Listen to Episode

Read Episode Transcript

Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Wanna say I don't know less? Listen to stuff you should know more. Join host Josh and Chuck on the podcast packed with fascinating discussions about science, history, pop culture and more episodes. Dive into topics like was the lost, city of Atlantis Real? And how does pizza work? Say goodbye to I don't know. Because after listening to stuff you should know you will listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Doctor Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast, the show that presents the latest science based strategies to help us live happier, more joyful lives. In the next season of the Happiness Live, we'll explore how to make friends happier parenting strategies, and why drinking the world's hottest hot sauce can be fun. Oh my God. Listen to the Happiness lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's being surgically inserted? My glands. I'm Robert Evans, hosted behind the ********. This is part two of our epic episodes on John Brinkley, the man who put goat balls into people. Caitlin durante. How are you doing? I'm so good. Happy to be here. Happy to be hearing about goat balls here, here and hearing about goat balls. Now, would you say that by this point in the series, you have now heard the phrase goat balls and variations of. Thereof more than you had in the entire rest of your life put together with 100% certainty. Yes, you know, that was actually the original founding goal of this podcast was to achieve that. And it it took us a year in change, but I'm very proud. I mean, you accomplished that goal. So congratulations and so happy to be a part of it. We did it, Sophie. Let's break it down. Podcast over everybody. This this whole episode is just to celebrate that milestone. Yay. All right, no, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to talk more about John Brinkley. In fall of 1923, as John and Minnie Brinkley were on their way back from their Asian adventure, an undercover investigative journalist named Harry Thompson published a bombshell expose on Diploma Mills. The first article did not mention Doctor Brinkley at all, but when he heard about the article, he knew it represented a mortal threat to his practice because Harry Thompson was reporting on exactly the sort of fake. Diploma operations that had given him a fake diploma back in 1915. Now, roughly 25,000 practicing doctors in the United States at this. Were, in reality fake doctors. That's mostly received the that's a lot of fake doctors. Now. Many had received their credentials from diploma mills like Brinkley, but others had just bought the diplomas of dead doctors from their widows or paid for the answers to medical exams. All of this was very common. Yeah, yeah. Now, fake degrees from diploma mills were by far the easiest kind of doctor fraud to expose, and before Long, John Brinkley was revealed as the fraud that he was when he arrived back in Milford to his newly completed radio station, Dr Nada Doctor. Brinkley started his radio career by haranguing journalists for being he didn't use the term fake news, but that was the idea. He accused them of being shamefully in league with the sinister AMA, which he called a monopoly against the public interest because they wanted doctors to have medical licenses. How dare they by Gillette. How dare they? By July of 1924, a grand jury had convened to hand out indictments to people who had been handed out fake medical degrees and to people who had received fake medical degrees and practiced with them. Brinkley was one of the men indicted, but the governor of Kansas refused to extradite him to San Francisco to stand trial. He said we in Kansas get fed on his medicine. We're going to keep him here so long as he lives now. Did this governor have goat balls inside of him? And is that maybe? Right. Yeah, probably right. I'm going to guess that governor had some goat testicles shoved up inside him, maybe even a couple of pairs. Yeah. I mean, did anyone get more than one operation? Like, are there some people with like 14 goat balls inside them? They probably right. I'm going to guess there's some rich guys who were like, one set of goat testicles is good. I won't ******* give me four. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my guess too. Now, Brinkley responded to his victory by telling his audience that the persecution he had faced had been, quote, no more justified than the persecution of Christ he loved comparing himself to Jesus by this point. Brinkley's radio. Yeah, by this point Brinkley's radio presence probably had as much to do with his continued freedom as his $1,000,000 goat gland operation. I'd like to quote from the Book Border Radio, which describes Dr Brinkley's early radio offerings. Quote. Methodist and Episcopal Church services, Masonic lectures, light music from the 9th Cavalry, U.S. Army Orchestra, French lessons from Kansas State Colleges, College of the Heir. These and other uplifting and inspiring performances went forth from the broadcasting tower of KFK B at 10:50 kilocycles on the radio dial. Doctor himself gave the medical lectures over the station three times a day, telling of his success in the field of goat gland research. He urged those disgusted with becoming below par to listen to his broadcasts, and he became a warm and well trusted radio personality. As he described the symptoms of nephritis, arteriosclerosis, and paralysis adjunctions, Dr Brinkley spoke conversationally with a well oiled country accent, blending flat Midwestern intonation and a smoky mountain drawl. Building on the faith and sympathy of his largely rural audience, the radio physician combined earthly country language with just enough Latin medical terminology to impress and confuse most anyone. According to one listener, his voice would just wound you. The New York Times described him as having a soothsayers, mysterious voice, and listeners. From all over the Midwest agreed with the fan, who said there's something about Doctor Brinkley that gets close to your heart. So we had a great voice. Was it the goat testicles that are getting close to people's hearts or he's now he's probably not putting them, no, he's putting those in their in their regular testicles, you know? No, I think he's just one of these guys that has a really well suited voice for radio, just like me. This is like, yeah, just like all of us here. Yeah. And and it mixed well with his surgery because you know, people are always going to trust someone that they feel like they know better than some stodgy old doctor with evidence. And if Doctor Brinkley's in your ear 6 hours a day, you feel like you know him in the same way people feel like they know their favorite podcast hosts like. This is one of the things that concerns me a little bit about podcasts because, like, the fandom that you build is so much more enthusiastic than anything I experienced as a writer. And I think it it was sort of the same thing with early radio people where like no one had ever been in people's ears five hours a day. That just wasn't a thing. Like, now we've we've got a billion different people like Joe Rogan, who who have been doing that for years, but Doctor Brinkley was the 1st, and so, like, he really developed this cult following before anyone else had one. Like the original podcaster. Yeah, he was the original podcaster and he was ******* selling medical advice. Umm. Yeah, he was essentially a mix of Alex Jones and Doctor Oz in an age that had never seen or heard anything like either of them. And like both of those men, he used the implied emotional intimacy of radio, the weird sort of bond that forms when someone is stuck inside your ear for hours a day to sell people on his quack remedies. Brinkley would say things like a red bird on his mate are building their nest just outside my bedroom window. Will you, for your health sake, be with us this may, and note the difference between the stallion and the gelding the former stands? Correct. Neck arched, main flowing, chomping the bit, stamping the ground, seeking the female while the gelding stands around half asleep. Cowardly, listless men, don't let this happen to you. Now, some effective advertising effective telling men their ***** won't work if they don't get goat balls. These carefully crafted harangues worked. Brinkley's practice expanded, as did the popularity of gland surgery nationwide. Soon hundreds of doctors and companies across the nation were offering their own variations of Doctor Brinkley's bogus surgery. One thing that made Doctor John Brinkley unique was his willingness to talk frankly and openly about the sexual needs of women. This was actually unprecedented feminist. Icon, you were right. Feminist icon John Brinkley. He would say things like, quote don't get the impression that women are icebergs and content with impotent husbands. I know of more families where the devil is to pay in fusses and temperamental sprees are all due to the husband not being able to function properly. Many and many times wives come to me and say, doctor, my husband is no good. Wow. OK, so he's advocating for women, ***** women who are like, my husband's **** doesn't work. Please help me. I need to. I need to come. But he's also saying, in an era where you just didn't talk about this, he's saying sex is a normal part of life. Women deserve to ****. And if you can't **** your wife, you're not a good husband. So you need my goat balls. Like, the fact that he's saying so, you need my goat balls makes it not nearly as woke, but like the fact that he's being, like, sex is a normal part of a relationship. And you need to be able to to please your partner and stuff, and that's important. No one else is saying that at this time. Which is weird. Yeah, it's it's different now. I should note that he also promised that any woman who came to his clinic with their husband could also, quote, avail themselves to my years of study and practice and have their ******** improved upon which I would love to know how he thinks that would happen. I'm very curious as to what improvements he wants to add. Is he putting goat balls into women's clitorises? Does he do goats have clitorises? Or is he putting goat? He might be putting goat clitter. Yeah, expand, extending a human ******** by just sticking a little goat ******** on I I want to die just at the thought of that. If there's one thing we know about Doctor Brinkley, it's that he'll take any part of one animal's genitals and he'll put it on another's animal's genitals. That's that's his practice. That's what Doc Brinkley does, is he adds genitals to genitals. I mean, and he was so impressed by the what was the the word? Lou Bossidy or something lubricity lubricity of the lubricity. I mean, yeah, he this is a long time coming for him to be a feminist icon. I would argue that he. Only was talking about that like female women's sexuality. Because I was just an on yet explored Ave by which he can sell his goat ball. Absolutely. He only brought it up to get men in for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That that's absolutely true. Although it does lead to something ironic a little bit later. OK, as his radio show went on, Doctor Brinkley learned to diversify his offerings to keep his audience interested. He would always be on multiple hours a day, but he was savvy enough to know that people needed more than just his voice, according to the book charlatan his offerings. Included quote French lessons, astrologers, gospel quartets that tell me a story, lady and Hawaiian songs of farewell country music, too. Within a year of its radio debut, a performance by Fiddlin John Carson over WSB in Atlanta, Brinkley was paying top dollar to recruit the champion fiddle player, Uncle Bob Larkin and others, and launching discoveries of his own like Roy Faulkner, AKA The Lonesome Cowboy, a short man with a tall pompadour and easy grin. Faulkner sang the old songs in a sunny voice like Gene Autry's and became Brinkley's most famous house musicians. And as it happened, John Brinkley wound up becoming one of the founding fathers of country music and of modern radio because he was the first person to do this. He spread country music outside of like, this thing that just like some people would play songs for each other to like a nationwide thing. Like he was the first guy spreading country music on a widespread basis by just having these people play because it was what he liked. And also the people wouldn't get tired of him talking about his goat ball surgery. Country music was launched as a genre to sell goat testicle surgery. That wouldn't. Well, I I'm going to go home and think about that. Think about that a lot. Think about that. I want to like. I want to like, yell that to Toby Keith at some point. Do you know the history of your music? You're just selling goat balls, man. Alright, OK, yeah. So John Brinkley, you know, became a radio pioneer, became a country music pioneer, was a goat testicle replacement pioneer. And then 80 years before, Alex Jones would have the same idea John Brinkley had what probably would be the most single innovative idea of his entire life. He was going to start selling medicine over the radio. Now this idea was born out of a practical problem. KKB was so popular that it received. More than 3000 letters a day, far too many for the local post office or doctor Brinkley's office to possibly handle. He launched a new program in 1928, medical question box. It was devised as a more efficient way to answer his mail while also making a huge amount of money. Here's the book Border Radio quote. During the broadcast, he read letters from his listeners and prescribed medicine for their ailments, medicine that they could get from one of the more than 1500 pharmacists who belong to the Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association. After giving news of his current patients over the Air, O Rob has been setting up all day Alfred Nash since greetings home Doctor opened the question box. Sunflower State from Dresden, Kansas. Probably he has gallstones. No, I don't mean that. I mean kidney stones. My advice to you is to put them on prescription numbers 80 and 50 for men also 64. I think that he will be a whole lot better. Also drink a lot of water to another supplicant, Dr responded. For three months. Take Doctor Brinkley's treatment for childless homes. Of course, doctors say it is vulgar for me to tell you about this, but we are taking a chance and we don't think it's obscene down here. If this lady will take numbers 50 and 61 and that good old standby of mine #67 for about 3 months and see if it isn't a great big change taking place to a person with exactly the opposite problem, the doctor counseled. I suggest that. Too many children. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I suggest that you have. Her husband's sterilized and then you will be safe from having more children, provided you don't get out in anybody else's cow pasture and get in with some other bull. So, OK, he starts diagnosing people over the radio and prescribing them over the radio responsible 1500 pharmacies to to get on to the plan. And one of the things they do is he's not just prescribing them normal medicine, he launches a whole line of medicine that's not known by what it actually is, but just by a number #54 #67. So it's his medicine. It all costs six times the market price for medicine of the type and he gets a dollar for every bottle that's sold. Which means a lot more money than he would, you know, it's a **** load of money. Yeah. And of course, the people who are taking medicine based on his over the air diagnosis aren't just people who he's reading their letters on air. Anyone who hears someone describe a complaint that they have will then drive out to the pharmacy and go get whatever medication he suggested for that person. So he's just selling. Yeah. And then he's making a dollar off of every bottle. And these people are just like, well, that kind of sounds like what? Them going through better get this medicine that's not really get this medicine. Well, part of the problem is that it was real medicine. So it's actually more irresponsible than what Alex Jones does where he just sells nonsense pills and vaguely claims that they help your brain. These were actual drugs. And so all right, people would like hear him talk to someone on the radio, would be like, oh, that sounds like what I've got. And then they go get medicine that might be terrible for them because you shouldn't just take medicine randomly because of what you hear on the radio. Doctor HW Jilly of Ottawa, KS, wound up treating a mailman who took Doctor Brinkley's on air advice and got medication based on it. Quote I found the patient profoundly collapsed, his countenance ghastly icy cold, pulseless, and apparently dying from some great shock upon my question as to what happened, he whispered. I took some of Brinkley's medicine, now that medicine was Brinkley's #50A liver medication that cost 350, despite being only worth about $0.75. It was real medication, obviously, but its price was wildly inflated. Unfortunately, it was also exactly the wrong medication. For the patient's doctor, Julie reported that its effects had quote been so durastic upon the patient as to produce enormous cholera like drippings and actions and vomiting, causing a tearing open of an old ulcer in a violent hemorrhage, the vomiting and intense pain continuing. X-ray Pictures were taken showing the pyloric orifice about 1 1/2 inches, to be nearly closed, and it will be imperative to make a new opening by attaching the bowl to the lower margin of the stomach. So he has to perform bowel surgery on this guy because he took radio pills. This OK. Now, I don't like to diagnose people over over podcasts, Caitlin, but you know, you know what? I do? Like to die. Seems like it works so well. It did work so well and so that's why I am going to diagnose that whatever problems you have at home listener, they can be helped by the fine products and services that we're about to advertise on this show. Just don't take Doctor Brinkley's number 50, it's only if you have liver problems. Was that was that a good ad plug, Sophie? OK, products. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family. And it meant. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind. This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about, or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Hey, it's Rick Schwartz, one of your hosts for San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we sit down with Doctor Jane Goodall to hear her inspiring thoughts on how we can create a better future for humans, animals and the environment. Getting particularly young children out into nature so that they can experience it and take time off from this virtual world of being always on your cell phones and so on. And get the feel of nature so that you come to be fascinated, then you come to want to understand it, and then you come to love it, and at that point you want to protect it. And then we'll come to the sort of healthy world that I envision as a good future for us. And the rest of life on this planet. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Yay, Caitlin, how you feeling about this guy so far? I'm feeling like I need some of his medicine because he's making me sick. Well, the medical question box soon netted Dr Brinkley around $14,000 a month, which was roughly 6 and a half, $1,000,000 a year. Modern money. He makes so much money. How much ****? Now, the longer his grift went on, the more victims turned up. One such victim was a middle-aged man named Whitbeck. Like many of Doctor Brinkley's clients, Whitbeck felt beaten down by his difficult life of Labor. He saw Brinkley's gland operation as his only hope for regaining the vitality of his youth. So he and his wife mortgaged their home to afford the surgery. Now that only brought in about $550, which was 200 bucks short of what they needed. But Whitbeck and his wife were sure that the kind old doctor Brinkley they heard preaching on the radio would give them a break when he heard about their situation next, according to the book. Milliton quote Brinkley was not that kind of Christian. When Andy got there with only $550, Brinkley wouldn't touch him. He'd have to raise 750 or go home without an operation. I never felt so sorry for anyone in all my life as I did for Andy as he stood there weeping like a child, one friend of the guy recalled. He wanted that operation so bad so he could go home into his old job. Then many Brinkley, who liked to describe her role at the clinic as counseling, collecting, and goodwill, stepped in. She told him he'd just have to raise the other 200, and they worked on his fears, made him think the goat glands are the only thing that could save him and make him young. Strong again, and Andy didn't know where to turn for money. With tears in his eyes, he begged Brinkley to take the note for $200.00, and he'd pay it little by little out of his wages, as he earned them many. Brinkley refused, but did agree to write his employer and get them to agree to garnish his wages until the $200.00 was paid. Witbeck got the surgery, which obviously didn't work, and he wound up sicker than he had been before, and was now completely destitute and mortgaged. Oh my God, that's cool. So everything I said about John Brinkley being any sort of philanthropist, I was not right. Yeah, he was definitely not a philanthropist. Yeah, man. The rich, right? Eat this rich guy for sure now. Another victim was Alexander Eblan and his wife Rose. She was dying of colon cancer, and actual doctors had told Alexander that his wife's case was terminal, he later recalled. I love my wife very much. I would have given my own life to save her if I could, and a man in my place about to see the wife he loves drift out to the tide will grasp at any straw. So Ecklon managed to pull together barely enough money for an operation. Rose went under the knife and died the very next day. Doctor Brinkley still demanded. Payment. There are dozens and dozens of documented cases like this, and probably hundreds of cases that were never documented. The wheels of truth and something that vaguely resembled justice gradually turned, though, thanks largely to the efforts of 1 Doctor Morris Fishbein, who by the late 1920s had become the chief nemesis of John Brinkley, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association went from state to state, confronting their medical boards with evidence of Brinkley's Butchery 1 by 1. Brinkley's ability to practice medicine was revoked, but Brinkley still had his radio station and on it. He attacked Morris Fishbein as fishy Fishbein and slammed the AMA as smirking oligarchs promising. I'll grind their heads off under my heel like I would a snake. I mean, he's got a way with words you gotta give him. He's got away with words. That's why he's a great radio personality. And I will say as someone who does essentially the same job, I love grinding snakes. Heads off under my heels. That's how you get fish oil. I've heard that's how you get, that's how you get snake oil. Sure. What did I say? Fish oil. Fish oil? No, you grind fish under your heel. For that, you got to strangle a lot of fish to get fish oil. I'm don't have a way with words, which is why I'm a terrible podcaster. It's, well, I don't know, Caitlin, I believe if you were to start selling pills based on random radio diagnosis, you could make $6 million a year. Thank you so much for your vote of confidence. And I would also just like to say that I would not do that because I'm a I'm not a horrible person. Well, I'm happy to do it. But I need to I need to ink a deal with Walgreens before I start prescribing anything. Sure, as 1930 Daunt, the Kansas City Star, began to publish a series of exposes on Doctor Brinkley. They spread the story of Cora Maddox, a 15 year old appendicitis patient who claimed to Brinkley had held her at gunpoint and demanded an extra $100 for the operation he just performed. On her quote, I lay at the point of death while Brinkley, drunk, straddled the doorway with a revolver in his hand and threatened to shoot my two brothers if they did not pay him. Yeah, he's he he loves threatening people while drunk, which that's the most likable thing about the guy to me. Little bit. Waving a gun around while drunk, threatening the surgery patient. That's just that's just good old fashioned American fun. That's right, got admire him. That's why I spend every Friday night at the hospital. Now the star also did the hard grunt work of putting together a clear list of patients who had died under Doctor Brinkley's ministrations. He insisted. I will not accept any patient who cannot be cured or may die under treatment. No patient of mine has ever died here. If we should have a man die here, the doctors who are fighting me would all publish it over the country, so I must be careful. Other doctors may kill them off, but I daren't. The next day the Star published a list of five people who had died at Brinkley's Hospital in the last two years. He had even signed their death certificates. John Brinkley next hired. Pinkerton detectives to harass, threaten and bribe his unhappy former patients to keep them quiet. But soon the state of Kansas got involved. Their investigation uncovered, even more shadiness, and on June 13th, his license to broadcast radio was cancelled by a three to two vote. Now, Caitlin, I bet you're thinking that this was canceled because of all the people that he got sick and that he killed with his his hack medicine and random prescriptions and bad surgery. You think? And that's why he lost his radio license? I would imagine so, but no, no, you're wrong. The reason they wound up cancelling his license is because he used the words erection and climax on the air. Yep. So it's all about censorship? Yeah, that's that's what it took to get him off the air. They were fine with all the people he killed, but he was talking about climaxes and that can't have that 1920s ******* rating. On the radio. OK, well, let alone talking about like he talked about women's orgasms, which you know, I mean obviously Pioneer was not allowed, pioneered feminist icon John Brinkley. Now, I mean, also, I, you know, I didn't even mention this because there's so much to go over. His wife was a fake doctor, too. She had a fake diploma from the same fake school he did. So he really, he really was a paragon of women's equality. Wow. And wasn't she? Because you said that she was practicing midwifery, being she did for a while. Once he started putting testicles in people, she got into the whole cutting open people and shoving balls inside of them, too. So she was doing the same thing. Yeah. She was very much a full partner in his enterprise. Interesting. OK. They seem to have really, really been a match made in heaven. Wow. I mean, yeah, John and Minnie. John and Minnie just shove and balls into balls and lying on the radio. Six weeks after losing, yeah, it is. It is. It's it's a tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme, beauty and the guy who shoves balls into balls. Six weeks after losing his radio license, the Kansas Board of Medical Examiners convened to discuss revoking John Brinkley's medical license. The trial was something of a circus Shiite sideshow happy goat. Glad recipients were paid to do hand stands outside of the court for the press in order to prove something, I guess. Meanwhile, in the courtroom, prosecutors brought in a steady stream of horribly injured patients. Here's the book, charlatan again. Charles Degenhart, 60, said that instead of stitching him up properly after a prostate operation. Brinkley had plugged the bleeding wound with a piece of rubber boot heel and sent him on his way. Grant Eden, caretaker of a State Park, had come in on the same bus as John Zahner. He, too, got the works, after which he could barely move. When he later wrote to complain, Brinkley replied with a note describing the hunting trip he had just returned from. Ending with your condition is your own fault, wishing you a Merry Christmas. There was testimony from Robert Carroll, brother of Cora Maddox, whose vivid account of Brinkley's gunplay at the clinic had already run on the star. A smelled whiskey on his breath, Carol said. He opened a desk. I took out a revolver and told me my sister would not come out of that hospital except over his dead body unless he was paid $100 more. Carol and his brother had returned with guns of their own and rescued her Wild West style from the building, which that's that's a movie right there. He's making so much money. The fact that he is like, but I need that extra $100. I mean, that is not the worst part of it, but that's a pretty bad part of that's a pretty bad part of it. Like this lady's already sick, she's already paid for surgery that you did, probably poorly, and you're threatening her drunk at gunpoint. Amazing doctor. Amazing doctor. Good. The trial ended with John Brinkley inviting the board to his Milford Hospital to watch him perform a gland operation so he could prove that he was, in fact, a real doctor. They agreed, and the horrifying spectacle of him cutting into somebody convinced them to finally revoke his medical license. Now, not a doctor, Brinkley realized. Yeah. Not a doctor. Brinkley realized that the only way to get his medical license back was to become governor of the state of Kansas. So he ran. Yeah, that's where his mind went. Next. They took away his license, so he was like, well, I guess I'll be the ******* governor. OK, so he ran what would become one of the most successful write in campaigns in all of American history. His platform is that he was being persecuted by the AMA and Fat cat politicians, and it went over like gangbusters with the uneducated masses, as did his promise to fill the countryside with free clinics and. Here everyone's illnesses with goat testicles, both the Republican and Democratic parties, had to work together to stop his candidacy. They only succeeded by instituting a strict rule that votes for John Brinkley could only be counted if his name was spelled a certain way. Jr Brinkley, Jay. R. Brinkley to be exact. Votes for John Brinkley or just Jr Brinkley would not be counted. John Brinkley came in third place in the election. The number of ballots that were discarded for improperly spelling his name would have been more than enough to win him the election. It was so close that the Republican candidate who lost to the Democrat by only two hundred votes refused to contest the election or even ask for a recount because every politician in the country was so ******* terrified about what would happen if John Brinkley were to win the governorship. Wow, that is wild. He was so bad he got the Republican and Democratic Party to work together, yes. OK, now, by this point most men would have probably retired to enjoy their millions of dollars, but John Brinkley was not a quitter. In 1931 he moved to the border town of Del Rio, TX and got a license from the Mexican government to build a radio station on their side of the border under the radio station named Ex ER. He continued to campaign for Governor of Kansas. In 1932 he came in 3rd place again, still the best showing by an independent candidate in gubernatorial history. He tried once more in 1934. By that point, he'd been gone from Kansas long enough that his star had faded, but Brinkley found himself liking living on the Texas border anyway. He was able to practice medicine in Del Rio, because then, as now, there were no rules in southern Texas. He was also able to upgrade his radio station in 1935, now under the name XRA, or Zara. He upgraded his broadcasting station to an absolutely ******* insane 1,000,000 watts, by far the most powerful radio transmitter on the ******* planet. For comparison, the most powerful modern AM radio. Transmitters in the modern United States are 50,000 watts. People in Canada were able to tune in and clearly listen to John Brinkley's hours of broadcasts. OK. Yeah. Pretty, pretty, pretty great. How does he have time for everything he's doing? He's doing these radio shows, he's building radio stations, he's practicing medicine. He's getting drunk apparently all the time. He's always like, he's fine. He's like inventing, not inventing, but like he is helping to, like, make country music, you know, spread it to the masses. 80% of what he's doing is just talking on the radio, and he loves hearing. Self talk. So he's all he's really doing is spending like 9 hours a day talking on the radio. Wow. And that's that's enough to accomplish most of his goals. OK, well. Gotta give it to him. Got to give it to him. You don't. You don't. You don't. You shouldn't do that. He already got an awful lot given to him. Yes. Now, Caitlin, I know what you're thinking right now. I think you're thinking the only thing that goes better than thoughts of Mexican radio stations are podcast ads. That one was not a good transition. I knew it had gotten away from me when I started it, but, uh, you know that that's the time it is. It's time for an ad break. Nothing. Nothing. Caitlin. Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought that. Lift me up here. Come on. I completely agree that it's time for an ad break, and I think your transition is actually really flawless. Thank you. Thank you for saying the truth about my flawless transitioning. You're welcome, products. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or that I should have asked you to add? You shouldn't have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Hey, it's Rick Schwartz, one of your hosts for San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we sit down with Doctor Jane Goodall to hear her inspiring thoughts on how we can create a better future for humans, animals and the environment. Don't help them find ways of making a living without destroying the environment. We can't save chimps, forests or anything else, and that becomes very clear when you look at poverty around the world. If you're living in poverty, you can't afford to ask as we can. Did this product harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals like, was it factory farmed? Is it cheap because of unfair wages paid to people? And so alleviating poverty is tremendously important. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back now, Caitlin. 1,000,000 watts, I think. Sounds like a lot, because it is a lot. But I I want people at home to understand how ******* ridiculously powerful John Brinkley's radio transmitter was. So I'm going to read another quote from the book. Border Blaster quote. People living near the station did not even need a radio to enjoy the great healers, messages Del Rio residents talking on the phone heard the doctor's mellifluous voice asking such questions as how many of you suffer from gas indigestion, bloat and belching, and chronic appendicitis. Ranchers were startled to find their fences electrified by the high-powered broadcasts of hillbilly performers and fortune tellers. Some residents said they even picked up the station and the fillings of their teeth or received vibrations of it on their hot water heaters at 8:40 kilocycles powerful. Zira brushed aside the signals of WWL in New Orleans and KO and Denver as if there were 98 Watt weaklings. A variety reporter in New York said that he could hear XRA regularly, and a Philadelphia resident said that he had trouble getting anything but Doctor Brinkley station on his family's radio set. Wow. That's why they don't do million Watt radio stations so much, right? That so he had he had the most powerful one with like, the widest range. How did he get that? Or did he build it? We just spent a lot of money. Yeah, he spent his he he hired really good engineers and spent a **** load of money because he wanted ******* everybody to be able to hear him. It's just the people with the most money are the people who should not have any money. And, you know, I think a lot of it, a lot of it comes down to *****. Caitlin he, he he got rich by selling people a cure all for ***** **** problems, which he said was, you know, goat testicles. But for him, *** **** was having the most powerful radio tower in the world, and that's what he needed to feel virile. That makes sense. I mean, a radio tower, I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I I imagine it is being pretty phallic. So, yeah, you'd have to say it's a tower, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, John Brinkley used his unprecedented soapbox to harangue the AMA and Sling snake oil. As he got older and goat gland operations fell from favor. He moved on to $1000 vasectomies and increasingly he waded into politics. You see, John Brinkley hated him. Some Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he also. Found himself increasingly enamored with a little known German politician by the name of Adolf Hitler. Yeah, yeah. He he went to Germany for the 36 Olympics and and loved it. Loved it. Loved seeing what Hitler had done to Germany. Thought it was a pretty cool place. Pretty pretty neat place. He hosted some other people who have been on this podcast on his radio show. Father Coughlin was a guest American fewer and head of the German American boomed Fritz Kuhn was a guest. William Pelley, founder of the Silver Shirts. All of these people were guests on XRA. Brinkley even donated $5000 to the Silver Shirts which were in American fascist. Movement. Now, a lot of this had to do with Brinkley's increasingly virulent anti-Semitism, much of which had grown from the fact that his nemesis, Dr Fishbein, was a Jewish man. But a lot of it also came from his hatred of communism. So, you know, this is a mix of both. He doesn't like Jewish people. He doesn't like communism. Maybe he thinks they're both the same thing like most Nazis did, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess. If that's your stance. Fascism looks pretty good. Yeah, he said. Stuff like war is the communist delight. He mixes its bitter broth for the sweet lips of your boy. I would deport every radical who preferred the gleam of warlike Mars to the soft amber light of the Bethlehem orb. He should have been a poet with his he. Don't put balls in it. Don't put goat balls in people write down. Put balls in people words. Gosh, John Brinkley in the late 30s added swastikas to the title of his swimming pool and became a prominent advocate of isolationism. In 1941 he ran for the Texas Senate. Unfortunately for him, this was the same year he lost a libel suit against the AMA, faced investigation from the State Department and the IRS, and was charged by the post office with mail fraud. There was some worry that even with all this he might still win. A writer for the Emporia Gazette wrote about this, this about his Senate run quote. He will appeal to the hillbilly mind as it has never been lured before. He is irresistible to the moron mind, and Texas has plenty of such. Perhaps that is unfair. Very likely Texas has no more morons than Kansas. So, while pointing with pride to the fact that Kansas escaped the doctor's clutches, we view with alarm for the United States the danger which impends in Texas. If this Republic ever totters to its fall, it will be because the moron minority shall sometimes, somewhere, somehow gain a party majority. By unscrupulous leadership I mean that that has to explain. Why he got so successful in the 1st place, right. Just like, you know, uneducated people being like, I want ** **** to work better and then ** **** to work better and I like the way he talks. And then despite all of like the stories of him, you know, being a drunken disaster and killing people with the surgeries, who's performing, everyone's just like, well, I mean, I'm going to still give him, you know, what was it, $750 for this? 150 bucks? Well, I want those goat balls, yeah. Ah, that's discouraging. Now, luckily for America, this time the Mexican government got fed up with Brinkley and in 1941 they made an agreement with the US government to cut out renegade stations like XRA, denying Brinkley his main platform just as the government came crashing down on his head. By May of 1942 he was poor, sick and dying. He developed a blood clot and had several heart attacks and had to have his leg amputated. He died on May 26th, 1942, almost penniless. His last words were reported to have been if Doctor Fishbein goes to heaven. I want to go the other way. Now. Wait, hang on. Did he, when he when he was his health failing, did he put goat balls in himself? He did not. Shockingly, yeah. You know, you'd really, you really would think that he would have tried that that obvious cure. All right. Yeah, he did not. I mean, goes to show that it would. I mean a doctor that won't do his own procedure on himself. You can't trust that guy. That's exactly right. If you're going to put. Goat balls in me. You'd better be putting goat balls in you. I've said that. I've said that for years so you can back me up. That's that's long been my my catch phrase. Now Doctor Brinkley's influence would live on and bad in good ways. The bad is very obvious. He horribly injured and killed hundreds of patients, maybe more. He claimed to have carried out more than 16,000 goat gland operations, so God only knows like the total health impact of his work. And then all those goats and all those poor goats. Thinking about 60,000 goats, 16,000 goats. He also single handedly created the idea of selling sham medicine to sick people over the radio. A terrible business that continues to this day. But. John Brinkley also helped launch country music as a genre. His million Watt station broadcast that music to impressionable young minds across the entire nation for years, helping to spread it out of the fairly niche areas that had occupied prior to Brinkley's Advent. Some of his early listeners included, according to the book charlatan quote. Chet Atkins, a teenager in Columbus, GA, who turned into Ezra on a battery powered radio he built from mail order parts. Waylon Jennings, a youngster in Littlefield, Texas, whose daddy ran a cable from his truck battery to the house so the family could listen to XRA. Tom Hall, future songwriter, and balladeer and Olivehill, Kentucky. Johnny Cash in DS, Arkansas, who first heard his future bride June Carter, then aged 10, singing over Brinkley's airwaves. Wow. So. It wasn't all bad. So he was actually a pretty good guy. So, I mean, yeah, thousands and thousands of people horribly, horribly injured and and hobbled for life and killed from bad operations and and medical treatments gone awry and the spreading of fascism over the airwaves. But Johnny Cash? Johnny Cash. But Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings? Yeah. Small price to pay. I mean, for Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. And I'm not a big fan of Tom Haller, Chet Atkins, but other people. So I don't know any of those people except for Johnny Cash. So everybody knows Johnny Cash. Everybody knows Johnny Cash. Yeah. So. Well, there, that's the story. That's John ******* Brinkley. Well, I feel enlightened. I feel like I I mean, I feel like I've just had some goat balls put in into my gonad areas, which is to say that I feel great. Wow, I mean he very ambitious guide as you said at the beginning. And I mean, I I hate that. I'm, like impressed with all these horrible people. But they accomplished a lot. I'm not impressed. I'm horrified. But I mean, I don't know what I'm trying to say. I just. You know what? Here's what I'm trying to say. **** John Brinkley the end. **** John Brinkley the end. If you're feeling sick, though, maybe do grind up a bunch of goat testicles and shoot them up your *** with a syringe. Can't forget about that rectal syringe. Can't forget about that rectal syringe. I'm so glad that modern medicine is what it is today. And that's not to say that our, you know, medical industry isn't very broken, because it is. But, you know, I'm glad. I'm just glad that there, you know, goat ball insertion isn't a thing anymore, to my knowledge. I never thought I'd felt myself saying I'm glad that when Alex Jones sells people medicine over the radio, it's just a little bit of lead and sugar powder in pill form. Like at least it's not ground up, go nuts, or like real medicine that you're giving to the wrong people so that they have horrible physical reactions to it and marked up at an insane price. And when you're when you're the guy who makes me look at Alex Jones and be like, well, compared to that, he's he's he's pretty ethical. You know you've got a real ******* on your hand. Yeah. You know, you've got a real ***** ** **** on your hands. And and John Brinkley was a real ***** ** **** indeed. Caitlin, you got some puggles to plug? You bet you can follow my radio station in which I, you know, spread feminist icon airy and not the bad stuff that John Brinkley was spreading. And that's all to say. Listen to my podcast, the Bechdel cast, that I co-host with Jamie Loftis and we talk about the representation of women in movies. And then you can, and that's spelled BECHDEL. Just in case you didn't know, you can follow me personally on Instagram and Twitter at Caitlin Durante. CAIT Graham and the twits. That's right, and. Yeah, you can check out my website caitlindurante.com. There's some, you know, show dates and and and stuff like that, but. Yeah, that's that's it. Check out Caitlin durante. Check out. Caitlin Durant me on Twitter at I write, OK. You like that, Caitlin? That, that, that working for you? I loved it. Excellent. You can check out this podcast on the web at behindthebastards.com, where we'll have the sources for this episode, including Fantastic Book Charlatan and that that's that's the we sell shirts to public.com. We have another podcast. It could happen here about the civil war. Bad stuff. That's it. Until next week, I'm Robert Evans. Don't inject goat glands into your *******. Don't do it. Don't do it. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break our handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization. Of your podcast, go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. No, I meant I don't know which phrase, and the best way to banish I don't know from your life is by cramming your brain full of stuff you should know. Join your host, Josh and Chuck on the Super Popular podcast packed with fascinating discussions on science, history, pop culture and more episodes that ask, was the lost city of Atlantis Real? I don't know. Is birth order important? I don't know. How does pizza work? Well, I do know. Bit about that see? You can know even more, because stuff you should know has over 1500 immensely interesting episodes for your brain to feast on. So what do you say? I don't want to miss the stuff you should know. Podcast you're learning already listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about? I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life.