Root Cause (GAM394)

### Starring:

Thomas Rau, Jerry Tennant, Thomas Levy, David Minkoff, Bradley Nelson, Joseph Mercola

## Hosts

Noah Lugeons

Heath Enwright

Eli Bosnick

### Special Guest

Michael Marshall

***Root Cause*** is the (no longer on Netflix) "documentary" about how heart disease, and MS, and cancer, and literally every other human illness is all caused by a routine dental procedure.

### **Opening Phrase**

Where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema, or they'll turn us into lobsters, apparently.

### **How Bad Was It?**

Well, if you love *Plandemic*, *Vaxxed*, and *Vaxxed II*, but you hate how it took multiple sentences to disprove the movie's thesis, you will *love* this movie.

### **Best Worst**

* Marsh: …doctors. [Diploma Mills, Osteopaths, Naturopaths, Name Changes, etc.]
* Noah: …narrator evacuations. [As if being watched was his kink.]
* Eli: …analogy. [One of the experts may be a plant by Marsh.]

### **Notes**

* Check out Marsh on Twitter, *Be Reasonable*, *Skeptics with a K*, *The Skeptic* (UK), and at The Good Thinking Society, or (thanks to Eli) Skeptic of the Year and MarshStoleHisVaccineFromAnOldLady.com.
* The American Association of Endodontists, the American Dental Association, and the American Association for Dental Research sent a letter condemning *Root Cause* to executives at *Netflix*, *Amazon*, *Apple*, and *Vimeo*. The Canadian Academy of Endodontics said "We have decided that we don’t want to engage the movie directly so as not to amplify its twisted and false message. The CAE has taken the approach of amplifying the safety and merits of endodontics and to not reference the movie directly." As mentioned in *Nature*, in response the British Endodontic Society added a section to its website under the heading "Exploding Endodontic Myths."

### **Jokes**

* [Noah: He's like, "Well, you know, I know all about teeth problems, so when my patients come in and I tell them 'You know, you have insomnia you have trouble with your memory, you have trouble dealing with stress' they're like, 'Wow, somebody who finally gets it.' " I'm like, "That's a fucking *horoscope*."] [Marsh: Yeah.] [Eli: Who sits down, their doctor goes "I'm gonna guess before you tell me anything", and they go "This is a good fucking doctor. This is *good*."] [Marsh: Never trust a doctor who eyeballs it when you walk in the room. Like, you want to give them *something*.] [Eli: "Let me raw dog this one. You are…have a broken leg."]

### **Interstitials**

* Final Planning Meeting (4:47)
* Breast Cancer and Your Teeth (32:25)
* Root Canal Analogy (1:04:42)
* Outtakes (1:30:46) [Post Credits]

### **Tropes**

* ~~Bible Reading~~ Quackery Montage
* Boss in a Bit Part
* ~~Christians~~Quacks Don't Know How the World Works
* ~~Coincidence~~Correlation Treated as ~~Miracle~~ Causation
* Heath is Away This Week
* Looks Like…
* Name That Movie!
* Take Your Damn Medicine!

### **Breakfast Club Close**

* Marsh: After pulling this movie in 2019, and they never produced a batshit documentary again.
* Noah: *My* penis *also* works… just fine.
* Eli: Eli went on a super fun surf vacation. \*sings wordlessly\*

### **Links**

* Episode on Audioboom
* Episode on YouTube
* Episode on Patreon
* Film on YouTube
* IMDb