🎪 Episode 85 (Mini Episode) Parenting, True Crime and Chaos:: Bougie Toothbrush Murders, Real-Life Purge, & CIA Secret Projects

It’s a mini episode, but we’re still bringing the chaos. This week’s snack-size episode is packed with bizarre headlines, dark history, and weird facts you didn’t ask for — because we know you’d miss us. No books this week, bookies — take a breather and read something wild.

✨ Inside This Mini Episode:

• 🦷 The Toothbrush Murder: California dentist poisons husband via $25,000 gold-plated toothbrush. You read that right.
• 🇪🇨 Real Life Purge in Ecuador: Cartels, military curfews, motorcycle executions — it’s giving Hunger Games meets The Purge.
• 🐜 Weaponized Mosquitos & Exploding Cigars?: CIA Project MK Naomi files exposed. Bio-weapons, anthrax, and rat delivery systems… nothing weird here.
• 🐱 $20 Million Cat Spy Fail: The CIA put microphones in cats. You can guess how that ended.

💡 Mini But Mighty Topics:

• Why gold toothbrushes = murder weapons
• How South America’s cartel violence looks eerily like a dystopian film
• More shady CIA projects you didn’t learn about in history class
• The cost of bad government decisions (spoiler: millions wasted on cats)
• Why Inspector Gadget might be more fact than fiction

❌ No Book Chat This Week

Bookies, enjoy the break! We’re resetting the A-Z challenge next week with “A” — get ready to start fresh.

🛑 Friendly Reminder:

If your neighbors have surveillance and your spouse has life insurance… don’t clean their toothbrushes with potassium chloride.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to, this is my circus, the podcast where we embrace the chaos and keep it real about parenting, pop culture, true crime, and the books we can't put down because let's be honest, life is one big circus and we're just trying to survive with caffeine, sarcasm, and a little true crime obsession. So if you love unfiltered conversation, questionable parenting hacks, and deep dives into the things that keep us up at night, you're in the right place. Buckle up, grab your popcorn, and let's get into the chaos. I'm Stephanie. I'm Meredith. And welcome to, this is my circus mini episode. We are gonna be a little bit busy next week, so we are just doing a mini episode. Well, I guess it's this week. Time is irrelevant. Okay. But we wanted to drop something for you guys so you're not just, you know, missing us. Yes.'cause we know you miss us. Yeah. So we're just giving you a little something, something just to tide you over. So we'll back next week. There won't be a book today. No. So bookies, you can relax, read something good. Tell us about it. But we don't know how we're gonna do our book list next week. Well, we have your A to Z book list still. Yeah. Okay, so we'll, we'll start over. We'll start over with a, I can't wait. So we've just got some, some little pieces we're gonna chat about today. Yeah. What you got? So let's talk about the toothbrush murder. What the heck is that? So, um. This is a case outta California. Okay. That it's bizarre and bougie. I like it. And it's pretty recent. Tell me more, tell me more. So in 2023, a wealthy cosmetic dentist named Rachel Wynn was arrested for the murder of her husband Grant after he mysteriously collapsed in their home spa. Hmm. Let's pause at home spa. Right. Okay. So we're at bougie. This is bougie. Oh, there's more bougie coming. Don in California. Yeah. Yeah. When people mysteriously collapse. So that's when we have questions, right? So at first it just looked like a heart attack. That's normally, you know, right. But when the investigators pull the security footage from their smart home system, that's where you get in trouble. And this is real. How does she not know that they have this? I, I, for. A cosmetic dentist. She doesn't seem too bright. But anyway, so on the video, and this is real, this is like legit real. They saw her cleaning their toothbrushes with a syringe full of potassium chloride, which as we know causes heart attacks. It does just stop your heart, right? So turns out she'd been slowly dosing him for weeks and we've heard stories like this Yeah. Before with Visine or whatever. But this is another bougie piece. She used a custom$25,000 gold plated toothbrush. I have so many questions, so many questions. Like what was the whole, like the bristles couldn't be gold plated because that would hurt. I'm picturing just like an Oral B electric toothbrush, like gold dipped in gold. No, but I mean. I don't know. Yeah. So many questions. Why? What did he do? Because like, I, I can't see just a cosmetic dentist being evil. Mm-hmm. Like mean maybe. I don't know. Well, yeah. I'm not sure. I, we never get all the answers we want, do they? So many questions. I know. I know. But anyway, so she put it in his toothbrush. Mm-hmm. And she did this because she didn't wanna leave fingerprints. Again, Rachel Lynn is not the smartest, but anyway, she was having an affair with her personal trainer. Of course we was. So the moral of the story is you, if your toothbrush is too fancy to make sense, just run i I a$25,000 toothbrush like brush. And did she have two of those? Right? Did they each have one? Well, and was it just a two or was it electric and you changed like the head out? Mm-hmm. And were those gold plated? I don't know. Just, okay. I didn't have enough answers for us, but there's, there's you a, a fun story. Okay. Well, I've got a creepy story. Of course you do. What's up? So. There's a real life purge. Okay. I can't even hear that noise without freaking out. Oh my gosh. Well, they made like a song with that intro of that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Too long ago. And Dylan played it like all the time. It, it, I can't. That was such a creepy movie. A hundred percent. Oh God. Iban as creepy as a squid game song. Ugh. They're both terrible. Okay, go ahead. All right. So this was earlier this year. Okay. In Ecuador. They declared a state of emergency because jug cartels basically turned parts of the country into the purge. What. Yeah. It started in a small town. Uhhuh cartels were storming TV stations live on air, and they executed. Police officers took hostages and left public warnings to the government. The president responded by unleashing the military full on shoot to kill orders, curfews and armored checkpoints. Oh my gosh. I feel so bad for these people. What were they trying to prove? Just that they run the place over, I guess. Ugh. Okay. I mean, like you just hear about all these like gangs and stuff everywhere. Yeah. I guess it was just to take over, I guess. Social media showed citizens locking themselves in their homes while cartel members roamed the streets with assault rifles, grenade launchers, and motorcycle mounted executions. Oh my gosh. I, I did not hear anything about it. I didn't either. That's terrifying. Yeah. It's still ongoing in pockets. The country's being torn between democracy and narco chaos. Hmm. And it's barely making us headlines. Exactly. Yeah. So if you haven't heard about this, you're not alone. Wow. Now you have, so yeah, it's like. Real life Hunger Games slash the purge. Oh my gosh. That is terrifying. Right? Can you imagine? Just, you know, living your life and that literally going on like that, oh my God, that's terrifying. You can't leave your home. Not just at night, like, I mean, I'm, it's happening 24 7, right? And it for, for still to be going on. And then how like secure is your home really? I mean, like if somebody wants to get in, they're getting in. Oh my gosh. That's terrifying, right? I mean, Yeah. They go right through the windows. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, poor people. Yeah. Oof. Yeah. Chills. And again, it wasn't nowhere. I've not seen it at all. No. Nope. That's scary. Nope. Narrative is being controlled by certain people. Mm. Whatever. We don't get into that. Well, we had talked about the CIA Yes. Last week, which is super fascinating. All these projects mind. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you found one this week I got one to talk about. Ready? Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. So. If you thought the CIA just stuck to spying and like stealing secrets and stuff, let me tell you some more about their dark history with Bio Weapons Project. MK Naomi. Mm-hmm. Okay. So think MK Ultra, but instead of LSD and hypnosis, it's toxins. Killer mosquitoes and exploding cigars. Listen, I get bit by some mosquitoes and I do the look at this place on my leg where I've been scratching it so much. Like I'm like a first grader with all bug bites okay, so let me tell you about the CIA piece. Okay. Okay. So MK Naomi was a top secret CIA project that ran from the fifties into the seventies, and its entire goal was to develop biological weapons for sabotage and assassination. Stuff that couldn't be traced back to the US but could stop a heart, could melt a liver, or just, you know, bring a whole town to its knees. Why not? Oh my God. So let's talk about the gadgets. Okay. Shall we? Well, so we're getting into like, okay, here's where I start thinking like Inspector Gadget, right? Well kind of So go, go gadget, aren't we? What was the dog's name? I can't even remember. Oh, penny was the niece. Yeah. I don't remember the, I don't either, but, okay. So poison dark guns, right? They lift pen sized holes in the scan and cause death within minutes. That could be useful. Yes. Cigars that exploded. Okay. That were intended for Fidel Castro. Oh, oh, okay. Yeah. Not good. Okay. Not good. Also, toxins hidden in pens, like writing pens. My southern draw messes that word up. Pens, cigarettes, and even watches. They even tried to grow bacteria on coins. Oh God. And infect rats and fleas as tiny biological delivery systems. Right. I mean that's, some of these are really kind of smart, but terrifying. That's the plague. Yeah. Like putting that stuff in rats and it and fleaing it. Like that's what the plague, how it spread. Yeah. Anyway, so this wasn't just theatrical. They had actual kits packed with anthrax, botulism, toxin. Oh my God. He was someone that Bullox and shellfish poison. So you could walk into a meeting with a briefcase and leave knowing that the other guy wouldn't even wake up tomorrow and nobody would even know why. Do you know, I saw one that, one of the CIA things, well I was like doom scrolling. And it was that they were putting devices in cats, to be able to eavesdrop. So they were implanting these devices into cats and their first cat that they actually got to live. Mm-hmm. Through these procedures. And was able to, I guess, function they like set it out and it got hit by a car in like 20 seconds. It's not funny, but like it was the first cat that they got to survive and that was a$20 million project that they ended after that cat got hit by a car. Oh my gosh.$20 million. And that was like back then, like back in like the fifties and sixties. Oh my gosh. So that's a lot more nowadays. That's a lot on zero successful attempts. Yeah. And we wonder why. Nevermind. Okay, so, so after Watergate had blown the lid off of everything, shady Congress, you know, started sniffing around and the 1975 Church Committee found out that the CIA had zero oversight and had stockpiled these lethal agents. They had stockpiled the lethal agents that they weren't even legally allowed to have. So the result was that MK Naomi was shut down. The files were of course lost. Mm-hmm. And equipment was destroyed. I'm doing air quotes to everybody, and we got one big collective shrug from the agency. I think that that's what their reaction is to every declassified thing now. Yeah. A lot of these though, from what I read, is, so many of these files were destroyed, but there were so many whistleblowers that still documented Yeah. The things. Yeah. And that's the only reason that we know of these Yep. Awful projects that occurred. Yep. Yeah, but the amount of people that were like laced with LSD UN unwillingly crazy not knowing, right. That's ter That's just, can you imagine going to get a donut laced with LSD and then you get kidnapped by, oh my gosh. And then you get put in a like band, Uhhuh could you imagine like thinking it was just a bad trip. But then you wake up in a brothel expected to perform. My goodness. Oh, well, yeah. Good times. Yeah, a hundred percent. All right. Well guys, that was just a little. Something, something for you. Yep. We do love you guys and we will be back next week. Yep. With our regular loving podcast. We're loving. I think we can be sometimes, entertaining. Petty sass it. Okay. We love you. Thank you. Love you. Bye Bye. Oh, wait. Tell a friend. Bye. Yep. Alright, that wraps up another episode of, this is My Circus. If you survive this episode and somehow still like us, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, share it with your friends, or just send us caffeine. And don't forget, you can join our VIP circus crew for the full video version of each episode. Also exclusive bonus content, access to merch, and so much more Until next time, keep the drink strong. The book's coming, and the kids only mildly Ferrell because this is our circus and these are our monkeys. Love ya.