Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Mr. Reich's Sexbox

Episode Date: December 13, 2013

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: Meet a real sex weirdo. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Hey folks, just MacRoy here. Listen, just a little warning ahead of time while this week's show will still be free profanities you've come to Expect from us. We do get into some adult topics. So if you're listening with the kids, you might want to make sure They're comfortable with that. I guess I don't know what your relationship is like with your kids. I'd have that whole bird's in the beast talk with them before listening to this episode if I were you. You go ahead and knock that out.

Thanks. Saw bones is a show about medical history and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. All right, Tommy is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four.

We came across a pharmacy with the two windows busted's lost it out We were saw through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around The medicines the medicines the escalant Macau for the mouth Wow, we're really welcome to saw bones a marital tour of misguided medicine I am your co-host Justin McAroy and. And I'm Sydney, my friend. It's the holiday season. That was a different dragon. It's the holiday season. Holiday season.

So, Hickory Dick. Hickory Duck. Hickory Duck. Don't forget to hang up your smock, Sid. Hang up your socks. Hang up your socks. Sid. Hang up your socks.

Hang up your socks. Don't get caught in the socks. Sidney, it's... I don't know this song clearly. The holiday season. I, of course, started my shopping as is my, as is my use in October, but I'm still needing a few more things

to fill out your stocking. Well, honey, actually, I was really hoping for a sex box this year. Oh, well, I mean, I already have the new Xbox, but I guess I could get a second one. No. I never thought you were that into games. No, no, no, no, not an Xbox. A sex box.

A sex box. I was really hoping to like... Is that on Amazon? a sex box. I was really hoping to like, I don't Amazon or. To capture like my, my, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or't, of course, that's probably the name you know I'm by. Don't beat yourself up. Time is proven that I don't have that great of a handle on your orgasmic energy either.

So we're at least in the same boat on that front. Marriage humor. Marriage humor. Sidney, what's a sex box? Like, what do you even say? Well, to understand what a sex box is, I think we're gonna have to. I mean, I understand what a sex box is. I don't want people out there thinking,

I don't know about some cool sex thing, because it sounds like a cool sort of like sex thing. So I just want you to tell the people at home what it is, because I know already. Right, you instantly thought it was an Xbox, like a video game machine. That's just a little cool guy humor that we used to throw off the plebs. That's what you call it, right? A video game machine? That's just a little cool guy humor that we used to throw off the plebes.

That's what you call it, right? A video game machine? A video game contraption, actually, for. Oh, okay. Okay, so it's Xbox. Okay, if I'm going to explain what a Xbox is, I'm probably going to have to treat you to a little biography. I'm ready.

This is this will be your oral biography for the day. Okay. I'm going to tell you about a guy named Wilhelm Reich. So clearly, you know, all about him already. So I'll just skip to the... No, I don't. I'm not that much of a cool guy. I will admit I don't know about Wilhelm Reich. He sounds German though. Austrian, but close. Right? I can handle that. I can live with Austrian. So he was an Austrian born in 1897. I can handle that. I can live with Austrian. So he was an Austrian born in 1897.

To be fair, he was raised to speak only German. So there's that. And I'm sorry I was right. This guy's going to grow up to be a psychiatrist and I'm going to tell you a lot of weird stuff about that. But it's important to know that early on, we're going to go in chronological order here. Early on, he had an interest in sex. This is something.

How early are we talking? Like, he started visiting brothels when he was 15. Cool, that's a cool kid. Yeah, he masturbated daily. He liked to watch animals have sex. And he was upper class, and so he had sex with all of his servants as well. He actually also- Let me find animals having sex.

That's not- I would like the woods. Okay, I have to think that if you and anyone in their day-to-day life, I don't want to say anyone, 90% of people, their day-to-day life come across animals having sex. They are not going to immediately like avert their gaze. I think they will at least take a moment just be like, well, that's crazy. This animal's having sex. Well, I'm assuming he like actively sought out animals

that were having sex. Hey, you got any log, you got any good tips on where I can find some animals having sex? I'm a stranger in town, I'm 15. Maybe, maybe in Austria, that happens all over the place. Working a kid good at what's Annelting sex all over. Yeah. Um, he actually, um, when he was a kid, also would watch his mother have sex with his

tutor. His mother was having an affair with his tutor and he would sneak up and watch that. That's just sloppy affairing. Yeah, that he was actually the subject of the first case report he would have a right later on as a physician about a case of breaching the incest taboo when he was watching his mom have sex gross gross start well home I hope it gets better we should also thank uh... ross and ellen for uh... yet thank you ross and ellen that you are that you inspired this episode and are a research

into the very strange and kind of gross Wilhelm Reich. If you want to suggest a topic you can email us, sawbones at maximumfund.org. Sorry, Sydney, go right ahead. So as we go into his medical career, it starts out pretty benign. He served in the Army, and then he started studying medicine. And that's probably what a doctor should start out doing. It's a very good place to start.

Yeah, it's a great entry into the medical world. All doctors have to choose their specialty, and it's not uncommon for them to find a mentor of such, or such, that would help guide them in what specialty they would choose. And he met Freud, Sigmund Freud in 1919. And they became close friends in that inspired him to go into psychoanalysis and psychiatry.

Freud actually even let him start seeing patients for psychoanalysis even before he had finished medical school. So he must have been pretty on point. I mean, if you could get basically an internship with Freud. Well, I mean, he was on point in the sense that Freud really liked him. Yeah. So which, I mean, let's be fair.

I don't have to have that edge character. What Freud was. Well, he's a little bit of a weirdo too. It's kind of weird. No offense. Some great ideas. Little weirdo. Especially back then, right?

Didn't everything he was a weirdo? No, at the time, I mean, he was pretty well respected, I think. Okay. And so him endorsing Wilhelm Wright gave him a lot of credibility. No, at the time, I mean, he was pretty well respected, I think. And so him endorsing Wilhelm Wright gave him a lot of credibility. When he finished school, he joined the Vienna Psychoanalytics Association, and he actually rented a house down the street from Freud and would just see patients out of that house. And that's one thing. This is getting a little single wifey male for my taste.

Well, this is right. Funny running into you. Gosh, we keep, yeah, I know, Wilhelm. You wait for me at Wilhelm box every day. What do you want? Is that your favorite bakery? That's my favorite bakery. It's the only one in town, Wilhelm.

This is weird. You're weirding me out, and I'm Freud. Well, it was Vienna. I bet there were a lot of bakeries. Sydney? What if we talked about interrupting the flow? Sorry, Justin. So this, okay, this is when things started to go a little awry, because unlike,

as far as I know, this is not true of Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich started having sex with his patients. Not like a great therapeutic relationship. No, absolutely not recommended. It's actually one of the few things that I definitely have to teach in my medical school curriculum. I'm required to teach my medical students not to have sex with their patients.

I have to explicitly say that. I bet that's a short lesson though. I mean, just don't do that. Yeah, I pretty much just in the middle of another lecture say, oh, and by the way, don't have sex with your patients. Now you've been told. Moving on. Moving on to less obvious topic. I would love to meet, and by the way, don't have sex with your patients. Now you've been told moving on, moving on to less obvious topic.

I would love to meet the guy, the one, because you know that policy has to be instituted because some guy at some point was like, what? They didn't tell me not to. No, they didn't tell me not to. That's why all these policies are instituted. Right. So he was continuing to see patients.

He was having sex with some of his patients. He made the mistake, or I don't know, maybe it was the lucky, maybe not a mistake, whatever, the serendipitous action of seeing a patient named Annie Pink, who he had an affair with, and then was forced to marry by her father. So interestingly enough, she became a psychoanalyst as well, and they had two kids both of whom became doctors. This should have turned his life around, don't you think? You would think that that seems like, okay, enough of being weird.

But see, the thing is, he wasn't satisfied with just practicing his little family of psychoanalysts in the Freud tradition. He wanted to kind of, you know, strike out on his own with his own theories. So he developed a concept of what's called character armor. Character armor. Okay, like armor class, like in Dungeons and Dragons, you have a plus three or Goblin defense character armor. I don't know what any of that means.

Okay. That's a great, great. Your character armor. You're really respecting the flow and I, I gotta give that up. What do I mean to pretend to like your- Pretend to like Dungeons & Dragons for once. I don't know. Dice game, the much shooting craps with Slim Ricky.

Got on the alley. You're right. It's much cooler. You're hanging out with Dungeon Master Joe down in the basement. That's a stereotype. You can play those jackets anywhere. It could be the attic below ground, but it could be a den.

Your parents living there. No, character armor. So basically it was the idea that if you looked at the expressions and the mannerisms of a person and kind of the way they hold their physical body, the way their posture, their gate, that you could read into their like neuroses and their defense mechanisms and that kind of thing. It's good to know about like literally the way they carry themselves.

Yes, like their armor is their physical self and it displays their character. That's not that far off, right? I mean, like there's some truth to that for some extreme cases, right? Well, definitely, you know, someone who is anxious appears that way. But I think the interesting thing about it

is that instead of necessarily addressing the problem, the anxiety or what would have you, that you could diagnose the problem by looking at them and then you could fix it by fixing the physical mannerisms. So like, massage them really hard. Just loosen up. Yeah. Like your jaw seems really stiff. I'm gonna push on it until it hurts really bad.

And then it'll be cured. And that was the kind of stuff you would do. Like I'm just gonna push on that spot on your back for a long time. Like really hard like with my fist. It sounds like a massage but it wasn't. No, it's something much, it tried to convince people it wasn't a massage. And he liked this idea of the character and he actually did a lot of, of you know, um, theorizing and philosophizing about the character and how well the role of plays in

different neuroses. Um, but then he got into a different, I mentioned that in the beginning he had this really early interest in sex. And so he began to incorporate that into his kind of theories about psychiatry and psychoanalysis. He started opening sex clinics all around Vienna because he thought that if people could have better sex and have more orgasms, they'd probably be happier. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Sure. I think. He had a whole group with him of physicians and a lawyer for some reason that you could call it any hour of the day and ask questions about sex. They would give you contraception, which was very controversial at the time. They would also give you a lot of Marxist political advice. Okay. You kind of slid that one in there, Will Hume, but I guess.

He actually, he, uh, that one, if you want to get dinner at the soup kitchen, you have to learn about Jesus. Same as some principle. If you want to get some condoms, let me just, you have to learn about Karl Marx. I had a sex clinic where you have to learn about Richard Marx. All his hits of the 80s, you had to be able to recite, don't mean nothing, but like verbatim, cold from memory,

all the verses, and then I would teach you about having sex. Because once you're able to do that, you've mastered the art of seduction. Yeah, that's, there you go. That's the trick is like, at the end you've repeated all the Richard Marx tunes and you're like, that's it, that's everything you go. That's the trick is like at the end, you've repeated all the Richard Marx tunes, and you're like, that's it.

That's everything you need to know. That's all. You've got the student has become the master. You graduated that pull off a mask and I've been Richard Marx the whole time. Please buy some literature on your way out. Things have been a little tight. So a lot of what he did, he started this German society

of proletarian sexual politics, where you could answer like sex poll questions that was kind of the idea. And it was all about sexual freedom in conjunction with these political beliefs. He had like a mobile clinic where he would go around and he had a whole group where he would talk to, he would talk to teens and the male patients while women all got fitted for contraceptive devices. And then there would be

another doc who would specialize in talking to children. He had a lot of progressive views about that sex before marriage was okay. Well, you know, okay. He believed that sex at a younger age was okay. He seemed tights here. And I will say that he was overwhelmed with patients using these tactics.

Yeah, all of them teens. Hey, listen, we heard that you're cool. Yeah, I mean, like super cool. You heard your cool. Um, he, uh, he began to morph this into the theory of what I mentioned earlier, or gast, or gastic potency. So that the way to be psychiatrically healthy is to lose yourself in just a really great orgasm. Because in that moment, you'll release all of your negative emotions

and all of your muscle tension and you'll be fine. And you can cure all neuroses. That scene, oh wait, hold on, did you take cure all neuroses? you can cure all neuroses. That scene. Oh, wait, hold on. Did you take cure all neuroses? Yes, cure all neuroses. All neuroses. So is a cure. He, um, he began to be known. He wrote a book about this. And he was known as the founder of a general utopia. Miner from Mars.

He was also known as the prophet of the better orgasm. That was actually my conversation name. What I think is great is this is he sent this book to Freud because they were buddies. This is when Freud started going, maybe I misjudged this guy. This guy is maybe a little... Because he kind of wrote him back and said, okay, this is weird. You don't really believe this, right? He was like, no, I totally did. You don't really you don't really believe this right? He's like no, I totally do he totally did and

And that started it that that would that would count the beginning of the end of his relationship with Freud And this is where he really starts kind of branching out on his own He starts talking about character armor more and and saying that it actually can character armor more and saying that it actually can it can cause problems like it can cause disease. So he said that after he fell out with Freud that the reason that Freud later got cancer of the jaw was because he had a really strict Jewish upbringing and he repressed his sexual desires and that if he hadn't

done that he would never have gotten cancer. That's an awkward phone call, huh? Yeah, so here I hear that you solved my cancer, huh? Because I'm a Jewish person, really? Really? That's what you got? That's okay. Sure you're coming from? Which was even more interesting he was actually a Jewish person himself, so.

Just a apparently cooler one. Well, his parents refused to raise him as such, so I guess we thought that was a problem. Yeah, my parents were chill. That's why I'm not gonna get job cancer. He continued to... Now, at this point, he took his ideas about having sex before marriage and started promoting adolescent sex as a way to start the process of like ending neuroses and psychiatric health

even earlier. You can't see it about tapping out. That's what he's tapping out and he was kicked out of the Vienna Psychiatric Association for this he actually was kicked out of the Communist Party Wow too much for them And and eventually you know, we're going into the same time period when Hitler came to power So he actually had to flee the country anyway. He moved to Denmark after several different moves where nobody wanted him. He moved to Denmark and they let him live there, but they told him before he even applied

that he could not join their Communist Party. Yeah, we've heard, we get the newsletter, okay. He did at this point, he was continuing, I should say, through all this time period to practice psychoanalysis and therapy, wherever he went, even though largely his theories were being denounced, he would still see patients, and he started to develop a therapy where he, and some of this is actually okay, he would sit across from his patients

as opposed to the old patient lane on the couch during the ceiling kind of thing. And then he would have sex with him. Well, that's where. Exactly, then he would ask them to undress. Yeah. Okay. See. And he would touch them while they were naked in order to release their their various character armor things. Is this just a whole lot of Don Juan de Marco? He also would press really hard.

Like I mentioned to you know, relieve these tensions, but he thought it would he thought if you pressed hard on certain parts of the body, you could invoke an orgasm reflex. I mean, I guess it's like true of some very specific area. But he would do this on like your face. I'm going to push, I'm going to take the heel of my hand and press as hard as I possibly can on your face until you have an orgasm reflex. A secret known only to the most popular dentists.

At this point, he went to a meeting of the International Psychoanalytic Association, which he was not really welcome at, but he insisted that he was still going to go. And the reason he wasn't welcome is that he just said he got the boombox. It was basically everybody. He was. I pressed to give you an orgasm.

Basically, there was, it had already been decided prior to this meeting that he was going to be kicked out, that they were going to, once and for all, as an international society, just denounce this weirdo and not let him back in. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here.

He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's never been out of Earth here. He's pushing on naked people's faces. Totally. So, he came and he camped out there and wandered around the conference the whole weekend or however long it went on with a giant knife in his belt. He was kicked out and not let back in. And at that point, there were always, you know, there were always a few

kind of weirdos who were following his theories, but for the most part, everybody kind of abandoned that. He moved at that point. He went and gave a lecture in Norway and liked it so much that he stayed there. He started experimenting with some new therapies with patients. He studied biology and thought that maybe what it really was, this instead of this kind of orgasmic energy, that fluid fills up different parts of the body and that there's like a bioelectric discharge. Again, I think he's talking about orgasm. And then the fluid goes away.

And so in order to test this, he had a bunch of patients hooked up to oscilloscopes. I know that word. What's that? Some kind of like it measures like electrical bio-electrical activity. And they would like touch each other and masturbate and stuff in front of him. And then he would watch the oscilloscopes to see the energy that was released. That's weird. Sorry.

Basically, he was shunned all over for this kind of stuff. And so he moved to the one place where he still had some fans. Which was? You guessed it. The United States America. The good old U.S. The fact that I take all cameras, bring me your poor, bring me your hungry, bring me your weirdos.

Bring me your sex weirdos. Bring me your sex weird as. Bring me your sex weird as. Um, he, this is, this is where the sex boxes come in. Um, cause if you're gonna move to the US, you gotta have a gimmick. If you're gonna, if you're gonna sell, you gotta hook. If you're gonna sell to Americans,

we need something snappy. Yeah. You know, forget this. Something peppy, something. Forget this character armor, forget this vegetative current orgasmic potency. We've heard it all before. Need a brand. So what he started to describe was the idea that there is a cosmic energy,

that we're going beyond the orgasmic potency. There's a cosmic energy inside all things. Okay. Okay. And like a life force. This is getting a little Matthew McConaughey from me, but I'm trying to hang in there. inside all things. Okay. Okay. And like a life force. This is getting a little mathy and maconae from me, but I'm trying to hang in there. He called it Orgon Energy. Okay. Because I mean, he just can't get over. It's okay, it's my novel.

It's like a 12 year old boy. And he thought that he actually developed a special telescope that you could use to see it if you wanted to see this energy. It's called an organoscope. Of course. Well, I mean, no, he didn't. I mean, no, Sydney, he didn't very much to not do that. He made a thing that like, I don't know, had like purple paint on the lens.

Like, you see it? It's incredible. It's an organ energy. It's an organ energy. It looks like a penis. Yes. What would you expect? Have you heard my theories? Don't you know

what I'm all about? I wear conscious bands. So it was this kind of blue or blue gray coloring to things basically is what it would look like. That's actually what the Tartis is flying through. That's why the Tartis is blue. And you can see it in the color of the sky. That's an example of the presence of Oregon energy. The Northern Lights, he believed, were discharges of Oregon energy. St. Elmo's fire. Bookie fever.

As well as I guess, sometimes sexually excited frogs get a bluish tent. Okay. So that is an Oregon energy. This is, I mean, this is news to me. Maybe he made that up too. Yeah. Maybe when he looked at sexually excited frogs,

he thought they looked blue. Maybe he would only look at sexually excited frog. Maybe the better question is, how do you know when a frog is sexually excited? He should, picture his piggy. Okay, that was good. Thanks. I'm giving you that.

So he had this theory about this organ energy, but you can't prove it because you can't see it. Oh yeah, because it's fake. But he wanted to be able to prove that it was out there. So he built a sex box, is what they came to be known in in the media, but it was basically like a fair-a-day cage. And then he put and that but he called it an organ accumulator. So they were like big plywood boxes, like human-sized plywood boxes. They just had a chair and sometimes a little

window inside. And they were aligned with like rock or sheet iron or something, like a bunch of layers of that because the more layers of whatever on the walls the more concentrated the organ energy you could catch was so you would just take off all your clothes and then sit in these boxes. Maybe this dude just had like a rapidly evolving fetish spectrum. Like he just every week you'd wake up and something new, like okay, well apparently now I can't finish unless people are in cages.

That's my new thing. And they're looking for our in cages and looking for space energy. That's the only lack of fetish. Yeah, that's what the window was for. So you could just peer through it. I think so, I think it's come along. Is there you feel in the energy? It's not a good. It's not a camera on you. That's another organoscope. Don't move.

Now, don't move though. It's a de-garitite. So it's going to take a little. He believed that in addition to concentrating organ energy that these organ accumulators could cure cancer. So he started off by giving cancer to mice and then sticking the mice inside. At least they're death-ment something. Yeah, they didn't die in vain. The thing is to be fair, I don't think he was actually giving cancer to the mice because he had found some sort of particle that he believed was the cancer particle, but it wasn't.

It was probably just a staff infection. So I think he was actually shooting, shooting mice full of staff. He got too excited when he could cure it. I look like what I should. And so I'm guessing some of them got better. And so he said he cured cancer when really they just overcame a staff infection. I think it's great. So we've already said that he got too weird for Freud.

He actually during this time period. Too weird for Freud's in a much worse style. During this time period. He made friends with Einstein. And he met Einstein and he talked about some of his theories. And Einstein wasn't super thrilled about him, but he did think he was an interesting guy and he did think he had kind of been treated unfairly

for some of his just kind of progressive sexual ideas not so much sex among kids, but contraception and such. Well, this is the problem, right? I mean, like you and I are goofing on this guy and I think with absolutely fair grounds too. But it's hard because anybody that is, our norms about sex are so concrete, and they're so ingrained in us,

that I think anybody trying to push forward and understanding of it can be unfairly maligned sometimes. And I think that that also could create sort of a, that knowledge could create a shield for somebody where, you know, anything that they want to try, they're being persecuted for it because it's taboo rather than, no, it's just, it's just the weirdest. Yeah. No, I mean, I think you're right. Because I think, you know, having a mobile sex clinic where you went around to people

who normally wouldn't have access to physicians very easily and giving them information about sex and giving them contraception and talking to them about that is a really novel idea for the 19 remember we're talking like the 1920s 1930s but then he obviously took it to a weird place. So because he was buddies with Einstein and nobody believed him about his sex boxes, he sent one to Einstein and said, you know, check this, you're a scientist. Check out the sex box. Check out the sex box. And then tell everybody that it works. And to his credit, Einstein really did try to find some sort of energy differential, you know, within and outside of the box, above and below the box. I mean, he really did. So try to evaluate it to see if it had any merit. Okay, everybody, if you have got nothing else from Sorbonnes, right now, I want you to

go to Twitter or Facebook and say today, I learn on solbones That our greatest scientific mind spin and after dude looking for cosmic sex energy Because what and then put a link to our show what but The our Einstein could have done anything that day He could have done anything when he decided to live for cause and sex energy in a box. Do you know how many mysteries of the universe are unsolved because of the day he wasted examining this and the box? He could have cracked anything.

He could have cracked how to easily warm your car when you go outside during the winter. He could have cracked anything when it said he spent the afternoon looking for cause and sex energy. And this is why time travel doesn't exist yet. Exactly. One more day and he would have had it. Oh my God. The average ice time on disappoint. Basically, he thought it was kind of silly.

And he wrote him back. He wrote what home write back and said, you know, I don't think this work. Some sorry, man. You know, good try. Right, wrote him back like a 32 page letter, you know, basically saying you're an idiot and I'm right and you need to reevaluate it and Einstein kind of said, you know, I don't think we should be buddies anymore.

18 pages were dirty pictures that you drew there. He, so just like every other country he went to at this point, he started being discredited in the press. Everybody was joking about this weird orgasm doctor with the sex boxes um he got fired from the university where he was teaching. It's like the incredible Hulk. Imagine the sad music and everything. Everywhere he goes. We've got on to the next country where they don't know about weird sex and energy. And he at he at this point, he was running this Organomic Infant Research Center. We're basically, he was studying children

to see kind of the beginnings of their neuroses and where the beginnings of psychiatric illness come from. And a lot of the studying involved having a naked kid stand in front of a panel of 30 researchers. Who could have seen that coming? So obviously people weren't big fans of that and that kind of ended his career. He continued to go on to make up weird theories.

The inverse of Oregon Energy was deadly Oregon radiation or DOR. He discovered, I guess, that discovered invented created. He's sounding suspiciously like a 1960s Marvel comic at this point. He found it in the atmosphere. He said the it was poisoning us all and the only way you could combat it was with a cloud buster. He was kidding naked in front of people and touching them. Let me guess. No, he invented a machine. Public erections.

It's the only care. I have sex with all your patients. That's the only way we can cure it. Quick. No, he invented a machine called a cloudbuster, which which is a bunch of repurposed sex boxes. And it's on. I can't sell these things.

Gotta find a new mic. Cloudbuster 2000. Cloudbuster. Now from Ronco. Get it for the kids. Chris is just right in the corner. For $19.99. Guaranteed to almost definitely have never been used to harness the imaginary cause

because I was energy bath at Einstein. So the cloud buster, you should really look up a picture of this online, because it shows a picture of like him operating one. It's a bunch of like metal tubes that are all kind of lined up. It looks like a gun, like some kind of missile launcher. Only there are a bunch of metal tubes all strapped to each other and wires wrapped around it and it kind of goes down into water

and I don't know if it actually shoots water or if it just uses the water energy to shoot something and he would shoot it at the clouds and then he said when he had dissipated all the deadly organ radiation, rain would happen. And so he actually was paid by some farmers, some blueberry farmers. You'll pay the war with the newspaper, real close. To come make it rain at their farm because their crops were dying and he did go. Have sex with them.

He went, he had sex with all of them. He was this cloud buster and it actually rained that night. So what's up now? But there were two farmers that believed him. That's all you need. Basically at this point, he actually, it's kind of interesting. He was investigated by the FBI during all this, but that was, they got, it was a different Wilhelm Reich they were looking for.

Ah! So, it was just a coincidence that he was also a weirdo. But then the, a lot of psychiatrists and the FDA started an investigation of him because he was peddling these fake products to people, you know, charging the money. And they basically confiscated all of his stuff and destroyed it and made him dismantle all of his sex boxes and made it illegal for him to sell them or traffic any of this stuff or any of the material about it. They actually burned his books and stuff. What were they hiding? Exactly. And at that point really he really kind of lost it

He began like chasing UFOs He continued to sell all of his organ stuff even though he had been forbidden to and he actually ended up in jail because of it Which is where this this sad story ends He died of a heart attack in jail. Oh man, while having sex with people. We can only imagine. So nowadays, we know that a lot of these theories are not true. Right, made up, you could say. Made up.

I'm certain that he did something for the contraception movement. We could maybe give him credit for that, but not much else. It's funny that we can look back. A lot of people talked about Freud and Einstein and a lot of famous psychiatrists and physicians at the time when they met him thought he was a genius who was going to change the world. And then in retrospect, look back and said, you know, he probably was severely mentally ill. Yeah. So. So. So there you go. It's a fine line, I guess. Yeah, apparently. So that's a strange tale of, uh, Will Humrike. Thank you again.

And then you're going to get me a sex box for Christmas. I will go to eBay right now. I'm sure I'll be able to pick one up. Thank you to everybody who listened to the show this week. Thank you for sharing the show. Sorry we missed you the last week. My little brother Griffin got married. So congratulations to him and his lovely wife Rachel. It was so beautiful.

You guys really missed out. You missed out to Super cold. Sorry. It was the best wedding ever other than of course ours, which was actually the best one. Greatest most romantic thing ever happening, buddy, ever. Thank you to people who tweeted about the show this week, like John Williams, Tyler Matheson, Nami Farron, Malz, Christine and others, Annem, Mark Quartz, Ricardo, J. Cotto, K. Calland, Aaron P. And Hannah Craig. Thank you so much for tweeting about us. We're at Salbones on Twitter. So you can listen or follow us there.

I also want to mention because I just saw on our Twitter feed, our theme music is provided with with kind permission from the taxpayers. The song's called Medicines. You can buy it on their website. And it's awesome and you should go get it. I also want to thank William Smith who sent us a super cool book called Anomalies and Curiosity of Medicine. It has what he referred to as gross pictures, but I'm gonna have to quibble. I think they're pretty awesome. Since we got the book, she was literally just sitting at the table like flipping through it for 20 minutes. No, it's a great book. Thank you so much. I really love it.

And the pictures did gross Justin out to be fair. Yeah. If you want to send us something, we're PO box 54. I need to watch Virginia 257 or 6. Let's keep those weird pictures to you. Send'm gonna send us gifts. Yeah, send us gifts. I think we get in trouble further. No, it's fine. It's totally legal. Anyway, go review us on iTunes, go subscribe to us there,

go pass that link around. Remember to tell people that Albinine's that way. This afternoon looking for weird costumes X energy. Cause you know that now, thanks to us. And be sure to join us again next Friday for another episode of Solbas, until then, I'm Justin. I'm Sydney. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!

Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artist Owned Listener Supported