Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Wisdom Teeth

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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IHeart Radio app search One and listen now. Joy 101 with Hoda Cotphe is presented by CVS. 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, oh, it hurts edition. Did you have your wisdom teeth come in and did you have them removed?

I had them removed. Oh, okay. I had mine removed. Kind of at the, now that I'm reading this, sort of a standard. time. I was probably 17 years old. Oh, not to appreciate the sedation. Yeah, that was my first experience with that. And I was like, oh, wow. Yeah. That was the gateway drug. 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. Like I was in public or something. Yeah, very strange. But yeah, we're talking about wisdom teeth, a.k.a. the third molar, which sometimes start to pop in there. By the way, I'm very turned off by how many times you type the word erupt in this thing. You don't like that, huh? 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. Okay, thanks. They can erupt from the gums. Well, they can start to come in as early as like five years old, and as old as 15, but when they actually erupt, that's twice, that can usually come, that's usually like a later thing, like 17, maybe all the way up to mid-20s. 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 Odontius. Sophia's. And that is the teeth of wisdom is what that means. And the whole point 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. 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 and 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 Tuk-Took was out and had a bigger jaw 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.

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, swallible stuff. And we just don't need that anymore. No, because usually people place it around the time of agriculture. You can make a case that it's much later than that. But say within 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 than just a few thousand years? Oh, buddy. You know I don't know the answer to that. Okay, but I feel like, yeah, I feel like 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 wuss, and our skulls got

shorter and smaller. And hence, when we get wisdom teeth, there's just not enough room for them because we don't eat them anymore, but stupid natural selection hasn't caught up yet, and keeps producing wisdom teeth in modern homo sapiens that don't need it, because we eat, a deviled ham. Right. I mean, that makes sense to me, right? You're just saying the timeline doesn't match up? Yeah.

The whole, yeah, it makes sense for sure. It's the timeline, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't question the timeline. That's your first mistake. You know what, though? When I was researching this, I found,

there's apparently a creationist argument. They use 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? 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 do it. 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.

Interesting. Take that podcaster. Yeah, because they took, The argument that people who believe in natural selection use and turned it on them. They flipped the script. That's very well put. All right. So we have four of these.

Not all of them erupt. What else are you going to say? Polk. Moist. Present themselves. Okay. I kind of like that. I have a coming out party.

No, that's good. Present themselves. Debutant 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 in some people. That's called a genesis. But the impaction 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. Like poor Lisa Simpson, when they showed that age progression of what she would look like if she didn't have dental insurance.

Yeah, that's right. Or braces. I say we take our break and then come back and talk about wisdom teeth. All right, let's do it. You have the desire to help, to make a real difference? The College, LaCity, you offer the program Dependance and Scenta Mental. Acquare the competences essential for accompanying and support the people confronted to the difficulties of mental and of dependence.

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of formation in health, supported by Sante Canada. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people.

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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 for most people. And so those teeth can get really, well, impacted by the wisdom teeth, not being impacted. Wow. That was great, man. Thanks. 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 in fact, I saw it recommended to make sure that your kids have a nice set of chomper's as they get older. Like, once they start eating solid food, start 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 jaw is just slightly longer, 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 been born again, I guess. Did you square the timeline? Yeah, and so you have room for the third molar after all. 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. Right. Which is great. Good for them.

There's that natural selection thing. 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 really, really necessary because, I don't know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but sometimes I get the feeling that they push on people who don't necessarily need it because that's their business. After our orthodonture 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. 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 they come in, wonky, right? So that's supposedly the consensus, or that should be the consensus, that you shouldn't take them out proactively. And this University of Saskatchewan evolutionary anthropologist, Julia Bonner,

she's basically comparing getting your wisdom teeth removed unnecessarily to what we used to do with kids getting their tonsils removed. 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. 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. Yeah.

I also don't remember my deal. I just remember they were like, you need your wisdom, pith 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. Did I ever tell this story? It sounds vaguely familiar, but you should definitely tell you.

Yeah, I came out when I was 17 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 that they were screwing with me and switch out this weird poster for children coming off their first drug experience. That's awesome. That would be a fun thing to do. I'll bet the cursing dentist does that. 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. Yeah, I think that that's either a song name or an album name. I don't know about a band name. Okay. Oh, well, that's not over then. I can just write a song. For sure. I can't wait to hear that one.

I already got a lyric. Locomotive lasagna, what do you mean? How about this? Let's write this together. I'm Bernie Taupin. Locomotive lasagna, what's going on you? Oh, man. Genius. 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 rather than have them taking it out. There's risks to having oral surgery. Like you can damage nerves and tissue and your jawbone. Like sometimes, I know Yumi, she said her oral surgeon was sweating.

He 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 it can actually cause damage to get your wisdom teeth removed, which is why they say they're healthy and they're in, just leave them alone. Yeah, and she should have known this is coming because he had a baseball cap on that said never let him see his sweat. And he just turned it around backwards when she got in the chair. That's right.

Man, can you imagine having your dentist sweat on you? No, that's not a good look. No. I guess short stuff's out, don't you agree? I think so. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Thank you.