Part Two: The Goat Testicle Implanting Doctor Who Invented Talk Radio

Robert is joined again by Caitlin Durante to continue discussing John Brinkley.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. What's being surgically inserted? Mcglens. I'm Robert Evans hosted
Behind the Bastards. This is part two of our epic
episodes on John Brinkley, the man who put goat balls
into people. Caitlyn DURRANTI, how are you doing. I'm so good,
happy to be here, happy to be hearing about goatballs.

(00:22):
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 certainty, yes, you know. That was Actually
the original founding goal of this podcast was to achieve that,

(00:46):
uh and it It took us a year in change,
but I'm very proud. Yeah, 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.
All right, now, I'm gonna I'm gonna talk more about

(01:08):
John Brinkley. In fall of nineteen three, as John and
Minny Brinkley were on their way back from their Asian
adventure and undercover investigative journalist named Harry Thompson published a
bombshell expose a on diploma mills. 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

(01:29):
the sort of fake diploma operations that had given him
a fake diploma back in nineteen fifteen. Now roughly twenty
five thousand practicing doctors in the United States at this period,
we're in reality fake doctors. That's a lot of fake doctors. Now,
many had received their credentials from diploma mills, like Brinkley,

(01:49):
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. Um 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,

(02:11):
Doctor not At 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 A m A, which
he called a monopoly against the public interest, because they
wanted doctors to have medical licenses by July. How dare they?
By July of nine, grand jury had convened to hand

(02:34):
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 fat 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? Probably right?

(03:00):
And I'm gonna 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 fourteen goatballs inside them?
They're probably right. I'm gonna guess there's some rich guys
who are like one set of goat testicles is good.
I won't fucking give me four. Yeah. Yeah, that's my

(03:24):
guest 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 million dollar

(03:47):
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 Ninth Cavalry U S Army Orchestra, French lessons from
Kansas State Colleges College of the Air. These and other
uplifting and inspiring performances went forth from the broadcasting tower

(04:09):
of kf KB at ten fifty kill cycles 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, arterio sclerosis, and paralysis.

(04:32):
Argentine's Dr Brinkley spoke conversationally with a well oiled country accent,
blending flat Midwestern intonation and a smokey 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

(04:53):
New York Times described him as having a soothsayer's mysterious voice,
and listeners from all over the Midwest agreed with the
fan who said, there's something about Dr Brinkley that gets
close to your heart. So you 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 know,
he's putting those in their in their regular testicles. No.

(05:16):
I think he's just one of these guys that has
a really well suited voice for radio. Just like this
is like, yeah, just like all of us here, Uh,
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.

(05:37):
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. 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. Um. And I think it was sort
of the same thing with early radio. People were like,

(05:59):
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
have been doing that for years. But Dr Brinkley was
the first, 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 fucking selling

(06:21):
medical advice. Um yeah uh. He was essentially a mix
of Alex Jones and Doctor Oz and 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

(06:43):
would say things like, a red bird and 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 erect, 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

(07:06):
to you now, some effective advertising effective telling men their
dicks 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

(07:27):
Dr Brinkley's bogus surgery. One thing that made Dr John
Brinkley unique was his willingness to talk frankly and openly
about the sexual needs of women. This was actually unprecedented
and 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

(07:47):
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. Okay. So he's advocating for women,
horny women who were like, my husband's dick doesn't work.
Please help me. I need to I need to come.

(08:11):
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 fuck, and if you
can't fuck your wife, you're not a good husband. So
you need my goatballs. 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,

(08:32):
and that's important. No one else is saying that it's
just which is weird. Yeah, it's it's different 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 clearterest improved upon, which I would love to
know how he thinks that would happen. I'm very curious

(08:56):
as to what improvements he wants to add. Does he
putting goat holes into women's clitters as he do? Goats
have clitters, as he putting goat click? I think he
might be putting goat clitterea expand extending a human clitter
iss by just sticking a little goat clitter as on all.
I want to die just at this thought of that.

(09:19):
If there's one thing we know about Dr Brinkley, it's
that he'll take any part of one animals genitals and
he'll put it on another's animals 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 word lubossity or something, lubricity, lubricity of lubricity goats.

(09:41):
I mean, yeah, this is a long time coming for
him to be. I would argue that he only was
talking about that, like female women's sexuality, because I was
just an un yet explored avenue by which he can
sell his goat ball. Absolutely, he only brought it up

(10:02):
to get men in, for sure. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
that that's absolutely true, although it does lead to something
ironic a little bit later. As his radio show went on,
Dr 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,

(10:23):
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 fiddle and 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,

(10:43):
like Roy Faulkner, a k a. The Lonesome Cowboy, a
short man with a tall pompadour and easy grin Faulkner
sang the old songs and a sunny voice like Gene
Autrees 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, as
he was the first person to do this. He spread
country music outside of like this thing that just like

(11:04):
some people would play songs for each other too, 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. Yeah yeah. Country music was launched as a

(11:25):
genre to sell goat testical surgery. That wouldn't Wow, I'm
gonna go home and think about that. Think about that
a lot. You think about the 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 many Yeah. So John Brinkley,

(11:50):
you know, became a radio pioneer, became a country music pioneer,
was a goat testical replacement pioneer, and then eighty 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

(12:14):
of a practical problem. KFKB was so popular that it
received more than three thousand letters a day, far too
many for the local post office or Dr Brinkley's office
to possibly handle. He launched a new program in 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,

(12:35):
he read letters from his listeners and prescribed medicine for
their ailments, medicine that they could get from one of
the more than fifteen hundred pharmacists who belonged to the
Brinkley Pharmaceutical Association. After giving news of his current patients
over the air, O Rob has been sitting up all
day Alfred Nashson's greetings home doctor opened the question box
Sunflower State from Dresden, Kansas. Probably he has gall stones. No,

(12:56):
I don't mean that, I mean kidney stones. My advice
to you is to put him on prescript and numbers
eighty and fifty from men, also sixty four. I think
that he will be a whole lot better. Also drink
a lot of water. To another supplicant, doctor 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

(13:17):
take numbers fifty and sixty one and that good old
standby of mine number sixty seven for about three months,
and see if it isn't a great big change taken
place to a person with exactly the opposite problem. The
doctor counseled, I suggest that, yeah, exactly, yeah. I suggest
that you have your husband sterilized, and then you will
be safe from having Moore's children, provided you don't get
out in anybody else's cow pasture and get in with

(13:39):
some other bull. So he starts diagnosing people over the
radio and prescribing them over the radio. It's hundred pharmacies
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 us by a number

(14:00):
number fifty four, number sixty seven. Um, so it's his medicine.
It all costs six times the market price for a
medicine of the type. Uh, 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 shipload of money.
And of course the people who are taking medicine based
on his over the air diagnoses aren't just people who

(14:23):
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 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 I'm
going through. Better get this medicine. That's not get this medicine. Well,

(14:47):
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. People would
like hear him talk to someone on the radio would
be like, Oh, that sounds like what I've got, and

(15:08):
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. Um Dr H. W. Jilly
of Ottawa, Kansas wound up treating a mailman who took
Dr Brinkley's on air advice and got medication based on it. Quote.
I found the patient profoundly collapsed, his countants ghastly. I see, cold, pulseless,

(15:31):
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 Number fifty, a
liver medication that cost three fifty despite being only worth
about seventy five cents. It was real medication, obviously, but
its price was wildly inflated. Unfortunately, was also exactly the
wrong medication for the patient. Doctor Jelly reported that its

(15:53):
effects had quote been so drastic upon the patient as
to produce enormous choleral grippings and actions and vomiting causing
a hering open of an old ulcer and a violent hemorrhage.
The vomiting and intense pain continuing. X ray pictures were
taken showing the pyloric orifice about one and a half
inches to be nearly closed and it will be imperative
to make a new opening by attaching the bowel to
the lower margin of the stomach. So he has to

(16:16):
perform bowel surgery on this guy because he took radio pills. Geez. Now,
I don't like to diagnose people over over podcasts, Caitlin,
but you know, you know what I do like it
seems like it works so well. It did work so well,
and so that's why I'm going to diagnose that whatever

(16:37):
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 Dr Brinkley's number fifty.
It's only if you have liver problems. Was that? Was
that a good ad? Plug, Sophie? Wonderful? Okay products, We're back, Caitlin.

(17:05):
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 Dctor
Brinkley around fourteen thousand dollars a month, which was roughly
six and a half million dollars a year in modern money.
He makes so much money, shit now. The longer his

(17:28):
grift went on, the more victims turned up. One such
victim was a middle aged man named Whitbeck. Like many
of Dr 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 mortgage their home to afford
the surgery. Now that only brought in about five fifty dollars,
which was two bucks short of what they needed. But

(17:49):
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 Charlatan Quote, Brinkley was not that
kind of Christian. When Andy got there with only five
fifty dollars, Brinkley wouldn't touch him. He'd have to raise
seven fifty or go home without an operation. I never
felt so sorry for anyone in all my life as

(18:10):
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 two hundred, 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.

(18:30):
And Andy didn't know where to turn for money. With
tears in his eyes, he begged Brinkley to take the
note for two hundred dollars 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 two hundred dollars was paid. 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.

(18:52):
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. What man eat the rich, right,
eat this rich guy for sure? Now. Another victim was
Alexander Eckblonde and his wife Rose. She was dying of

(19:14):
colon cancer, and actual doctors had told Alexander that his
wife's case was terminal. He later recalled, I loved 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
Blonde managed to pull together barely enough money for an operation.
Rose went under the knife and died the very next day.

(19:35):
Dr 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 one Dr Morris Fishbean, by the late
nineteen twenties had become the chief nemesis of John Brinkley,
the editor of the journal of the American Medical Association

(19:56):
went from state to state confronting their medical boards with
evidence of Brinkley's butcher One by one, Brinkley's ability to
practice medicine was revoked, but Brinkley still had his radio station,
and on it, he attacked Morris fish Bean as fishy
fish Bean and slammed the A. M A. As smirking
Oligarch's promising I'll grind their heads off under my heel
like I would a snake. I mean, he's got away

(20:18):
with words. 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. Same. That's how you get
fish oil. I've heard that's how you get That's how
you get snake oil. What did I say, fish oil?
Fish oil? No, you grind fish under your heel for that.

(20:39):
You've got to strangle a lot of fish to get
fish oil. Yes, 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 diagnoses. You could make
six million dollars a year. Thank you so much for
your vote of confidence, and that I would also just

(21:00):
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 started prescribing anything.
As The Kansas City Star began to publish a series
of expose s on Dr Brinkley, they spread the story
of Karamatics, a fifteen year old appendicitist patient who claimed

(21:23):
Brinkley had held her at gunpoint and demanded an extra
hundred dollars for the operation he'd 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. Yikes. He see. He loves threatening people while drunk.
Which that's the most likable thing about the guy to me.

(21:44):
Waving a gun around while drunk, threatening the surgery patient,
that's just that's just good old fashioned American fun, that's right.
Gotta admire him. M 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 Dr Brinkley's ministrations. He insisted,

(22:06):
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 him 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

(22:28):
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 his license to broadcast radio was canceled 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

(22:49):
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. Uh. The reason
they wound up anceling his licensees because he used the
words erection and climax on the air. Oh yep, So
it's all about censorship. Yeah, that's that's what I scept

(23:11):
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 hard penis on the radio, Okay,
let alone talking about like he talked about women's orgasms,
which you know I peer was not allowed pioneered when

(23:34):
feminist icon John Brinkley. Now, I mean also, 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 didn't.
So he really, he really was a paragon of women's equality. Wow.
And wasn't she because you said that she was practicing midwiffrey.

(23:56):
She did that for a while. Once he started putting
test coals and people, she got into the whole cutting
open people and shoving balls inside of them too, So
so she was doing the same thing Yeah, she was
very much a full partner in his enterprise. Interesting, it
seemed to have really really been a match made in heaven.
I mean John and Many, John and Many just shoving

(24:19):
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 m hm.
Six weeks after losing his radio license, the Kansas Board
of Medical Examiners can feened to discuss revoking John Brinkley's

(24:42):
medical license. The trial was something of a circus side show.
Happy Goat Gland recipients were paid to do handstands 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 Eigenharth sixties said that instead of stitching

(25:03):
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 bush
as John's honor. 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 as your

(25:23):
own fault, wishing you a merry Christmas. There was testimony
from Robert Carroll, brother of Karamattox, whose vivid account of
Brinkley's gun play at the clinic had already run on
the star. I smelled whiskey on his breath. Carol said
he opened a desk, dur 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
a hundred dollars more. Carol and his brother had returned
with guns of their own and rescued her wild West

(25:45):
style from the building. Which that's that's a movie right there.
He's right, he's making so much money, the fact that
he is, Like, but I knew that extra hundred dollars.
I mean, that is not the worst part of it,
but that a pretty bad part of that's a pretty
bad part of it. Like this lady is already sick
she's already paid for surgery that you did, probably poorly,

(26:08):
and you're threatening her drunk at gunpoint. Amazing doctor, Amazing doctor.
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,

(26:31):
not a doctor, Brinkley realized. Not a doctor. Brinkley realized
that the only way to get his medical license back
was become governor of the state of Kansas. Yeah, that's
where his mind went next. They took away his license,
so he was like, well, I guess I'll be the
fucking governor. So he ran what would become one of

(26:52):
the most successful write in campaigns in all of American history.
His platform is that he was being persecuted by the A,
M A and fat cat politician, and it went over
like gangbusters with the uneducated masses, as did has promised
to fill the countryside with free clinics and cure everyone's
illnesses with goat testicles. Both the Republican and Democratic parties
had to work together to stop his candidacy. The only

(27:12):
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, j period R. Period
Brinkley to be exact, votes for John Brinkley or just J. R.
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

(27:34):
than enough to win him. The election was so close
that the Republican candidate, who lost to the Democrat by
only two 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. That is wild. He
was so bad he got the Republican and Democratic party

(27:56):
to work together. Okay, Now, by this point most men
would have probably retired to enjoy their millions of dollars,
but John Brinkley was not a quitter. In nineteen thirty one,
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. Under

(28:17):
the radio station named x e ER, he continued to
campaign for governor of Kansas. In nineteen thirty two, he
came in third place, again, still the best showing by
an independent candidate in gubernatorial history. He tried once more
in nineteen thirty four, but 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,

(28:39):
as now, there were no rules in southern Texas. He
was also able to upgrade his radio station in nineteen
thirty five, now under the name x e r A
or Zara, he upgraded his broadcasting station to an absolutely
fucking insane one million watts, by far the most powerful
radio transmitter on the fucking planet. For comparison, tho with
powerful modern A M radio transmitters in the modern United

(29:01):
States are fifty thou watts. People in Canada were able
to tune in and clearly listen to John Brinkley's hours
of broadcasts. Okay, 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

(29:23):
getting drunk apparently all the time. He's camping. 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. Of what he's doing is just talking on
the radio, and he loves hearing himself talk, So he's

(29:43):
all he's really doing is spending like nine hours a
day talking on the radio. And that's that's enough to
accomplish most of his goals. Okay, well, I gotta give
it to him. I gotta give it to him. You don't, don't.
He shouldn't do not at all. He already got an
awful lot given to him. Yes, now, Caitlin, I know

(30:07):
what you're thinking right now. I think you're thinking. The
only thing that goes better then, thoughts of Mexican radio
stations are podcast as. That one was not a good transition.
I knew it had gotten away from me when I
started it. But you know, that's the time it is.

(30:28):
It's time for an ad break. Nothing nothing, 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 transition.

(30:49):
You're welcome, products We're back 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. So I'm going

(31:09):
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 Healer's messages. Del Rio residence,
talking on the phone heard the doctor's mallifluous 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

(31:32):
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 eight forty kill cycles, powerful Zerra brushed aside the
signals of w w L and New Orleans and k
o A and Denver as if there were ninety eight
watt weaklings. A Variety reporter in New York said that
he could hear xc R A regularly, and a Philadelphia

(31:54):
resident said that he had trouble getting anything but Dr
Brinkley's station on his family's radio set. Why they don't
do million wat radio stations so much 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? He just spent a lot of money. Yeah,

(32:15):
he spent He hired really good engineers and spent a
shipload of money because he wanted fucking everybody to be
able to hear him. God, it's just the people 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 dick's Caitlin. He got

(32:37):
rich by selling people a cure all for their dick problems,
which he said was, you know, goat testicles. But for him,
his dick was having the most powerful radio tower in
the world, right, That's what he needed to feel verrile Um.
And that makes sense. I mean a radio tower. I
don't know exactly what that looks like, but I imagine
it is being pretty phallic, So yeah, you'd have to

(33:00):
so it's a tower, right, yeah. Now, John Brinkley used
his unprecedented soapbox to harangue the A M A and
sling snake oil. As he got older and Goat Gland
operations fell from favor, he moved on to thousand dollars
vasectomes and increasingly he waited into politics. You see. John
Brinkley hated him some Franklin, Delano Roosevelt. He also found

(33:22):
himself increasingly enamored with a little known German politician by
the name of Adolph Hitler. Oh yeah, yeah. He went
to Germany for the thirty six Olympics and uh and
loved it. Loved love seeing what Hitler had done to Germany.
Thought it was pretty cool place, pretty pretty neat place.
He hosted some other people who have been on this

(33:45):
podcast on his radio show. Father Coughlin was a guest.
American Fewer and head of the German American Booned. Fritz
Coon was a guest. William Pelly, founder of the Silver Shirts,
All of these people were guests on x c r A.
Brinkley even donated five thousand dollars to the Silver Shirts,
which were an American fascist movement. Now, a lot of
this had to do with Brinkley's increasingly virulent empty Semitism,

(34:08):
much of which had grown from the fact that his nemesis, Dr.
Fishbean was a Jewish Man, but a lot of it
also came from his hatred of Communism. So you know,
it's 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 I mean, I guess
if that's your stance, fascism looks pretty good. Yeah, he said,

(34:33):
stuff like war is the communist delight he mixes It's
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 don't put balls,
don't put goatballs, and people right now people words. Gosh.

(34:56):
John Brinkley in the late thirties added swastikas to the
title of his swim wing pool and became a prominent
advocate of isolationism. In one he ran for the Texas Senate.
Unfortunately for him, this was the same year he lost
a libel suit against the A. M. A, faced investigation
from the State Department and the I. R. S UH,
and was charged by the Post Office with mail fraud. Uh.

(35:17):
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

(35:39):
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, sometime somewhere, somehow gain a party majority by
unscrupulous leadership. Mm hmm. I mean that has to explain
why he got so successful in the first place. Right,

(36:00):
just you know, uneducated people being like I want my
dick to work better, and then my dick to work better,
and I like the way he talks. 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 gonna still give him.

(36:23):
You know, what, was it seven and fifty dollars for
this seven fifty bucks? Well, I want those goatballs. That's
discouraging now. Luckily for America, this time, the Mexican government
got fed up with Brinkley, and in nineteen forty one
they made an agreement with the US government to cut
out renegade stations like x ci A, denying Brinkley his

(36:43):
main platform. Just as the government came crashing down on
his head that May of nineteen forty two, 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 nineteen forty two, almost penniless. His last
words were, a poor it to have been. If Dr
Fishbean goes to heaven, I want to go the other way. Now, wait,

(37:06):
hang on, did he when he when he was his
health dying failing? Yeah, 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 here, all right, Yeah he did not. I mean
goes to show that it would. I mean a doctor

(37:30):
that won't do his own procedure on himself, you can't
trust that guy. That's exactly right. If you're gonna put
goatballs in me, you'd better be putting goatballs in you.
I've said that. I've said that for years, so he
can back me up. That's that's long been my my catchphrase. Um. Now,
Dr Brinkley's influence would live on in bad and good ways.

(37:50):
The bad is very obvious. He horribly injured and killed
hundreds of patients, maybe more. He claimed to have carried
out more than sixteen thousand goat gland operations, so God
only knows like the total health act of his work,
and all those poor goats, sixty goats goats. He also
single handedly created the idea of selling sham medicine to

(38:11):
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,

(38:35):
a teenager in Columbus, Georgia who turned into x Cirara
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 x C. A Tom Hall,
future songwriter and ballotire in Oliveville, Kentucky. Johnny Cash in
d s, Arkansas, who first heard his future bride, June Carter,

(38:55):
then aged ten, singing over Brinkley's airwaves. Wow, so it
wasn't all bad. So it was actually a pretty good guy.
So I mean, yeah, thousands and thousands of people horribly
horribly injured and hobbled for life and killed from bad operations.
Uh and and medical treatment's gonna ry and spreading of

(39:17):
fascism over the air waves. But Johnny Cash, But Johnny Cash,
But Johnny Cash, small place Jennings, Yeah, small price to pay.
I mean for Whalen Jennings and Johnny Cash. And I'm
not a big fan of Tom Haller chet Atkins, but
other people like him. So I don't know any of
those people except for Johnny Cash. So everybody knows Johnny Cash.
Everybody knows Johnny Cash. Yeah, so that's the story. That's

(39:43):
John fucking Brinkley. Well, I feel enlightened. I could feel
like I mean, I feel like I've just had some
goatballs put in into my gonad areas good just to
say that I feel great, Um wow. I mean a

(40:08):
very ambitious guide, as you said at the beginning. Um.
And I mean, I I hate that I'm impressed with
all these horrible people, but they accomplish 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,

(40:29):
here's what I'm trying to say. Fuck John Brinkley, the end.
Fuck John Brinkley the end. If you're feeling sick, though,
maybe do grind up a bunch of goat testicles and
shoot them up your ass with a syringee. You can't
forget about that rectal syrenge, can't forget about that rectal syringe.
I'm so glad that modern medicine is what it is today.

(40:54):
And that's not to say that our you know, medical
industry isn't very broken, because it is. But um, you know,
I'm glad. I'm just glad that uh there, you know,
goatball uh insertion isn't a thing anymore. To my knowledge,
I never thought i'd felt myself saying I'm glad that

(41:16):
when Alex Jones sells people medicine over the radio, it's
just a little bit of lead and sugar powder and pillform.
At least it's not ground up nuts or like real
medicine that you're giving to the wrong people so that
they have horrible, uh physical reactions to it, right and
marked up at an insane price. Yeah, and when you're

(41:41):
when you're the guy who makes me look at Alex
Jones and be like, well, compared to that, he's he's
pretty ethical. Like, you know, you've got a real bastard
on your hands. Yeah, you know, you've got a real
piece of sh it on your hands and uh and
John Brinkley was a real piece of ship. Yes, indeed, Caitlin,
you got some plug doubles to plug you bet. You

(42:03):
can follow my radio station in which I you know,
spread uh, feminist iconery and not the bad stuff that
John Brinkley was spreading. Uh. And that's all to say.
Listen to my podcasts, the Bechtel Cast that I co
host with Jamie Loftus and we talked about the representation

(42:25):
of women in movies. And then you can and that's
spelled b E C H D E L. Just in
case you didn't know. You can follow me personally on
Instagram and Twitter at Caitlyn Durant taste A T. Graham
that's right. And uh, yeah, I could check out my

(42:46):
website Caitlin dront dot com. There's some you know, show
dates and and and stuff like that. But yeah, that's
that's it. Check out Caitlyn Duranty. Check out Caitlyn Durant
me on Twitter at I right, Okay, do you like that, Klin?
That that that working for you? I loved it excellent. Uh.

(43:11):
You can check out this podcast on the web at
Behind the Bastards dot com where we'll have the sources
for this episode, including the fantastic book charlatan Um. And
that's that's that's the we We sell shirts to public
dot com. We have another podcast it could happen here
about the Civil War, bad stuff. That's it until next week.

(43:32):
I'm Robert Evans. Don't inject goat glands into your asshole.
Don't do it. Don't do it.