Penis Theft

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Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now.

Speaker 1 I'm Eli Bosnick, and I'll be driving stick this evening, but I'll need some other members. First up, two men who won't show me their dick and therefore must be cops, Tom and Cecil.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, it doesn't help that you keep asking, where's the beef ahead of the questions?

Speaker 1 Awkward. And I don't think you know how to drive sticks.

Speaker 1 I don't know how to drive automatic. You don't have to drive automatic.

Speaker 1 And also joining us tonight. All of a sudden, he's really good for something.

Speaker 1 That's the problem. So it's not a chance.

Speaker 1 Not a fucking chance. I just, I need to be able to switch gears.
I need to feel the sweet, sweet clutch underneath me.

Speaker 1 And also joining us tonight, two men who are going to be a little bit more than a clutch who lasts 30 minutes. 30 minutes.

Speaker 1 And 30 seconds. 30 feet.

Speaker 1 And also joining us tonight, two men who look at my open butthole every time they go on vacation. No one can see.

Speaker 2 Hey, those are only vacations for you, Eli. It's true.

Speaker 1 Are we talking about Newark? Like Newark Newark?

Speaker 1 Is that your open but

Speaker 1 we feel like it?

Speaker 1 Patrons, before tonight's program, I was not aware that someone had stolen my penis.

Speaker 1 I thought it was just small, but thanks to you, I can finally pay that ransom and give my lovers the full three and a half inches they deserve.

Speaker 1 If you'd like to learn how to join the ranks of our patrons or my lovers, be sure to stick stick around till the end of the show. And with that,

Speaker 1 that was so real. It was from his heart.

Speaker 1 And with that out of the way.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I could keep a poker face for that one.

Speaker 1 I've heard you make that noise when you like open a newspaper and

Speaker 1 fucking genocides in Rwanda.

Speaker 1 And with that out of the way, tell us, Tom, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today?

Speaker 2 Today we'll be discussing penis theft.

Speaker 1 And Noah, your parents had a really weird way to get you to eat your vegetables. You ready to walk us through your trauma?

Speaker 2 To make it especially weird when they were like carrots and cucumbers and stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. So tell us, Noah, what is penis theft?

Speaker 2 I'll answer a different question. Thank you.

Speaker 2 On the night of June 23rd, 1993, a 24-year-old Ecuadoran immigrant on the brink of intergenerational notoriety by the name of Lorena Bobbitt

Speaker 2 woke up, looked at her piece of shit, abusive husband, went to the kitchen, grabbed an eight-inch Ginsu brand kitchen knife.

Speaker 1 That's a serrated knife.

Speaker 2 A knife made famous by infomercials in the 70s and 80s that assured you that it would cut through a tin fucking can

Speaker 2 came back to bed and deep penised her husband with it.

Speaker 2 And in an exemplary testament to the quality of Ginsu's worksmanship that their advertisers remain curiously uninterested in promoting to this day, she managed to do it without waking him up.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I like to imagine that he started to wake up a few times and Lorena just lulled him back to sleep with like his own snoring noise that clutches him, you know.

Speaker 1 Just kept running,

Speaker 1 huh? Shoo. And he's like,

Speaker 1 that would work.

Speaker 1 I actually like to imagine a whole infomercial crossover thing. It's like the Ginsu to remove it.
Then she pops it under a slap chop and then

Speaker 1 roasts the bits on skewers in a set it and forget it, Rodco rotisserie revenge scenario. Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 Cleans up with a sham wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Has this ever happened to you? There's gotta be a better way.

Speaker 2 So, penis in hand, she runs out of the house, gets in the car, and takes the dick for a spin.

Speaker 2 She reported later that she actually had a lot of trouble driving because she had to do everything one-handed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it was a dick shift, so it's hard to

Speaker 1 get it.

Speaker 1 I would have taken the balls too if it was.

Speaker 2 Okay, I'm just saying, she just

Speaker 2 didn't know just the dick.

Speaker 2 But after a few minutes of driving around,

Speaker 1 I would do it, right? Yeah, get the whole package. What are you doing? She feels like a half.
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 And if she'd had the dick and ball, she could have just thrown it over her wrist or whatever and used both hands. Yeah, it would have been so much easier.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 She could have just swimmed around in her palm like those

Speaker 1 relaxations. Exactly.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
It's just more interesting for all of the reasons.

Speaker 2 So, so now, after a few minutes of driving around, wondering where one goes with a disembodied cock, she elects to toss it out of the window into a nearby field.

Speaker 2 And then a few minutes later, she finds a payphone, calls 911, tells the operator what she did and where they could find the dick.

Speaker 1 Okay, this is

Speaker 1 a real, I don't know if it's fun, it's a real fact. The cops found it and they put it inside a big bite hot dog box from 7-Eleven.

Speaker 1 That's really what happened. With ice.

Speaker 1 That seems like a compliment.

Speaker 1 And again, I'm imagining like a 7-Eleven parking lot just full of severed dicks. You have to sort Cinderella style through like a glass slipper situation, try to figure out which one is the right fit.

Speaker 1 Well, here it is. It was on the roller the whole time.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so meanwhile, her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, wakes up without his dick and notices immediately.

Speaker 1 Braggy.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 in later interviews, he said he tried to remain calm. And you got to imagine that was really fucking hard to do.
But he did what he could to stop the bleeding.

Speaker 2 He called a friend, had a very wind-spilled conversation about how he needed to ride to the hospital right the fuck now.

Speaker 1 It's like your friend should be in the ambulance in this scenario.

Speaker 1 Really, yeah.

Speaker 2 But one way or the other, he does manage to get to the emergency room where he's reunited with his penis through a nine-hour surgery.

Speaker 1 Him and the penis arrive in separate ambulances at the same time, like a rom-com that is pulled up.

Speaker 1 They bump heads.

Speaker 1 Penis has an armful of papers that climbs through the

Speaker 1 end of the movie. He's chasing his penis through the airport, lets go of Lorena's hand, and she just nods because she understands.

Speaker 1 She's a good guy.

Speaker 2 So, okay, so Lorena was arrested. And when asked about the attack, she initially said, and I am quoting here, quote,

Speaker 2 he always have orgasm, and he doesn't wait for me ever to have orgasm. He's selfish.

Speaker 1 End quote. Okay, boys, the majority of our audience need you to say that's no reason to cut off someone's dick right now.
Our listeners have never needed us more. Okay.

Speaker 1 Look, I know that isn't the real reason his Johnson was severed, but this is a good moment to remind listeners that a lot of the Manosphere guys don't even believe in the female orgasm. So

Speaker 1 there's hope. I guess I'm saying there's hope.
Fingers crossed. Yeah, right?

Speaker 2 Right. Now, yeah, to be clear, there's a lot more to her motivation than just him being a forethrust kind of guy.

Speaker 2 In the subsequent trial, it comes out that he's an abusive piece of shit, and both his lawyers and hers admit as much.

Speaker 2 She said that he raped her, psychologically tortured her, forced her to have an abortion, and did all kinds of other penis removal-worthy shit.

Speaker 2 And while it's true that he was later acquitted of marital assault, that's undercut by the fact that A, it was really hard to convict a man of marital rape in the 90s.

Speaker 2 And B, he would go on to be arrested and occasionally convicted of abusing wives and girlfriends for kind of the rest of his piece of shit life.

Speaker 1 I feel like if you marry or date the such a piece of shit, someone lopped off his cock guy, you can't be super surprised when he's not Mr. Wright.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's still debatable if he's better or worse than half of what's currently on offer at Tinder, though. Well, that's the thing, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Somebody cut off this dick. That's how he has a dick.

Speaker 2 He is half of what's on offer.

Speaker 2 As clear as it is in retrospect, that John was the bad guy in all of this, it didn't seem all that clear to the popular culture of the day, and the dude got a ton of sympathy.

Speaker 2 When his medical and legal bills started to mount, he at first tried to start a band called The Severed Parts.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But the music wasn't good enough for such a lazy dude.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. Fuck yeah.
My penis got cut off.

Speaker 1 So that's a band.

Speaker 2 The music wasn't quite good enough for I once was three miles away from my dick to carry it through, right?

Speaker 2 So, so then he started a porn called John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut, which was at least successful enough to merit a follow-up Franken penis, which, to be clear, is not a direct sequel.

Speaker 2 It completely ignores the lore that the first one said.

Speaker 1 Disappointing. I did think the addition of the bolts and the shaft just under the head was a nice nod to the source.

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 the perforation for a tear tearaway. That was tough by the surgeon.

Speaker 1 That's nice. You have to do it.

Speaker 2 But apparently, the porn money still wasn't enough to keep John in the black. So Howard Stern also hosted a New Year's Eve fundraiser for him that raised a quarter of a million dollars.

Speaker 2 The incident also introduced the term bobbitized into the lexicon, and it forced the telecommunications company MCI to pull a completely unrelated commercial that featured a testimonial from a couple named Bobbit

Speaker 2 because the I don't want MCI to cut off my service jokes were too damn easy at that point.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 amazing that they happened to use the name Bobbit and they were like, Are you fucking?

Speaker 1 Yeah, unfortunately, the entire comedy profession didn't have the same comedy standards as MCI and Bobbit jokes for the next like five years of everything, pretty much.

Speaker 1 There was even a reference in a song by Eminem to Lorena Bobbitt and a Philip Ross

Speaker 1 reference. Yeah, I miss it.

Speaker 1 John Bobbitt joke. Sometimes

Speaker 2 for her part, Lorena was also acquitted of any wrongdoing.

Speaker 2 She was found not guilty by reason of insanity from a jury that basically said, who wouldn't have eventually cut that man's dick off? She went on to be something of a symbol of hear-me-world feminism.

Speaker 2 And when she went home to Ecuador in 1996, the Ecuadorian president invited her to an official dinner.

Speaker 2 And as much shit as he took for that at the time, the two of them would later baptize a kid together as godfather and godmother.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she was the moyal, too. Oh, God.

Speaker 2 Now, in 1995, the Bobbits divorced. And the only surprise there is that it came two years after the dick chopping.

Speaker 2 They still tried to make it work after that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Now, Lorena goes on to start a charity that helps prevent spousal abuse. John went on to get arrested for a like a bunch more times for shit like hitting exotic dancers.

Speaker 2 And because it's produced by a soulless ghoul, the next time they see each other after the divorce is on an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009.

Speaker 1 Okay, fine, but how do you not make that a dildo giveaway episode? You know, like,

Speaker 1 look under your seat and you get a dick, and you get a dick, and you get a dick. Oh, you want me to put them under the seat? Fuck.
Oh, half the audience gets dicks, half of them get Ginsus.

Speaker 1 Just split it up.

Speaker 1 Now, two years. They must have gone to couples counseling.

Speaker 1 You would think.

Speaker 1 That must have been a fun couples counseling. Or triple scouts.
She's like, yeah, doesn't validate my feelings. Oh, yeah.
Also, cut my penis off. Right.
There's that. I feel very emasculated.

Speaker 2 Now, you might be thinking to yourself, Noah, that doesn't really count as penis theft. After all, she gave it right back.
If anything, she borrowed his penis.

Speaker 2 And it's true that she wasn't convicted of assault and wasn't even charged with theft. But it turns out that hacking dicks off with a Gintsu knife wasn't actually the subject of my essay.

Speaker 2 Because there's one kind of person who actually steals penises and does so quite prolifically. And that kind of person, of course, is a witch.

Speaker 2 Because despite what this prolonged intro might have led you to believe, this isn't an episode about physical penis theft. It's about spiritual penis theft.

Speaker 1 Damn it, guys. We should have known it when he got right to the point.

Speaker 2 Now, so for this bit, we'll have to rewind all the way back to the 1480s in what's now France, but was then part of the Holy Roman Empire. Now, at this point,

Speaker 2 we're at the end of what we used to call the medieval period, and it got that name in part because of the dangerous superstitions that dominated the culture of Europe at the time.

Speaker 2 This included a ubiquitous belief in and fear of witches. Basically, anytime bad shit happened, somebody was going to blame witches.
Bad harvest, witches. Bad weather, witches.

Speaker 2 Rampant disease, witches, or Jews.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Now it's DEI.
Yep. Got witches, got Jews blamed.
DEI. Right, right.
And I think I speak for all Jews when I say at least people stopped blaming witches. How do we get in

Speaker 1 on that? Well, yeah.

Speaker 2 But see, so unlike Jews, witches didn't exist. So when it came time to scapegoat them, you had to kind of make them up.
And few people were better at that than than a priest named Heinrich Kramer.

Speaker 2 In fact, he was so monomaniacal about the trial of one accused witch that he was formally expelled from his order and defrocked.

Speaker 2 Okay, so like he was too fearful and superstitious for the Catholic Church of the 1400s.

Speaker 2 All right, so but damn it if he was going to let a little ostracization keep him from battling against those fornicators with the devil.

Speaker 2 So he wrote himself a book called Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of the Witches, in which he laid out the European witch problem along with his preferred solutions, most of which included setting people on fire.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, that's Blacksmith 101.

Speaker 1 You can't shape a witch with your hammer if she's cold, Noah. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 So fun fact, the world's first magic book was written as a direct response to the Malus Malefactorum because some of the signs of witches listed in the book were like common magic tricks at the time.

Speaker 1 So Reginald Scott wrote a book of how all those tricks are done so people would stop burning the fucking birthday clowns.

Speaker 2 Now, the witch hunts are way too fucked up to do an episode about.

Speaker 2 And given what we've done so far on the show, that should tell you a lot.

Speaker 2 But I bring it up because at one point in the book, while Kramer is trying to justify the claim that witches did, in fact, exist, he asks his reader, if there aren't any witches, who's making all the penis nests?

Speaker 1 Okay, that is a great question. And let him cook the phrase.

Speaker 1 I want to know where he's going with this.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so he cites the fact that many people have reported finding nests in the forest made entirely of dismembered members and even shares one such tale. Quote,

Speaker 2 a certain man reported when he had lost his member and gone to a certain sorceress to regain his well-being, she told the sick man that he should climb a certain tree and granted that he could take whichever one he wanted from the nest, in which there were very many members.

Speaker 1 It's like a have a penny. Leave a penny full of dicks.
Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 So have a penny.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So

Speaker 2 when he tried to, I'm sorry, continue with the quote.

Speaker 2 When he tried to take a particularly large one, the sorceress said, you shouldn't take that one, adding that it belonged to one of the parish priests.

Speaker 1 End quote. Look, lady, I need aid of them.
My wife is octopusy, okay?

Speaker 1 All right, I'm taking this. No, not that one.
It's Lamborghini. No.

Speaker 1 The nest. For the nest.
It's great. Another thing I'm getting picked for.

Speaker 1 Awesome.

Speaker 2 Now, you might think because of the lack of modern accounts of penis nests that witches have since mended their ways or at least chosen a different line of attack.

Speaker 2 But as we're about to see, they've continued swiping dicks this whole time.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, I am convinced and ready to torture a schizophrenic child to death for sure.
All right, while I light the pyre, we'll take a quick break for some apropos of nothing.

Speaker 1 Hello, can I help you? Hi, Mrs. Withers.
Yes, that's me. Hi, yeah, I'm Jacob Miller from down the road.
Oh, of course. Hi, Jacob.
How can I help you? Well, I seem to have

Speaker 1 had a little accident last night, and I was told you might be able to help. Oh, you want to purchase one of my healing salves?

Speaker 1 Maybe. So, you know how it was hot last night? Oh, my God.
So hot, yes. Right, right.

Speaker 1 So I slept with the window open, hoping to get a little breeze going, and it seems that someone came in and stole... My penis.

Speaker 1 That is terrible, terrible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it's terrible. So, um, Tituba mentioned that you might be uh

Speaker 1 that you could help with that. Well, I didn't steal your penis.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 of course, of course you didn't, of course not. No, um, if you say you didn't, then, then you didn't.
But you have, um,

Speaker 1 you have a nest of dicks.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I mean, there is a nest of dicks in my barn, but I wouldn't say I have them. I mean, no, no, of course, of course.
But it's there. So I was just thinking, I could take a gander at your dick nest.

Speaker 1 Of course, of course. You never know.
I mean, your dick might be in there. Sometimes I check and there's just a dick in there I didn't steal.

Speaker 1 Not that I steal dicks. Of course you don't steal dick.
You already already said that. Okay.
Okay. Right this way.
So, so you're a Miller, right? Yeah, I'm a Miller.

Speaker 1 Well, it helps that everyone's jobs and their name. Sure.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Here we go.

Speaker 1 Do you see yours in there anywhere?

Speaker 1 Not

Speaker 1 really.

Speaker 1 oh, oh, there it is. Yeah, there it is.
That one, yep, yep. Here's, here's my dick.
Found it. So, um,

Speaker 1 do I just, like, put it on with? You sure that's your dick? Or it's a little darker in complexion. Oh, my, my grandmother is half Italian.
Oh, yeah?

Speaker 1 Please just let me take this one. 50 bucks.
Yeah, deal.

Speaker 1 Okay, what about a watch? Nah, I start going backwards and exploding.

Speaker 1 Why? I mean, if I knew, I would tell you.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys, what's the matter?

Speaker 1 Hey, Noah, we're trying to figure out what to get Tom for Christmas, but his terrible, terrible curse makes him impossible to shop for. I'm not impossible to shop for.

Speaker 1 Fruit rots when you touch it, man.

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Speaker 1 I use my phone every day. That's how I get all the bad news.
Exactly.

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Speaker 1 All right, Noah. Thanks.
Okay, for the record, all fruit is technically rotting when you hold it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but not like visibly. Man, that is true.

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Speaker 1 And we're back. When we left off, we heard about the only bad thing that hadn't happened to Tom.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 That we know of, yeah, right?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 2 so for the rest of the podcast, we have to deal with a bit of a challenge because from this point on, it's just going to be a bunch of white guys talking about a phenomenon that's primarily confined to Africa and Asia.

Speaker 2 And I don't want to be insensitive insensitive about that. I want these guys to, so that I can stay above the fray, right?

Speaker 2 And be very sophisticated and woke in my essay about disappearing dongs.

Speaker 1 Got you. If we're talking about penises, my people are the oppressed minority.
Everything is punching up. I'm going to say whatever the fuck I want because he's tall.

Speaker 1 Nope.

Speaker 2 So, so the phenomenon we're going to be talking about here is called Koro or Kuru.

Speaker 2 And in the words of Wikipedia, it's quote, a culture-bound delusional disorder in which individuals have an overwhelming belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear despite the lack of any true long-standing change to their genitals, end quote.

Speaker 2 And this shrinking penis syndrome is so common that it's listed in the fucking DSM.

Speaker 2 In the U.S., the condition is known as genital retraction syndrome, which is probably for the best since the term koro is apparently a Malay word for head of a tortoise.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, look, some people get a Turkish hair hair transplant. Some guys say a witch stole their dick.
Anything but admitting you're aging. Am I right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I mean, I had a whole swimming pool installed at the house, so I'd have an excuse that they're ready. So I can.

Speaker 2 No, to be clear, there are some medical conditions that'll cause a penis to retract or get smaller. So part of diagnosing disorder is

Speaker 1 right. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 So part of diagnosing this disorder is checking the dick in question, I would imagine, multiple times, right, to get a size comparison, unless we fall prey to trusting guys who are telling us that it's usually much bigger than this.

Speaker 2 And if you think you can escape the danger by not having a penis, I'm sorry to inform you that there is a non-penis version of CORO that usually manifests as a fear that the nipples are retracting into the boobs or that the boobs are retracting into the chest.

Speaker 2 The true causes of this are varied and heavily influenced by cultural expectations, education, and sexual repression.

Speaker 2 The syndrome is far more common among people who feel guilty about promiscuity or masturbation, for example.

Speaker 2 But as to the perceived cause, well, that's usually still witches.

Speaker 2 The common form of this delusion isn't just that the penis is disappearing, but that it in fact has been cursed or in the most extreme circumstances, stolen.

Speaker 1 Stolen? Okay, I feel like my first instinct would be lost. Like, stolen feels arrogant.

Speaker 1 Straight to stolen. Okay, but the I broke into Heath's bedroom and all I got was this lousy penis merch.
It still sells surprisingly well. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I don't know why you were surprised.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I'm going with thank you.

Speaker 2 The obvious question here is, how the fuck can a person with a perfectly extant penis think that it's missing?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 But if you think about the forms of body dysmorphia that you're more familiar with, it makes sense, right?

Speaker 2 Like, like, think about all the dangerously skeletal anorexics that you've seen that somehow still perceive themselves as being too fat, right?

Speaker 2 It's like, it's remarkably easy to look at yourself and see something completely different than what everybody else sees. Wow.

Speaker 1 I bet my cock is huge in real life, huh?

Speaker 1 Who's going to tell him?

Speaker 2 It's really small, Eli. It's actually very small.
No, it will.

Speaker 1 I'll do it.

Speaker 2 And if you wonder how committed these folks are to the pit, I should point out that in extreme circumstances, they take their dick's continued protrusion into their own hands.

Speaker 2 Here's a downright terrifying quote from Wikipedia: quote, a man may perform manual or mechanical penile traction or anchoring by a loop of string to some clapping device.

Speaker 2 These forceful attempts often lead to injuries, sometimes death, end quote.

Speaker 1 Wow, that's why those lift-kitted trucks have that winch in front, huh?

Speaker 1 Staying erect to battle a penis curse by a witch is an amazing game game genius that they need to have some it is but but may i say something brave i think if you rip your dick off and die in an imagined tug of war with a witch you probably weren't going to do other stuff that was awesome right

Speaker 1 i think this is a huge problem among brain surgeons or tuberculosis researchers like important artists yes yeah right so so

Speaker 2 as the 15th century references before the break of test stories of stolen penises go way back back.

Speaker 2 The multiple chapters about the phenomenon in the Malleus Maleficarum were based on centuries-old folk traditions, after all.

Speaker 2 But the earliest records I can find of it showing up in the medical literature, as though I looked through the medical literature,

Speaker 2 the earliest one that I can find that's in medical literature that was on the Wikipedia article was from China, where there were outbreaks of penis purloining panics in 1948, 1955, 1966, and 1974.

Speaker 2 And the most recent nationwide epidemic in China came in 1987. But after that, they fixed it/slash stopped admitting to it.

Speaker 1 Okay, just a thought.

Speaker 1 But if social contagion is strong enough that five nationwide epidemics of dudes in the 20th century all thought their dicks were magicked away by witches, I guess maybe just hear me out when I mention that Twitter wasn't the smartest idea we've collectively had.

Speaker 1 Yeah, fair. Fair.

Speaker 2 Now, there was also a noteworthy outbreak in Singapore in 1967. In October of that year, young men started flooding into Singaporean hospitals complaining about shrinking or absent penises.

Speaker 2 Apparently, that panic was set off by rumors that a vaccinated pig had died from a retracted penis.

Speaker 2 Fearing that they too would die if their dick sucked all the way in, many of those patients had attached clamps or other devices to their junk to pull it back from the event to rhizom.

Speaker 2 By the end of the epidemic, more than 450 cases had been reported and there was a noticeable drop in local sales of pork.

Speaker 1 Okay, if I really thought that was happening, I think I might just let it happen. You know, like watching a sunset.
It's just like,

Speaker 1 it's like peaceful. Man, you really are married, aren't you?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So another fallus filtering fear struck Thailand in 1976, thank you, where about 350 patients showed up at local hospitals complaining of terminal shrinkage.

Speaker 2 This one was blamed not on pigs, but on a combination of poisoned tobacco and Vietnamese food, which was apparently emasculating the population ahead of a perceived invasion plan, they had another noteworthy epidemic in 1982.

Speaker 1 If you eat this banh mi, your dick will dissip. And you ate it anyway.
You ate them. They're already gone.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 have you guys tried staying hard while you're eating pho? It's fucking impossible, right? Well, there you go.

Speaker 1 Strong disagree. Opposite.

Speaker 1 Fuck your face.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 2 So the Indian subcontinent might have been a little later to the game, but we've got reports of at least one Coro epidemic in 1982 in northern India, though that might also just be because it's fucking cold there.

Speaker 2 There was also a reported panic as late as 2010 in West Bengal that affected both India and Bangladesh. Apparently, the folk remedy for that was partially submerging people and yanking on their dicks.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 So like, I can see why that would have been a popular malady to at least complain of for a little while there.

Speaker 1 Wow. If you're going to pull start it, you can't flood it, guys.
Come on. Okay.
Ignore Cecil. If you're going to pull start it, a little moisture never hurt that situation.

Speaker 2 Well, that's true. No, that's fair.

Speaker 1 And you got to choke it.

Speaker 1 It's a two-stroke.

Speaker 2 But when it comes to penis theft, The world leader is Nigeria, where accusations of penis theft continue to be a problem to this day. In fact, people still regularly get arrested for stealing penises.

Speaker 2 More More often, though, the people who accuse others of penis theft, people who, like quick reminder, are suffering from a well-known psychological condition that's in the DS fucking M, are punished for inciting a panic.

Speaker 2 Everybody has fallen for the thumb between the fingers thing.

Speaker 1 Got you, pee-pee. I got it right here.
I got it. How can you hear your penises gone with such dirty ears?

Speaker 1 You're just pulling it out like a hanky. You just got like one hand on their head and you just keep going.

Speaker 2 And the dick on the end of it. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 Amazing.

Speaker 2 But now, apparently, it's not all that uncommon in certain parts of Nigeria to be standing in a crowd and somebody suddenly goes, well, that motherfucker stole my dick.

Speaker 1 And in those cases,

Speaker 2 you better hope they're not pointing at you. Right.
Because so folks occasionally get beaten to death because of these accusations. Apparently, the superstition is that sorcerers have to touch you.

Speaker 2 to steal your dick. So when people are seized by this delusion, they'll look around for like who is most likely to have just jostled them and throw the blame their way.

Speaker 1 Okay, I feel like sometimes people just want to kill someone and dick stealing is like the least snopesable excuse. Well, that's probably happening, too.

Speaker 1 You're not going to argue with the guy who accuses you of dick stealing.

Speaker 2 No, that's fair. Now, there are a lot of different reasons why thinking your dick is missing might stress a person out.
And those reasons vary a lot by culture.

Speaker 2 Like in China, it's generally believed that penis retraction is a sign of impending death.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay. I mean, also Michigan.

Speaker 2 But like in Nigeria, it's generally believed to be part of like the result of malicious magic. So you can imagine how that causes different types of anxiety.

Speaker 2 For its part, the wiki does try to put together an exhaustive list.

Speaker 2 After talking about the specific fear of death that's unique to China, it adds, quote, intra-abdominal organ shrinkage, sex change to female or eunuch, nonspecific physical danger, urinary obstruction, sterility, impending madness, spirit possession, and feeling of being bewitched, end quote.

Speaker 2 A list remarkable for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is how far down urination was, right? Like,

Speaker 2 the list wasn't fucking alphabetical.

Speaker 1 Also, I would have guessed specific physical danger was in there too. Only non-specific physical danger, though.
Right, right. Okay.

Speaker 1 But, of course, there are a lot of things about the subject that are a total fucking bummer.

Speaker 2 So I've mostly mostly left them out of the narrative because we're a comedy show.

Speaker 2 Because like, you know, look, the thought of a dude standing there with his dick in his hand insisting that he doesn't have a dick and that he won't until he convinces a witch to give it back, that's just fucking funny.

Speaker 2 But the various outbreaks of this phenomenon in Nigeria and other African nations generally coincide with economic downturns.

Speaker 2 And everywhere it happens, it's heavily associated with being part of a societal underclass or being destitute.

Speaker 2 It's also, like I said earlier, it's heavily associated with sexual guilt and unrealistic body expectations. So it's like an amalgamation of a bunch of the shit that's wrong with society.

Speaker 2 But on the other hand, it lends itself to no end of improvised dick puns. So like it probably balances out is what I'm thinking.

Speaker 1 All right. And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be?

Speaker 2 Ginsu wasn't kidding. Like, I honestly didn't think they could cut a fucking tin can in half, but now I think they.

Speaker 1 And are you ready for the quiz? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Those vector scissors can really make a penny into a corkscrew, too. That's like a real thing.
Oh, fuck yeah.

Speaker 1 I was like the best salesman in my region at one point. It's not a big deal.
Anyway,

Speaker 1 it really isn't.

Speaker 1 So, Camp Lejeune is a Marine Corps base that had a toxic water supply for decades. Let it led to some terrible sickness for Marines and their families.
But it wasn't all bad.

Speaker 1 What's the fun part of that story? A,

Speaker 1 John Wayne Bobbitt got poisoned. B,

Speaker 1 he got a condition called toxic peripheral polyneuropathy or toxic pee-pee. Shut the fuck up.
C,

Speaker 1 as a thematic result, all his toes got amputated.

Speaker 1 Or do all of the above.

Speaker 2 All of the above, if you can believe that shit.

Speaker 1 Yes, that is correct.

Speaker 1 All right, Noah, what is the best real song about this phenomenon?

Speaker 1 A.

Speaker 1 Detachable penis by King Missile.

Speaker 1 B, that is a real song with lyrics such as, quote, I woke up this morning with a bad hangover and my penis was missing again. This happens all the time.

Speaker 1 C,

Speaker 1 but like a detachable penis would be sort of awesome, actually.

Speaker 1 D, it's not like it's all that helpful in most situations. Fair.
It's true.

Speaker 2 It's true. Fair.

Speaker 2 I guess it's Secret Answer E, all of the above.

Speaker 1 It's all of the above. You got it.

Speaker 1 That would be awesome if you could just be like,

Speaker 1 and it's like, get get ready. And then, yeah, you were picturing a transformer situation.

Speaker 2 I was. I was.

Speaker 1 Yes, I was.

Speaker 2 That's not detachable.

Speaker 1 To be a truck with a detachable

Speaker 1 apparent.

Speaker 1 All right, Noah. Which famous magician does the best version of the disappearing dick?

Speaker 1 A

Speaker 1 David Cocknofiel.

Speaker 1 B, David, I can explain.

Speaker 1 Or C,

Speaker 1 Harry Scrudini.

Speaker 2 Well, it's the fact that you went Scroodini instead of Hooweeny is just baffling to me.

Speaker 1 I was sure

Speaker 2 that's where we were going this whole time, Hoo Peeny

Speaker 2 or something. But I guess it's C Harry Scrudini.
There you go.

Speaker 2 Okay, Noah.

Speaker 1 What's the best penis heist movie? A pubic enemies. B

Speaker 1 cock jock and two smoking barrels. C, the yank job.
D, hog day afternoon, or E, the friends of Eddie Moyle.

Speaker 2 All right, well, it can't be B, because it was just one smoking barrel in that one, if I recall correctly. I think it's E, Friends of Eddie Moyle.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 1 No, you're wrong. It's Hog Day Afternoon.

Speaker 2 That was pretty good, too.

Speaker 1 That was pretty fucking good.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, Cecil, that means you are this week's winner.
All right. Well, I don't know why I would say this, but it says here I say Eli is the next person.

Speaker 2 Oh, that was your idea then.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Well, for Cecil, Tom, Noah, Noah and Heath, I'm Eli Bosnick. Thank you for hanging out with us today.
We'll be back next week. And by then, I will be an expert on something else.

Speaker 1 Between now and then, Cecil can surprise you with Joe Rogan over on the No Rogan Experience.

Speaker 1 Tom and I can surprise you with our hot takes on dear old dads, and Noah and Heath can surprise you with their sheer ability to watch a volume of Christian movies over on God Awful Movies.

Speaker 1 And if you'd like to help keep the show going, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can.

Speaker 1 And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com.

Speaker 1 Hello?

Speaker 1 Hi, yeah, I was wondering if you do refunds.

Speaker 1 It's a shower, not a grower, huh? It was warm in the barn.