Stuff You Should Know - How Castration Works

Episode Date: December 3, 2013

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chubb-Royant. Jerry's over there, and we all want to warn you that if you are squeamish, you should skip this one. 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. No.

And as a matter of fact, I'm pretty proud of our circumcision episode. That one was really good. It had it all. It had history, anatomy, scalpels, controversy. Controversy. 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. Alright.

Castration. Yeah, castration. I don't remember how this came up, but this is from a blog post I wrote. 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 couple of historical bullet points for you. Okay. Apparently in 1778, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill reducing punishment for rape, polygamy, and sodomy from death to castration. Oh, okay.

TJ. And you know, we should also point out, we got a lot of letters from people about the revisionist history with Thomas Jefferson that said, you know, Sally Hemings was more than likely forced into that relationship. Yeah. And some people go so far as to call Thomas Jefferson a rapist himself for that relationship. And so I had never seen that, but then I did some reading and that is a theory that we can't really base and say, hey, they were in love. Right. You took the Pocahontas route, right? Yeah.

You're 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 it's definitely some hinky history. So that's a really excellent point, like with revisionist history again, like a lot of its interpretation. But I mean, if you do look at it like she was his slave and they had a relationship. Like how can it be consensual? Right. At the very least, 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. And also the other quick thing is that Genghis Khan supposedly led and says that Genghis might have incarcerated himself. Really? By a princess seeking revenge. I can't remember his name. Genghis Khan? No, no. No.

Hang Si or hang Phi. I can't remember. He was like the admiral of the Chinese Navy. Yeah. When they were undertaking basically their own age of exploration that, again, in Gavin Menzies thinks beat Columbus to the New World. Yeah. In 1421, he was castrated as well. There's actually been a lot of very prominent people in history who've held positions of great power.

Yeah. Who were castrated people. It's very interesting. Hadn't heard of Genghis 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 or something.

Sure. To make him seem weaker or something. Sure. But, you know, we should point out that with the concept of castration as shocking and as weird and horrific as it sounds, there is like a certain group of people who are either castrated or interested in being castrated that there's nothing really weird to it at all from their perspective. Sure. So let's talk about this. This is not like a widespread thing today. Right.

But if you look back into the ancient world, it was actually fairly common, especially in parts of Asia like Korea and China. A lot of their high bureaucrats were actually castrated. And like I said, a lot of them went on to hold great places of prominence in history. Yeah. And very oddly, there's been some sort of longevity research into the idea that if you're castrated male, you may live longer than the average male. Yeah. You found a study from 2012 from Korea. Yeah.

That UNIX, and that's a word you're going to hear a lot. The subject group produced more centenarians. That's people who live 100 or older than 130 times more. Right. And they're just normal folks in the West. Yeah. Not say they're abnormal, but you know what I mean. Well, and they're non-UNIX.

Right. Yeah. And their average lifespan of that group was 14 to 19 years higher than the control group. Interesting. The thing is, as 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 an STD. Yeah.

That's another really good point that I hadn't thought about. There's a study, though, that had similar findings, too, though. So it is possible, the theory goes, that without testosterone raging through your body, your lifespan could conceivably increase over time. That's true. Okay. So who else is famous? I know Boston Corbett, Thomas Boston Corbett.

Yeah. You said you knew about him already. I'm impressed. I had heard this before. It might have been like a Jeopardy thing. But he was the guy who most people believe shot John Wilkes 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 may I? Sure. So Mr. Corbett, you said he was the guy who shot John Wilkes Booth against orders, even. Yeah. He was to be taken alive, and this guy shot him. I didn't know it was disputed, but some people say he didn't do it, but I think he's largely held responsible.

So later on in life, he became widowed. He was a widower. His wife died is another way 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 obviously go to the local doctor's house to see if it should get checked out. That obviously made national news.

One of the ideas that suggests Corbett was crazy when he did this is that he was a hatter. That was his profession, and hatters at the time worked with Mercury, which the phrase mad as a hatter, the mad hatter. That's because people who made hats worked with Mercury and all of that Mercury poisoning over time supposedly affected their personality and their IQ. What did they do with the Mercury? I think it had something to do with giving the hat its shape. I'm not sure.

I looked for this and I couldn't find it, but I did find that that idea is in dispute. Well, I did see that Corbett cited a Bible verse. It's not surprising that he went to church after. Matthew 1912, may I? Please. 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 eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

The one who was able to do this let him do it. There was another early church father who carried out auto-castration because of that same Bible verse. They're talking about in the Bible, if you're able to castrate yourself for the kingdom of heaven, just go ahead and do that. Right. There is a passage in the Bible that has led to at least two people cutting off their own genitalia. This is New Testament, by the way. Yeah.

I noticed he said Matthew. The super modern New Testament. So Corbett was the 19th century. That's a fairly recent case. The early church father was obviously in the first couple centuries AD. The Korean eunuchs, although the last one died in 1996. Yeah, that's crazy. That's pretty recent.

Yeah. They were really operating in more than 19th and early 20th century and then way earlier in the millennia. But there are cases every once in a while like auto-castration. Every once in a while, I think in 2006 or something like that, I came across a case study of a person who castrated himself. He was a 20-year-old with what sounds like Cotard's delusion. He said that he had died and he was trying to wake himself up.

That was one reason. I bet he was awake. He also said he felt guilty for experiencing lust. 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 stuck. But ultimately, the thing that stuck out to me was he said he felt relief afterward. Like 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 his genitalia, 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 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 result of psychosis. Right. And it's not the castration part. It's the fact that you've harmed yourself. Yeah, just self-mutilation. Exactly. 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 explodes the idea that you have to be crazy to be castrated or want to be castrated. Yeah, 112 people responded. And 40% of those reported a desire to be free from sexual urges. And another 30% said they either wanted to be castrated for the cosmetics appearance. Yeah. I guess you reference Kindall appropriately. Or as a way to act out a sexual fetish, which as Warren later is a thing.

It is a thing. North Carolina there was. Yeah. As far as the sounds and as I guess across the board and universal, it might seem that thinking that you'd have to be crazy to be castrated or 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 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 comes up later too. So that makes more sense to me than cutting off my left arm because it feels weird. Yeah. Like would your left arm ever do? Yeah. Well, you know, my left arm.

Have you ever seen my left foot? I knew you were going to say that. Yeah, of course. I have not. Oh, it's good. That was the beginnings of Daniel Day-Lewis's like mastery of acting. He was amazing. That was the first time I'd heard of him, I remember.

Yeah, I think, I don't think that was his first movie. I think my beautiful Andrette was before that. No, no, there was another one that I saw that was before. That was a Merchant Ivory film. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was in it and it was, man, it was a Merchant Ivory film. I think he made his name though and won the Academy Award for that milestone. For sure.

All right. Let's talk about the history. Yeah. I saw a thing that was disturbing that in Korea, they would castrate boys. You might want to not listen to this. Fair warning. Who me? Here it comes.

I have to. No, the other people. That they would allegedly dip the genitals in feces and have a dog eat the genitals off. Well, that's a really awful way to do it. I can't imagine anything worse. Weird. Yeah. It's pretty awful.

So let's get into why someone do this. If you're a eunuch, you are a trusted friend of the court, perhaps? Yeah. Well, especially in Korea, the reasoning went, and again, like for millennia, eunuchs ran Korea at the behest of the royal families that had the dynasties in power. Well, you're not going to start your own dynasty, so there's one reason to trust you. That's the point. Eunuchs were allowed to have families, but they had to adopt kids, obviously.

And any males that they adopted had to be eunuchs themselves to prevent them founding. Since they were very powerful people, they had to kind of die out. That's so awful that these kids are like, yeah, I'm adopted finally. And then, oh. Yeah. Oh, you're a eunuch? Yeah. Can I go back to the orphanage?

The other reason eunuchs were trusted, obviously, because they weren't going to be making any moves on the queen. Well, in the Middle East, especially, harms were very popular. And if you have a harm of wives, they need protecting. And you want the guy who's going to protect them to be physically incapable of doing anything with them. Yeah. So hence, eunuchs.

Sure. But the point is, with the removal of these men's genitalia, they were automatically imbued with a trust, because they simply were incapable of circumventing that trust. So that's like one of these weird things about eunuchs is what goes hand in hand with being a eunuch, at least as far as government or power is 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?

Well, that's what we're trying to show, little by little, just how insane humanity is. So let's move on to the 18th century in Italy, where, in 1994, I saw a movie called Farinelli. Did you ever see that? No, again. It was a movie about a castrato singer. I'm glad you said that. Castrato, the plural is castrati. Yeah.

Same with gelato. Little, little, do you know? Oh, so if your family goes out, you get gelati? Yeah. Really? Yeah. So his name was Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Brosci. And his stage name was Farinelli.

And it's a good movie. You should get it. It was... It's a biopic. Yeah, it's a biopic about a famous castrato. And in Italy, at the time, women weren't allowed to sing in church. So if you wanted that mezzo-soprano, you just got a grown man with no genitalia. What?

Sing your heart out. The thing is, it was illegal to castrate somebody in Italy at the time. Well, in 1870, 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. Yeah. Because in the 18th century, the 1700s, 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 done. And apparently, they would basically take a boy... Here's the thing. You wanted your kid to possibly be a castrato because it could mean wealth for you and your family. A kid's parents, a boy's parents would take him to this castration surgeon. The castration surgeon would pinch the boy's carotid artery until he passed out and then cut his testes off. The bulk and death grip. Pretty much.

Yeah. Then cut his testes off. And this is the way they did it, according to this book from 1718, because they tried opium before, but too many of the boys died from... Odine. Yeah, they odined and died. So they would just pinch their carotid and then remove their testes. And a lot of people think that you could do this at any stage and produce a high-pitched voice.

Yeah, that's like the whole thing. Like, even when you get kicked in the groin, a guy will go... Right. It's like the old joke. You can thank Martin Short for perpetuating that joke. Yeah. But that's not true. It has to be done before puberty, before your vocal cords have lengthened,

and those 95% of the male sex hormones are produced in the testes. So if you get rid of those, what you've got is a man that continues to grow. And interestingly, castrato, castrate, their limbs grow really long, and their ribs, their rib cage gets bigger because without testosterone, their bone joints don't harden like they should. So that produces an effect of better able to breathe. And so 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,

do you remember that Brady Bunch where Peter Brady's voice changed? You can forget. What was going on was the testosterone in his body was lengthening his vocal cords by anywhere between 35 and 92 millimeters. So your vocal cords increased by 65% in length during puberty. Within a castrato, the vocal cords don't lengthen nearly as much because they've only got about 5% 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 rib cage grows to allow their lungs to grow even more, take a deeper breath. So you have somebody who has the ability to hold a note like a male, a male adult, but a high-pitched resonant voice. Yes, so it's a weird combination of like an extra powerful singing voice through the vocal cords of a kid. The upside is if you remove the testes of an adult male, his voice isn't going to change a bit.

He's just going to be really mad. His demeanor might. Right. Yeah. So I guess what did you say, 18 what when they outlawed it? 1870 is when it became officially illegal. The thing is, it was definitely frowned upon because I found criticism of the church. The choir at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, which is where the Pope says Mass,

had tons of castrati, even though you weren't really supposed to, and opera houses would have castrati. The thing is, it was very, very, very competitive. So there were a lot of boys who were castrated and never went anywhere with their singing career. And then over time, they outlawed it, and Italy was kind of like, we should probably stop 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. You should see Farinelli, check it out. It's good. Okay. So you might think that this is the kind of thing that went away in, like, let's say the 1800s. But no, it happened up until in England at least, chemically, the 1950s, because we've talked about this before, the great father of computing and inventor of the Turing test, Alan Turing, was homosexual, which is illegal.

It was. It was at the time. And he was given a choice and go to prison, or you can take these injections of still bestraw. It's a female sex hormone. And it gave him boobs and made him impotent. Yeah. And he laced an apple with cyanide and died by his own hand by eating the apple a couple years later. Yeah, and I don't think they called it chemical castration at the time.

They just were like, this will limit your libido. Right. So I think that came up in the mid 1960s in the United States. So basically we went from people's parents having them castrated as boys to the state taking over. Yeah. So that's how castration is typically carried out at the hands of the state these days as punishment for crime. And in 1966, a guy named John Money, an American physician, 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.

Yeah. 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 sexual feelings for children or whatever, and it would reduce his libido and he would be cured. The thing is 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 going to start making that compulsory. And California was the first.

I think that is a good time to break for a message that we'll learn about modern castration after that. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with stamps.com. That's right, because with stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office. And, you know, it's ready to go in minutes. You can get back to running your business sooner than later. Yep, stamps.com is like the post office elevated. They have rates you literally can't find anywhere else, which comes in handy because postage rates just increased again,

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Was it was it still like an option? Or was it no before that it was like if you were caught, if you were a pedophile who was caught doing something or a rapist or something, it's sex criminal. Sure. 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 use, if you use your penis to commit 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. Gotcha. In the mid 90s, California said, it's not a bargaining chip anymore. Like you're, this is going to happen to you. Like this is something that can happen to you. Yeah. This is a sentence we can, we can exact on you. Well, the Czech Republic surgically castrated sex offenders until 2008. So did Germany?

Yeah. Germany did. I don't think nearly as long, but for a long time, like in Europe, that's how pedophilia was, was cured was through castration or sex offenses. Yeah. And since theirs was surgical, they had 100% success rate of no recid recidivism. Is that the word? Recidivism. Recidivism. That's a bonehead word.

It is. But that ain't me no more. So yeah, the chemical one, the chemical variety can be reversed if you stop taking the drugs. Yeah. It's generally thought that you, you can go back to achieving erections and doing things with your penis. There was a study, right? Of German sex offenders. Well, let me tell you about Joseph Frank Smith first.

Okay. So when you are chemically castrated, the recidivism rate drops from 80% for non-treated. Like just basically you send the person to prison. There's an 80% chance they're going to commit another sex crime later. Yeah. To just 5% among chemically castrated people. Yeah. It takes the wind out of their sails.

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. Yeah, this is unbelievable. So back in 1983, he was convicted of raping a woman for the second time, the same woman. Really? Yeah. And they were like, you're, you're losing your junk. Yeah.

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. Yeah. And like how this is such a great humane treatment for people with sex offense problems. And all the while, he was out there raping and committing other sex crimes while he was giving these interviews. And finally in 1998, he got caught. And he was convicted of a few sex offenses, but he was suspected of 75 more over the years.

Wow. And the reason was he stopped taking his injections. Yeah. 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. Yeah.

That trust in Unix was still reflected all these years later on this guy because people 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. I would think so. But I guess every Monday, hey, Joe Frank, you've really knocked us off our feet. You just handle this.

We'll give you some needles. You do it at home. Yeah. Or maybe he suggested, maybe he's like, doc, I've seen. Yeah. 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 and possibly as many as 75 or 80 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 still that 5% chance. That's because some of your testosterone is made in the pituitary gland. About 5%? Yeah. Not all of it comes from the old testicles. Which is why your vocal cords grow some.

Right. When you're castrato. So that explains that. Right. The thing is, now we've come to the German sex offender study. Of course. Of course, the study. Right.

So back in 1960, somebody carried out a study of German sex offenders who'd had oryectomies. Yeah. That's the test school removal. Right. So even these guys, oryectomies, sorry, even among these guys, 18% were still able to have sex 20 years after the procedure. Germans are, they have a stick to it quality. They're very efficient.

But they, that's because their pituitary gland is still generating enough testosterone that they could get an erection. Well, you know what Germans say. My pituitary gland produces more testosterone by 10 a.m. than yours does all day. I mean. That's what you're saying. Right. If they got a penectomy, 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 100% chance of like no following, no crimes. That's the only way to reduce libido. Well, that was my two cents. Yeah. Based on my research, it would take the removal of the penis, the removal of the testes and drug therapy to drop the. I was really dancing around.

Yeah. I didn't go down in nothing, but yeah, that was just my research. So you go on to point out, I think that's very fair to call out some of the positives that people feel 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 criticism of the use of castration in any form by the state as punishment for for a sex crime though. Mainly if it is in the United States at least. Yeah. If it is punishment for a crime, then groups like, you know, Amnesty International and

ACLU say, well, then that's a cruel and unusual punishment. Sure. Secondly, if you're using it to prevent future crimes. Yeah. I can't think of anything more unconstitutional than that. Yeah. Unless it's voluntary. But if it's the state saying, we're going to give you this to keep you from possibly committing

a crime that 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 now. And then thirdly, doesn't always work. It doesn't always work as the case of Joe Frank Smith shows us. Yeah. But you're right. There are some people who have had a liberating experience.

Exactly. Yeah. But they're not necessarily criminals. We should probably divide that right about here. Right. Anyone who's been castrated doesn't mean they're a criminal. Right. There's a lot of there's a lot of parallels between people who voluntarily seek castration

and asexuals. Yeah. Third sexual orientation who we did a podcast on. Yeah. That was a good one too. Yeah. And I guess that brings us to the final piece of the pie is 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 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 they're, you know, you know, saying whatever floats your boat. Right.

For some people this floats their boat and it may seem really weird to us, but in North Carolina in Waynesville, which is right outside of Asheville in 2006. These, well, actually three men or they see their mug shots, have you seen them? Yeah. You could have just seen them without the story, man, like I know what those guys are into. Yeah. They had a quote unquote dungeon fashion from a enclosed carport and they carried out surgical

castration for people voluntarily, at least six dudes voluntarily did this for sexual gratification. Right. In their little dungeon. They were like underground, unlicensed surgeons who did it in their own home. And 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&M and that's why you're being castrated, yeah, they don't allow that.

They're going to, well, they're not going to like torture you sexually before, after or during the operation, which is what you're after. Right. And with the castration for masochistic purposes for sexual gratification, you're never going to have a pnectomy because you still want to be able to have sex afterwards, but 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, while you're being operated on.

Yeah. That's, like you said, another piece of the pie. That's right. And Richard Master Rick Ciara, he was the lead physician, I guess you could say. He actually worked for 23 years as a physician's assistant. So he had a little background. Yeah, from what I understand that none of the surgeries were bought, like nobody died or, or got an infection or anything like that.

They seemed to know what they were doing. So it was him, it was his partner of 20 years, Michael Mendes, and then a man they called their slave, Danny Carol Reeves, who all pleaded, originally they were charging them with operating medical establishment and practicing, 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 South America for his surgery. Yeah.

Like where do you go? Wainsville, North Carolina. Yeah, right. It's the, it's the home of a S and M operations. In the end, they did not get convicted of those crimes. There were misdemeanors. They ended up pleading guilty to felony castration and maiming. Oh yeah.

And Master Rick served a year in prison. Michael Mendes served four months and the slave man served eight months and at the time of his life. He 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. 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 20 years, and this is in 2006 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 an S and M website because I looked else like I got to see what this Master Rick looks like. And there was pictures of him from his profile at collar me dot com.

And I was like, color me dot com. What's that? And I was like, Oh, well, what do you think it is? Collar put a collar on like a dog collar. Yeah. Yeah. So right. Yeah.

Okay. That's what it is. I'm hip. Yeah. You're you're in the know. But yeah, there was a picture of the dude with his buttless chaps on and Master Rick served a year. I feel like if there's anything about castration is that it has it encompasses a lot of different

people with a lot of for a lot of different reasons. Yeah. 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. And now we never have to talk about it again. You got anything else?

I got nothing else. I've got something else. We 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 Applewhite and all of them, all the male members of Heaven's Gate, except for him was castrated.

No, 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 Gate. I'm glad we did. Yeah. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your

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off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gate one travel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. 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. StuffYouShouldKnow.com because this came from one of our articles and since I said StuffYouShouldKnow.com, that means it's time for administrative P.K.O. All right. This is the time in the show where we say thank you to you for sending us baubles and trinkets and handmade goods. So I've got one, Josh. White River Knife and Tool of Coopersville, Minnesota, this dude Luke sent me a really

cool knife and he sent one and you're like here, you take the knife, Chuck. Oh, you spend more time out of doors. Yeah, it was a very cool knife. You have to defend yourself against jackrabbits and such. He sent the seven inch backpacker and it's awesome and it is super sharp. Yeah, very sharp and it is from whiteriverknives.com. We also want to say thank you to Jack Schaefer for sending us Life is LARPing Bro bracelets. We should thank Anthony Lawson who sent us some really cool gifts, 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. These are machined by hand so like when you look at something this intricate like made of metal and like how do you make this but the dude makes them by hand. So you should check it out at J.L. Lawson and Company which is JLLawsonCo.com. Yep, Matt Robb, Robb, I know him from our correspondence but I don't know how to pronounce

his last name. You mean Matt Broccoli Robb? He sent us a school on wheels mobile tutoring program, umbrellas and stickers, some good swag from 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 and the Nobody's band that sent us

some shirts and CDs. Yeah, thank you. Steve with his plain number of N6NX sent us a thank you card for accompanying him on a 49 state, three country, 20,000 mile Cessna journey. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah. And thanks to Jane Genab, we thanked her before Jane's creation. She does custom knit items to benefit Animal Rescue, 100% goes to Animal Rescue. So go to Facebook.com slash Jane's Creations and we're trying to drum up some dough for her, right? Yeah, like buy a little knit cap for someone for Christmas and 100% of that will go to Animal Rescue. We want to give a huge thank you to Anna Krufkowska.

Yeah, Krufkowska, she's got one of those last names that's difficult to pronounce until you really look at it and then you're like, yeah, it's Krufkowska. You remember her? She's at InSound. Oh, yeah. So you and I curated a sale at InSound. We just picked our favorite albums and they put them on sale and as thank you, she ended up sending us gift cards and thank you very much because I got some pretty cool records

as a result. I got posters. Nice. Yeah. I want to say a very, very big thank you to Charlotte Alford for sending me her copy of Dark Dungeons, the Jack Chick Publications track. Remember we talked about the Dungeons and Dragons thing? Very cool.

I have an original copy of it. Wow, that's nice. Yeah, thank you. You want to keep going? I've got a couple more. Yeah. Let's see. Thanks to Jim Morehouse for sending us the Sasquatch Field Guides for tracking.

Yes. Thank you to Brandon Basilia. Is that how you pronounce that? Woiske. Woiske? I don't know. I can't read my own handwriting. He sent handmade art books about asthma.

Oh, that's right. I remember those. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the asthma books. Yeah, they're pretty awesome. Those were cool. He's like, please do one on asthma. Yeah.

Here's some books to bribe you. We'll have to do that. That I made myself. Thanks to Emily who's working in the environmental conservation program in Paraguay. She sent us a postcard. We also got a postcard from Budapest from Kristen Curring. Yeah. And we got $100 trillion Zimbabwe note.

Oh, yeah. You remember that? Uh-huh. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. That was from Dave Stevenson. We appreciate you, Dave. Got a wrote 66 postcard from Pauline S. And we got a postcard from Adam Pervez of happinessplunge.com.

So thank you very much to everybody for sending us some cool stuff. We appreciate it. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us whatever on twitter.com. Our handle is syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate 1 travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate 1 handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gate1travel.com for more information or to book your tour.

That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. There's a sense of thrill that comes with learning. A sort of aha moment when things click. Or you learn a cool new fact. Wondrium.com is all about the thrill of those moments. Medieval history, astrophysics, cooking with bugs, playing the ukulele, training your puppy.

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