Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Goat Testicle Implanting Doctor Who Invented Talk Radio
Aired: 2019-06-13
Duration: 57:20


=== Trust Your Girlfriends (02:19) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that.
[00:00:21]  Trust your girlfriends.
[00:00:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:00:25]  Trust me, babe.
[00:00:26]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:00:31]  I got you.
[00:00:32]  I got you.
[00:00:36]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[00:00:41]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:00:44]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[00:00:51]  An in-depth conversation with a man who's shaping our future.
[00:00:55]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:00:58]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:01:07]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[00:01:12]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban.
[00:01:15]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:01:18]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:01:20]  That's so funny.
[00:01:21]  Shall we stay with me each night, each morning?
[00:01:29]  Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:37]  What's up, everyone?
[00:01:38]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:01:39]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:01:43]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:01:46]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:01:48]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:01:55]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:01:57]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:02:04]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:02:06]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:02:07]  There's a lot of life.
[00:02:09]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

=== Selling Medicine Over Radio (14:33) ===

[00:02:19]  What's being surgically inserted, McGlens?
[00:02:23]  I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards.
[00:02:25]  This is part two of our epic episodes on John Brinkley, the man who put goat balls into people.
[00:02:31]  Caitlin Durante, how are you doing?
[00:02:33]  I'm so good.
[00:02:35]  Happy to be here.
[00:02:37]  Happy to be hearing about goat balls?
[00:02:39]  Hear, hear, and hearing about goat balls.
[00:02:43]  Now, would you say that by this point in the series, you have now heard the phrase goat balls and variations thereof more than you had in the entire rest of your life put together?
[00:02:53]  With 100% certainty, yes.
[00:02:56]  You know, that was actually the original founding goal of this podcast was to achieve that.
[00:03:02]  And it took us a year in change, but I'm very proud.
[00:03:06]  Yeah.
[00:03:06]  I mean, you accomplished that goal.
[00:03:08]  So congratulations and so happy to be a part of it.
[00:03:11]  We did it, Sophie.
[00:03:12]  Let's break it down.
[00:03:14]  Podcast over, everybody.
[00:03:17]  This whole episode is just to celebrate that milestone.
[00:03:20]  Yay.
[00:03:22]  All right, now I'm going to talk more about John Brinkley.
[00:03:26]  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.
[00:03:37]  The first article did not mention Dr. 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.
[00:03:52]  Now, roughly 25,000 practicing doctors in the United States at this period were in reality fake doctors.
[00:03:59]  That's most received their fake doctors.
[00:04:02]  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.
[00:04:11]  All of this was very common.
[00:04:12]  Oh, my.
[00:04:14]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:14]  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.
[00:04:24]  When he revived back in Milford to his newly completed radio station, Dr. Nada Dr. Brinkley started his radio career by haranguing journalists for being...
[00:04:32]  He didn't use the term fake news, but that was the idea.
[00:04:34]  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.
[00:04:44]  How dare they?
[00:04:45]  By July...
[00:04:46]  How dare they?
[00:04:47]  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.
[00:04:57]  Brinkley was one of the men indicted, but the governor of Kansas refused to extradite him to San Francisco to stand trial.
[00:05:03]  He said, we in Kansas get fat on his medicine.
[00:05:06]  We're going to keep him here so long as he lives.
[00:05:09]  Now, did this governor have goat balls inside of him?
[00:05:13]  And is that maybe right?
[00:05:15]  Yeah.
[00:05:16]  Probably right.
[00:05:17]  I'm going to guess that governor had some goat testicles shoved up inside him.
[00:05:20]  Maybe even a couple of pairs.
[00:05:22]  Yeah, I mean, did anyone get more than one operation?
[00:05:26]  Like, are there some people with, like, 14 goat balls inside them?
[00:05:31]  They're probably right.
[00:05:32]  I'm going to guess there's some rich guys who are like, if one set of goat testicles is good, I won't fucking give me four.
[00:05:38]  Yeah.
[00:05:40]  That's my guess, too.
[00:05:43]  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.
[00:05:52]  He loved comparing himself to Jesus.
[00:05:55]  By this point, Brinkley's radio...
[00:05:57]  Yeah.
[00:05:58]  By this point, Brinkley's radio presence probably had as much to do with his continued freedom as his million-dollar goat gland operation.
[00:06:05]  I'd like to quote from the book Border Radio, which describes Dr. Brinkley's early radio offerings.
[00:06:11]  Quote, Methodist and Episcopal church services, Masonic lectures, light music from the 9th Cavalry U.S. Army Orchestra, French lessons from Kansas State College's College of the Air, these and other uplifting and inspiring performances went forth from the broadcasting tower of KFKB at 1050 kilocycles on the radio dial.
[00:06:30]  Doctor himself gave the medical lectures over the station three times a day, telling of his success in the field of goat gland research.
[00:06:36]  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 adjentins.
[00:06:50]  Dr. Brinkley spoke conversationally with a well-oiled country accent, blending flat Midwestern intonation and a smoky mountain drawl.
[00:06:57]  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.
[00:07:06]  According to one listener, his voice would just wound you.
[00:07:09]  The New York Times described him as having a soothsayer's mysterious voice, and listeners from all over the Midwest agreed with a fan who said, there's something about Dr. Brinkley that gets close to your heart.
[00:07:20]  So he had a great voice.
[00:07:22]  Was it the goat testicles that are getting close to people's hearts?
[00:07:25]  No, he's probably not putting them.
[00:07:27]  No, he's putting those in their regular testicles.
[00:07:32]  No, I think he's just one of these guys that has a really well-suited voice for radio.
[00:07:38]  Just like me.
[00:07:39]  This is like just like all of us here.
[00:07:42]  Yeah.
[00:07:43]  And it mixed well with his surgery because people are always going to trust someone that they feel like they know better than some stodgy old doctor with evidence.
[00:07:53]  And if Dr. Brinkley's in your ear six hours a day, you feel like you know him in the same way people feel like they know their favorite podcast hosts.
[00:08:00]  Yeah.
[00:08:01]  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.
[00:08:12]  And I think it was sort of the same thing with early radio people where no one had ever been in people's ears five hours a day.
[00:08:19]  That just wasn't a thing.
[00:08:20]  Like, now we've got a billion different people like Joe Rogan who have been doing that for years.
[00:08:26]  But Dr. Brinkley was the first.
[00:08:27]  And so, like, he really developed this cult following before anyone else had one.
[00:08:32]  The original podcaster.
[00:08:34]  Yeah, he was the original podcaster, and he was fucking selling medical advice.
[00:08:41]  Yeah.
[00:08:43]  He was essentially a mix of Alex Jones and Dr. Oz in an age that had never seen or heard anything like either of them.
[00:08:50]  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.
[00:08:59]  Brinkley would say things like, A red bird and his mate are building their nest just outside my bedroom window.
[00:09:05]  Will you, for your health's sake, be with us this May?
[00:09:08]  And note the difference between the stallion and the gelding.
[00:09:11]  The former stands erect, neck arched, mane flowing, chomping the bit, stamping the ground, seeking the female, while the gelding stands around half asleep, cowardly, listless.
[00:09:20]  Men, don't let this happen to you.
[00:09:24]  Now, some effective advertising.
[00:09:28]  Effective telling men their dicks won't work if they don't get goat balls.
[00:09:33]  These carefully crafted harangues worked.
[00:09:35]  Brinkley's practice expanded, as did the popularity of gland surgery nationwide.
[00:09:39]  Soon, hundreds of doctors and companies across the nation were offering their own variations of Dr. Brinkley's bogus surgery.
[00:09:45]  One thing that made Dr. John Brinkley unique was his willingness to talk frankly and openly about the sexual needs of women.
[00:09:52]  This was actually unprecedented in the world.
[00:09:54]  Feminist icon.
[00:09:55]  You were right.
[00:09:56]  Feminist icon John Brinkley.
[00:09:58]  He would say things like, quote, don't get the impression that women are icebergs and content with impotent husbands.
[00:10:03]  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.
[00:10:10]  Many and many times wives come to me and say, Doctor, my husband is no good.
[00:10:15]  Wow.
[00:10:16]  Okay.
[00:10:16]  So he's advocating for women, horny women who are like, my husband's dick doesn't work.
[00:10:22]  Please help me.
[00:10:25]  I need to come.
[00:10:27]  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.
[00:10:32]  Women deserve to fuck.
[00:10:34]  And if you can't fuck your wife, you're not a good husband.
[00:10:36]  So you need my goat balls.
[00:10:38]  Like, the fact that he's saying, so you need my goat balls makes it not nearly as woke.
[00:10:43]  But like the fact that he's being like, sex is a normal part of a relationship and you need to be able to please your partner and stuff.
[00:10:49]  And that's important.
[00:10:50]  No one else is saying that at the start.
[00:10:52]  Which is weird.
[00:10:54]  Yeah.
[00:10:55]  It's different.
[00:10:56]  Now, I should note that he also promised that any women who came to his clinic with their husband could also, quote, avail themselves to my years of study and practice and have their clitoris improved upon.
[00:11:06]  Oh, I would love to know how he thinks that would happen.
[00:11:11]  I'm very curious as to what improvements he wants to add.
[00:11:14]  Is he putting goat balls into women's clitorises?
[00:11:19]  Do goats have clitorises?
[00:11:20]  Is he putting goat clitorises?
[00:11:22]  I think he might be putting goat clitoris.
[00:11:24]  Yeah.
[00:11:26]  Extending a human clitoris by just sticking a little goat clitoris on it.
[00:11:29]  Oh, I want to die just at the thought of that.
[00:11:35]  If there's one thing we know about Dr. 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.
[00:11:42]  That's his practice.
[00:11:43]  That's what Doc Brinkley does, is he adds genitals to genitals.
[00:11:47]  I mean, and he was so impressed by the, what was the, the word lubosity or something?
[00:11:53]  Lubricity.
[00:11:54]  Lubricity.
[00:11:54]  Lubricity of lubricity.
[00:11:57]  I mean, yeah, he this is a long time coming for him to be a feminist icon.
[00:12:03]  I would argue that he only was talking about that, like, female women's sexuality because that was just an unyet unexplored avenue by which he can sell his goat ball surgery.
[00:12:16]  Absolutely.
[00:12:17]  He only brought it up to get men in, for sure.
[00:12:20]  Yeah, That's absolutely true.
[00:12:24]  Although it does lead to something ironic a little bit later.
[00:12:26]  Okay.
[00:12:27]  As his radio show went on, Dr. Brinkley learned to diversify his offerings to keep his audience interested.
[00:12:32]  He would always be on multiple hours a day, but he was savvy enough to know that people needed more than just his voice.
[00:12:38]  According to the book Charlatan, his offerings included, quote, French lessons, astrologers, gospel quartets, the tell me a story lady, and Hawaiian songs of farewell.
[00:12:47]  Country music, too.
[00:12:48]  Within a year of its radio debut, a performance by fiddling 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.
[00:13:04]  Faulkner sang the old songs in a sunny voice like Gene Autry's and became Brinkley's most famous house musicians.
[00:13:10]  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.
[00:13:17]  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.
[00:13:24]  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.
[00:13:31]  And also the people wouldn't get tired of him talking about his goat ball surgery.
[00:13:37]  Yeah.
[00:13:38]  Yeah.
[00:13:39]  Country music was launched as a genre to sell goat testicle surgery.
[00:13:44]  That wouldn't, wow.
[00:13:47]  I'm going to go home and think about that.
[00:13:50]  Think about that a lot.
[00:13:52]  Think about that.
[00:13:53]  I want to like yell that to Toby Keith at some point.
[00:13:57]  Yeah.
[00:13:57]  Do you know the history of your music?
[00:14:00]  You're just selling goat balls, man.
[00:14:04]  All right, okay.
[00:14:06]  Yeah, so John Brinkley, you know, became a radio pioneer, became a country music pioneer, was a goat testicle replacement pioneer.
[00:14:13]  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.
[00:14:23]  He was going to start selling medicine over the radio.
[00:14:27]  Now, this idea was born out of a practical problem.
[00:14:31]  KFKB was so popular that it received more than 3,000 letters a day, far too many for the local post office or Dr. Brinkley's office to possibly handle.
[00:14:39]  He launched a new program in 1928, Medical Question Box.
[00:14:43]  It was devised as a more efficient way to answer his mail while also making a huge amount of money.
[00:14:48]  Here's the book, Border Radio.
[00:14:50]  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 1,500 pharmacists who belonged to the Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association.
[00:15:01]  After giving news of his current patients over the air, Oh oh, Rob has been sitting up all day.
[00:15:05]  Alfred Nash sends greetings home.
[00:15:07]  Doctor opened the question box.
[00:15:09]  Sunflower State from Dresden, Kansas.
[00:15:11]  Probably he has gallstones.
[00:15:12]  No, I don't mean that.
[00:15:13]  I mean kidney stones.
[00:15:14]  My advice to you is to put him on prescription numbers 80 and 50 for men, also 64.
[00:15:19]  I think that he will be a whole lot better.
[00:15:21]  Also, drink a lot of water.
[00:15:22]  To another supplicant, doctor responded, for three months, take Dr. Brinkley's treatment for childless homes.
[00:15:28]  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.
[00:15:33]  If this lady will take numbers 50 and 61 and that good old standby of mine, number 67, for about three months and see if it isn't a great big change taking place.
[00:15:42]  To a person with exactly the opposite problem, the doctor counseled, I suggest that you have ancient sterilization.
[00:15:47]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:48]  Yeah.
[00:15:49]  I suggest that you have your husband 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.
[00:15:57]  So he starts diagnosing people over the radio and prescribing them over the radio and gets 1,500 pharmacies to get on to the plan.
[00:16:09]  And one of the things they do is he's not just prescribing them normal medicine.
[00:16:12]  He launches a whole line of medicine that's not known by what it actually is, but just by a number.
[00:16:17]  Number 54, number 67.
[00:16:20]  So it's his medicine.
[00:16:21]  It all costs six times the market price for medicine of the type.
[00:16:25]  And he gets a dollar for every bottle that's sold, which means a lot more money than he would, you know.
[00:16:31]  It's a shitload of money.
[00:16:33]  And of course, the people who are taking medicine based on his over-the-air diagnoses aren't just people who he's reading their letters on air.
[00:16:42]  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.
[00:16:51]  So he's just selling.

=== The Cost of Fake Cures (05:57) ===

[00:16:52]  Yeah.
[00:16:53]  And then he's making a dollar off of every bottle.
[00:16:55]  And these people are just like, well, that kind of sounds like what I'm going through.
[00:16:59]  Better get this medicine that's not real.
[00:17:01]  Better get this medicine.
[00:17:03]  Well, part of the problem is that it was real medicine.
[00:17:08]  Oh, 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.
[00:17:16]  These were actual drugs.
[00:17:19]  All right.
[00:17:20]  People would like hear him talk to someone on the radio and be like, oh, that sounds like what I've got.
[00:17:24]  And then they'd 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.
[00:17:35]  Dr. H.W. Gilly of Ottawa, Kansas, wound up treating a mailman who took Dr. Brinkley's on-air advice and got medication based on it.
[00:17:43]  Quote, I found the patient profoundly collapsed, his countenance ghastly, icy cold, pulseless, and apparently dying from some great shock.
[00:17:49]  Upon my question as to what happened, he whispered, I took some of Brinkley's medicine.
[00:17:54]  Now, that medicine was Brinkley's number 50, a liver medication that cost $350 despite being only worth about 75 cents.
[00:18:00]  It was real medication, obviously, but its price was wildly inflated.
[00:18:04]  Unfortunately, it was also exactly the wrong medication for the patient.
[00:18:08]  Dr. Jilly reported that its effects had, quote, been so drastic upon the patient as to produce enormous cholera-like grippings and actions and vomiting, causing a tearing open of an old ulcer and a violent hemorrhage.
[00:18:18]  The vomiting and intense pain continuing.
[00:18:20]  X-ray pictures were taken showing the pyloric orifice about one and a half inches to be nearly closed.
[00:18:25]  And it will be imperative to make a new opening by attaching the bowel to the lower margin of the stomach.
[00:18:32]  So he has to perform bowel surgery on this guy because he took radio pills.
[00:18:36]  Jesus.
[00:18:38]  Okay.
[00:18:39]  Now, I don't like to diagnose people over podcasts, Caitlin.
[00:18:45]  But, you know, you know what I do like to diagnose it?
[00:18:48]  It seems like it works so well.
[00:18:50]  It did work so well.
[00:18:51]  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.
[00:19:00]  Just don't take Dr. Brinkley's number 50.
[00:19:04]  It's only if you have liver problems.
[00:19:08]  Was that a good ad plug, Sophie?
[00:19:10]  Wonderful.
[00:19:11]  Okay.
[00:19:12]  Products.
[00:19:18]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:19:22]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:19:26]  If you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:19:29]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:19:32]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:19:36]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:19:37]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:19:40]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:19:42]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:19:47]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:19:49]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:19:50]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:19:52]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:19:55]  They said, oh, hell no.
[00:19:57]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:19:59]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:20:04]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:20:06]  Trust me, babe.
[00:20:07]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:20:16]  What's up, everyone?
[00:20:17]  I'm Ago Modem.
[00:20:18]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:20:26]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:20:29]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:20:33]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:20:38]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:20:40]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:20:44]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:20:49]  Yeah.
[00:20:50]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:20:52]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:20:54]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:21:02]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:21:05]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:21:11]  Just hang in there.
[00:21:12]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:21:14]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:21:15]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:21:17]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:21:25]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:21:32]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:21:37]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:21:40]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:21:44]  I doctored the test once.
[00:21:45]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:21:48]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:21:52]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:21:55]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:21:57]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:21:59]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
[00:22:02]  My mind was blown.
[00:22:03]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:22:05]  This is Love Trap.
[00:22:07]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:22:09]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:22:13]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:22:20]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:22:25]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:22:34]  10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
[00:22:37]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:22:42]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:22:48]  How could this have happened in City Hall?

=== Death Certificates and Licenses (13:06) ===

[00:22:50]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:22:50]  Jeffrey Hood did it.
[00:22:52]  July 2003.
[00:22:54]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:22:59]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:23:02]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:23:10]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:23:13]  A shocking public murder.
[00:23:14]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:23:16]  Those are shots.
[00:23:17]  Those are shots.
[00:23:18]  Get down.
[00:23:18]  A charismatic politician.
[00:23:20]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:23:22]  I still have a weapon.
[00:23:24]  And I could shoot you.
[00:23:27]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:23:29]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:23:32]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:23:34]  That may have been about sex.
[00:23:36]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:23:49]  We're back!
[00:23:50]  Yay!
[00:23:51]  Caitlin, how are you feeling about this guy so far?
[00:23:54]  I'm feeling like I need some of his medicine because he's making me sick.
[00:23:59]  Well, the medical question box soon netted Dr. Brinkley around $14,000 a month, which was roughly $6.5 million a year in modern money.
[00:24:08]  He makes so much money.
[00:24:12]  Shit.
[00:24:13]  Now, the longer his grift went on, the more victims turned up.
[00:24:16]  One such victim was a middle-aged man named Whitbeck.
[00:24:19]  Like many of Dr. Brinkley's clients, Whitbeck felt beaten down by his difficult life of labor.
[00:24:23]  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.
[00:24:31]  Now, that only brought in about $550, which was $200 short of what they needed.
[00:24:35]  But Whitbeck and his wife were sure that the kind old Dr. Brinkley they heard preaching on the radio would give them a break when he heard about their situation.
[00:24:43]  Next, according to the book Charlatan, quote, Brinkley was not that kind of Christian.
[00:24:47]  When Andy got there with only $550, Brinkley wouldn't touch him.
[00:24:51]  He'd have to raise $750 or go home without an operation.
[00:24:54]  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.
[00:25:01]  He wanted that operation so bad so he could go home and do his old job.
[00:25:04]  Then Minnie Brinkley, who liked to describe her role at the clinic as counseling, collecting, and goodwill, stepped in.
[00:25:09]  She told him he'd just have to raise the other 200, and they worked on his fears, made him think the goat glands were the only thing that could save him and make him young and strong again.
[00:25:17]  And Andy didn't know where to turn for money.
[00:25:18]  With tears in his eyes, he begged Brinkley to take the note for $200 and he'd pay it little by little out of his wages as he earned them.
[00:25:24]  Minnie Brinkley refused, but did agree to write his employer and get them to agree to garnish his wages until the $200 was paid.
[00:25:32]  Whitbeck 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.
[00:25:39]  Oh my gosh.
[00:25:40]  That's cool.
[00:25:40]  So everything I said about John Brinkley being any sort of philanthropist, I was not right.
[00:25:47]  Yeah, he was definitely not a philanthropist.
[00:25:49]  Oh, what a man.
[00:25:52]  Eat the rich.
[00:25:53]  Yeah.
[00:25:54]  Right?
[00:25:55]  Eat this rich guy for sure.
[00:25:57]  Now, another victim was Alexander Ekblon and his wife, Rose.
[00:26:00]  She was dying of colon cancer, and actual doctors had told Alexander that his wife's case was terminal.
[00:26:06]  He later recalled, I love my wife very much.
[00:26:08]  I would have given my own life to save her if I could.
[00:26:10]  And a man in my place about to see the wife he loves drift out to the tide will grasp at any straw.
[00:26:15]  So Ekblon managed to pull together barely enough money for an operation.
[00:26:19]  Rose went under the knife and died the very next day.
[00:26:21]  Dr. Brinkley still demanded payment.
[00:26:24]  There are dozens and dozens of documented cases like this, and probably hundreds of cases that were never documented.
[00:26:29]  The wheels of truth and something that vaguely resembled justice gradually turned, though, thanks largely to the efforts of one Dr. Morris Fishbean, who by the late 1920s had become the chief nemesis of John Brinkley.
[00:26:40]  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.
[00:26:47]  One by one, Brinkley's ability to practice medicine was revoked.
[00:26:50]  But Brinkley still had his radio station, and on it, he attacked Morris Fishbean as fishy fishbean and slammed the AMA as smirking oligarchs, promising, I'll grind their heads off under my heel like I would a snake.
[00:27:04]  I mean, he's got away with words.
[00:27:05]  You gotta give him a turn.
[00:27:06]  He's got away with words.
[00:27:07]  That's why he's a great radio personality.
[00:27:10]  And I will say, as someone who does essentially the same job, I love grinding snakes' heads off under my heels.
[00:27:17]  Same.
[00:27:17]  That's how you get fish oil, I've heard.
[00:27:20]  That's how you get, that's how you get snake oil.
[00:27:22]  Yeah, what did I say?
[00:27:23]  Fish oil.
[00:27:23]  Yeah, fish oil.
[00:27:24]  No.
[00:27:24]  You grind fish under your heel for that.
[00:27:26]  You got to strangle a lot of fish to get fish oil.
[00:27:29]  Right, right, right, right.
[00:27:30]  Yes, I don't have a way with words, which is why I'm a terrible podcaster.
[00:27:35]  It's well, I don't know.
[00:27:36]  Caitlin, I believe if you were to start selling pills based on random radio diagnoses, you could make $6 million a year.
[00:27:44]  Thank you so much for your vote of confidence.
[00:27:46]  And I would also just like to say that I would not do that because I'm not a horrible person.
[00:27:53]  Well, I'm happy to do it.
[00:27:55]  But I need to ink a deal with Walgreens before I start prescribing anything.
[00:28:00]  Sure.
[00:28:00]  As 1930 dawned, the Kansas City Star began to publish a series of exposés on Dr. Brinkley.
[00:28:05]  They spread the story of Cora Maddox, a 15-year-old appendicitis patient who claimed Brinkley had held her at gunpoint and demanded an extra $100 for the operation he'd just performed on her.
[00:28:14]  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.
[00:28:23]  Yikes.
[00:28:24]  Yes, he loves threatening people while drunk.
[00:28:28]  Which that's the most likable thing about the guy to me.
[00:28:31]  Waving a gun around while drunk, threatening a surgery patient.
[00:28:35]  That's just good old-fashioned American fun.
[00:28:38]  That's right.
[00:28:39]  Gotta admire him.
[00:28:41]  That's why I spend every Friday night at the hospital.
[00:28:45]  Now, the star also did the hard grunt work of putting together a clear list of patients who had died under Dr. Brinkley's ministrations.
[00:28:52]  He insisted, I will not accept any patient who cannot be cured or may die under treatment.
[00:28:57]  No patient of mine has ever died here.
[00:28:58]  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.
[00:29:04]  Other doctors may kill him off, but I daren't.
[00:29:07]  The next day, the star published a list of five people who had died at Brinkley's hospital in the last two years.
[00:29:12]  He had even signed their death certificates.
[00:29:14]  John Brinkley next hired Pinkerton detectives to harass, threaten, and bribe his unhappy former patients to keep them quiet.
[00:29:20]  But soon, the state of Kansas got involved.
[00:29:22]  Their investigation uncovered even more shadiness, and on June 13th, his license to broadcast radio was canceled by a 3-2 vote.
[00:29:30]  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 hack medicine and random prescriptions and bad surgery.
[00:29:39]  You're thinking that's why he lost his radio license?
[00:29:41]  I would imagine so, but.
[00:29:43]  No, no, you're wrong.
[00:29:45]  The reason they wound up canceling his license is because he used the words erection and climax on the air.
[00:29:51]  Oh.
[00:29:52]  Yep.
[00:29:53]  So it's all about censorship.
[00:29:56]  Yeah, that's what it took to get him off the air.
[00:29:59]  They were fine with all the people he killed, but he was talking about climaxes and that can't have that in 1920 fucking radio.
[00:30:06]  He talked about a hard penis on the radio.
[00:30:11]  Okay.
[00:30:12]  Well, let alone talking about like he talked about women's orgasms, which, you know, obviously was not allowed.
[00:30:20]  Pioneered.
[00:30:21]  Feminist icon.
[00:30:23]  John Brinkley.
[00:30:26]  Now, I mean, also, you know, I didn't even mention this because there's so much to go over.
[00:30:30]  His wife was a fake doctor, too.
[00:30:31]  She had a fake diploma from the same fake school he did.
[00:30:34]  So he really, he really was a paragon of women's equality.
[00:30:38]  Wow.
[00:30:38]  And wasn't she, because you said that she was practicing midwifery, being able to do that.
[00:30:43]  She did that for a while.
[00:30:44]  Okay.
[00:30:45]  Once he started putting testicles in people, she got into the whole cutting open people and shoving balls inside of them, too.
[00:30:51]  Oh, so she was doing the same thing.
[00:30:53]  Yeah, she was very much a full partner in his enterprise.
[00:30:56]  Interesting.
[00:30:56]  Okay.
[00:30:57]  They seem to have really, really been a match made in heaven.
[00:31:01]  Wow.
[00:31:02]  I mean, John and Minnie.
[00:31:04]  John and Minnie just shoving balls into balls and lying on the radio.
[00:31:12]  Six weeks after losing.
[00:31:14]  Yeah, it is.
[00:31:14]  It is.
[00:31:15]  It's a tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme.
[00:31:18]  Beauty and the guy who shoves balls into balls.
[00:31:23]  Six weeks after losing his radio license, the Kansas Board of Medical Examiners convened to discuss revoking John Brinkley's medical license.
[00:31:30]  The trial was something of a circus sideshow.
[00:31:33]  Happy goat gland recipients were paid to do handstands outside of the court for the press in order to prove something, I guess.
[00:31:40]  Meanwhile, in the courtroom, prosecutors brought in a steady stream of horribly injured patients.
[00:31:45]  Here's the book Charlatan again.
[00:31:47]  Charles Ziegenharth, 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.
[00:31:57]  Grant Eden, caretaker of a state park, had come in on the same bush as John Zahner.
[00:32:01]  He, too, got the works after which he could barely move.
[00:32:04]  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.
[00:32:10]  Wishing you a Merry Christmas.
[00:32:12]  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.
[00:32:19]  I smelled whiskey on his breath, Carroll said.
[00:32:21]  He opened a desk drawer, 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.
[00:32:28]  Carol and his brother had returned with guns of their own and rescued her Wild West style from the building.
[00:32:33]  Which, that's a movie right there.
[00:32:36]  He's right.
[00:32:36]  He's making so much money.
[00:32:38]  The fact that he is like, but I need that extra $100.
[00:32:43]  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.
[00:32:50]  Like, this lady's already sick.
[00:32:51]  She's already paid for surgery that you did probably poorly.
[00:32:55]  And you're threatening her drunk at gunpoint.
[00:32:58]  Amazing doctor.
[00:32:59]  Amazing doctor.
[00:33:00]  So good.
[00:33:02]  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.
[00:33:11]  They agreed, and the horrifying spectacle of him cutting into somebody convinced them to finally revoke his medical license.
[00:33:17]  Now, not a Dr. Brinkley realized.
[00:33:22]  Not a Dr. Brinkley realized that the only way to get his medical license back was to become governor of the state of Kansas.
[00:33:28]  Wait a minute.
[00:33:29]  So he ran.
[00:33:30]  Yeah, that's where his mind went next.
[00:33:32]  They took away his license.
[00:33:33]  So he was like, well, I guess I'll be the fucking governor.
[00:33:36]  Okay.
[00:33:37]  So he ran what would become one of the most successful write-in campaigns in all of American history.
[00:33:42]  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 cure everyone's illnesses with goat testicles.
[00:33:55]  Both the Republican and Democratic parties had to work together to stop his candidacy.
[00:33:59]  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, J.R. Brinkley.
[00:34:07]  J. Period, R. Period Brinkley, to be exact.
[00:34:10]  Votes for John Brinkley, or just J.R. Brinkley, would not be counted.
[00:34:14]  John Brinkley came in third place in the election.
[00:34:17]  The number of ballots that were discarded for improperly spelling his name would have been more than enough to win him the election.
[00:34:22]  It was so close that the Republican candidate, who lost to the Democrat by only 200 votes, refused to contest the election or even ask for a recount because every politician in the country was so fucking terrified about what would happen if John Brinkley were to win the governorship.
[00:34:36]  Wow.
[00:34:37]  That is wild.
[00:34:40]  He was so bad he got the Republican and Democratic Party to work together.
[00:34:44]  Yes.
[00:34:46]  Okay.
[00:34:46]  Now, by this point, most men would have probably retired to enjoy their millions of dollars.
[00:34:52]  But John Brinkley was not a quitter.
[00:34:55]  In 1931, he moved to the border town of Del Rio, Texas, and got a license from the Mexican government to build a radio station on their side of the border.
[00:35:03]  Under the radio station named XER, he continued to campaign for governor of Kansas.
[00:35:08]  In 1932, he came in third place again, still the best showing by an independent candidate in gubernatorial history.
[00:35:14]  He tried once more in 1934, but by that point he'd been gone from Kansas long enough that his star had faded.
[00:35:19]  But Brinkley found himself liking living on the Texas border anyway.
[00:35:23]  He was able to practice medicine in Del Rio, because then, as now, there were no rules in southern Texas.
[00:35:28]  He was also able to upgrade his radio station in 1935.
[00:35:31]  Now, under the name XERA or Zera, he upgraded his broadcasting station to an absolutely fucking insane 1 million watts, by far the most powerful radio transmitter on the fucking planet.
[00:35:43]  For comparison, the most powerful modern AM radio transmitters in the modern United States are 50,000 watts.
[00:35:50]  People in Canada were able to tune in and clearly listen to John Brinkley's hours of broadcasts.

=== Powering the Texas Border (06:18) ===

[00:35:56]  Okay.
[00:35:57]  Yeah.
[00:35:59]  Pretty, pretty, pretty great.
[00:36:01]  How does he have time for everything he's doing?
[00:36:04]  He's doing these radio shows.
[00:36:06]  He's building radio stations.
[00:36:07]  He's practicing medicine.
[00:36:09]  He's getting drunk apparently all the time.
[00:36:12]  He's camping.
[00:36:13]  He's always governor.
[00:36:15]  Like he's fun.
[00:36:16]  He's like invent, not inventing, but like he is helping to like make country music, you know, spread it to the masses.
[00:36:25]  80% of what he's doing is just talking on the radio, and he loves hearing himself talk.
[00:36:29]  So he's just, all he's really doing is spending like nine hours a day talking on the radio.
[00:36:34]  Wow.
[00:36:35]  And that's, that's enough to accomplish most of his goals.
[00:36:38]  Okay.
[00:36:38]  Well, gotta give it to him.
[00:36:43]  Gotta give it to him.
[00:36:44]  You don't.
[00:36:44]  No.
[00:36:45]  You don't care.
[00:36:45]  You don't.
[00:36:46]  He shouldn't do that at all.
[00:36:48]  He already got an awful lot given to him.
[00:36:51]  Yes.
[00:36:52]  Now, Caitlin, I know what you're thinking right now.
[00:36:56]  I think you're thinking the only thing that goes better than thoughts of Mexican radio stations are podcast ads.
[00:37:06]  That one was not a good transition.
[00:37:10]  I knew it had gotten away from me when I started it, but, you know, that's the time it is.
[00:37:14]  It's time for an ad break.
[00:37:18]  Nothing?
[00:37:18]  Nothing, Caitlin?
[00:37:19]  Oh, I'm so sorry.
[00:37:20]  I thought that.
[00:37:22]  Lift me up here.
[00:37:23]  Come on.
[00:37:24]  I completely agree that it's time for an ad break.
[00:37:28]  And I think your transition is actually really flawless.
[00:37:32]  Thank you.
[00:37:33]  Thank you for saying the truth about my flawless transition.
[00:37:36]  You're welcome.
[00:37:37]  Products!
[00:37:43]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:37:47]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:37:51]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:37:54]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:37:57]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:38:01]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:38:05]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:38:07]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:38:12]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:38:13]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:38:15]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:38:17]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:38:20]  They said, oh, hell no.
[00:38:22]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:38:24]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:38:29]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:38:30]  Trust me, babe.
[00:38:31]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:38:41]  What's up, everyone?
[00:38:42]  I'm Ego Modern.
[00:38:43]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:38:51]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:38:54]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:38:57]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:39:02]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:39:05]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:39:09]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:39:14]  Yeah.
[00:39:14]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:39:17]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:39:19]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:39:27]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:39:30]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:39:37]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:39:39]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:39:40]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:39:41]  Listen to Thanks Stat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:39:50]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:39:56]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:40:02]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:40:05]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:40:09]  I doctored the test once.
[00:40:10]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:40:13]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:40:17]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:40:20]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:40:22]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:40:24]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
[00:40:26]  My mind was blown.
[00:40:28]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:40:30]  This is Love Trap.
[00:40:32]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:40:34]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:40:38]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:40:45]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:40:49]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:40:59]  10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
[00:41:02]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:41:07]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.
[00:41:10]  This is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:41:13]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:41:14]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:41:15]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:41:17]  July 2003.
[00:41:19]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:41:23]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:41:26]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:41:35]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:41:38]  A shocking public murder.
[00:41:39]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[00:41:41]  Those are shots.
[00:41:42]  Those are shots.
[00:41:43]  Get down.
[00:41:43]  A charismatic politician.
[00:41:45]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:41:47]  I still have a weapon.
[00:41:49]  And I could shoot you.
[00:41:52]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:41:54]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:41:57]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:41:59]  That may have been about sex.
[00:42:01]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

=== Johnny Cash's Secret Weapon (09:51) ===

[00:42:14]  We're back.
[00:42:14]  Now, Caitlin, a million watts, I think, sounds like a lot because it is a lot, but I want people at home to understand how fucking ridiculously powerful John Brinkley's radio transmitter was.
[00:42:26]  So I'm going to read another quote from the book, Border Blaster.
[00:42:29]  Quote, People living near the station did not even need a radio to enjoy the great healers' messages.
[00:42:35]  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?
[00:42:45]  Ranchers were startled to find their fences electrified by the high-powered broadcasts of hillbilly performers and fortune tellers.
[00:42:52]  Some residents said they even picked up the station in the fillings of their teeth or received vibrations of it on their hot water heaters.
[00:42:58]  At 840 kilocycles, powerful Zira brushed aside the signals of WWL in New Orleans and KOA in Denver as if they were 98-watt weaklings.
[00:43:07]  A variety reporter in New York said that he could hear XERA regularly, and a Philadelphia resident said that he had trouble getting anything but Dr. Brinkley's station on his family's radio set.
[00:43:16]  Wow.
[00:43:18]  That's why they don't do million watt radio stations so much.
[00:43:23]  Right.
[00:43:24]  That so he had he had the most powerful one with like the widest range.
[00:43:29]  How did he get that?
[00:43:30]  Or did he build it?
[00:43:31]  He just spent a lot of money.
[00:43:32]  Yeah.
[00:43:33]  He hired really good engineers and spent a shitload of money.
[00:43:37]  Damn.
[00:43:37]  Because he wanted fucking everybody to be able to hear him.
[00:43:40]  God.
[00:43:42]  It's just the people with the most money are the people who should not have any money.
[00:43:50]  And you know, I think a lot of it...
[00:43:51]  A lot of it comes down to Dick's Caitlin.
[00:43:54]  He got rich by selling people a cure-all for their dick problems, which he said was, you know, goat testicles.
[00:44:01]  But for him, his dick was having the most powerful radio tower in the world.
[00:44:06]  That's what he needed to feel virile.
[00:44:09]  And it makes sense.
[00:44:10]  I mean, a radio tower, I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I imagine it is being pretty phallic.
[00:44:16]  Yeah, you'd have to assume it's a tower, right?
[00:44:18]  Yeah.
[00:44:20]  Now, John Brinkley used his unprecedented soapbox to harangue the AMA and sling snake oil.
[00:44:26]  As he got older and goat gland operations fell from favor, he moved on to $1,000 vasectomies.
[00:44:31]  And, increasingly, he waded into politics.
[00:44:34]  You see, John Brinkley hated him some Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
[00:44:39]  He also found himself increasingly enamored with a little-known German politician by the name of Adolf Hitler.
[00:44:46]  Uh-oh.
[00:44:47]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:48]  He went to Germany for the 36 Olympics and loved it.
[00:44:52]  Loved seeing what Hitler had done to Germany.
[00:44:54]  Thought it was a pretty cool place.
[00:44:57]  Pretty neat place.
[00:44:59]  He hosted some other people who have been on this podcast on his radio show.
[00:45:05]  Father Coughlin was a guest.
[00:45:07]  American Fuhrer and head of the German-American Bund, Fritz Kuhn, was a guest.
[00:45:11]  William Pelley, founder of the Silver Shirts.
[00:45:13]  All of these people were guests on XERA.
[00:45:15]  Brinkley even donated $5,000 to the Silver Shirts, which were an American fascist movement.
[00:45:21]  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. Fishbean, was a Jewish man.
[00:45:30]  But a lot of it also came from his hatred of communism.
[00:45:33]  So, you know, it's a mix of oath.
[00:45:36]  He doesn't like Jewish people.
[00:45:38]  He doesn't like communism.
[00:45:40]  Maybe he thinks they're both the same thing like most Nazis did.
[00:45:43]  Right.
[00:45:44]  I mean, I guess if that's your stance, fascism looks pretty good.
[00:45:50]  Yeah.
[00:45:50]  He said stuff like, war is the communist delight.
[00:45:53]  He mixes its bitter broth for the sweet lips of your boy.
[00:45:56]  I would deport every radical who preferred the gleam of warlike Mars to the soft amber light of the Bethlehem orb.
[00:46:02]  He should have been a poet with his own.
[00:46:07]  Don't put goat balls in people.
[00:46:09]  Write down your balls and people.
[00:46:10]  Do you think that's a horrible words?
[00:46:13]  Gosh.
[00:46:13]  John Brinkley, in the late 30s, added swastikas to the title of his swimming pool and became a prominent advocate of isolationism.
[00:46:21]  In 1941, he ran for the Texas Senate.
[00:46:24]  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.
[00:46:35]  There was some worry that even with all this, he might still win.
[00:46:37]  A writer for the Emporia Gazette wrote this about his Senate run.
[00:46:41]  Quote, he will appeal to the hillbilly mind as it has never been lured before.
[00:46:46]  He is irresistible to the moron mind, and Texas has plenty of such.
[00:46:49]  Perhaps that is unfair.
[00:46:51]  Very likely, Texas has no more morons than Kansas.
[00:46:53]  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.
[00:47:00]  If this republic ever totters to its fall, it will be because the moron minority shall sometime, somewhere, somehow gain a party majority by unscrupulous leadership.
[00:47:11]  I mean, that has to explain why he got so successful in the first place, right?
[00:47:17]  Just, you know, uneducated people being like, I want my dick to work better.
[00:47:22]  And then...
[00:47:23]  I want my dick to work better and I like the way he talks.
[00:47:25]  And then despite all of the stories of him, you know, being a drunken disaster and killing people with the surgeries he's performing, everyone's just like, well, I mean, I'm going to still give him, you know, what was it, $750 for this?
[00:47:43]  $750.
[00:47:44]  Well, I want those goat balls.
[00:47:45]  Yeah.
[00:47:46]  Oh, that's discouraging.
[00:47:49]  Now, luckily for America, this time, the Mexican government got fed up with Brinkley, and in 1941, they made an agreement with the U.S. government to cut out renegade stations like XERA, denying Brinkley his main platform just as the government came crashing down on his head.
[00:48:03]  By May of 1942, he was poor, sick, and dying.
[00:48:07]  He developed a blood clot and had several heart attacks and had to have his leg amputated.
[00:48:11]  He died on May 26th, 1942, almost penniless.
[00:48:16]  His last words were reported to have been, if Dr. Fishbean goes to heaven, I want to go the other way.
[00:48:22]  Now.
[00:48:23]  Wait, hang on.
[00:48:25]  Did he, when he was his health failing, did he put goat balls in himself?
[00:48:33]  He did not, shockingly.
[00:48:34]  Yeah.
[00:48:35]  Wow.
[00:48:35]  You know, you really would think that he would have tried that obvious cure-all.
[00:48:40]  Right.
[00:48:41]  Yeah.
[00:48:41]  But he did not.
[00:48:43]  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.
[00:48:52]  That's exactly right.
[00:48:53]  If you're going to put goat balls in me, you'd better be putting goat balls in you.
[00:48:57]  I've said that.
[00:48:57]  I've said that for years, so if you can back me up, that's long been my catchphrase.
[00:49:03]  Now, Dr. Brinkley's influence would live on in bad and good ways.
[00:49:07]  The bad is very obvious.
[00:49:08]  He horribly injured and killed hundreds of patients, maybe more.
[00:49:11]  He claimed to have carried out more than 16,000 goat gland operations, so God only knows the total health impact of his work.
[00:49:18]  And then all those poor goats.
[00:49:20]  And all those poor goats.
[00:49:21]  At least 60,000 goats.
[00:49:23]  16,000 goats.
[00:49:25]  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.
[00:49:33]  But John Brinkley also helped launch country music as a genre.
[00:49:37]  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 it had occupied prior to Brinkley's advent.
[00:49:48]  Some of his early listeners included, according to the book Charlatan, quote, Chet Atkins, a teenager in Columbus, Georgia, who turned into XCRA on a battery-powered radio he built from mail-order parts.
[00:49:58]  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 XCRA.
[00:50:05]  Tom Hall, future songwriter and balladeer in Oliveville, Kentucky.
[00:50:09]  Johnny Cash in DS, Arkansas, who first heard his future bride June Carter, then age 10, singing over Brinkley's airwaves.
[00:50:16]  Wow.
[00:50:18]  So it wasn't all bad.
[00:50:20]  So he was actually a pretty good guy.
[00:50:22]  So, I mean, yeah, thousands and thousands of people horribly, horribly injured and hobbled for life and killed from bad operations and medical treatments gone awry and the spreading of fascism over the airwaves.
[00:50:36]  But Johnny Cash.
[00:50:40]  Small price to pay.
[00:50:41]  And Wayland Jennings.
[00:50:42]  Yeah, small price to pay.
[00:50:44]  I mean, for Wayland Jennings and Johnny Cash.
[00:50:46]  And I'm not a big fan of Tom Hall or Chet Atkins, but other people like him.
[00:50:50]  I don't know any of those people except for Johnny Cash.
[00:50:53]  Everybody knows Johnny Cash.
[00:50:54]  Everybody knows Johnny Cash.
[00:50:56]  Yeah.
[00:50:57]  So that's the story.
[00:51:00]  That's John fucking Brinkley.
[00:51:02]  Well, I feel enlightened.
[00:51:05]  I feel like I mean, I feel like I've just had some goat balls put in into my gonad areas.
[00:51:16]  Good.
[00:51:17]  Which is to say that I feel great.
[00:51:22]  Wow.
[00:51:23]  I mean, very ambitious guy, as you said at the beginning.
[00:51:30]  And I mean, I hate that I'm like impressed with all these horrible people, but they accomplish a lot.
[00:51:38]  I'm not impressed.
[00:51:39]  I'm horrified, but I mean, I don't know what I'm trying to say.
[00:51:45]  I just, you know what?
[00:51:47]  Here's what I'm trying to say.
[00:51:48]  Fuck John Brinkley.
[00:51:51]  The end.
[00:51:52]  Fuck John Brinkley.
[00:51:53]  The end.
[00:51:55]  If you're feeling sick, though, maybe do grind up a bunch of goat testicles and shoot them up your ass with a syringe.
[00:52:00]  Yeah, you can't forget about that rectal syringe.
[00:52:03]  Can't forget about that rectal syringe.

=== Fuck John Brinkley (05:13) ===

[00:52:06]  I'm so glad that modern medicine is what it is today.
[00:52:11]  And that's not to say that our medical industry isn't very broken because it is.
[00:52:19]  But, you know, I'm glad.
[00:52:21]  I'm just glad that they're, you know, goat ball insertion isn't a thing anymore, to my knowledge.
[00:52:31]  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.
[00:52:42]  At least it's not ground up goat nuts.
[00:52:46]  Or like real medicine that you're giving to the wrong people so that they have horrible physical reactions to it.
[00:52:53]  Right.
[00:52:53]  And marked up at an insane price.
[00:52:57]  Yeah.
[00:52:58]  And when you're the guy who makes me look at Alex Jones and be like, well, compared to that, he's pretty ethical.
[00:53:06]  You know, you've got a real bastard on your hand.
[00:53:09]  Yeah.
[00:53:09]  You know, you've got a real piece of shit on your hands.
[00:53:12]  And John Brinkley was a real piece of shit.
[00:53:15]  Yes, indeed.
[00:53:17]  Caitlin, you got some pluggables to plug?
[00:53:20]  You bet.
[00:53:20]  You can follow my radio station in which I, you know, spread feminist iconery and not the bad stuff that John Brinkley was spreading.
[00:53:35]  And that's all to say.
[00:53:36]  Listen to my podcast, The Bechtel Cast, that I co-host with Jamie Loftus, and we talk about the representation of women in movies.
[00:53:45]  And then you can, and that's spelled B-E-C-H-D-E-L, just in case you didn't know.
[00:53:51]  You can follow me personally on Instagram and Twitter at Caitlin Durante, C-A-I-T.
[00:53:58]  The Graham and the Twits.
[00:54:00]  That's right.
[00:54:01]  And yeah, check out my website, CaitlinDurante.com.
[00:54:05]  There's some, you know, show dates and stuff like that.
[00:54:09]  But yeah, that's it.
[00:54:12]  Check out Caitlin Durante.
[00:54:14]  Check out Caitlin Durant, me on Twitter at IridOK.
[00:54:21]  Did you like that, Caitlin?
[00:54:22]  Is that working for you?
[00:54:24]  I loved it.
[00:54:26]  Excellent.
[00:54:28]  You can check out this podcast on the web at behindthebastiards.com, where we'll have the sources for this episode, including the fantastic book, Charlatan.
[00:54:38]  And that's the...
[00:54:40]  We sell shirts, TPublic.com.
[00:54:43]  We have another podcast, It Could Happen Here, about the Civil War, bad stuff.
[00:54:48]  That's it.
[00:54:49]  Until next week, I'm Robert Evans.
[00:54:51]  Don't inject goat glands into your asshole.
[00:54:53]  Don't do it.
[00:54:54]  Don't do it.
[00:55:05]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:55:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:55:16]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:55:18]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:55:20]  We always say that.
[00:55:21]  Trust your girlfriends.
[00:55:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:55:26]  Trust me, babe, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:55:36]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[00:55:41]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:55:44]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[00:55:52]  An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
[00:55:55]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world of AI.
[00:55:58]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:56:07]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[00:56:12]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:56:15]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:56:18]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:56:20]  That's so funny.
[00:56:22]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:56:29]  Listen to Nora Jones' Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:56:37]  What's up, everyone?
[00:56:38]  I'm Ago Mode.
[00:56:39]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:56:43]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:56:47]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:56:48]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:56:55]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:56:57]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[00:57:04]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:57:06]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:57:07]  There's a lot of life.
[00:57:09]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:57:16]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:57:19]  Guaranteed human.