Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

In this two-guest episode, Howard Farran sits down with the leadership team behind DOCS Education. Dr. Michael D. Silverman, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, is a globally recognized lecturer, author, and patient advocacy leader with more than four decades of clinical experience as a general dentist. He co-founded the Dental Organization for Conscious Sedation in 1999 to give dentists the training and safety protocols needed to treat high-anxiety patients, and as President — and a Fellow of both the International College of Dentists and the American College of Dentistry — he has helped teach over 40,000 dental prof...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Tobi Bosede, a recognized leader in artificial intelligence and machine learning — named one of Samasource's "12 Women in Machine Learning to Watch" — who left a career building production AI systems for Fortune 500 companies to found DentalFynd, an AI-powered prepaid booking marketplace for fee-for-service dentistry. The conversation leans hard into the AI question dominating the dental community right now. Tobi draws a clear line between genuine application and buzzword, describing overkill AI as "trying to hit a fly with a hammer when you can just use a swat," and pointing to where it earn...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with brothers Jordon and Justin Comstock to dig into the economics of recurring revenue in dentistry. Jordon is the founder and CEO of BoomCloud, a dental membership-plan platform he bootstrapped into a multimillion-dollar SaaS company now serving hundreds of practices. He has spent years helping dentists create, automate, and scale in-house membership programs as an alternative to relying exclusively on traditional insurance and PPO reimbursement, with a focus on shifting practices from one-time transactional revenue toward systematic recurring income.

The conversation starts with a blunt observation: most dental practices begin...

In this episode, Howard Farran welcomes back Dr. Ann Marie Gorczyca for her sixth appearance on the show. An orthodontist with more than 36 years of experience, she is a graduate of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine with a Master's in Public Health from Harvard's Department of Health Management and Policy, completed her orthodontic residency at Northwestern, and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Orthodontics and Past President of the Northern California Angle Society of Orthodontists. She taught practice management to orthodontic residents in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly a decade, leads her team at...

In this special episode, Howard Farran steps into the lecture hall rather than the studio, delivering a guest lecture to dental students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas at the invitation of Dr. Karen Kucharski, Assistant Professor in Residence in Clinical Sciences. The talk — titled The Business of Dentistry After Graduation: DSOs, Practice Ownership, Student Loans, and Career Strategy — was requested for a simple reason: students are increasingly convinced that practice ownership is a dream that has died, and they want an honest, balanced education on what actually awaits them after graduation.

Howard works through the ques...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Jill A. Tanzi, current president of the Alliance of Independent Dentists and a partner in Shero Dental Advisors. A valedictorian from Oxford, Massachusetts, she earned her BA cum laude in Biology from the University of Rochester and her DDS with honors from the University of Maryland, and has owned and practiced in a successful group practice in Hopkinton, MA for the past 23 years. That combination of hands-on ownership and organized advocacy gives her a grounded perspective on the pressures facing independent practice today.

The conversation tackles the question...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Lior Tamir, a practicing dentist and entrepreneur who spent more than a decade in marketing technology — building platforms that turned data into action for global consumer brands — before returning to dentistry and finding a fragmented, outdated ecosystem with almost no real-time clarity. He grew his de novo practice, Bloom Dental Group, to $5M in its first seven years and used it as the testing ground for The Dental App, a cloud-based platform combining practice management, patient relationships, and real-time analytics into a single AI-powered system.

The conversation centers on a...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Jim Glidewell — the man he calls his idol, mentor, and the GOAT of crown and bridge — for a conversation nearly 1,800 episodes in the making. Jim traces his improbable path from a one-room Kentucky schoolhouse with a coal stove and no electricity, to returning from Vietnam, selling insurance at 21, and stumbling into dental technology after visiting a friend at his lab bench. He explains the philosophy that shaped everything since: like Henry Ford, Sam Walton, and Southwest Airlines, the winner isn't whoever charges the most, it's whoever delivers the most value for the...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Arthur Volker, a graduate of the Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery who went on to complete a Master's degree in Prosthodontics and New Technologies from the University of Siena. In addition to his private practice in Sunnyside, New York, Dr. Volker owns DigiDent Laboratory — giving him a valuable dual perspective from both the operatory and the lab bench. He has published multiple articles and textbook chapters and lectures nationally and internationally on cosmetic dentistry, minimally invasive dentistry, dental materials, and digital dentistry.

The conversation centers on...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. George Hariri, entrepreneur, educator, and co-founder of Shared Practices — one of dentistry's leading coaching and consulting organizations. After acquiring and scaling his own practices, George built a reputation for a candid, systems-driven approach to ownership and a willingness to challenge the conventional wisdom that leaves too many dentists overworked and underpaid. The conversation arrives at a milestone moment: the Shared Practices Podcast turns ten this year, and George reflects on what has changed across a decade of coaching aspiring and current practice owners, the growth of the coaching program, and th...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Anthony "Tony" Gedge, who has spent 24 years in dentistry focused on the one thing most systems overlook: trust. His route into the profession was anything but conventional — he moved from running nightclubs into dentistry, where he built a pain-free movement around anxious patients and the fear of the injection, founded the Pain-Free Dentistry Institute, and co-founded Dental Mavericks, a charity that has now helped more than 180,000 children. He also took John Lennon's tooth and Elvis Presley's crown on tour to raise mouth cancer awareness — a campaign with fresh urgency given that UK d...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Philippe Salah, a PhD-trained scientist with a lifelong passion for innovation in orthodontics. Philippe co-founded Harmony, a pioneering lingual orthodontics company, in 2007, before founding DentalMonitoring in 2013 — a company he still leads as CEO and which has become a driving force in AI-powered, remote patient care.

The conversation explores how DentalMonitoring supports the full patient journey, from initial observation through active treatment and all the way to retention, and what continuous remote monitoring changes about the way orthodontists practice. Philippe and Howard also dig into a question weighing on many cl...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Erin Sheffield, a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon who has built a career breaking barriers in one of medicine's most male-dominated specialties. Beyond the operating room, she is an international speaker, educator, content creator, and advocate — the founder of The Doctor Is ALL In, a retreat helping high-achieving women doctors reconnect with their purpose and reclaim their well-being, and the host of The Resting Stitch Face podcast, where she leads candid conversations about identity, leadership, and the cost of fitting in.

The conversation moves fluidly between the clinical an...

In this episode, Howard Farran podcasts live from Guatemala with Dr. Tommy Murph — the Myrtle Beach–area general dentist and Dentaltown legend behind more than 50,000 posts and the longest-running threads in the community's history. Speaking from the clinic floor between patients, Tommy walks through the scale of the operation: 46 dentists from four countries, roughly 250–300 patients a day, twelve-hour days, and nearly 1,000 teeth extracted in a single day, with about 45% of them wisdom teeth. Four times a year, he and Dr. Fletcher run these trips as a hybrid of charity dentistry and hands-on continuing education, delivering 54 hours of participation credit throug...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Peeyush Ranjan, a board-certified pediatric dentist in both the United States and Canada and the owner of Tooth Pals in Airdrie, Alberta. Dr. Ranjan began his career in general dentistry in 2009 before discovering his passion for treating children, which led him to complete his pediatric residency at Nova Southeastern University and Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, where he served as Chief Resident. His master's research explored using picture-guided techniques to improve oral hygiene in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder — work that continues to shape how he cares for kids today.

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with JoAnne Tanner, founder of Tanner Management, a dental practice consulting firm specializing in acquisitions, financial due diligence, and operational systems. With more than 20 years of experience, JoAnne has guided countless dentists through the process of buying a practice — helping them avoid costly mistakes and build strong business foundations from day one. She's also the author of The Smart Dentist's Guide to Buying a Dental Practice, and is known for a clear, no-nonsense approach that makes complex transactions understandable.

The conversation focuses on what dentists need to know before signing on...

In this two-guest episode, Howard Farran brings together two clinicians unafraid to challenge the status quo. Dr. Michael DeLuke is a board-certified orthodontist who graduated valedictorian from SUNY Stony Brook and served as Chief Resident at UConn before owning DeLuke Orthodontics for nearly two decades. He has since retired from private practice to teach and coach full-time, serving on faculty at Montefiore Einstein and a Florida pediatric dental residency, and founding DeLuke Orthodontic Coaching ("DOC") and The DOC Podcast. Dr. Mark Levi is a Sydney-based dentist who, after his own severe obstructive sleep apnea diagnosis in 1998, dedicated his career...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Kevin Lassiter, an Arizona native and proud Army veteran who earned his bachelor's degree from Arizona State University and his Doctor of Dental Medicine from Midwestern University College of Dental Medicine. Dr. Lassiter spent 12 years serving as a dentist in the U.S. Army, completing his specialty training through the United States Army Prosthodontic Program, and today provides relationship-centered dentistry that blends science and artistry to create healthy, natural-looking, long-lasting smiles.

The conversation traces Dr. Lassiter's path from a 19-year-old applying to dental school — admittedly naive in those ea...

In this two-guest episode, Howard Farran sits down with two financial leaders from PracticeCFO. Wes Read is a CPA, Certified Financial Planner™, and Registered Investment Advisor who began his career in Big 4 accounting at Ernst & Young before founding PracticeCFO in 2009 to give practice-owning doctors access to CFO-level financial leadership. He's also the founder of Practice Orbit and creator of Associates On Fire, a free financial education platform for dental associates. Joining him is Paul Lipcius, a CPA, Series 65-licensed Investment Adviser Representative, and CFO Advisor at the firm with nearly a decade of experience, who focuses on higher-net-worth clients, ca...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Paul Homoly, one of the profession's foremost authorities on treatment acceptance and the new patient experience. After 20 years in clinical reconstructive dentistry, Paul devoted the following decades to building what many consider the most comprehensive body of work on guiding dentists and their teams toward successful complete-care practices. He's the author of several influential books — including Dentists: An Endangered Species, Isn't It Wonderful When Patients Say "YES!", and Just Because You're an Expert… Doesn't Make You Interesting — and the first dentist worldwide to earn the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, the hi...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Chanelle Small, an endodontist who earned her Certificate of Endodontics from Tufts and both her DDS and undergraduate degree from Howard University, and who served as a Clinical Instructor at Columbia. Beyond founding Midtown Endodontics in New York City, Dr. Small works as a dental expert witness, retained by both plaintiff and defense attorneys across multiple states to determine whether the standard of care was met in malpractice cases.

The conversation demystifies the legal side of dentistry that most clinicians never see until it's too late. Dr. Small...

In this two-guest episode, Howard Farran brings together two very different but complementary paths in reconstructive surgery. Nancy Hairston is the founder and CEO of MedCAD, a Dallas-based medical technology company specializing in patient-matched cranial, facial, and mandibular implants. A sculptor by training — with a fine arts degree and an early career designing toys for Mattel and Disney and building 3D animation software that became Maya — Nancy channeled her mastery of digital sculpting into medicine, earning FDA clearance for her AccuShape cranial implant in 2011 and delivering custom, patient-specific solutions for more than 8,000 individuals since. Dr. Samir Singh is a boar...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Bob "Dee" Dokhanchi — a private practice dentist since 1993, entrepreneur, media publisher, and tireless advocate for the profession. A 1992 graduate of Loyola University Chicago College of Dental Surgery, Bob has earned a reputation as a forward-thinking leader with a deep interest in technology, software, and cloud systems, becoming widely known as the "cloud guy" for his practical advice on dental tech and digital strategy. He's also the founder of Dentistry in General, a large verified dentist-only community built to foster candid discussion, support, and connection, along with its media arm spanning th...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Joseph Hogan, President and CEO of Align Technology — the company behind Invisalign and the iTero scanner. Hogan brings an extraordinary executive background to the conversation, having led ABB, a $40 billion global automation company, and spent 25 years at General Electric, including eight years as CEO of GE Healthcare, where he more than doubled revenues from $7 billion to $16 billion.

The discussion explores where Align is focusing its efforts to meet dentists where they are today, the recent innovations Hogan is most excited about, and what separates the most successful Invisalign-trained doctors fr...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Karl Frye, Principal Broker and owner of Frye Practice Sales, a Scottsdale-based practice and commercial real estate brokerage, and current President of the National Association of Practice Brokers. Before founding his firm in 2015, Karl spent more than a decade in commercial banking serving the M&A needs of doctors — financing the startups, growth, sales, and refinances of dental practices nationwide. That credit background gives him a distinctive, outcome-focused perspective on what's actually realistic in today's healthcare acquisition market.

The conversation tackles the questions on every practice owner's mind: whether th...

In this four-guest roundtable — part three of the show's airway and sleep series — Howard Farran brings together a genuinely multidisciplinary panel: Patrick McKeown, an internationally recognized breathing expert, author of eleven books, and creator of MyoTape and the modern Buteyko approach; Dr. Felix Liao, an engineer-turned-dentist who coined "Impaired Mouth Syndrome" and developed Airway Facial Epigenetics through his AMD Academy Global; Nerissa Boggan, a myofunctional therapist and sleep-and-breathing educator with 25+ years in dental hygiene and author of the children's book My Dog Myo and My Nose; and Dr. Anthony Bolamperti, a second-generation laser dentist running Omaha Laser Dentistry and its...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Brian Hanks, MBA, CFP — a national dental transitions expert, author, accountant, and Certified Financial Planner who has been directly involved in hundreds of dental practice transitions across all fifty states. Through his firm, Dental Buyer Advocates, Brian works exclusively with buyers, guiding them through due diligence, negotiation, financing, and transition. He joins the show to explain what recent turbulence in private credit markets could mean for dental practice valuations.

The conversation starts with the Blue Owl private credit situation and why a fund halting redemptions matters to everyday dentists. Br...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Eric J. Morin, MBA, Founder and President of Tower Leadership, a Forbes speaker and best-selling author who has spent more than two decades helping doctors build more profitable, scalable, and valuable businesses. The conversation focuses on the operational and financial disciplines that separate a practice that simply produces well from one that commands real enterprise value.

Eric explains how dentists can grow EBITDA without just doing more dentistry — by finding the profit quietly lost to overhead, inefficiency, weak scheduling, and poor case acceptance — and walks through the key KPIs ever...

In this roundtable — part two of the show's airway and sleep series recorded around an ASBA gathering — Howard Farran sits down with three leaders working at the intersection of dentistry, sleep, and medicine: Dr. Luann Hall, a UCSF-trained "recovering pediatric dentist," minimally invasive advocate, and regent of the American College of Dentists; Dr. Manisha Witmans, a board-certified sleep physician, pediatrician, and pediatric pulmonologist who built the pediatric sleep program at Stollery Children's Hospital and recently learned she's been an OSA patient herself since childhood; and Dr. Janelle Crichton, an orthodontist and airway specialist whose practice ranks #1 in Canada for Invi...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Eric Recker — a dentist of 24 years, keynote speaker, author, pilot, mountain climber, and success coach based in Pella, Iowa — for a candid conversation about burnout and the path back from it. Eric opens up about how close he came to leaving dentistry entirely: he tried to sell his practice, and when the deal fell through, he was forced to confront the tension headaches, heart palpitations, and panic attacks he'd spent a decade dismissing as "just how it is" — including one attack that left him on his office server room floor on a M...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Randolph Cross, a private practice endodontist in Watsonville, California, and the inventor of the EndoCator — a first-of-its-kind chairside ATP test that tells clinicians, in five seconds, whether a root canal is truly clean before they close it. Dr. Cross traces the idea back to a finals-week breakdown during his residency at USC, when he realized the profession had no reliable, real-time way to confirm disinfection. Drawing on his biochemistry background, he bought a cheap ATP tester off eBay, tried it on extracted teeth, and watched the readings drop from dirty to...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Sompop Bencharit, a board-certified prosthodontist, innovation strategist, and Director of Innovation at the Austin Institute of Dental Medicine, who has led technology transformation at VCU, the Medical University of South Carolina, and High Point University. A Fellow of the American College of Prosthodontists with over 100 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Bencharit also serves as president of HADEN — the Haptic and AI in Dental Education Network — connecting more than 70 educators worldwide.

The conversation opens by demystifying "haptics" — the virtual-reality, flight-simulator-style training that lets students feel the difference between drilling enamel and dentin...

In this episode, Howard Farran welcomes back Dr. Densen Cao — physicist, prolific inventor, and founder and CEO of CAO Group and AMD Lasers — for his first return to the show in eight years. Mentored early in his career by Dr. Gordon and Dr. Rella Christensen, Dr. Cao has spent decades developing disruptive dental technologies at the intersection of physics, materials science, and clinical dentistry.

The heart of the conversation is his newly released LEAP procedure (Laser Endodontic Ablation Procedure), unveiled at AAE 2026 after five years of FDA review and more than 100 U.S. cases. Dr. Cao explains why...

In this episode, Howard Farran reconnects with longtime friend Dr. Ben Wachter, a Mesa, Arizona native and 2017 graduate of A.T. Still University whose career has been shaped by service, perseverance, and a passion for caring for the underserved. Ben opens up about the mentor who changed his life — the late Dr. Tim Lukowski — who inspired him to leave a path toward medical school, took him on his first mission trips to Mexico, and believed in him through three rounds of dental school applications.

The conversation moves through Ben's remarkable commitment to charitable care, including 10 dental mission trip...

In this two-hour roundtable recorded at a global airway, breathing, and sleep conference, Howard Farran sits down with three of the field's most passionate voices: Dr. Toshi Hart, Diplomate and President-Elect of the American Sleep and Breathing Academy; Dr. Kimberly Ann Meyer, current President of the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain; and Dr. Mark Levi, a Sydney-based diplomate who turned his own severe sleep apnea diagnosis into a career treating children.

The conversation centers on a provocative idea: that the malocclusion, crowded teeth, and breathing problems flooding modern dental practices stem from generations of underdeveloped jaws — driven by...

In this episode, Howard Farran is joined by Ellen Bösl, Vice President of Research and Development at Solventum, where she leads the strategy and execution of the Global Dental Solutions R&D organization. A chemical engineer by training with a 25-year career spanning Solventum and 3M — including R&D leadership across MedSurg, Transportation, and Electronics — Ellen brings a systems-level lens to one of the profession's most stubborn problems: oral health inequity. The conversation confronts why oral health remains one of the most unequal corners of healthcare despite unprecedented advances in technology, materials, and knowledge. Ellen and Howard dig into...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Tobias Richter, founder of TRI® Dental Implants and a dental entrepreneur with two decades of experience at the cutting edge of the implant industry. Tobias traces his journey from launching product innovations like SLActive at Straumann, to co-founding Implant Direct Europe and building the business across 25 markets before its sale to the Danaher Group, to eventually founding TRI® as an innovative digital implant company. Beyond TRI®, he is also a co-founder of the German dental clinic group DENTABENE, a partner in the e-learning platform Dental Campus, and a board member of the...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Jack Hahn, a pioneering figure in implant dentistry whose career spans more than 58 years — 54 of them dedicated to implants. Dr. Hahn takes listeners through a remarkable journey that began with placing bilateral blade implants in 1970, evolved through subperiosteal and early root form implants, and ultimately led him to design four distinct implant systems, including the Steri-Oss, the Replace Tapered Implant, and the Hahn Tapered Implant now manufactured by Glidewell. Along the way, he shares stories of treating patients and teaching dentists across the globe — from Russia to Saudi Arabia — the skepti...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Jay Reznick, a Diplomate of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and one of North America's earliest adopters of fully-guided, prosthetically-based implant surgery. Trained at Tufts, USC, and L.A. County-USC Medical Center, Dr. Reznick holds both a DMD and an MD — and has spent the last two decades at the forefront of 3D digital technology in dentistry, becoming the first specialist in the U.S. to integrate CBCT and CAD/CAM into clinical practice. He is a co-founder of OnlineOralSurgery.com, a leading educational platform for practicing de...

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Drs. Jessica and Richard Marn — a wife-and-husband team whose combined expertise in pediatric dentistry and anesthesiology has led them to a mission-driven focus on sedation safety in dental and oral surgery practices. Jessica is a board-certified pediatric dentist and private practice owner with over two decades of experience in New York City, while Richard is dual board-certified in anesthesiology and pediatric anesthesiology, with over 18,000 anesthetics delivered and faculty experience training Harvard Hospital anesthesiologists in crisis resource management and performance under pressure. Together, they developed the Boring Sedation Method — a systems-based approach buil...