MFM Minisode 495

Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder the Miniso.

That's right, we tell you things you didn't even know.

That's right, I know you're about to learn.

Go ahead.

The subject line of this email is the great Goat Gland Grift. It says, hello, my favorite emotional support podcasters.

That's a good one. Love y'all.

Love the podcast Day thirteen listener here so roughly around the time I started writing this hometown, I'll get right to it. That's funny, Day thirteen.

I love that. Lucky they know.

Okay, It says I now live in Los Angeles, but I hail from a small border town of Del Rio, Texas. When I was nine, we moved to a new neighborhood, and I remember driving past the rundown All mansion at the end of our street for the first time. It's imposing iron gates bore the name doctor Brinkley. From the backseat, I asked, who's doctor Brinkley, to which my dad casually replied, Oh, that.

Was the goat testicle doctor.

As you can imagine, that nickname comes with an equally insane backstory that honestly feels like it could have happened today. In nineteen seventeen, a young doctor named John Romulus Brinkley moved to a tiny town in Kansas with his wife Minnie. One day, a farmer visited Brinkley complaining of being a flat tire aka rectile dysfunction. They joked about how goats never seemed to have that problem, and the farmer said, too bad, you don't have billy goat nuts. What started as a joke turned serious when the farmer insisted Brinkley implant goat testicles into his scritum to fix the issue.

No, no, no, no, you can't make up a fucking medical procedure.

But in nineteen seventeen you could.

Yeah, I guess so.

Thus the goat gland cure was born. Brinkley began promoting the procedure as a cure all claiming could fix everything from impotence to cancer, even offering a version for women. To be clear, this surgery was a complete hoax and Brinkley knew it, but his charisma and flair, complete with a goate, round glasses in a three piece suit, helped sell the scam.

It's like the KFC of testicles.

They're like, there's something familiar about that guy, and I trust him Colonel with my testicles. It was also around this time that commercial radio was taking off, and Brinkley saw and seized its potential. He launched his own station, using it to promote his hospital quack remedies and elixirs. Wow, so his own means of production. Brinkley was a natural using his calm and conversational voice. Because he was a natural using his calm and conversational voice, he convinced and captivated audiences, turning himself into a nationwide sensation. Everyone was buying it, though, entered doctor Morris Fishbeine of the newly established American Medical Association.

Morris, you're such a buzzkill.

Morris, get in here.

Because he also has a curly mustache and round glassysfunction.

That's not something to laugh at.

It's okay, they're not paying attention.

For years, he worked tiresly to expose Brinkley as a fraud, and eventually succeeded, taking him to court. The trial revealed Brinkley had a questionable medical degree and was linked to forty two death certificates of patients who died at his clinic. Oh my god, with countless more likely succumbing to his dangerous advice.

This is incredible.

Yeah wow.

Brinkley had become one of the most successful killers in American history, operating openly in full public view. Even crazier, he couldn't be criminally prosecuted due to the laws at the time.

Oh my god, I want a whole episode about this.

I mean meat dibbs. Yeah, oh, you can have it a taste than so much. I'm touching the paper, so it's mine. Kansas revoked his medical license and federal authorities shut down his radio station, but Brinkley wasn't finished. He ran for guffnor wow.

Of course.

The audacity.

Get that shit out there and kill more people. It's you're right.

Please spread the word.

Using his celebrity massive cult like following in radio platform to cast himself as a victim of the elites. Sound familiar. He lost, but only because the state rejected thousands of votes that misspelled.

His name lost on a technicality.

By nineteen thirty one, Brinkley relocated to Del Rio, where he built one of the most powerful radio stations in the world, just across the Rio Grande in Mexico. Outside US regulations, his pseudoscience reached millions, spanning as far as Asia, and then in parentheses it says our old neighbor claimed that his station was so strong it made their bedsprings hum and car headlights flicker. This is amazing, It's fucking unbelievable.

Oh my god. Okay, keep going, I want to hear it.

It's Brinkley's fame grew, so did his ego. He was rubbing elbows at Hollywood premiers, slapping his name on his mansion, a customed Cadillac, and a private airplane. After visiting nineteen thirty's Germany, he embraced, of course, not say he embraced pro fascist views, even considered running for president again sound from Miliai. Eventually, lawsuits and investigations caught up with him.

A libel suit against Fishbne backfired, exposing his fraudulent empire. Yes, that's in discovery. If you try to sue somebody, they can fucking depose you. It all comes out. Within two years, he was bankrupt, and a year later he died of a heart attack at the age fifty six. Today his mansion still stands, restored by a series of subsequent owners and marked as a Texas Historical site. A bizarre monument to a con man who built an empire on charisma, deception, and well goat testicles.

I just want to thank you too.

For being my constant companions for all these years and for always making my Mondays, Thursdays and now Wednesday is a little brighter, not until every day in the week is jagged in. So proud of everything that you've accomplished in all the lives you've touched.

Thank you.

A big shout out to my friend Annie who introduced me to the show, and to my road trip buddies Brian and Cody who are always along for the stories. Hope to see you soon. Alberto Alberto with an exclamation point. Alberto he him and then he included a newspaper article highlighting Billy the first Goat Gland baby.

Okay, what so basically because.

It can't be real though, the erectile stopped dysfunctioning and here comes the Billy the Goat Gland baby.

John R.

Brinkley and Billy Billy the Goat, Billy.

Go Billy Goat. I didn't even think of it.

That and that baby is Chris Farley's father.

Wow. That there are so many I just there's so many things I want to hear people's like crazy person from their town that everyone knows about, like because like the person who has like a legend.

Yes, there was an incredible the old Victorian that was on a hill on the highway on the road it like on the highway into Pedaloma, and it was white and faded and it absolutely looked like it was from a horror movie. Yeah, and it just sat there like falling apart. I'd always be like, who lived there and no one knew. I think at one point a teacher at our school was like, is like the egg magnate of Pedaluma or whatever?

But it looked like a witch lived there. It was amazing.

My Okay, first one's called Inca Talking Heads, Lima Peru hometown. Oh hello, and welcome to my favorite story, Smiley winky face. I live in a great little town just north of Pedaluma called and I'm going to get this wrong. It's not stub A Poul Sebastopol, Sebastopol. I'm sure Karen knows.

It well, very well.

Yay, this says yay. I saved all my fangirling for you too until the end. So let's dive in because this period is period. Good. My husband is an American now previously British, and even earlier than that, Peruvian, and it says, yes, his accent is to die for. He was born in Lima and lived there for his first fifteen years. When he was really young, there were many ink and burial grounds just outside town. I'm sure they are all protected now, but sadly, grave robbers had mostly already pillaged all of them over time. Anyway, it was the early seventies, ladies, so however inappropriate this was folks treated checking out the graves as a day outing of sorts.

Yeah, and go look at the ruins kind of.

Yeah. There was some stuff left behind by the robbers, like tiny bits of pottery, rope, and even some bones like femurs that my husband and his brother would take home and sword fight with.

That's not sword yoga, I just remembered. But also that's bad. You don't want that that's on your hands or home and home.

Well, here it goes, Well, his grandmother, Brenda, that is not a grandmother's name, and that's not I Brenda, Brenda, Grandma Brenda. Grandma Brenda had done the same thing many years earlier than that, when the graves were quote less pillaged back. Then she came across two relatively intact inc And skulls she decided to take home with her. She felt it surely seemed better than them being strewn across the desert as she had found them. She placed them at each end of the piano in her house and went along with the day. My husband's whole family plays piano a lot. So for months, the skulls were always in good company, or so they thought. Oh until one day his grandmother's gardener and cook, both Incan descendants, asked

to talk to her. They sat her down and told her that the skulls had to go. Oh. She was mortified and realized she had probably desecrated their culture and said she would rebury them immediately. But no, it wasn't that at all. They didn't care at all that the skulls were there. The problem was, apparently, that the skulls were talking and gossiping to each other all the time, and often even fighting. What look, God, it's like fucking haunted mansion come to light. Yes, they said, all this back and forth bickering from the skulls was driving them nuts and they couldn't sleep at night. Seriously, this actually happened, so off the skulls went to be buried back where they came from, and a new family rule was enacted.

They were still allowed to bring home bones, and it says yep, still the seventies, they just couldn't be skulls and they had to bury them in the garden before the second sunset from when they brought them home.

Okay.

Interestingly, there's a Peruvian law that states all deceased must be buried before the second sunset of their death. This time in South America seems to be brimming with truly incredible family stories, like the time when they found out his other grandparents were m one sixpies right am I six six? Am I six spies in Columbia during the Cold War, and a super romantic story of his father serenading his mom at her house from a piano that he and his friends had stolen from a bar, put in a truck yes, and drove onto her lawn playing the whole way.

Why can't I have that?

That is romance? It's swipe. Now, you just fucking swy swiped on you.

Now you're just nagging people in a bar and you're supposed to.

That's enough.

Now and then it says, oh so sweet, but those are stories for another day. Thanks for all you do. I've been a listener since year two and really love your dedicated empowerment of women. I'm a female business owner, disrupting my traditionally male industry and making space for mental health conversations. I also especially love your book and TV recommendations.

I travel a lot for work, and I love to cook, and there's nothing better than a few MFM episodes to brighten my mood, no matter how slightly disturbing my husband finds it. Thank you again, You too are inimitable and we all appreciate you so much. Ash. What does inimitable mean?

Like one of a kind, Molly, impossible to copy or imitate?

Of kind?

Well, that's not true. Let's not be crazy.

You know what I'm talking about.

Wonderful, Thank you, Ash, that's you.

That was a first of all, culturally interesting, relevant, but also like what an insane thing that's just nearby?

Yeah?

Like that's just like, oh yeah, did you bring a femur home from the ruin ruins?

A ruined cemetery?

Actually that we had a driver in Italy across Sicily and he was saying that there are ruins all across Sicily, but no one ever tells anybody because the government will come and take your land. Wait what they kind of like go it. It's like if you have you know, so he goes, Oh we used to, he goes.

We used to.

Climb on there wud be big columns from the temples, and we played on all of it. Because it was a driver who took us to this one site where they had like built stuff up. They walked all around it and it was super cool. He's like, oh, we used to play here when we were little kids. We just get all over it. We climbed all over this stuff.

I thought you were going to say there were some like mines hidden. Oh no, that's that's crazy.

It's wild. And then he's like, oh, he goes. I know so many people. I know so many people that just have like ancient stuff in their garage.

Because they're going to take their land if they tell them.

They're not telling anybody. My god, that's amazing. It's so good.

Yeah.

I mean, there's your there's the tour you want to go on.

Yeah, okay, this is uh, this is a trash parents story, but I'm not a going to read to the subject line, it says, Hey, Karen and Georgia picture it. It's summer nineteen ninety five and I'm four years old, and my family and I travel all the way to San Diego, California from Kentucky for the first time.

We did it right.

We rented out the red convertible, drove across the Mexican border to have dinner and a dance in parentheses, not a passport in sight, and spent the day at All Caps Sea Worlds. Wow.

Not horrible, but horrible. But the kid, it was how it was. I was so excited.

All the beautiful fish and they even had those whales. We're sitting there watching the Orches show. This is a four year old. We're sitting there watching the Orcar show at the top of the bleachers, and my mom, an elementary school teacher with permed hair and an ear for whispering overhears some workers saying and they need to be about thirty eight inches and less than forty pounds. And my mother, not one to lose out on an experience, says, my daughter is less than forty pounds and gestures.

To me, oh not.

Five minutes later, I've been taken from my family by two random people. Walked back behind the gates and onto a stage, where directly in front of me emerges an orca whales onto a semi submerged platform. A trainer inlirad grabs me and hoists me up. I a literal four year old am sitting straddling a killer whale.

That's a snack, You have a photo. Holy fucking shit, this bitch, it's like a It's like she's on a fucking what are those called carousel? Right, fucking literal killer whale and everyone's just laughing and smiling about it.

If the carousel had horses that were dangerously wide, because this little girl's practically doing the splits on top of this orca. Holy shit, this is an apex predator. These are more dangerous than great white sharks. I made that up, but I feel like I read that somewhere. They're the most dangerous. They're the biggest killers.

And in the crowd, not a speck of some block to be found.

Wow, what a time.

So maybe that same year I fainted at Sea World. Oh it was there, and I fainted.

It was it because that little girl's was doing this blit so hard.

No, but can we see my head in the back?

Am I there? Okay?

I am nothing but my mother's daughter, and I am loving it. I sit smile and wave to my adoring fans, not knowing at all what the actual hell was going on today. I don't remember much of it, other than being slightly upset afterwards that my butt was wet after the experience. But this is definitely now my fun fact about me. I have made fun of my mother many times about this, how she let her oldest child put four year olds go off with strangers and be placed on top of a giant sea creature whose name literally includes the word killer. Not true trash parent behavior, because come on, it was the night, stay sexy and volunteer your toddlers for cool things, Emily, And then she says psc attached photo of little Emily.

Oh my god, I love it. So watch Dark Water. Everyone. We have to say it.

I mean, I feel like they Orca should absolutely be protected, but I love that it's come to the turn in our culture where people need to be protected from the orc as.

Now because they're trying to kill because they deserve it. They're on it.

Okay, Well, I have a dad lore Sweet Georgia. Yeah, did you say dark water?

It's it called blackwater, Blackfish.

Dark Water. Blackfish. Darkwater is a Japanese horror movie, isn't it? Is it? Isn't it? I think it's a film starring Mark Ruffalo.

But it's from a but it's about chemicals in our water.

I think yes.

Oh, okay, so blackfish is what I'm talking Can you leave us all in by the way obvious.

Because this is great podcasting content, Okay, and rabet It's called the Disney x trash Parent crossover.

You have been waiting for, Oh ladies. Sending love to you and the Earm team from my sofa in Oslo, Norway. Hey, we've been there. I'm currently watching you on Netflix. Congrats and the Disney story from Anaheim made me rush to my laptop to share my contrasting, yet parallel experience. Summer break for us back in the early two thousands was a bunch of my classmates' parents in Eagle Rock figuring out what to do with a gang of kids. That included crashing the houses with pools, camping at Lake Peru, and an annual trip to Disney, normally at the peak of summer in July date relevant later. With so many kids and activities, it isn't that wild that you wouldn't drive in the same car as your parents if you

wanted to sit with your friend, et cetera. On this occasion to Disney, I sat and drove there with my friend's family, and we had a great day as a gaggle of kids and our parents. The time came to get on the trams that would bring us to the parking lot areas and the chaos of everyone boarding the trams, I somehow got lost in the shuffle and couldn't recognize anyone in our group. I didn't end up boarding. We had just didn't get on the tram. Noah, I don't know.

We had parked all in the same area, so I knew to stay put and someone would be back to get me since they would realize I was missing. Fireworks were long over, it was getting colder, and the sparkle of the day had officially faded. I waited and waited until a cast member saw me and asked if I was lost. After telling them what had happened and how much time had passed, they took me to a lost kid.

Center I've been at disney Land. Yeah, I've been to that, the little House.

Oh my god, the ley ran off yep.

Oh yeah, yeah, I ruined part of vacation. My parents thought I'd been kidnapped out at Disneyland when I was five.

This is that. That day at disney is one big blur. But I remember clearly the older man who kind of looked like Sanna, staying with me for hours and gave me multiple pins for my lanyard, some Mickey Mouse nuggets, and set up some blankets for me to lay in. It's like a lost dog.

I was just in a red chair. No one gave me shit.

Meanwhile, my parents had driven all the way home.

Sorry I missed that completely. It was like a lost dog. I was put in a kennel. They put a nice lease underneath me.

To Meanwhile, my parents had driven all the way home and Egel Rock is fucking to like. It's back in Los Angeles hours bar where they finally realized I wasn't with the family that I originally drove with, and because it was two thousand, they had to go into the family's house to use their dialep to find a hotline to Disneyland, which I always find the most cinematic part of the story. My parents apologized and fussed over me when I did finally talk to them on the phone as they were headed back to pick me up. I was so tired and slightly traumatized by this point, and my spacey but loving parents were a mess. When they got there. My guardian, Santa and other cast members kindly offered us a room in one of the hotels, since

it had been hours since the park had closed and they had already driven home and back. Fuck hindsight, it is reasonable to think that the family I arrived with had assumed I would be going home with my parents, and my parents assumed I would go in the car with the family I drove with.

It's definitely something you locked down beforehand.

Though, on the other hand, wtf mom and dad? Who That's how? I also got a free night at a Disney hotel and spent my ninth birthday. It's cool, stay sexy and teach your kids your phone number, and he says, parenting one on one Britney legendary.

So scary though I got lost during the day and then was found.

You know, I turned myself in and was found.

But the idea that you're there and then just everything closes around you.

Everything's just kind of shutting down. No, you're like, oh shit, I feel like I'm being a loss. As a little kid is the scariest.

Okay, well, so my last email, the subject line is Liza Minelli story.

Okay, race yourself. Hi'all.

I grew up in a New York suburb and I spent my youth training to be a ballet dancer.

Wow well, well, well.

Among the many places I would take class was a tiny underground literally studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that my trash parents inexplicably let me traveled to by myself starting around the age twelve. And it's this was the early aughts. I had a book called A Very Young Dancer that I was given probably age seven, and it was all about the little girl who gets cast to play Clara in the Nutcracker at the New York City Ballet. Oh wow, and it just this.

I was just like, Oh, it's it's her, She's here to tell us some stories.

I had one called Angelina, who was a ballet dancing mouse.

Oh I know that book. Very cute.

This place also rented studio space to a jazz teacher known only as Luigi Loie finally hit it dang edit ning in honor of Georgia, about to become a part of Italy folklore.

Get ready.

He'd been around forever and had a cult following within the New York theater scene. Luigi actually has an amazing story himself. In parentheses, it says major car accident, would never walk again, self rehabbed, etc. Oh my god, please tell us Luigi's story, Please time, Menery that shit, please, I would love to hear that. Okay, but that's for another time. Well make time. Little bunheads like me were required to take his jazz classes during the school's August Intensive program as part of our dance training, which I was not thrilled about at first.

My twelve year old brain saw Luigi.

As a hairy, weird old dude, and he honestly scared me a bit. But boy, am I glad I went because his classes were unforgettable. I don't think I've ever seen a more bizarre mix of people in such a tiny space. Child ballerinas, random rich Upper West Side old ladies in thong leotards, and massive beehive haired dogs. Please let that be me young theater professionals and Broadway legends like Ben Veren and you guessed it, Liza fucking Minelli.

One of our employees here, Craig Perozza, who we know and love very much, who was also on Broadway himself, concurs that Luigi was a very big deal who knows who it is, and said that there's a there's a line about Luigi in one of the songs, in a chorus line. Holy shit, So this guy's legendary, legendary. Yeah, oh, I'm so excited.

Okay.

So it says the adults were always kind and encouraging to us in class and around the studio, but Liza really stood out. She insisted we call her Auntie Liza. Oh, I love her, and she'd chat to us in the dressing room often wild no, often while naked. Oh no, Liza about whatever she felt like talking about. But you would have loved the theater department because standing around naked was this thing people did to like where it's like, it's natural and it's your body.

Always mean, I make people so uncomfortable. I don't fucking give a shit.

Yeah, And it's also kind of a brag of like I'm actually willing to stand around naked, and you know that's that's theater.

The fact that she did this, that's amazing. She'd tell us crazy stories about her life, ask us about ourselves.

Our goals and dreams, or just monologue about shit I definitely didn't understand at the time. I'll never forget her encouraging us to go on and tell Auntie Eliza what the young people are into these days.

While she was but naked.

Holy shit, she was just.

So kind and fun and I still laugh thinking about her doing finger guns at the end of every combination in.

Justice Like I don't know she hear and Luigi.

I didn't appreciate how much she struggled with her mental health and substance abuse until I got older, but that only made me respect and admire her even more. She's truly incredible, and I'm so glad I was lucky enough to share even a little time with her.

Oh that's how.

Is it taking you ten years to fucking write this in? It's I know, one of the best fucking.

You're so selfish, You're one of the worst listeners we have because this is the story we've been waiting for.

I've been asking you for this, and god, damn, you're kind of withholding.

I just would like to mention now if Lizman only here's this. I got to play you in a musical right about the New Year's Eve before nineteen eighty.

And you're the person I always pick when someone says who would play you in a movie?

Yes, that's right, always you. Yeah, Liza where it's big.

Fans say sexy and treat Lismonelli like she's anyone else, even when she's naked, and it signed h she hear, And then oh, here's a photo h in costume for a production of Petrushka around the time she took dance lueg.

And nanty Eliza.

A little baby, amazing, amazing, great job. Okay, here's my last one. I'm a huge fan and longtime listener. I heard your call for dad, Laura, and I wanted to tell you one of my favorite stories about my awesome dad. It was nineteen sixty eight and Dennis was twenty years old living in the Band district of Richmond, Virginia. He had a day job working for an engineer, but at night and on the weekends he would play in a band and do odd jobs. One night, he was asked to deliver a brand new Pearl Vox Phantom guitar to the Mosque Theater near his apartment. It was a guitar for the one and only Jimmy Hendrix Shit, who was playing a show that night. Dennis knocked on the stage door and told the dorman that he had a delivery

for the band. The doorman looked at him, looked at the guitar, and said, I'll take it from here. But this was a big effing deal, and so my dad said, no way, I have to deliver this myself. The doorman let him backstage and went to find someone from the band to receive the guitar.

Oh you can't fucking just hand a guy at the door something that precious.

Or so the stage hand thought.

Ooh.

In actuality, my dad had spent months saving up for his very own pearl white Vox Phantom, the same guitar Brian Jones from The Rolling Stones played. I'm told he had finally purchased the guitar when he found out that Jimmy Hendrix was coming to town. He simply couldn't afford both. So he thought on his feet and boop opped the stage hand into letting him backstage, just held up his own guitar. Yes, that's like the thing of like if you walk in somewhere, like carrying a step ladder, you can get it anywhere, or a clipboard a clipboard too. Yeah, from there and what must have been the absolutely most anxious moments of his entire life. No, he's a white man.

It gets way with fucking anything.

Yeah, he's fine.

My dad managed to sneak up onto the balcony with his guitar when Jimmy Hendrick started playing. My dad worked his way into the crowd and watched the entire show. He got both the guitar and the show of a lifetime. Fuck epic. Thank you for reading the story. I adore my dad home, Jim and Marty would love Dennis. He's sweet, funny, kind, And then it says up grumpy and one of my favorite people. I like to think that me and my two sisters helped make him that way. That's what happens to girl dads. But you already know that. Stay sexy and rock on, Bernie. PS Dad, if you're listening, it's okay.

I know him the favorite and we don't have to tell my sisters. And then there's a photo, says, a photo of my dad as a grip at Rocks, Yes, where me and my sisters were fortunate enough to watch many concerts from backstage while our dad worked. Look at him, Look at him probably like thirty in this photo.

This guy absolutely belongs backstage at a Jimmy Hendrix or any other concert he.

Wants to go to it. I want that guy to be our grip on our next tour.

That's a guy that's like he's going to be like he's going to know where the coke is, yeah, and then he's also going to know where the really good chicken strips after the show.

Are totally, and he's got so much gaffer tape on him.

Yeah, and great stories, great stories, and he can drank caken fun all right, Dennis, Dennis, we believe in you. Thanks for doing a good dad job. Yes, if your daughters are writing in to this podcast about you, I'm not calling your trash and even and not yeah exactly, you still kind of made it well.

Amazing.

Those were great. Thank you guys for writing in. Write your story, Yeah, for sure.

Write your story. Write your dad story.

To us at my favorite murder of Gmail, it can.

Be anybody's And now we go to Italy, Stay sexy and don't get murdered.

Goodbye, Elvis. Do you want a cookie?

This has been an exactly right production.

Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.

Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo.

This episode was mixed by Leona Squalocci.

Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.

And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and the remind me buttons. That's the best way you can support our show.

Goodbye,

MFM Minisode 495

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