James Reardon is not a historian by profession or training, but he did spend many years producing a manuscript about Brinkley, for which he did a lot of research and amassed a big archive which he was kind enough to share with us. We gave him this “lower third” ID for two reasons: (1) we didn’t know what else to say; (2) “Kansas Historian” makes him sound more legit than “guy who wrote an unpublished manuscript thirty years ago.” In other words: for expert interviews to work, you have to buy that the person speaking is an “expert” (which, in our opinion, Reardon is).

Pope Brock wrote a Brinkley biography called Charlatan, which is how we found out about Brinkley in the first place!

Gene Fowler is not exactly a “radio historian,” although the reason we interviewed him was because he co-authored a book called Border Radio containing a section on Brinkley. It might be more fair to call him a Texas historian. Or a storyteller. Or a collector of odd Americana, mostly from Texas and often involving radio and eccentric characters.

Professor Megan Seaholm is a senior lecturer in the Dept. of History at UT Austin. One of her research areas is the social construction of medical science and medical practice.