How Castration Works

In this episode, Josh and Chuck teach you everything you ever wanted to know but were too freaked out to ask about castration. Learn about the history of removing male genitalia, why some parents had it done to their sons, how the state has become the main agent of castration in the last several decades, and why some people who are not crazy decide to become castrated themselves.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles Debuto, Bryant,
Jerry's over there, and we all want to warn you
that if you were squeamish, you should skip this one.

(00:23):
And if you're a man, you may just sit there
with your legs crossed the entire episode. Yeah, don't be confused.
We're not talking about circumcision. We already did that one.
This one's castration, and it is nothing like circumcision. Really.
Uh And as a matter of fact, I'm pretty proud
of our circumcision episode. That one was really good at
head at All had history, anatomy um scalpels, controversy, controversy.

(00:49):
That was a good one. This one's a little different.
This is castration. It better not be anything like circumcision,
because that means something has gone very wrong or you
just haven't finished. Yeah, all right, yeah, castration. I don't
remember how this came up, but this is from a
bog post. I wrote, Hey, yeah, you did a great job. Yeah, well,
I just wanted to find out everything there is to
know about castration. I did pretty much. I've got a

(01:12):
couple of historical bullet points for you. Okay, Um, Apparently
in seventeen seventy eight, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill reducing
punishment for rape, polygamy, and sodomy from death to castration. Okay,
t J. And you know, we should also point out
we got a lot of letters from people about the

(01:32):
revisionist history with Thomas Jefferson that said, you know, Sally
Hemmings was more than likely forced into that relationship. And
some people go so far as to call Thomas Jefferson
a rapist himself for that relationship. And um, so I
had never seen that, but then I did some reading,
and that is a theory that we can't really base

(01:54):
and say, hey, they were in love. Yeah, so are
in love because they made love. I don't know that
I'm going to go out and say that he was
a rapist, but um, it's it's definitely some hinky history.
Well that's a really excellent point. Like with revisionist history again,
like a lot of its interpretation. But I mean, if

(02:15):
you do look at it, like she was his slave
and they had a relationship, Like how can it be
consentual right at the very least, it's it's tarnished with
the concept that she was a slave, and there's a
chance that he forced her into it. So thanks for
everyone who wrote in. Yeah. Um. And also the other
quick thing is that Genghis Khan supposedly like says that

(02:36):
Jingis might have been castrated himself by princess seeking revenge.
I can't remember his name, Jingis, No, no Hang See
or Hang Fee. I can't remember. He was like the
admiral of the Chinese navy when they were undertaking basically
their own age of exploration. That again named Gavin Menzies
thinks beat Columbus too the New World in four he

(03:01):
was castrated as well. There's actually been a lot of
very prominent people in history who have held positions of
great power who were castrated people. It's very interesting. Hadn't
heard a Jengis though, Yeah, and that's you know, that's
not verified. No, you can see that being like a
rumor that his enemies made up to see make him

(03:21):
seem weaker or something. Sure, but you know we should
point out that. Um with this, with the concept of
castration as as shocking and as weird, and horrific as
it sounds, there is like a certain, um, certain group
of people who are either castrated or interested in being castrated,
that there's nothing really weird to it at all from

(03:45):
their perspective. So, um, let's talk about this. This is
not like a widespread thing today, but if you look
back into the ancient world, um, it was actually fairly common,
especially in parts of Asia like Korea and China. A
lot of their high bureaucrats were actually castrated, and UM,

(04:06):
like I said, a lot of them went on to
hold great places of prominence in history. And very oddly,
there's been some sort of um longevity research into the
idea that if you're castrated mail, you may live longer
than the average mail. Yeah. You found a study, uh
from two thousand twelve from Korea that unix and that's

(04:29):
the word you're gonna hear a lot. Um the subject
group group produced more centenarians. That's people who live a
hundred or older than UM a hundred and thirty times
more than just normal folks in the West. And yeah,
not say they're abnormal, but you know what I mean,
well in their right and their average lifespan of that
group was fourteen and nineteen years higher than the control group. Interesting. Um,

(04:53):
the thing is that somebody pointed out like, well, they
were high bureaucrats, so their life was cushier. They were
less likely to be killed in an ox accident or
something than their contemporaries. They're also less likely to die
from a STD. Yeah. That's another really good point in
that I hadn't thought about another study though that that
um had similar findings too, though, so it is possible.

(05:15):
The theory goes that without testostro in raging through your body, um,
your lifespan could conceivably increase over time. That's true. Okay,
So who else famous I know? Uh? Boston Corbett, Thomas
Boston Corbett. Yeah, you said you knew about him already.
I'm impressed I had heard this before. It might have

(05:36):
been like a Jeopardy thing. Um. But he was the
guy who most people believe shot John Wokes Booth, who
shot Lincoln, and he was castrated himself. He castrated himself.
He was a case of auto castration, and there aren't
that many on record of auto castration. But um may

(05:57):
I so, Mr orbit Um, you said he was the
guy who shot John Wolkespooth against orders even Yeah, he
was to be taken alive and this guy shot him. Yeah,
I didn't know. It's disputed, but some people say he
didn't do it. But um, I think he's largely held responsible.
So later on in life, he uh, he became widowed.
He was a widower, his wife died, is another way

(06:18):
to put it. And he was worried about being tempted
by other people, other women. So he one night took
a pair of scissors and castrated himself, and then he
went to church for the evening service, went home and
had dinner, and then decided to go to the local
doctor's house to see if it should get checked out. UM.

(06:40):
That obviously made national news. One of the one of
the ideas that UM suggests Corbett was crazy when he
did this was that he was a hatter. That was
his profession, and hatters at the time worked with mercury. Mercury,
which the phrase mad as a hatter, the mad hatter.

(07:00):
That's because people who made hats worked with mercury, and
all of that mercury poisoning over time supposedly affected their
personality and their i Q. What they did with the mercury.
You know, I think it was had something to do
with giving the head as shape. Okay, I'm not sure.
I look, I looked for this and I couldn't find it.
But I did find that that idea is in dispute. Um. Well,

(07:21):
I did see that Corbett cited a Bible verse. Um,
it's not surprising they went to church after Matthew nineteen
twelve May. For there are eunuchs who were born that
way from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who
were made so by man. And then there are also
eunuchs who made themselves Unichs for the sake of the

(07:43):
Kingdom of heaven. The one who was able to do this,
let him do it. So there was another early church
father who carried out auto castration because of that same
Bible verse. So talking about in the Bible, if you're
able to castrate yourself for the King of Heaven, just
go ahead and do that. Right. There is a passage
in the Bible that has led to at least two

(08:05):
people cutting off their own genitalia. And this is New Testament,
by the way. Yeah, I noticed the s Matthew, the supermodern. So. Um,
the Corbett was nineteenth century. That's a fairly recent case.
The early church father was obviously in the first couple
of centuries a d and then the Korean eunuchs, although
um they the the last one died in pretty recent Um,

(08:32):
they were really operating in the more than nineteenth and
early twentieth century, and then way you know, earlier in
the millennia. But there are cases every once in a while,
like an auto castration. Um, like every once in a while,
like I think in two thousand six or something like that,
I came across the case study of a person who
castrated himself. Um. He was a twenty year old with

(08:55):
what sounds like Cottard's delusion. He said that he had
died and he was trying to wake himself up. That
was one reason that he was awake. He also said
he felt guilty for experiencing lust, and then overall he
said he felt more female than male, but he was heterosexual.
So it sounds like he was throwing everything at the
wall to see what's stuck. But ultimately the thing that

(09:15):
stuck out to me was he said he felt relief afterwards,
like he was he was fine. His affect was flat,
but he was fine. He wasn't like, oh my god,
what have I done? And apparently he expressed relief at
no longer having a sanitalia, which is something we'll get
into it comes up later on. But the point is
when he went into the hospital and doctors found out

(09:36):
what he'd done to himself, they thought he was totally crazy,
and a lot of people would. But it's really important
to point out that with castration, it's typically auto castration
that is deemed the results of psychosis, and it's not
the castration part. It's the fact that you've harmed yourself. Yeah,

(09:58):
just self mutilation exactly. That that's the that's the part
that has the psychosis label attached, not being castrated. And
so there's this internet survey that I think kind of
really um explodes the idea that you have to be
crazy to be castrated, or want to be castrated. Yeah.
A hundred and twelve people responded UM. Of those reported

(10:19):
a desire to be free from sexual urges, and another
thirty percent said they either wanted to be castrated for
the cosmetics, uh, the appearance. I guess you reference kindall
appropriately or as a way to act out of sexual fetish,
which later is a thing it is a North Carolina

(10:41):
there was. Yeah. So as bizarre as it sounds and
is is um I guess across the board and universal.
It might seem that that, you know, thinking that you'd
have to be crazy to be castrated, or you you
would never want to be castrated. There are some people
out there who do, I think, and I don't think
it makes sense for me. But that makes more sense

(11:03):
to me than the people who say, like, I just
feel like my left arm shouldn't be on my body. Yeah,
because at least castration is tied to lust and these
other things that people think might ruin their lives, these
sexual urges or in the case of like pedophilia, you
know that that comes up later too, So that makes

(11:24):
more sense to me than cutting off my left arm
because it feels weird. Yeah, you know, like with your
left arm every due Yeah, well you know my left arm.
Have you ever seen my left foot? I knew you
were going to say that I have, of course I
have not. Oh, it's good. That was That was the
beginnings of Daniel day Lewis is like mastery of acting.

(11:48):
He was amazing and that was the first time I've
heard of him. I remember, Yeah, I think I don't
think that was his first movie. I think My Beautiful
Laundrette was before that. No, there was another one that
I saw that was before that was the merchant Ivory film. Yeah. Yeah,
he was in it and it was man, it was
a merchant Ivory. I think he made his name though,
and one the Academy Award for that. Yeah. Sure, alright,

(12:09):
let's talk about the history. Yeah, Um, I saw a
thing that was disturbing that in Korea, Um, they would
cast rate boys. You might want to not listen to this.
Fair warning me here it comes. I have to you
know the other people. Um, that they would allegedly dip
the genitals in feces and have a dog eat the

(12:31):
genitals off. Well that's a really awful way to do it.
I can't imagine anything worse weird. Yeah, that's it's it's
pretty awful. Um. So let's get into why someone do this.
If you're a eunuch, you were a trusted um friend
of the court, perhaps, yeah, well, especially in Korea, the

(12:51):
reasoning went and again, like for millennia, eunuchs ran Korea
at the behest of the royal families that had the
dynasty's in power. Well, you're not gonna start your own dynasty,
so there's one reason to trust you. That's the point. Uh.
Unuchs were allowed to have families, but they had to
adopt kids obviously, and any males that they adopted had

(13:12):
to be unix themselves to prevent them founding. Since they
were very powerful people. They had to kind of die out.
Can you that's so awful? These kids are like, yeah,
I'm adopted finally and then then oh, yeah, oh you're unich.
Can I go back to the orphanage? Right? Um. The
other thing that eunuchs, The other reason unuchs were trusted

(13:33):
obviously because they weren't gonna be making any moves on
the queen. Well in in the Middle East especially, harms
were very popular, and if you have a harem of wives, uh,
they need protecting, and you want the guy who's going
to protect them to be physically incapable of doing anything

(13:54):
with them. Yeah, so hence eunuchs. But these are the
point is with the removal of these men's genitalia, they
were automatically imbued with a trust because they simply were
incapable of of circumventing that trust. So that's that's like

(14:15):
one of these weird things about unichs is like, what
goes hand in hand with being a eunuch at least
as far as government or powers concerned. Sure, trust goes
hand in hand with it. Isn't the history of this
world crazy when you really kind of get down to
the nitty gritty. That's how we're trying to show a
little by little just how insane humanity is. Uh So,

(14:35):
let's move on to the eighteenth century century in Italy. Um,
where saw a movie called Farinellie. Did you ever see that? No? Again?
It was it was a movie about a castrato singer. Um,
that's I'm glad you said that. Castrato, the pluralist castrati.

(14:56):
Same with gelato. Little little do you know? So if
your family goes out, you get Gelatti. So his name
was Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi, and his stage name
was Faranelli. And it's a good movie. You should get it.
It was a biopic. It's a biopic about a famous castrado.
And in Italy at the time there were women weren't

(15:20):
allowed to sing in church. So if you wanted that
mezzo soprano, you just got a grown man. With no genitalia.
Well he said, sing your heart out. The thing is
it was illegal to castrate somebody in Italy at the time.
Well in in eighteen seventy it became illegal, So before
that I think they were just sort of well so
from my understanding, at the very least, it was frowned upon.

(15:42):
Because in the eighteenth century, the seventeen hundreds, UM, there
were there was basically an underground network of castration surgeons,
and there was an anonymous book that came out that
was published on it that basically explained how it was
one and apparently they would, um, they would basically take

(16:03):
a boy. Here's the thing. You wanted your kid to
possibly be a castrado because it could mean wealth for
you and your family. So a kid's parents, a boy's
parents would take him to this castration surgeon. The castration
surgeon would pinch the boy's karated artery until he passed
out and then cut his testis off the death grip

(16:25):
pretty much, then cut his tests off. And this is
the way they did it, according to this book from
seventeen eighteen UM. Because they tried opium before, but too
many of the boys like died from from Yeah, they
odeed and died, so they would just pinch their karate
and then remove their tests. Uh. And a lot of
people think that you could do this at any stage

(16:47):
and produce a high pitched voice. Yeah, that's like the
whole thing. Like even when you get kicked in the
groin and guy, you can thank Martin Short for perpetuating
that joke. Uh, that's not true. It has to be
done before puberty, before your vocal cords have lengthened, and
those of the male sex hormones are produced in the testy.

(17:11):
So if you get rid of those, what you've got
is a man that continues to grow. And interestingly, castrato castrati,
their limbs grow really long, and their ribs, the rib
cage gets bigger because there without testosterone, their bone joints
don't harden like they should. So that produces an effect

(17:32):
of better able to breathe and so like it makes
you a better singer. But you're singing through the vocal
cords of a child, right because during puberty one of
the things your voice change. You remember that Brady bunch
where Peter Brady's voice changes. Can forget what was going on?
Was the testosterone in his body was lengthening his vocal
cords by anywhere between thirty five and ninety two millimeters.

(17:55):
So your vocal cords increased by length during puberty. Within
a castrado, the vocal chords don't link and nearly as
much because they've only got about five percent of the
testosterone compared to an uncastrated person. But their pharynx grows,
their oral cavity grows, their lungs grow, and then, like
you said, their ribcage grows to allow their lungs to

(18:17):
grow even more. Take a deeper breath. So you have
somebody who has, like this, the ability to hold a
note like a male, a male adult, but a high pitched,
resonant voice. Yes, it's a weird combination of like a
super powerful, like an extra powerful singing voice through the
vocal chords of a kid. But the upshot is if
you remove the testings of an adult male, his voice

(18:39):
isn't going to change a bit. He's just going to
be really mad. His demeanor might right. Um, so I
guess what'd you say? Eighteen? What when they outlawedit is
when it became officially illegal. The thing is is it
was definitely frowned upon because I found criticism of the
church that the acchoir at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome,

(19:00):
which is where the Pope says masks um, had tons
of castrati even though you weren't really supposed to, and
the opera houses would have castrati. The thing is it
was very, very very competitive. So there are a lot
of boys who were castrated and never went anywhere with
their singing career, and then over time they outlawed it.
In Italy was kind of like, we should probably stop

(19:22):
doing this, Yeah, and maybe we should just let girls
sing in church. Yeah, you know, I'm sure that had
a pretty big impact. Um. You should see Fairnelly. Check
it out. It's good. Um. So you might think that
this is the kind of thing that went away and like,
let's say the eight hundreds, But no, it happened up
until in England, at least chemically the nineteen fifties. Because

(19:46):
we've talked about this before. The great father of computing
an adventure of the Turing test. Alan Turing was homosexual,
which is illegal. It was was at the time, and
he was given a choice and go to prison or
you can take this These injections of still but straw
it's a female sex hormone, and it gave him boobs

(20:10):
and made him impotent, and he he laced an apple
with cyanide and died by his own hand by eating
the apple a couple of years later. Yeah, And I
don't think they called it chemical castration at the time.
They just were like, this is will limit your libido, right,
So I think that came up in the mid nineteen
sixties in the United States. So basically we went from

(20:30):
people's parents having them castrated as boys to the state
taking over. So that's that's how castration is typically carried
out at the hands of the state these days as
punishment um for crime. And in six um, a guy
named John Money uh, an American physician uh he um,

(20:55):
he came up with this procedure, which is just a
simple round of injections of something called medoxy progesterone acetate,
which is a birth control used by women. And basically
you just take the same round of birth control that
you would give a woman and give it to a
guy who was having sexual urges that he was scared
of or um sexual feelings for children or whatever, and

(21:19):
it would reduce his libido and he would be cured.
The thing is this, this first chemical castration in America
was voluntary. It was a treatment basically for a pedophile
who hadn't committed a crime yet. And the state said, hey,
that's a pretty good idea. We're gonna start making that compulsory.
In California was the first. I think that is a

(21:41):
good time to break for a message that will learn
about modern castration after that. Okay, so you said California,
which is kind of surprising, as liberal as it is,
to get on board first and allowing chemical castrat shan
as uh Well was it was? It still like an

(22:04):
option or no. Before that, it was like if you
were a caught if you were a pedophile who was
caught doing something, or a rapist or something it's sex criminal. Um,
you could say, hey, I heard about this this chemicals
castration thing. How about instead of going to prison, you
just give that to me. It was a bargaining chip.
So if you if you use your penis to commit

(22:25):
a crime, they would give you this option, or you
your lawyer could bring it up. They may not give
you the option, but it was something that was out
there that you could use to bargain your way out
of prison with potentially In the mid nineties, California said,
it's not a bargaining chip anymore, Like you're this is
gonna happen to you, Like this is something that can
happen to you. This is a sentence we can we

(22:47):
can exact on you. Well, the Czech Republic surgically castrated
sex offenders until so did Germany. Germany did. I don't
think nearly as long, but for a long time, like
in your up. That's how um pedophilia was was cured,
was through castration or sex offenses. Yeah, and since there's

(23:07):
a surgical they had success rate of uh no recid recidivism.
So the word reciitativism, recidativism, it's a bone head word.
It's uh but that ain't me no more. Um So, Yeah,
the chemical one, uh, the chemical variety can be reversed
if you stop taking the drugs. It's generally thought that

(23:30):
you you can go back to achieving erections and doing
things with your penis. Well, there's a study right of
um of German sex offenders. Well, let me tell you
about Joseph Frank Smith first. So when you are chemically castrated,
the recidativism rate drops from eight percent for non treated
like just basically, you send the person to prison, there's

(23:52):
an eighty percent chance they're going to commit another sex
crime later to just five percent among chemically castrated people. Yeah,
takes the window of their sales, it does. And one
of the reasons why America got really behind the idea
of chemical castration was because of a guy named Joseph
Frank Smith. So back in three he was convicted of

(24:13):
raping a woman for the second time, the same woman. Yeah,
and they were like, you're you're losing your junk. We're
going to chemically castrate you. And he basically became this
poster boy for chemical castration. He would give interviews about it.
He would talk publicly about how it freed him and
how it changed his life, and like how this is

(24:34):
such a great humane treatment for the for people with
you know, sex offense problems, um, and all the while
he was out there raping and committing other sex crimes
while he was giving these interviews. And finally he got
caught and he was he was convicted of a few
sex offenses, but he's suspected of seventy five more over

(24:56):
the years. And the whole reason was he stopped taking
his injections. Yeah, I see. That's the thing that I
didn't get, is that not they just said, here, just
take these. I guess over time enough trust See that's
the thing that you That trust in unis was still
reflected all these years later on this guy, because people

(25:16):
thought he was castrated, and because he was really working
people with his public image as well. Yeah, I think
the state would carry out that punishment for you know life, right,
you would think so. But I guess, hey, Joe Frank,
you've really you've really knocked us off our feet. You
just handle this. We'll give you some needles. You do
it at home. Or maybe he suggested, maybe he's like, Doc,

(25:37):
I've seen yeah, right, I can do this. Yeah. But
however it happened, whoever was in charge of him getting
that that chemical castration injections really dropped the ball in
Possibly as many as eighty people were victimized as a result.
So you did mention earlier that something we should clear up.
You said that even if the testes are removed, there's

(26:00):
still that five percent chance. Um, that's because some of
your testosterone is made in the pituitary gland. About five percent. Yeah,
not all of it comes from the old testicles, which
is why your vocal cords grows some when you're castrado.
So that explains that. Right. The thing is, now we've
come to the German sex offenders study called study right. Yeah,

(26:23):
so back in nineteen s somebody carried out a study
of German sex offenders who had had um are ectomys. Yeah,
that's the testicle removal. Right. So even these guys orchaeect
to me, sorry, um, even among these guys, we're still
able to have sex twenty years after the procedures. Germans are,

(26:46):
they have a stick to it. They're they're very efficient.
But they that's because their pituitary gland it's still generating
enough testosterone that they could get interaction. Well, you know
what Germans say, my pituitary gland produces more testosterone by
ten am than years does all day the field saying right, um,

(27:08):
if they got a penick to me, which is cutting
off your testicles and your penis complete removal of all
of your junk, followed by drug therapy to reduce the hormones,
then you're basically that's only the only way to get
a chance of like no following no crimes. That's the

(27:31):
only way to reduce libia. Well, that was my two cents,
based on my research. It would take the removal of
the penis, the removal of the testing, and drug therapy
to to drop the libido down enough. But yeah, that
was just my research. Uh So you go on to
point out I think that's very fair to call out

(27:52):
some of the positives that people feel um for sex offenders.
A lot of them say that, you know what this is.
I feel freed, I feel serenity. I don't have these
urges anymore. I did not feel normal and well before,
and now I do, and I can go out and
live my life as a normal person because no one
else knows about what's going on downstairs. But there is

(28:14):
criticism of the use of castration in any form by
the state as punishment for um for a sex crime,
though mainly if it is in the United States at least,
if it is punishment for a crime, then groups like
you know, Amnesty International and a c L you say, well,

(28:35):
then that's a cruel and unusual punishment. Sure. Uh. Secondly,
if you're using it to prevent future crimes, I can't
think of anything more unconstitutional than that. Unless it's voluntary.
But if it's the state saying we're gonna give you
this to keep you from possibly committing a crime that

(28:56):
you may or may not commit in the future, you're
not supposed to be able to do that. But society
kind of looks the other way on that one. And
then thirdly, it doesn't always work. It is the case
of Joe Frank Smith shows us. But you're right, there
are some people who who have had umbrating experience exactly,

(29:16):
but they're not necessarily criminals. We should probably divide that
right about here. Anyone who's been castrated doesn't mean they're
a criminal. Um. There's a lot of there's a lot
of parallels between people who voluntarily seek castration and um
A sexuals, the third sexual orientation who We've did a

(29:37):
podcast on BEA that was a good one too. Yeah. Uh,
And I guess that brings us to the final piece
of the pie, is uh, castration seeking sexual gratification. Right,
it's a very small niche group of people. I would
hope these are like the people who are the opposite

(29:59):
of the people who want to be castrated, to be
free from sexual urges and desires so they can just
live their lives in a freer way. These people want
to be castrated for sexual gratification. Yeah, like masochists get
into this. You know, not all of them, but there
you know, you know they'ld saying whatever floats your boat.

(30:20):
For some people, this floats their boat. And it may
seem really weird to us. But in um, North Carolina
and Waynesville, which is right outside of Asheville, in two
thousand six, these uh, well actually three men, um many,
Yeah you did. You could have just seen them without

(30:41):
the story men like I know what those guys are into. Yeah.
Um they had a quote unquote dungeon fashion from an
enclosed car poard and they carried out uh, surgical castration
for people voluntarily. At least six dudes voluntarily did this
for sexual gratification in their little dungeon. They were like underground,

(31:02):
unlicensed surgeons who did it in their own home. And um,
the reason that people went to this guy, these guys
was because there are supposedly surgeons around the world who will,
for enough money carry out surgical castration. But if you're
into like S and M and that's why you're being castrated,

(31:23):
they don't allow that you're going to, Well, they're not
gonna like torture you sexually before, after, or during the operation,
which is what you're after. And with the castration for
um massochistic purposes for sexual gratification. Uh, the you're never
going to have a pen ectomy because you still want

(31:43):
to be able to have sex afterwards. But you may
have you may have your scrotum removed, you may have
one testicle removed, you may have both removed, and you
will probably do this under more than one operation over time.
But you're being sexually tortured while you're Wow, you're being
operated on. That's like you said, another piece of the pie.

(32:05):
That's right. And uh, Richard Master Rick Ciarra, he was
the lead um physician. I guess you could say he
actually worked for twenty three years as a physician's assistant,
so he had a little background. Yeah, from what I
understand that none of the surgeries were like, nobody died
or got an infection or anything like that. They seemed

(32:27):
to know what they were doing. So it was him,
it was his partner of twenty years, Michael Mendez, and
then a man they called their slave, Danny Carroll Reeves,
who all pleaded. Originally, they were charging them with um
operating medical establishment and practice practicing medicine without a license. Right,
And we should also point out like every single one
of their patients was there voluntarily. One guy flew from

(32:48):
South America for his surgery. Yeah, Like where do you go, Waynesville,
North Carolina. Yeah, right, it's the it's the home of
S and M operations. In the end, they did not
get convicted of those crimes. There were misdemeanors. They ended
up leading guilty to felony castration and maiming and uh
Master Rick served a year in prison. Um Michael Mendez

(33:11):
for four months and the slave man served eight months
and at the time of his life may have So
I think it's neat that those guys found each other,
like three people who are in another thing about this
small town. Yeah, I mean, I can understand the guy
from South America finding these guys from the internet. But
if like these guys were partners for twenty years, and

(33:31):
this is in two thousand and six, that definitely predates
the internet. So like, these guys who were into some
very unique stuff found one another. Yeah, and it may
have been thanks to uh An S and M website
because I looked. I was like, I gotta see what
this Master Rick looks like. And there was pictures of
him from his uh profile at kolar me dot com

(33:53):
and I was like, collar me dot com what's that?
And I was like, oh, well, what do you think
it is? Put it coller on like a dog collar.
Yeah right, yeah, I'm hip, Yeah you're you're in the now.
But yeah, there was a picture of the dude with
his uh buttless chaps on and Mr Rick served a year. Yeah.

(34:14):
I feel like if there's anything about castration, it's that
it has it encompasses a lot of different people with
a lot of for a lot of different reasons, over
a lot of period of time. Yeah, that's just another
one of those weird human things that we have to
let you know about. Yeah, now we never have to
talk about it again. You got anything else, I got

(34:36):
nothing else. I've got something else. We'd probably be remiss
to not mention the Heaven's Gate cult. Remember them, Yeah,
they were castrated and weird. Well yeah, they were led
by Marshall apple White and all of them, all the
male members of Heaven's Gate except for him, was castrated. No,

(34:56):
that's not true. He was castrated as well, so all
of his followers had to be as well. So yeah,
we should probably. I don't think you could do a
castration episode without mentioning Heaven's Kate. I'm glad we did,
so thank you for joining us. This was castration. If
you want to learn more about castration, you can type
that word into our website. Stuff you should know dot

(35:17):
com because this came from one of our articles. And uh,
since I said stuff you should know dot com, that
means it's time for all right. This is the time
in the show where we say thank you to you

(35:39):
for sending us babbles and trinkets and handmade goods. Uh.
So I've got one, Josh uh White River Knife and
Tool of Coopersville, Minnesota. This dude Luke sent me a
really cool knife and he sent one and you were like, here,
you take the knife, Chuck. Oh, you spend more time
out of doors. Yeah, it was to defend yourself against

(36:02):
jack rabbits and stuff. He sent the seven inch backpacker
and it's awesome and it is super sharp. Yeah, very sharp,
and it is from White River Knives dot com. Yeah,
we also want to say thank you to Jack Schaefer
for sending us life is LARPing bro bracelets. Yeah, we
should thank Anthony Lawson who sent us some really cool gifts,

(36:23):
pricey gifts, handmade gifts, brass spinning tops and bottle openers.
You should see Jerry spin this top. She's like, look,
it just keeps going. I know it's pretty awesome. Um,
these are machine by hand, so like when you look
at something that's intricate, like made of metal, and like
how do you make this? But the dude makes in
my hand. So you should check it out at J. L.

(36:43):
Lawson and Company UM, which is j L. Lawson Co
dot com. Matt rob rab I can't know. I don't
know how I know him from our correspondence, but I
don't know how to pronounce the last thing you mean,
Matt Broccoli row up he uh. He sent us a
School on Wheels mobile tutoring program, umbrellas and stickers some

(37:07):
good schwag from his his awesome program out and I
think Los Angeles, I believe that's right. School on Wheels.
Go check it out. Thank you School on Wheels and
thanks also to Baby in the Nobody's Band that sent
us some shirts and c d s. Yeah, thanks music. Uh.
Steve with his plain number of N six and X
sent us to thank you card for accompanying him on

(37:29):
a forty nine state, three country to any thousand miles
Cessna journey. Yeah we went on that, did you know? Yeah?
Uh and thanks to Jane jen Av we thanked her
before Jane's creation, she does custom knit um items to
benefit Animal Rescue. Goes to Animal Rescue. So go to
facebook dot com slash Jane's creations and um, we're trying

(37:54):
to drum up some dough for her, right yeah, like
bye bye little nit cap for someone for Christmas, and
percent of that will go to Animal Risk. We want
to give a huge thank you to Anna Krukowska. Yeah, Kukowska.
She's got one of those last names. It's difficult to
pronounce until you really look at it and then you're like, yeah,
it's Krukowska. Um, you remember her. She's that in Sound.

(38:17):
So you and I curated a sale in Sound. We
just picked our favorite albums and they put them on sale,
and uh, as thank you. She ended up sending us
gift cards, that's right, and thank you very much because
I got some pretty cool records as a result, and
I got posters Yeah. I also want to say very
very big thank you to Charlotte Alfred for sending me
her copy of Dark Dungeons the Jack Chick Publications tracks.

(38:42):
Remember we talked about the Duncis and dragons things. I
have an original copy of it. That's nice. Yeah, thank you.
Uh you want to keep going. I've got a couple more. Um,
let's see. Thanks to Jim Moorehouse for sending us the
Sasquatch Field guides for tracking. Yes, thank you to you. Brandon.
Uh passilia, is that you pronounce that voisca? Voisca? I

(39:05):
don't know. I can't read my own handwriting, he said,
handmade art books about asthma. Oh, that's right, I remember those. Yeah,
and the asthma books. Yeah, they're pretty awesome. He's like, please,
do you one on asthma. Have some books to bribe
you that I made myself. Thanks to Emily who's working
in the environment environmental conservation program in Paraguay, she sent

(39:25):
us a postcard. We also got a postcard from Budapesh
from Kristen Curran. Yeah. Uh, and we got a hundred
trillion dollars Zimbabwe. Note. Do you remember that? That's pretty awesome?
That was from Dave Stevenson. We appreciate you. Dave got
a wrote sixty six postcard from Pauline s. And we

(39:47):
got a postcard from Adam Purvez of Happiness Plunge dot com.
So thank you very much to everybody for sending us
some cool stuff. Well appreciate it. If you want to
get in touch with us, you can send us whatever
on Twitter dot com. Our handle is s y s
K Podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com
slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an

(40:10):
email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always,
join us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot Com.

(40:34):
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