Dental technology journalism has had no greater champion over the past three decades than Dr. Paul Feuerstein — and this episode is a master class in how passion, persistence, and a willingness to tinker can shape an entire profession’s relationship with technology. On this episode of The Technology Evangelist Podcast, host Dr. John Flucke sits down with his longtime friend, collaborator, and fellow internet pioneer to trace a journey that runs from Sputnik-era IQ testing and punch-card computing to the editor-in-chief chair at Dentistry Today, the industry’s leading trade journal. This episode is brought to you by Medidenta Digital Solutions, the proud sponsor making this podcast possible.
Key Insights on Dental Technology Journalism and the Future of Dental Media:
- A Childhood Built for Technology: Dr. Feuerstein’s path to dental technology journalism was set in motion before he ever picked up a handpiece. Growing up in Queens during the Sputnik era, he was identified in second grade as part of a cohort of academically gifted students and tracked into an accelerated science and math curriculum funded by the U.S. government’s push to win the space race. He skipped multiple grades, entered high school at age 11 or 12, and graduated at 15 — a formative experience in intellectual confidence that was simultaneously socially isolating. His early computer training was conducted on the IBM 360, a room-sized mainframe programmed with punch cards where a single error on line 16 meant starting the entire stack over the next day. That foundation in computational thinking, combined with classical piano training and years of performing in bands, shaped the cross-disciplinary curiosity that has defined his career ever since.
- Almost a Rock Star, Almost a Nuclear Physicist: During his junior year at the New Jersey College of Dentistry, Dr. Feuerstein’s band was offered a recording contract with Decca Records — complete with a cross-country tour. He turned it down. His bandmate, who was also prepared to decline, stood up first and refused to sign on other grounds, and the contract collapsed. Dr. Feuerstein describes the decision with characteristic humor, crediting his father’s frank assessment that he was probably not the next Eric Clapton. His best childhood friend, by contrast, went on to earn a PhD in nuclear physics before going to medical school and becoming head of radiology at the Lahey Clinic. The contrast, he says, tells you everything about how the Sputnik-era tracking program worked.
- How Dental Technology Journalism Began — With a Newsletter and a Photocopier: Dr. Feuerstein’s entry into dental writing parallels Dr. Flucke’s in its informality and unexpectedness. Both men were writing about technology for Bob Davis’s photocopied newsletter, Tools R Us — printed on a desktop copier, folded by hand, stapled, and mailed to subscribers — before either of them had any formal role in dental media. That newsletter, primitive as it was, established the audience and the voice that eventually attracted the attention of editors at real publications. Dr. Feuerstein went on to write a monthly technology column for Dental Economics for roughly fifteen years before being recruited — in what he describes as a somewhat alarming encounter in a dark alley during a New York dental meeting — by Jim Radcliffe, the founder of Dentistry Today.
- From Columnist to Editor-in-Chief: When longtime Dentistry Today editor Damon Adams retired several years ago, he asked Dr. Feuerstein to take over as editor-in-chief. Dr. Feuerstein’s initial understanding of the role — “I just read articles, right?” — turned out to be far from the reality. The job is primarily about identifying and developing talent: finding credible clinicians with genuinely useful knowledge, evaluating whether their content serves readers rather than themselves, validating clinical references, and actively recruiting voices that represent the actual diversity of the profession. His most memorable example of dental technology journalism at its best involved a young New Jersey dentist he spotted in a Facebook group who had documented a complete digital crown workflow with a new intraoral scanner. Dr. Feuerstein cold-messaged him, offered him a spot in the magazine, and watched that dentist’s career trajectory change completely — he is now teaching digital dentistry internationally.
- Changing the Face of the Magazine: One of Dr. Feuerstein’s most deliberate editorial priorities has been diversifying the authorship of Dentistry Today to reflect what dental school classes actually look like today — which is to say, majority female, highly international, and far more racially and culturally varied than the profession’s legacy publications have historically represented. He describes a landmark issue in which eleven consecutive articles were all authored by female dentists from multiple countries, with an introduction he wrote that made a simple point: these are dentists, not women dentists. He has since built editorial relationships with the National Dental Association, the Hispanic Dental Association, the American Indian Dental Association, and the LGBTQ Dental Association, creating pathways into dental technology journalism for clinicians who had never considered it an option available to them.
- What It Actually Takes to Get Published: For any clinician watching who wants to contribute to a publication like Dentistry Today, Dr. Feuerstein’s advice is direct. Document your cases from start to finish with high-resolution, unaltered photographs — no Photoshop, no color correction, no composites. Write down what you did the way you would explain it standing in front of a room. If your English needs polish, his editorial team handles that. What they cannot manufacture is clinical specificity: what material did you use, what scanner, what technique, why, and what happened. The best article he says he ever published was about a single chipped tooth on number seven. It was not glamorous. It was educational. That is the standard he applies.
- AI in Dental Publishing — Tool, Not Author: Dr. Feuerstein has a measured but clear position on artificial intelligence in dental technology journalism. He uses it as a research and reference tool in the same way he might use a hammer — it is enormously useful for the right job and dangerous if misapplied. Articles written entirely by AI are obvious to experienced editors, can be verified with counter-AI detection tools, and are not acceptable for publication in Dentistry Today. More concerning to him is AI’s tendency to fabricate references that sound authoritative but do not exist — a problem he has caught in submitted manuscripts and that he now treats as a fundamental validation issue. His broader framework is that AI accelerates good work done by capable humans; it does not substitute for it.
- The Economics of Print Dental Media and What Comes Next: Dr. Feuerstein is candid about the financial pressures facing print dental publications. Advertising budgets that once flowed exclusively into trade journals are now distributed across digital platforms, social media, and online channels — dramatically increasing the cost-per-reader of print while reducing the advertiser support that made large-format glossy publications viable. Dentistry Today continues to print in its original oversized format — a deliberate decision by founder Jim Radcliffe, who argues that clinical photography loses impact when it shrinks to a phone screen — and distributes to roughly 100,000 readers. But the magazine, like all print media, is actively reinventing its model around podcasts, webinars, online articles, and digital-first content to remain sustainable. Dr. Feuerstein sees consolidation and reinvention happening simultaneously across dental media, mirroring what Dr. Simon described in the same conversation about dental meetings.
- The Networking Infrastructure Behind Dental Technology Journalism: Both Dr. Feuerstein and Dr. Flucke reflect on what three decades of meeting attendance, limo-sharing, and business card collecting has actually built: a direct-access network that allows either of them to reach product managers, vice presidents, R&D directors, and company founders by text rather than web form. They describe this infrastructure not as a perk but as the functional foundation of dental technology journalism — the ability to call someone who was in the room when a product was designed, verify a claim directly with the researcher who generated the data, or connect a promising young clinician with a company that needs exactly their expertise. That network, assembled over decades of in-person meetings, is something that cannot be replicated online.
Dr. Paul Feuerstein has spent more than thirty years making dental technology journalism a genuine force for clinical progress — finding new voices, validating new ideas, and refusing to let the profession’s media default to the same familiar faces. Whether you are a clinician with a case worth sharing, a young dentist wondering how people like Dr. Feuerstein and Dr. Flucke built the careers they have, or simply someone who loves dentistry and wants to understand how its ideas get transmitted and preserved, this episode is worth your time. To explore Dentistry Today’s clinical content or submit an article for consideration, visit dentistrytoday.com or reach out to Dr. Feuerstein directly at [email protected].
