Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - HTDE: Earthquakes, Dentists, and How To Talk To Your Dog

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

On today’s episode: a bold new way to help out when an earthquake hits, and Mike and Ian help out a listener with the help of a friendly dentist and a dog named Stella. Plus, our continuing commitment to be your Out of Office emergency contact turns into a surprise birthday celebration.You can email your burning questions to [e-mail] To Do Everything is available without sponsor messages for supporters of Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me+, who also get bonus episodes of Wait Wait Don't…Tell Me! featuring show outtakes, extended guest interviews, and a chance to play an exclusive WW+ quiz game with Peter! Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org. How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. It is produced by Schuyler Swenson. Technical direction from Lorna White.******(Once again) after listening:“I am OOO from (INSERT DATES HERE). For any urgent concerns, please email Mike and Ian at [e-mail]. Please bear in mind that Mike and Ian don’t know anything about anything and their help may in fact make your urgent concern worse, but they did promise to answer any email they get from this out of office message.”Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from The Extraordinarians. What does it take to be the best at something extremely specific? Celebrated character actors Kristen Schall, Tony Hale, and Matt Oberg are on a mission to find out. Subscribe to The Extraordinarians wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Peter once again in your Wait, wait, wait feed. I am so pleased to present to you another episode of How to Do Everything by Wait, Wait, producers, Ian and Mike. on this week show, they actually answer a question that we've all had, but have had trouble

articulating, namely, how do you talk to the dentist when your mouth is filled with dentistry? Now, remember, you can only get these episodes of how to do everything in our feed for a short while, so if you love the kind of mysteries that Mike and Ian are revealing, make sure you subscribe to how to do everything at their own feed. Thanks. Whenever there's an earthquake, the search and rescue team's first priority is to find people who may be trapped under the rubble. It's a very hard thing to do. Danielle Giangrasso of the NGO Apopo has been working on a new way to do it. So a major challenge that search and rescue teams face is the limited ability to penetrate deep into dense and complex debris structures to find victims.

And so our solution is to work with rats, or as we call them, rescue rats. You can actually go in and navigate these tight spaces that other technologies can't reach and also locate and identify human survivors. Wow. How do the rats tell you that? How do they give you that information? Yes. So we've trained them to pull a microswitch on their vest whenever they are in proximity of a human.

And they pull a microswitch and it triggers a beep. back to our base point, our base camp, that they've found someone. Okay, so I should be picturing these rats wearing vests. Yes. Also, they're outfitted with a technology-enabled backpack with a camera, with two-way communications, GPS. So what happens? So, okay, so there's an earthquake.

Say there's an area with a lot of debris where you suspect there might be people trapped underneath it. And then you show up with a bunch of rats? Yes. When we've identified an area of the debris that we would like to search with the rats, we'll then set up our small team and the rats will go in and search. Whether it's there's a supposed victim deep in the debris that we need to investigate, or even if we want to see what the internal debris structure is.

And so that's really valuable information. It's less glamorous than finding a person, but it's really valuable information for our search and rescue teams to have. Do you think about, have you thought about the sort of human experience of this? I just think, like, if I were trapped under a bunch of rubble, unsure if I was going to get out, and all of a sudden there was a rat in front of me pulling a switch on its vest, it might only add to my terror. Yes, or you may think you're hallucinating. Yes.

Hi, what's happening? So we've definitely thought about this. And so the first thing is, hopefully, public awareness will help. So the more we can spread the news about this, the more people can hear about it. But also, the rats have, we have search and rescue colors on their backpack. So it's orange. They have a light. And we've also played around with having a recording that plays.

Hey, I'm a rescue rat. I'm here surveying. Please let me know if you need help, which may just add to the question. We'll see. A talking rat is here to save me. Well, cool. Dr. Jean Grasso, thank you so much for telling us all about this. Thank you.

It was great speaking with you. And please thank the rats for us for all their wonderful work they're doing. I definitely will. Thank you for considering them. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Ian. And I'm Mike. On today's show, you keep making us your out-of-office emergency contacts.

We keep helping you out. Sort of, sort of. Keep sort of helping. But first, hey, Dennis, what can we help you with? Well, what do you do when you're in the dental chair and your dentist is carrying on a conversation with you but has a head in your mouth while he's doing so? That's tough.

You know, I think about this all the time. Well, all the time when I'm at the dentist. Was there a time, have you been to the dentist recently? yeah i i was there and i'm in the chair and the dentist says to me i hear you running for public office and uh i just want you to know that even though you've been a patient of mine for 40 years i don't agree with your positions so i'm not going to vote for you wow And then I had to go, oh, look, my food room, back in my room. Well, Dennis, what was happening?

What was the procedure he was doing? Was this just a cleaning, or was there more going on? No, he was doing the route for now, which was bad enough. That is bad. Wow. All right, Dennis. We're going to take this and we're going to see what we can do to help you out. Well, thank you very much.

Okay, we have an idea of how to help Dennis, something that might help any of us when we're in the situation. We're going to call up Christina Hunger. Christina, we understand you can talk to your dog. Do I have that right? That's correct. And she can talk back, which is the coolest part about it. How does this work? So she has a system of buttons that all represent a different word.

And when she presses a button with her paw, it says the word that, we've previously recorded into it. And this all came from technology that I used as a speech therapist with kids who were nonverbal. Wow. I'm picturing there's like a kind of key, like a keyboard or something. Describe what I guess your dog is seeing. Picture a giant colorful keyboard on the ground.

And it has rows of buttons on it that are about the size of her paw so that when she presses down, it says the word that we've recorded in. to it. Can you give an example of what a conversation is like then? Yeah, absolutely. So we started with just some basic words. Like she would learn to tell me when she needed to go outside or when she wanted to play, when she needed to eat, or when her water dish was empty. But it's really evolved. So now she uses our names, different locations. She has question words, some simple emotions. So this morning, for example, I was tending to my toddler and she was upset. And she said, said, mad, want outside, because I hadn't taken her out yet.

Whoa. And so then I let her out. She came back in, then she marched right back to her board and told me, come eat, come eat when she was ready for her breakfast. What's your dog's name? What's her name? Stella. Stella.

And the keyboard is customizable so you can add words. Yes. What was the last word you added? Actually, we haven't added words since my son was born, and we added. his name and cry because that was a relevant word for the environmental change going on. So how does that work? How does cry? How does Stella use that word? So when he would be crying a lot, she would a lot of times say cry all done or cry off or she would comment. My son's name is Max. So she would say like Max cry, Max cry. So I'm hearing Max crying. And then I'm

hearing Stella say, Max cry. Everyone's trying to get a patient in your situation. So you mentioned the word mad is on there because you would say mad outside. Are there other emotions on the board? We just have happy and mad. So like happy, I don't have a dog, but I think I think of our communication with dogs as mostly being them trying to tell us what they need. But like, happy might just be made.

making conversation. Does she just make conversation sometimes? All the time. That's been the most surprising part of this. So when I set out to teach her, my goal was to just give her a way to say some few basic needs. But I saw her starting to use words in ways that were really similar to kids, which I could recognize because I'm a speech therapist. And that's what I think. She'll come back in from playing outside and say, play happy and smile and lay on my feet. It's like she didn't happy to say that she just wanted to let me know she was really happy playing outside. That's so cool. That's awesome.

What reactions have you seen from guests in your home of this happening for the first time? So in the beginning, it was really interesting because no one else had done this. Like, I'm the one who started it. And sometimes I just wouldn't say anything. I would wait for Stella to just go on and talk and then see their reactions. And that was always really fun. Like, I'll never forget, we had two friends over. They came in.

We were kind of showing them around. And then Stella went and got a drink of water. And she finished her bowl. And then she walked over to her board of buttons and said, all done water. And the look on my friend's faces, because they had no idea about this. They were just in shock and had a million questions. Well, we have a question from one of our listeners, Dennis. Dennis. Dennis wants to know how he can have a good conversation with his dentist while in the dental chair, while having tools in his mouth.

And we're wondering if your invention maybe could help in Dennis's situation. I totally think it could. It came from, you know, humans using devices when they're not able to communicate with verbal speech. So I think, you know, our buttons and just this whole concept, augmentative communication in general, that absolutely solved that universal problem when the dentist asks you something and you're laying there and you don't know how to respond when you can't talk. Yeah, you would need to, you would need to think of kind of anticipate the dentist questions. But that's like, I think just in my experience, it would be, I would need a button that said, no, no big plan, that button. Yep. Of course I've been flossing.

Oh, it would be that button. Yes. I wonder if there's a way. Where are you based? In the Chicago area. Could we, is there a way? I wonder if we could get this board to a dentist and try this out. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, we definitely could. Okay, so we have acquired from Christina. Thank you, Christina. We've acquired this board. We've programmed it with our own. messages. And we are now at the dentist because we're going to try it out. And I'm going to be getting, I'm the one getting in the chair. I'll be the patient. So can I have you just introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Teresa Neal, owner of Windy City Family Dental here on Michigan Avenue. Excited to

meet Mike. See what's going on. Thinking about Dennis's question, do you, when you're working on, Do you talk to your patients? I do all the time. Do you ask them questions? Yeah, of course I do. That's how I get to know my patience. But, I mean, you must know that it's hard for them to respond. Is it hard?

Most do. Wait, are you, do you ever have to stop what you're doing to continue a conversation? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I do. Like, does it ever, do you ever get into, like, deep philosophical conversations where a yes or no just won't do? Yes, sometimes I do. Yeah, so we'll stop and we'll talk.

you know, like this, I'll pull my mask down and we'll start talking. Are there any patients where you don't want to hear what they have to say, so you keep going? Yes. Yes, definitely. Sometimes when it gets into, I don't know, sticky things like politics or just something I don't want to hear about, we have a device called a bite block where it kind of just keeps their mouth open. And so they can't really close.

really stop and keep talking. We have different little tools we could use that will end the conversation pretty effectively. So there are cases where you will use the bite block, even if it is not dentally necessary. Yes. Yeah. Actually, it might be good to put, yeah, to put a bite block in, Mike. Yeah, okay, so let's try it then. Then I, well, so we have this device that will do the talking for me so that I don't have to talk. And this is a device that was invented so that dogs could talk to their owners. Oh. All right. Do you want to put it on top of the

No, I think I... You're okay? It's on this room. Okay. So welcome, Mike, to our practice. How are your teeth feeling today? Really, really good. Yeah, they look pretty good. Let's see. How often are you brushing? Oh, every day. Every day. Every day.

How about flossing? Of course, I've been flossing. So you're brushing pretty well. Really, really good. Okay, I see a little, you had braces too. I can see a little retainer here. Really, really good. Mike, can I ask a question?

How do you feel about me, your friend, being able to look into your mouth as you're getting a dental exam? I love that for you. Yeah, I mean, your teeth look good. They do look good, Mike. Yeah, they're a very good example. As Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love said, having a broken heart

is a good sign, because it means you tried for something. Okay. Where's my bite block? So far, what do you think about this device as a, would you want one of these, say, mounted on the chair so a patient could speak to you? It's effective, but probably not. I don't know.

We don't love it. I think this device is, it needs some refinement. I think we have, we've uncovered the limitations of this device. It doesn't, I don't know. it works for the situation. Yeah. Maybe the problem is we modified it when maybe we should have caught the, we just kept the dog responses.

Or the dog responses. Outside. Yeah. Food. Yeah. I feel like if you're doing something a patient doesn't like and they keep saying outside, that communicates. Stop.

Yeah. Yeah. If you could reprogram this, what would you have me say? a lot of yes and knows really is more simple yeah more simple things like how are you doing a lot of my patients do thumbs up which is good thumbs down which is I need a break that hurts yeah do you think being a dentist do you think that that has made you better at telling when people are lying yes definitely a lot of my patients lie to me about how well they're brushing their teeth and I can tell let me ask you this question if I know I have a dentist appointment next

week. Yeah. Should I start flossing the week before? You should, but I can tell still that you only started flossing recently. Yeah, I would say like at least three months of consistent flossing. Oh, that's not going to happen. Yeah. All right.

Do you and the hygienists you work with, do you have any kind of secret ways of communicating with each other? Like if you don't, if you need to say something that you don't want the patient to know, you're talking about, do you have kind of code words or anything? Are we telling you? We do have code words, yes, in the notes and when we speak to each other. Okay, tell me one code word. Triangle, we have a triangle patient. That means something. Wait, what does it mean? What does it mean? It can mean a lot of different things, usually just high maintenance maybe in different ways. Where does that come from? Why triangle? I don't know. We just picked triangle because it's not a common word that

we would really ever use to describe a patient. It doesn't really mean anything to the average person. Sometimes their chart will be labeled triangle. And so if you or another patient sees triangle, they don't really know what that means. Was Mike a triangle patient? No, Mike was awesome. Great teeth. Yeah. Is it on? Because I don't want everybody to know. It is on. Oh, it is on. Okay. So some patients talk more than others. Like I do. This is one of the hygienists in the office. So I'm going to go in there and I'm going to tell her you have a phone call in room 10, which we don't have a room 10. So she knows she has to finish the conversation. So I have to get her out of there because we're running late.

Yeah. We make it sound like an important phone call in room 10, which we don't have at room 10. So. Well, all right, we don't. I get the sense that there might be a phone call in room 10 that you guys should take. Thank you. Thank you, also. You're welcome.

You're welcome. Thanks for stopping by. I don't actually have thank you on here. Sorry. Okay, you need that for sure. There's so many we need. Thank you. OMG, I love that. Christina Hunger, who invented this technology, wrote a book about her experience.

It's called How Stella Learned to Talk. Stella's a dog. Hey, Paola. Ooh, this is your treasure. It's your birthday treasure. Sure. You've found it. Everyone else. Just move on. If you have questions for us, whatever they may be, you can get them to us at how-to at npr.org.

We promise we'll do our best, our very best, to find the perfect person to help solve your problem. Send those questions to us, how-to at npr.org. This message comes from RINCE, who knows that mastering the perfect house-party table spread takes time. But so does laundry. So Rinse takes your laundry and hand-delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned. And you can take the time once spent sorting and waiting, folding, and queuing, to finally pursue your real passion, rolling delicate roses of Capacola, alongside meand-earned. ribbons of Amon Serrano, transforming a humble plank of weathered barnwood into a show-stopping charcutory spread. Rinse, it's time to be great. This message comes from Next We Have with

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innovation, from revolutionizing higher education to supporting artists who are driving change. Pathbreakers is available on podcast platforms. Our offer still stands to be your out-of-office email emergency contact when you go on vacation. And this week, somebody named Paola put us as her contact when she went off to celebrate her birthday week. Specifically, she said, I am mentally away celebrating my birthday week. All birthday messages, celebration logistics, and general love notes should be trusted to Mike and Ian at how-to.org. We got a slew of responses. Let's get to them now.

Hey, Ken. So, Ken, what's going on? Well, it was kind of a strange reply. So I tried contacting here several different ways. And so I finally emailed there, and I got this weird out-of-office reply saying to contact you guys. So you can help me with in terms of finding out what's going on with her birthday. So you're trying to figure out, like, what her plans are or if there is a party. Because we saw the, I think we saw the same out-of-office message you did. But we don't know any further details at this point, but we will try and track it down. That'd be great.

Okay. So if you wanted us to convey a message to Paola regarding her birthday, or if you have a question, what would it be? Just a happy birthday from Ken. Where are you? What are you up to? And I guess that's about it. Okay, terrific. And what birthday is this? Do you know? You mean her age?

I guess, yeah. I guess I am asking that. I don't know if that's something. You don't have to answer that. Yeah. Maybe she's uncomfortable. I don't know. Maybe she just embraces the passage of time. I don't know. She's a year older. That's all I can say. Okay. That's good diplomacy.

Okay. I feel like, so we're at the beginning of this process. Can you tell us just like a little bit of about her as we kind of shape maybe what we might want to do? Well, she knows a lot of people. She's pretty outgoing. She's a very friendly person. And she loves to dance. Oh, okay.

That's fun. Any dietary restrictions? Yeah. preferably no lactose. Hey, Eduardo, we got an email from you seeking assistance in celebrating Paola's birthday. We're happy to help you if maybe there's some wishes you want to convey, we can send them to her. Yeah, sounds good. It'd be great. How long have you known Paola?

She's my sister, actually. Sorry, she's your sister? Yeah. I was a joke, right? I send her a text. I send her an email, I sent her what's up, and I called her. And when I got the email bag, I was like, what is this? Yeah. So, okay, so let's see. Why don't we just, we'll just give you an opening right now.

You can say a birthday message for your sister. Sure. Felicitis. I care much. Hope you've had a fantastic birthday. And we're just entering the weekends. So lots more to celebrate. And I love you very much and wish you best.

That's fantastic. You seem like a great brother. I try to be. Yeah. So we're going to try and take our duty very seriously and try and do something for Paola. Can you tell us, we don't know, we've never met her, we don't know anything about her. Do you want to tell us something about her so we know what maybe we want to do? Sure.

She likes dark chocolate, that's for sure. glass of wine and white and dark chocolate What else? Yeah, when we were a kid who we used to do like treasure hunt or me and my sister. Oh. But there was more

and we're just memories and anything else, but yeah. Okay, so we wanted to do something nice for Paola, so we sent an edible arrangement to her school. A bouquet of fruit. This is with dark chocolate, And no lactose. Can you hear me? Hello, Paola.

Hi. Happy birthday, Paola. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm still laughing about all this. Yeah, we got a lot of, a lot of people reached out to us needing help to celebrate your birthday. We talked to Ken. We talked to your brother, Eduardo.

I just needed some mental time away, and I didn't really. really want to plan for anything this time, so I wasn't purposely picking up the phone or answering text. People found it a little bit weird. My mom was utterly confused. We didn't hear from your mom. Yeah, I think someone from work was trying to help me to relax. I have no idea. She did not understand. Well, did it work? Do you feel rejuvenated? I do. I think it worked. You know, And, of course, I wanted to leave this with someone I could trust to do absolutely nothing helpful. And you two were, you know, the obvious choice. That's, that is, that is who we are.

I trusted you guys fully. You know, I think one thing we're going to do, we want to do one more thing. So your brother told us that when you were kids, you used to do treasure hunts. Yes, that's right. I think what we're going to do We're going to hide treasure in this podcast episode Okay

Probably by this point in the episode Everyone will have heard it And wondered what that was But now they know That was your birthday treasure Hidden hidden in here somewhere Oh, that's so sweet Well, happy birthday

Thank you so much Thank you, thank you I love you guys If you, having just heard this having heard how we helped Paola with her birthday, if you want us to be your out-of-office emergency contact, just copy and paste the out-of-office message from our show notes. We blew our entire budget on one edible arrangement,

so we will not be helping in that way. But any other way, we'll do our best. Well, that does it for this week's show. What'd you learn, Ian? I learned dogs. I think it's amazing. I learned dogs. Just sometimes just want to make conversation.

Yeah. Yeah, that does change things, doesn't it? It's not just, you know, give me food, let me out. Mm-hmm. I don't like the way you're talking to me right now. Don't patronize me. I'm not always a good boy. You know, Mike, I, uh, one other thing that this episode has been making me think about.

I just, you know, there's a lot of people out there with, with broken hearts. Okay. Right. And if they're listening to us right now, I just wonder if you have, have any advice. Oh, for people with broken hearts. Sure. You know, okay, yeah, now that you mentioned it, it does remind me.

As Elizabeth Gilbert, author of E. Pray, Love said, having a broken heart is a good sign because it means you tried for something. It is weird, right, Mike, that we, in programming the dentist talking board, we had a long quote from Elizabeth Gilbert, but we didn't think to put in, thank you. I feel like, again, we had a lot of missed opportunities. If Stella hears this episode, she's going to have a lot of strong criticism. Out. Crying. Podcasts.

Bad Dorks. Attack. How to Do Everything is produced by Hina Shrabastava and Skyler Swinson. Technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is Kin. Ken, thanks for helping us celebrate Paola's birthday. And happy birthday to you, whenever that birthday may come. If you have any questions, we're happy to try and answer them.

You can send them to us at how-to at npr.org. I'm in. And I'm Mike. Thanks. Thanks.