. Because then we can't eat it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You use this a hammer. Just now, like a few minutes ago. Oh, that's fine.

Great. Actually, really, this speaks a lot to the pig. You know, Rob, Rob, you have. multiple computers, you're allowed to buy a hammer. No, no, no, no. I like the idea that it was... There's three cameras. I had to either walk upstairs or I could use the can. It shows the strength of LaMonica's

canning industries. And I don't seem really proud of them. Yeah, it kept the squeangely in there. It did. So what's a prisoner? What is your New Year's resolution? My New Year's resolution? Um, let me think about this. Well, I found

my cause, and I really am going to get behind it. Yeah, what is it? My cause is, I really, like, it's weird because, like, I've been, like, you know, doing this show for a little while, and I always said that once I found any type of success, I would try to find, like, something to support and get behind. And I recently found my cause, which is breast implants for divorced women. Yes. That's amazing. Yeah, I know. It's really 1099 a month, you can help support this. And honestly, and some of us, like, listen, the panel of husbands get together and when 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. Yeah, sometimes it's a reduction. Yeah. Because sometimes, well, very rarely. Sometimes we remove

the breast completely and put it two little penises. Very rarely. Very rarely, because it's expensive. Very rare. It has been done. No, what is it for real? Welcome to side stories. My name is Senator Browski. He's now going to reveal his actual Newsy Presser

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

So are you just given in installments? Yeah, yeah, it's really, they take it in little pieces It's really nice Have you not noticed I've been dumber? Yes, okay That's why I asked That's why I've been pee pee my pants I'm going to pee my pants

That's why I'm so funny when I pee my pants I know you like it But the rest of us Are getting alarmed by the smell And the color But I've So this interview we're about to do Is with Dr. Chris Nowitzky

He is If you remember from the Aaron Hernandez series 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 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 was a football player at Harvard. He was a wrestler. Yeah. 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. I really can't say enough how hard Ed worked to secure this interview

it means a lot is actually extremely interesting a very deep look into this issue from somebody that is at the very forefront like this isn't just like

it's really no one's looking in the CTE it's like it's really like a handful of people and Chris Nowitzky is one of them yeah it's like the people that like just discovered that women get perimenopause

you know I mean they're like just discovered that like like they're like we're looking at this women's health thing you know Well, consider donating to the Cuccian Legacy Foundation, whether it's money or your own brain. I did both. And I love this man immensely, and I can't tell you enough.

But please listen to the interview, Dr. Chris Nowitzky. 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 and cephalopathy. Did I say it right? Yes, sir. 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, a brain donation registry with Dr. Cantu. You've worked extensively with Dr. Anne 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 a left. Before we get started, I think you're amazing. 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 was, it was a, I didn't realize it was a traumatic experience until 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 but actually a big friendly dude looking friendly he looks friendly but he's but you know I wouldn't fight him and uh and then he kicked you in the head and and then that led to your retirement

and before that um I believe it was edge fell on you off of the top rope or jumped on you off the top rope during a world rumble and that was a major concussion as well and now you have permanent post concussion syndrome correct well yeah yeah i mean i'm mostly better but there's still some things i wish weren't there

yeah what so can you explain like what how does it so permanent like how what happens what how do you still feel this how long ago was this 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 a 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 your brain. It could be damaged to the nerves that go into your brain, the dura matter 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 don't know why I developed permanent headaches or I developed a sleep disorder. But, you know, another thing. And you still have those problems? 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, like the first minute I woke up. Wow, which was bizarre and scary for me and anyone who's with me. And then the headaches, like, it took me 15 years to get them under control, but now they're mostly under control. 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. Yeah. I mean, you know, you think back now, you know, because now my whole world is people who had years of symptoms after injuries. But, you know, 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. And 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. Yeah. No, of course, I've dealt with this just because we just did the Aaron Hernandez series. And I've been dealing with this, even with my own friends back home people I love like they're like oh you're really talking against football you're really like bringing up these things you're 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 um including with wrestling people gather to like watch wrestling together um 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 good 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 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 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's 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.

So, 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. How many years were you wrestling? 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, and it's just, it was interesting, though, even 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 your, 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 the CT, and I keep their photos. was on my desk.

Who are they? This was my starting strong safety. We just released that he died at 45 with CT. And this is me on the cover of the Harvard program. And this is our captain. He died in 2001 and had stage 2 CT. And so both died horrible ways that they weren't trying to. So for me, it's not anti-football, but it's more about we didn't take care of each other.

Yeah, exactly. There was a lot. We were taught. I grew up playing football in the 90s as well. well, we were taught to lead with our heads. You know, that's, you know, but it was like, it was like, it was like, 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, and 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, and, uh, Oklahoma's and.

all these crazy drills that are just basically punishing people. Like, I remember if someone got in trouble or, like, didn't show up for practice, they'd put him 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 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? 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 them like, hey, guys, I can't remember what's next. Tell me what, you know, tell me what to do. And so they just kept telling, you know,

you can call matches in the ring. He was 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.

No, because you take you. out of the game. Yeah, 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, 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.

Wow. How bad is a chair hit to the head? As bad as you can imagine, as bad as you think it is. Yeah. If you put your hand up like we did in the 80s, it's nothing because it never touches your head. But we forgot that. You know, like, and part of that was I think the ECW influence of, you know, like 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

that they felt pressured to make it real. And also UFC was coming, MMA was coming around then, and so there was 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.

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 chair seven times seven times it was Mick Foley talking about this at our gala because he spoke for us really yeah does he think he has it I mean because he put himself out there just as much as

anybody if not more well so the reason he was there and the story told was in 2013 he was going to 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 I said I said go see dr. can't do he's always the best guy to figure this out. And he filled this wonderful story on stage about how he, you know, he did all his tests and he came back two weeks later. And Dr. Candice said, you know, 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 a stand-up shows because his brain is still working. Yeah. No, he's hitting the road hard. Yeah. I love going to a club and see in his face. Yeah. Yeah. So he saved the next 10, 20 years of his life because he convinced him to stop getting hit and head so

much. What percentage of wrestlers do you think develops CTE? 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. Okay. And so, I think, you know, so also there, Natalia spoke because we diagnosed her dad, Jim the Anvil,

and I'd heart with C.T. And she's not 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 I can speculate on some of the sports where you have really good data. It's certainly a good, you know, a decent percentage of wrestlers have it. it's not all from wrestling because there's a lot of ex-football players to go into it, ex-other contact sports. But it's a problem. Like, you know, Chris Benwell was the first sort of window into the fact that we knew, like,

oh, gosh, like getting, you know, this wrestling can cause this. But if you do it wrong, essentially. So out of the 10 that you got, how many had it that you said you've studied 10 wrestlers so far? Yeah, well, I mean, I can only really speak to the public ones. Because the other thing about wrestling is that it's an industry where a, lot of people who've donated the brain, you know, people stay in that, that culture and that business still sometimes make money. So we, I can only, so it has, I think it's been less than half. Okay. Okay. That, that we've studied have had it. But it's, it's been a handful of folks.

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? So we crossed over. And the first time I met him, the time I got to noon, was he just got his neck fused back in 2002 or so. I was in Heartland Wrestling, just had been signed. And so he came in, and I remember there's a wrestling named Ray Steele who was tied with him and sort of got him back into wrestling shape. And he invited me to be like the other guy.

So we took bumps, you know, and I spent like, you know, a few hours with him. just three of us. And I remember at one point, he started helping me. And so, like, my most vivid memory of that is that, like, I didn't know how to throw a forum at that point. I've been wrestling for a few months. And he's like, well, he's like, anything I can help you with. And I'm like, well, 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 way, 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,

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 that was the first time he gave me a cell phone number was this, you know, it was months or a year before the murder or suicide where he said, give me a call.

I want to talk about concussions because I've had more than I can count. And then when I called him, he sounded like he was in the middle of an argument with somebody. He's like, I'll call you back. And he never did. And I just had no idea. Like what he was, 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 because i was intimidated by him and and i missed out on probably a chance to intervene on that that's that's very intense um yeah but it's driving well it drives why i still do this i mean i literally was doing that today with somebody uh you know an xboxer who's a friend of a friend and like you know wandered out into the snow uh without shoes in in a up north and i nearly died last night And we're trying to get him to care. That is 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. I don't know. Don't know. We got it done. We got it done. That's amazing. Thank you very much.

Live from North Lane. Now, Chris Penwa, he was known, of course, for his move, the cross-face 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 oh i mean i haven't done that research who else has done it 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 yeah i mean the the the The reality is, you know, we forget, like, you can't cheat physics.

And so if you're going to come off the, like, I've come off the top rope. Like, it's horrible. It hurts. And if you actually are going to go down with 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 setting a huge impulse of energy in your brain.

especially when it's the leading force it was a Harley Race the Dynamite Kid and Bam Bam Bigelow All yeah I mean Dynamite kids died young Harley Race I think had dementia when he died So I mean it

I'm certain like certainly 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, your 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, creates intribital 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 it doesn't really stretch, and you don't get that tear. But 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 headboat necessarily would have caused the CD unless they were twisting at the end. Interesting. Michael Benoit, Chris Benoit's father, thought that it was a sudden change in his personality. Did you notice that? Because you said he was a nice guy and it was a lot of fun to be around. 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, all the rest are starting to tell me, like, yeah, in the last year, I found him crying in the hallway on the road. He stopped calling matches because I don't think he could remember them. Like, he definitely changed. Yeah. And now, so whenever a wrestler dies, do you just reach out to the family immediately? Or do you know.

So for brain donation, you have 48 hours. 48 hours. Basically, to get a hold of them in 72 hours to get the brain taken care of. Put in a formulent 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 brands a year. And that's all we have the staff and the money to do.

And it's one of the most busy brain banks in the world because each one is so expensive and so time consuming. So I call cases that are in the public interest. I certainly call when it's people I know or people I'm. 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 oh I see I see I make a lot of calls 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. Yeah, I got a K-Fave, all that stuff. Yeah, no, I understand the best use of K-Fave there. So we said a chair hit to the head's really hard, but you also mentioned a soccer ball can be very bad to the head. Yeah. And so you've seen a lot of CTE and soccer players as well. Yeah, we've seen some in the U.S. where they're seeing a ton of it is an English.

England, in Scotland. Really? Interesting. So that, basically, there's a, there's not that many old soccer players in the U.S. 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. Wow. And they have a ton of guys with CTE.

Now, going back to Chris Ben-Wan for two seconds, do you think steroids mixed with CTE is an issue? Yeah, there's no. research on it. So like 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. What about drugs, just like cocaine, Mali, stuff like that?

Do you think that affects, if someone with CTE takes drugs, do you think it changes the way they are? Again, it can't help. It's all about when you have CT, you have frontal low 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. Now, 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. I don't know if we have a scientific answer. The brain, um, you, if you kill a neuron, yeah, another one doesn't grow in its place. Okay. Um, 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 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,

your microglue 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 midlife. 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 Miami Dolphins fan, I'm from Boca Raton. Tua, like, do we think he should still be playing? So the

interesting thing is that we now have nearly a thousand football players brains. Okay. And we have all their medical records. 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. Okay. What predict CTE is, in our models, is how many years you played. Because that is, that is, 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 BRIT database. So if you were a college lineman, offensive lineman, you average 860 hits, or 24Gs. And in high school, if you were also a linebacker, you took 750 hits that were this. We laid that over, and that predicted who got CT. interesting so it's like a math problem it's number and strength of head impacts it's not unlike smoking lung cancer like how many packs a day for how many years is this going to predict your your lung cancer risk what position not concussions what positions are most likely to experience

the cTE so we don't have in those in those models because there's no difference in part because the linemen take more hits, but they're not as hard. Yeah, because they're so close. Right. But, and then we also, we don't, nobody remembers what special teams they were on and kick off and kickoff return to be the worst. The wedge busters. 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, it's, 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 death rates and finds that the non-line interaction will worse off. Yeah, linebackers and probably safety. 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 CTs of 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. Yeah. Because it's basically it's when the brain inside of your skull, like hits the skull, basically. No, it's that twist in.

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

at one single head injury, is that, can that cause CTE or is it more of the repeated over and over and over again? In theory, like in theory, it has to be true. But when you look through brain banks of people who've had. had one severe brain injury that put them into a hospital, we almost never, almost never, never see CD. So it's like your brain is meant to take one hit. It's just not meant to take 100 hits a week. 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. And then before me. Yeah. That was before you. And then you went and then you went to see Andre Waters family.

And to get his brain, I had to call the medical examiner, and then, yeah, then called his mom eventually met her. Do you have like a, I don't know, lack of a better word, spiel? Like when you call a family, like, how do you do that? Like, it's such a personal thing. Yeah, I do. I do. Cultivated over time. And I was just having that conversation because in 2006, at our annual gal, I was with my boss from 2006, who I was, he was in the office.

office next door. And I was like, and I just finished the book, but there was no foundation. And I was like, I think, I think this Waters thing is CT. And the medical examiner just gave me Andre Waters' mother's phone number. And I've got a caller and ask for the brain. And so we like wrote out a script together of like, 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. and this has never been done before. Yeah, and it's within two days of them passing away. Well, 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 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. Wow. Which is a strange thing to tell a mother who lost her son, but they had to do it. Did you work on Shane Tamura? No. No?

That was someone else who studied him. How many organizations are studying brains? Well, that was an organization. So that was the New York City Medical Examiner's Office. Okay. Which is the busiest medical examiner's office in the country. Yes. And they brought in CT experts from Manhattan.

I know who did. And they were part of the team that developed CT criteria so they know it. Okay. And of course, Shane, tomorrow, for those of you who don't know, 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 um do you think that it is very personal do you think that you might have it from how much the odds are to have it i mean it's really you know the two guys

who've had it from my team were not the guys we thought would have like i was a guy i left 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 the only thing I have going for me is I waited until 14 to start. But I played eight seasons of football, three years of wrestling, headed a lot of soccer balls. But on that high school front, which is, again, it's supposed to be tough to communicate, but the high school rate is actually much higher than people want to imagine. Yeah. Like 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,

also just had our first brain donor die who was part of the bank CTE study, which means he gave blood while he was alive and then he died. So he could try to diagnose CT through the blood and we're still enrolling for bank CTE if you want to Google it. The, uh, Chip Collins, he was his high school captain, played eight seasons of football, never played after high school, got to mention 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 he had, he only had CT. That's all he had from high school football.

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. Well, 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. Yeah. 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. Personally, I worry about it because, you know, I, I'm a 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, uh, I started playing football at eight 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, it's frankly, it's, 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. Oh, wow. And so they threw me in pads immediately.

And so that was like my father, he just saw a dollar signs when I was born, you know? And so, and he played football for University of Missouri. And 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, and then he... Did you notice any behavioral problems? The whole family hated him.

You know, so it wasn't, you know, he basically excommunicated me from my entire family, you know? And so and then everyone that loved him growing up ended up hating him by the time he died. And so I really do believe he didn't have any good relationships, except for the people that

you know, he married his wife later in life. And he was very peaceful at the end of his life. So, you know, I will say that. But the rest of it, I mean, you know, who knows? But I worry about myself is what I'm saying, because do you think that it could be, and 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? 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. But then, no, there's, I mean, it's not, what we have shown is that there's no, 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, right? but we have shown very clearly that there are a number of genes that are going to modify how bad it hits you yeah so there's a lot of people who are completely fine until they're 70s but not not everyone we covered it in our um in our episode and i'm sorry uh Wyatt Bronwell 18 years old he ended up taking his own life in 2019 and then he had um and he had CTE when you were did you work on that case yeah that was that was our case um he had he was

the youngest person I have stage two so he was 18 we we thought you know like we've published that there's an average of 13 years between stages so you see stage one is late as someone's 40s and then you know you earliest stage like Aaron Hernandez was early stage three and is 27 why it's our earliest stage two at 18 so he probably got it like 10 yeah And it had been already progressing in his brain. He had massive mental health problems in high school. He knew he had it. He had 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. Like, you know, we all thought we were doing the right thing. So it's a very sad case. It 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 what you're doing right now because I watch your TED talks very good the stop hitting children so this is

can you just explain this we have a lot of listeners we're 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. Oh, I appreciate that. So yeah, the campaign is called Stop Hitting Kids in the Head. So we're trying to very, you know, very clearly make the case that

it is completely abnormal to hit children ahead 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 head. 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 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 ban until 11 in the U.S., which is still not young enough. We say at least 14 and go as long as you can without hitting your kid in head. Oh, so you can't put on a helmet and play till you're 11 now? You can't head a soccer ball. Oh, had a soccer ball. 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, your, your, your axons, your long, 120th width of 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 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 their 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 head or don't let anyone else hit your kids in the head. 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 insane. What sports are good? Basketball. 40, 40 sports are good. 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 until 13. And then boxing and MMA with head strikes, like terrible ideas. But after that, it's like everything else is pretty good. LaCross 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 doing taekwondo There's no head strikes Like What age should you be allowed To start football In your opinion

So our campaign is called Play Flagg until 14 You know For the people 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 But there's no reason To start before 12 Yeah

I mean I think about it, like, how scared I was. Because not just, I was eight playing with 12-year-olds because of my size. And then, like, you know, it's because I was a big boy. But these kids are obviously stronger than me. I'm just fat. You know, and so it's like, 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, uh, the. Did you also have to play both ways? Yeah, man. Yeah. I was the crazy thing about it.

I was center in defensive tackle, you know? And I was just because I was so big. 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 just because I loved weed and theater too much. Thank God. But, um, but yeah, man, it was a, it definitely terrifies me that it's, it's, it comes, it could be something that happened. The good news is, I'll tell you this, that when I tell everyone, like, you know, the guys who are like midlife, like, at risk. you know, like notice things that we don't like about our behavior and our ability, you know, that, you know, treat the symptoms aggressively.

You can't treat the symptoms, you know, it's not, you know, 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 stay under control. Work on your brain health. How do you do that?

I've done. Lionsman? No. Supplements are all garbage. I have started losing, I've started losing weight. I've actually, I'll tell you, I haven't told anybody. I've taken GLPs. I'm taking Zepbound.

Oh, I'm on it, baby. Let's rock. Yeah, I don't know. I lost 60 pounds. I feel like a new man. Oh, great. I'm down 35 and I'm actually, like, weaning off blood pressure medication because, like, I'm, yeah, because hold on to whatever you can.

Heart health is brain health. Yeah. You got to eat like champs. And 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-ruggery guys and the 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. Any leads on a cure? 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 trying to draft off Alzheimer's disease research because they're both the same protein. going wrong in the brain.

What we have learned, though, is... The tau protein, right? Taal protein, 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. you know, there's a drug now for the plaque. I mean, you just need to get a drug for this protein. And you said, you mentioned a moment ago about addiction and in 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? 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 alcohol. who died of liver failure. Okay. And including, you know, my old roommate Chris Eitzman, who was captive of the hard football team,

three years in the NFL, NBA from Dartmouth, investment guy, doing amazing until alcohol took over. And within five years, he was dead. And his frontal lobe was shrunk. And so it's like,

you cannot battle addiction with the damaged frontal lobe as well as you could with a healthy brain. So like, so I, Yes, I absolutely think that you would not believe that the stories I could tell you about the uncontrolled alcoholics that were the worst alpulics who ever heard that have died to CT. Interesting.

That makes a lot of sense to me because you're trying to dumb the pain down as well. Live from your play. 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 just her as a human being, she said that there is a

definite link that she could see between head injuries and gambling addiction. So do you think that this is something that like it's a lot of people who have been in like multiple car accidents and stuff like that, football players obviously they love gambling. I watched Brian Cox,

spent a lot of money. The cruise ship once. I don't doubt that for a second. I don't doubt that for a second. The traumatic brain injuries lowers your makes you more impulsive you know, again, that disinhibition.

So yeah, there's no, I mean, yeah, I haven't looked up specifically the brain injury and gambling stuff, but I don't doubt it for a second. Awesome. And Aaron Hernandez. Yeah. So you listen to the series. Thank you very much. I appreciate you listening. It was wonderfully entertaining. What did

wrong? Get nothing wrong. I was like, this is really incredibly well research. I was very broad. Fuck, yes. Shout out to Grant Gordon. He did a lot of work. He's also a big fan of years.

Oh, my buddy Grant, who helped me write the CTE stuff, he wanted me to ask, what's your favorite type of cooler? My favorite type of what? Cooler. Cooler? Yeah, yeah, 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, I love a barbecue. You know, I'm always trying to get, like, the best cooler possible, you know, like, what I got to, yeah, I mean, I, I, I have transported a brain once in a styrofoam cooler. Like, it's, it's, oh my God. Like, yeah. That's insane. Yeah. 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?

No, no, it's, well, usually, usually they're transmitted, well, there's two ways, there's two ways the brain gets to the brain bank. One is that it's occurring, like, if, if you get there with hours of them dying, it's actually a current. 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.

Did they just put it on like a commercial flight or like this is FedEx or like what is a 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. So you're sitting on a Delta flight with a brain in your lap? I haven't done that role but God bless it

there are people who do that for us Wow And then there's And then the other way is that you have to put it in a formal in solution Like formaldehyde type of thing And it's literally in a receptacle And it sits

It has to harden for weeks Because the brain is so soft So it can be transferred without getting damaged And then it gets shipped Wow So Aaron Hernandez He takes his own life in prison, how faster are you with that phone call? Who do you call, who'd you call his mother?

Oh, you know, I don't know, I don't know what's public here, but that was, I believe they initiated that, the family. 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, uh, and so what, what do you do with that information? Do you immediately run to the depressed 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 a very valuable information like what do you do you 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 you're not happy it happened where 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 asking that case got more tension than any other case and so yes i mean i thought yeah what happened when we got the call we're like oh gosh like we're going to find like a couple little spots of disease and it's not going to explain anything and we thought it was just going to be like uh you know not not help not help advance our understanding.

But then when Dr. Ann McKee, who studied it said, 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 a little bit of trouble, turned into somebody who just signed a $40 million contract but yet chooses to murder people over small things, right?

Like that makes no sense. Like stage three to me help 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 Wyatt ran well. So we actually had an annual CT conference coming up. And I suggested to Dr. McKee that she present this as a case study. We actually had a few dozen of our brain donor family members in the audience for this event. 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. Wow.

That is, that is mind-blowing. How is the NFL? Because 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, obviously, time has happened. 345 out of 376. 345 out of 376. So that's 90-something. and so how many players do you think have it that play professional football

percentage wise percentage wise yeah well we've proven it's at least 10% of all NFL players who've ever played okay and I think we're about to update that number wow how is the NFL covered up CTE yeah league of denial is probably the best way to get the window into that So at the beginning, they were trying to sort of cover 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. Like basically, like 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 it was only, you could only study the healthy people. And so they concluded from these studies of only healthy people, there were no long-term effects. And then when the CT stuff started to happen, they first tried to get the Benadamalu 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, you know, they did a real head job on him. Pardon?

It seemed like, it seemed like they did. a hit job on him. They tried to discredit all of his research. It seemed like to me. Yeah. So they did. As from an outsider, as an outsider. He also was not, was not a classic researcher. Okay. So there were things to pick apart. Gotcha. And that's in part why I started at an academic, I started the Unite Brain Bank at Boston University with the foundation and Dr. McKee's, because this needs to be real academics who just did research all day. He was, he was a pathologist, at a medical examiner and did a great thing by finding these cases, but he's never been full-time research.

So, but yeah, they attacked him. And then, you know, they kept rolling out prestigious doctors who would say that we're completely wrong and we're stupid and we're liars. And I mean, they've got some crazy things over the years to try to discredit us every chance they got. And obviously, I think Paul Tagliabu was way worse at it than Roger Goodell. But has there been any improvements made in the last couple years? Like, do you feel like they're actually taking it seriously?

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 honest, 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. They're playing at halftime at the stadium.

Yeah. And so you can't be serious about preventing CTE if you're also telling everyone to start at five years old. 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 and 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. Yeah. Can helmets be any safer than they are or it just doesn't even matter what you do with it? A little bit. 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. They're decent for linear. So no, the helmet, I mean, the helmet stuff in the guarding cap is all a distraction. And the USA today just, just exposed that the NFL has been not been fully transparent about how effective guardian caps are. And guardian cap, is that the headband? That's the padding you put over it, that they mandated for the preseason. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. They were saying that the guardian cap was responsible for 50% reduction in concussions. 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 pat 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 your talking point. Why are you still saying the talking point? Can you watch football? I watch it for research.

I like to monitor how they talk about the big hits and all that stuff. Yeah. 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 paint everyone's helmets every week now, so you no longer see the gashes we used to see.

Yeah, which I loved. Yeah, I know. I love the guy. You know, the chip face masks, all that stuff. So everybody looks fine and looks like a safe game until you see that big hit, until you see in the, like, in the, like, in the, like, in the, like, in the, like, in the, Patriots game Monday night, a guy's helmet chip off. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Yeah, there's no question about it. No. It's just that. I mean, I still love the players. I still support the players and all that stuff, but it's just. It's like you don't support war, but you love the soldiers.

It's the same thing. You know, it's, that's how I look at it. It's weird because I think about like, I just been so, ever since going through this series and studying what you've studied and stuff like that. I think about everything so much. Even down to like celebrating, we would always smash our heads against each other, like in a friendly way. You know, it was, that was committing it.

Like, those aren't counted, you know, those are hard. Practice is insane. You know, most of my, what I believe, my concussions were happening in practice, you know, and so. Yeah, exactly. Why would the hell be hitting in practice at all? Like, can't you teach us how to play football without spam? matching our brains.

Exactly. Using your head-to-head-butt people is interesting, part just because I just did my annual trainings for WW 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 liked to head-butt the locker before he went out to his match.

And he did it this time in Saudi Arabia. And he hadn't done it while. He concussed himself. And then he went out and did the match, gave himself another concussion, and nearly killed the Undertaker by dropping on his head. Yeah. Yeah, the Undertaker's moved.

It was because his old football habit he had. Yeah. It's so, oh, it's so, what would you do if your son was like, I want to play football? I don't think, at this point, like, I'm just surrounded by football players dying and suffering every day. So I would tell them, 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 theater, too. Like, yeah. You know, like, I learned a ton of my lessons in theater, too. Like, like, you know, like, you know, like, like, like, I

a lot of football, but, like, you know, there's... It's where the chicks are, too, by the way. So, I'm thinking, things are going through my head. I'm not going to say the, yeah, I mean, it's, 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. That was very, that was very sweet, man.

I love it. And so your organization, Concussion Legacy Foundation, you are looking for brain. You're at all times. So you have like a backlog of brains that you guys have to get there? We have a 15,000 person brain donation registry. The people signed up and told their families. And so they're coming in now on regular basis. And then everyone else calls when their dad's in hospice or something.

When will this air? This is going to air around Christmas. Okay. So we are by then, we will have rebranded ourselves. Oh, okay. Please tell me about it. On, we are becoming, because of the advancements that we, we think are coming next year with CTE, we are becoming the Concussion and CT Foundation.

We're going to give it equal billing to CTE, and we'll be at Concussion and CTE.org. Of our 1700, our families are predicting CTE accurately about 60% of the time. Wow. That's why. Our NFL families are predicting at 90% of time, but everyone else is 60. And to put that in perspective, less than 1% of the population has this. so do you ever say no if someone's like i want to donate a brain or i do anything like that you're like 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 need the CT tissue because we're sending it to researchers around the world trying to figure this thing out oh okay so i you know at risk at risk of making myself look stupid you want my brain do you need it you would qualify unfortunately I would qualify. Dude, I'm signing up. You could totally have my fucking line. I don't need it. I don't understand why people are so...

It's trash. And I'm done with it. It's just going in the garbage. You might as well... You're not going to feel it when we go in there and get it. Yeah, no. We could help a lot of people. You really could, right?

And a lot of people can. 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... 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. uh you know and stuff like that have you ever thought about trying to get serial killers brains and studying them for cTE yes in fact a lot of the mass shooters we've reached out to including like we got robert card's brain who killed 17 and louisden main who was a grenade instructor in national guard yeah um 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 give you my eyes and ears on this. Let's, we can work together and grab some. Gary Ridgway is about to die. He's, uh, the, the Green River killer killed, uh, 50 people on record, uh, up to 80. He's about, he's about, he's about to pass away. They're saying he's like days from death. So, uh, that's, that's one to keep on the books. But yeah, Richard Ramirez, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Martin, Brian, Fred West, Kraft,

um, rolling, picked in the hillside strangler, starkweather. These guys, it's like, I went and asked my buddy who works on the show at me, That's, like, off the top of his head. He was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so it's very prevalent as far as, like, serial killers and spreeshooters. I feel like this is something that. No, we should do something with this. I mean, it's dramatic brainers, well known in the criminal, you know, convict community,

you know, people in prison way overpopulated by over, more likely to have brain injury histories than the population. 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. Niewski, sorry, I like you a lot. Sorry, I called you, Chris.

But Dr. Niewinski, thank you so much. Guys, go check out his book, Head Games. There's a documentary about the subject. Check that out. It was directed by the same fellow who directed Hoop Dreams, right? Yeah, Steve James, legend. It was awesome. Yeah, legend.

So I haven't seen it myself. I can't wait to watch it. I just bought your book. I'm going to, so next time I talk, to you because I'm going to find you. I'm glad you can still find it. That's great. Where can people find it if they want to check out your house?

Oh, I mean, you know, like, you know, nowhere. I mean, you can get the Kindle. You get the Kindle. Just read it. It's more important. Yeah, I mean, it's out of stock. I think my publisher went out of business. There's some in my closet.

I'll send you a box. Oh, wow. Okay. That's not a horrible idea. The Concussion Legacy Foundation is being rebranded to what again? How do people find your? and CTE Foundation. 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. 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 you keep doing your work, man. And anything you need from me or last podcast, on the left, you hit me up. I got your back forever. I'm so honored. Yeah, we got you, man.

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 fucking wrong about it. I'm in for all of it and hit me up next time you're back home, Boka. Like, thrilled. Honored to meet you. Appreciate you so much.

Back at you, buddy. Keep up the good work. That's my man. I love that, dude. That's very interesting. 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 going to be a good football player.

But they have him going both ways. I'm going to try and talk them out of it. I'm going to make him listen to this episode as a way to be like, hey, man, at least just play one side of football. Share it with your families. You know anyone who has 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 Chris

Nowitzky. 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. Nowisky, Dr. Nowitzky, and everyone else who cares about this. Also,

just slightly strangle kits. Yes. See? Is that easy? The Comer Simpson. Yeah. This Sunday I'm going to be in Oxnard. Come and see me. If you've got nothing to do, it's going to be amazing.

That is going to be Sunday, January 4th, Oxnard, California, Levity Live. It's going to be me, Carolina Hidalgo. Holding McNeily, Jake Young, and Julia Johns is going to be a fucking blast. Come hang out with me. Start your new year off right. Yeah, baby, happy new year. All right. See you next year.

See you next year, you idiots. Unless you already. you're listening to this tomorrow. See you in 20206, you fucking morons. It's already 2026 and you missed it because who were the... Fuck you! You're listening to a podcast on New Year's Eve.

You're late. I asked to release it on a different day. They're like, no, we are contractually. We have to do it on the wrong day. So there you go. Rock and row! Hell yeah. Please be good people.

Try.