Stuff You Should Know - How Leper Colonies Worked

Episode Date: December 2, 2014

Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, used to mean a one-way ticket to banishment. But once medicine trained its sights on wiping out what might be the most ancient disease to afflict humans, it has become treatable and even accepted. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot

sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to stuff you should know from how stuff works.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W took bright. There's Jerry. This is stuff you should know. Okay. Unclean. Unclean. What is that from? I think that's what people with leprosy were. They had to say they had to like ring a bell and say unclean when they walked through town.

So people would avoid them. I knew about the bell. Yeah, I think they would have to say unclean. Early sets the story out man alive. Yeah. So he says it all. It really does leprosy. Yeah. Well, yeah. Hansen's disease, I think is the preferred term for it these days. Is it? I knew it was called that, but I have like every article I saw didn't even mention that. I know. I don't know who it's who's preferring it. Mr. Mr. Hansen, I guess, whoever he is. Well, he's a 19th century, I think Swedish or Danish physician. Oh, is that the deal? The guy who discovered the actual bacteria. Gotcha. That does it. Yeah. Because we're talking leprosy and it's a bacterial infection after all.

Yeah, I think when folks hear the word leprosy or leprecolony, they a lot of times may not even know what the heck it is. And yeah, I guess we should start off by just talking about the disease a little bit. Yeah, it's an ancient disease. I actually found something from the beginning of 2014 and they discovered a new form of leprosy. Oh, really? New to humans, but it's actually very old. But the fact that they can take this new form, the newly discovered form and compare it to the one we've known about for centuries, yeah, they actually found that the fact that they diverged so long ago makes them suspect that it's possible that leprosy Hansen's disease is the oldest infectious disease to humans around.

Wow, really? Yeah, I think that it definitely originated in Africa, that it traveled out with humans in however many waves that went out of Africa to spread around the rest of the world. And one of the telltale signs that it's extremely old is that it only infects humans. As far as we know, it doesn't infect any other animals except supposedly armadillos, and they think that armadillos caught it from humans as recently as 100 or 200 years ago. Well, that's why if you're going to see leprosy in the United States, you're probably going to find it in Texas or Louisiana. Yeah. Because the armadillos. Yeah. Crazy. Weird. There is leprosy here. I guess I bet most people think that it's not in the United States at all,

but it is. It's super rare. The CDC says they get about 100 new cases a year in the U.S., which is super, super low. And only about 20 to 40 of those are people born in the United States. Like usually the other 40 to 80, I guess, are bringing it in from another country and have it for years without knowing it. Because leprosy generally takes four to six years to manifest itself. I've seen 10 to 20. Well, I mean, it can take that long, but generally four to six years. Which is a big problem. Sure. Because first of all, it's rare. But even in the parts of the world where it's not all that rare, like you can be infected with leprosy, like you said for many, many years. And even if you do start to show symptoms, they don't just automatically point

to leprosy. They can be skin rashes, respiratory problems or something like that. So by the time a doctor says, oh, you have Hansen's disease, you're in big trouble. Or it used to be the case. Yes. But now it is completely curable, which is great news. It is also not contagious at all hardly. 95% of human beings have a natural immunity. So the biblical times of in the middle ages where lepers were, and we'll get to all this, but when they were thought like if you come anywhere close that you're going to get this dreaded disease has never been true. Yeah, the thing is, is as ancient as leprosy is, they still don't know exactly how it's transmitted. Yeah. They assume that it's transmitted like most other bacterial infections, like either through

saliva or mucus. Yeah, sure. Through a sneeze or something like that. Or through cracks in the skin. And I saw both that it's either very hard to catch, or it's not that hard to catch. I saw that it doesn't live outside the human body for very long, or it can still remain potent in like just basically on some sort of surface or whatever. Oh, really? Yeah. But the last idea that it doesn't stay active outside the human body for very long is supported by the fact that they've never been able to come up with a leprosy vaccine because it can exist outside of the human body, which is another idea or another reason why they think it's a very ancient human disease. Yeah. Because it's specifically tailored for humans. And do you know how it works?

Yeah, sure. Well, you want to talk about how it actually what it is and then how it affects you? Yeah. Well, it is their little microbes called micro bacterium lepre, L-E-P-R-A-E. They're little tiny rod shaped microbes and they infect the body and you will get skin sores and nerve damage and muscle weakness. And you're going to not be able to feel pain, which leads to more problems like you will end up getting amputations because of gangrene, because you injured your toes or your hands. Right. And you don't even know it. Yeah. And the way that it does that on a cellular level is the leprosy bacterium hijacks what are called your Schwann cells. Your Schwann cells,

they typically make some sort of fatty coating for muscle and nervous system tissue. Right. Okay. And it turns Schwann cells into stem cells, which is pretty magical if you ask me. And it says go forth and go infect the muscle tissue of this human and let's see what we can do. So like again, it's basically perfectly tailored to infect and hijack the human body and affect you in all these horrible, terrible ways. Like it shortened your fingers is one of the symptoms. Yeah. Meaning that they just kind of start going back like pencil nubs that have been sharpened too many times. Yeah. It was if you're a biblical scholar, you have seen the word leprosy a lot in the Bible, but it didn't necessarily mean this specific

disease. It could have been a variety of things like eczema or cirrhosis, because the word leprosy in the King James Bible in Hebrew, Sarath could be a host of diseases that kind of make you look gnarly on the outside. Yeah. But there is a passage in at least in, I think Leviticus, which is old man. Yeah. And it says that you Hebrews are supposed to keep an eye on anybody who has a skin sore. And if that skin sore starts to spread, that person is a leper and they are to live outside of camp. There's kind of an early understanding of contagious disease. Yeah. They didn't necessarily know what it was or what was going on, but they knew enough to say, you hang out over there. Right. Because we've seen before that if

people with hands disease hang out with everybody else, other people can catch it. Yeah. And that was the beginning of what would end up being leper colonies. And we'll talk about that a little more right after this break. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so

my husband, Michael, um, Hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our

jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude,

the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So at first, there were no leper colonies per se. They were generally just shuttled to the outskirts of the city or camp in London. Queen Matilda in 1118 founded, I guess, a camp that people could still come back into town and beg for money and stuff, but they were always to go back to their camp at the end of the day. Just basically open land. It wasn't necessarily like some awful place to be. A lot of times like these wealthy landowners would endow this land to keep these people there. Yeah, because they were sequestered or ostracized or just kept outside, people with leprosy effectively formed a subculture or a subset of the population. So you

would have, say, in a medieval town, like the Jewish section and the leper section and then the blacksmiths or whatever, and the executioner had to stay outside of town. So they were just like cobblers. Don't mess with them. Right. But I mean, they were like a subset of society. And they were very frequently the butt of all sorts of reigns of terror. Sure. Like people would be like, well, everybody's getting sick. So somebody poisoned the wells. And it was probably the lepers. Yeah. And the lepers, all the lepers would be rounded up and killed. So lepers definitely were subjected to execution. As recently as I think I saw the 1930s and in 1937 in China, soldiers were like hunting down lepers and executing them for being lepers.

Yeah. I mean, I think we've talked about this a lot on the show. People fear what they don't understand as a society. And they didn't understand leprosy. They didn't know where it came from. They thought it might be hereditary. They thought it was super contagious, like just touching someone would infect you. Right. And so, and just because of the appearance that someone with leprosy would have, you know, they didn't want to see them. They wanted them away so they couldn't be infected. And so they didn't have to look at it. Right. Okay. So the thing is, is up until the 19th century, basically, although they were a subset of society, they were still technically part of society, lepers were, even though they lived on the outskirts away from town, they were still part of

society. In the 19th century, there was a movement to basically say like, we don't want you to have anything to do with us any longer. Yeah. Like you go over there. Like you're not a part of our society any longer. You're your own thing. Just go away forever. And there was actually a law in Illinois, I guess in Chicago in ordinance. It was called an ugly law. Yeah, in 1881. And it said, any person whose disease are deformed, so as to be unsightly or disgusting object has to stay away off the streets and away from public places. Yeah. Because that's how they talk in Chicago. So I know. So I've seen Saturday Night Live before. So no longer are you allowed in town to beg for a law? Like, yeah, we decided like, we don't want

to look at you any longer. So you are not a part of our culture any longer. That was in Chicago alone. This happened elsewhere. There was an outbreak in the 1850s in Hawaii. Yeah. And the Hawaiian government said, Yeah, I think we're going to finally just say you guys can't be part of our culture any longer. And so they made leprosy a crime. So if you had leprosy, you were a criminal. And therefore you could be excommunicated, ostracized, banished as under law. Yeah. That was when it was Hawaii was an independent monarchy. And in 1865, they passed the act to prevent the spread of leprosy. And like you said, they might as well have been, they were criminals. And as the article opens up in 1879, they describe a night in January where they police officers

rounded up a bunch of people with stricken with leprosy and basically sent them off on a boat to Kalapapa Peninsula. And so this is your new home and you're not ever going to leave. So it makes the analogy of a prison, but it points out that even in a prison, you can get visitors and you may get out one day when your sentence runs out. If you had leprosy, you could not have any contact and you were there for life, very, very messed up. Yeah. And apparently for leper colonies that were run like prisons where the patients were treated like prisoners. Yeah, they weren't being attended to like a hospital. No, it was like you're in jail. Yeah. That there was a particularly difficult for say like the warden of jail because you couldn't, you couldn't use the

same kind of carrots and sticks that you could on a typical prisoner. Yeah. Because there was no hope that you were ever going to leave the leper colony. And that was part of the point. Like it was your relationship with society at large was severed. And you were never coming back. Kids were taken from their families at very young ages, like knowing that they were never going to see them again. Yeah. This one guy that was a quote from a superintendent of a South African leper colony on Robin Island. His name was SP MP. And he said in his notes in the 1890s, you cannot starve them. You cannot flog them. All you can do is deprive them of their liberty, which is really sad. Yeah. You know, so a lot of a lot of places set up actual prisons inland. But a lot of countries said,

you know, that island over there that nobody wants, you're going to make that a leper colony. So there are places in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean and the Pacific off of South Africa, like you just said. But one of the most famous leper colonies of all time was that one. I think it's Kalau Papa. Kalau Papa. If I know my native Hawaiian, it would be Kalau Papa Peninsula on Molokai. And in 1866, a year after they enacted that leprosy criminal code in Hawaii, they set it up. And it was different because you didn't need any fences or walls or anything like that. Just the natural surrounding of the place. It was a peninsula. Yeah. So it surrounded on three sides by water. And then it just so happened that on that fourth side that was connected to

land, there's a sheer 2000 foot cliff. Yeah. So they were trapped. They were trapped, but they were trapped in paradise. And it had an effect. It had a different effect. It did. And we will talk about that effect right after this break. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there

for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in,

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Josh, you were talking about the different effect that this leper colony in Hawaii had, because it wasn't, it was Hawaii after all. Yeah, you know, I mean, I don't want to make light of it. But it was a nice place. It was very fertile. They grew vegetables. They had a lot of food supplies. Local fruits were rampant. And there was a Belgian-born Roman Catholic priest named Reverend Joseph de Vuster, who went by Father Damien. And he really made a huge difference in the life of these people. Try to make it as normal, sort of like a village as he could.

You know, they built the schools. They built churches. He started choirs and planted trees, started a band. He gave these people a life. Like as much of a normal life as they could have. He treated them like people. Yeah. Which, like human beings. Yeah. So not just human beings, but also people who had an infectious disease, like patients. Yeah. Patients who could still walk and talk and move around and needed some sort of distraction or some sort of fulfillment. Father Damien came and gave this to these people. He also badgered the government for money. Right. Which was good because they actually had an advocate for the first time. Yeah. It was basically like the Fifth Avenue or regulars, but on the Leopard colony in Hawaii.

Yes, right. Unfortunately, very sadly, Father Damien himself got leprosy and died at the young age of 49 in 1889. But he was canonized as a saint. A saint? 120 years later. During the big saint sweep of 09. So that was, that's a pretty neat ending to that story. Sure. For him. And that the Leopard colony and Kalatupapa Peninsula. Man, I'm proud of myself for saying that one right. That is now a national park. It was created or turned into a national park in 1980. But the crazy thing is there's still people that live there, at least as recently as 2003. What do you mean people that live there? Like people with leprosy? Yeah. Okay. There was a guy I saw, I guess in 2003, there were a lot of people that were told they could

leave or something. I think they were just waiting for the last generation to die out. And they said, you know what? We've got this thing kind of licked here in the United States. So if you guys want to leave, go ahead. And some people said, I've spent my literally my entire life here. I don't want to leave. This is my home. So it's a national park with inhabitants, which is rare. Yeah. That's a good point. In the 1920s in the US, we started to change our tune a little bit. And the US Public Health Service said, you know what? Let's start a leper colony in Carville, Louisiana. That's actually a hospital of sorts where we treat these people and try and make their life better and to find, try and find a cure, which is, I think,

directly led to the first drugs in the 1940s being established, one called Promen, that apparently is a pretty nasty way to treat it because the injections were so painful. But it was a good start. So it was painful. Apparently they figured out it, but it was an antibiotic that did work. And they figured out that if you added it to a cocktail of other drugs, apparently it was easier to take because it was in pill form, I think is what they changed it to in the 50s or 60s. And then they added it to other drugs because the bacteria was starting to get resistant to this antibiotic alone. They came up with a cocktail in the 60s or 70s and now have a regimen that can cure leprosy in six months. And it all came out of this leper colony at Carville,

Louisiana. And there's a really, really neat documentary called Try Out Fat Carville about that, about how this place in Louisiana was the place where humanity licked leprosy. And it's Carville, Louisiana is named after James Carville's family and he's in it. He talks a lot about it. Oh, really? Because yeah, he grew up down the road from it. I could listen to him talk just that accent. For sure. I love it.

But apparently there was this kind of open secret that that inhabitants would just leave every once in a while and there was like a bar nearby where they would go and like drink beers and everything. Nice. They'd just sneak out and sneak back in drunk, like in the 50s or whatever. Did for them. Everybody just kind of left them alone and they did their own thing. Well, that's cool.

Yeah. It's a neat documentary. It took obviously a cure for leprosy to begin to change the stigma and the tie did start to turn on that stigma in the 1960s and leper colonies started to close one by one. I think in Japan, there were one of the last nations to quarantine patients. They ended it in 1996. I think in Romania, there is still one colony where supposedly there are a few elderly patients still there. But India is where it's a huge problem still and not a huge problem, but the biggest problem.

Well, there's a lot of debate over just how big of a problem leprosy is. Apparently the World Health Organization has said we basically want to eradicate leprosy. Yeah. And so a lot of people accuse them of fudging the numbers. One doctor put it like the best way to eradicate a disease is to stop reporting. Right. So there's between, say, I think the World Health Organization says 100,000, 250,000 new cases a year and this one doctor who admittedly has to do with this leprosy vaccine says, no, I think

it's more between like a million and two and a half million new cases a year. Oh, those are new cases? Yeah. I thought there were less than 200,000, period. The reporting is all over the place. It is all over the place. And it's questioned. That's all I can say about that.

Yeah. India, Brazil, and Indonesia are the top three countries. And I know that in India, there's a colony in Kasturba, Grom near New Delhi. And it still has that stigma there. There are people there that are cured of leprosy that stay there because their families don't want them back. If you have leprosy, you are still likely to be ostracized away from your family because it has, they just think it reflects badly if you have like a boy and a girl and the boy has leprosy

and the girl doesn't. Like that girl won't even be able to find a husband because the brother in law has leprosy. So they're still sending them behind closed doors, which is super sad because it's just a disease like any other and it's very treatable. It's because of the stigma of how it makes you look, you know. And I saw this thing. There was an inmate in an Ohio prison this week that was just treated for leprosy. Wow.

He was just discharged from Ohio State Medical Center, Ohio State University Medical Center, the Ohio State Medical Center. He just went to fans. And he was just treated for like a few days. So apparently once you start this drug cocktail, they can cure you in six months, but you're not even infectious after like a few days of it. Wow. So they put him back in the prison and he had it before he hit at it for years.

Man, why did he get it in Armadillo or something? No, he was from, I think, Micronesia. So they think he got it there, brought it over here, didn't know he had it, ended up in jail and make sure it's what he's in jail for. But not for having leprosy. I know that. Not in the U.S., buddy. But they basically said, all right, you're going back to jail.

Not nothing to worry about. Going back to prison. He was like, great. Yeah. Thanks. And I'm sure the prisoners are probably worried because they don't listen to this podcast. Yeah. Well, some of them do.

It's probably working in his advantage. Yeah. Like stay away from that guy. Sure. Yeah. Unless he's sad and lonely, then that's different. So if this kind of got to you and you want to do something, World Leprosy Day is January 25th, 2015.

That's right. We're a little early. We're kicking off World Leprosy Day in November. If you want to know more about leprosy or Hans's disease, you can type either one of those in the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it will bring up this article. So until I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one hit drummer. Hey, guys.

I have no idea how I missed your one hit wonder podcast for a while back until now, but it brought back a lot of memories. I was in a band called SR71, which you may remember had a hit called Right Now, which reached number two on the Billboard Modern Rock charts in 2000. That is high up. And generally inescapable that summer. There are definitely some mixed feelings on the subject, but I'd have to say having had one hit is better than having none.

Do you know the song? I went and listened. I looked it up and I did not recognize it. I didn't either. And that's because I don't listen to the radio. Same here, man. And in 2000, I wasn't listening to the radio. But it seemed like a very 2000 sort of song when I heard it.

You know? Yeah. It fit that time period. Oh, yeah. And the video too. Yeah. Then the detail. I worked on a lot of videos like that at the time.

Like it seemed like there was like a lot of street party and skateboarding and like, you know, a lot of that going on. Overacting. Although I got a brief small taste of the sweetness that is fame. It was enough to make me realize that what I thought I wanted wasn't very satisfying. The upside was having plenty of stories to tell. Unfortunately, I keep a tour journal containing details that have mostly been lost from memory. Late night TV, daytime talk, guest spots on short live TV shows,

several incredible gigs. Can't forget the 40 watt club in Athens. An amazing trip to Japan and one of the strangest experiences ever on German MTV. They make for some great life experiences that helps me see marketing for what it is and all its forms. A major label recording experience in the constant touring for beneficial from a musical standpoint. Although playing the same bunch of tunes every night quickly became maddening.

And I'm happy to know that I don't want to be on the merry-go-round of or tour bus rolling Petri dish. Gross. Unless I'm the one running the show. Thanks for a great show. Please keep at it. There's so much to know. And that is Dan Garbin.

And that's when to grow on. Formerly of SR 71. And I emailed him to see if he cared to say what he's doing now and I didn't hear back from him. But I think he. Well let's make something up. Yeah. No.

Okay. I think he's still drumming and like teaching and I think he has a recording studio. I think he's taken like that road instead of the drudgery of the tour bus. Are you making all that up? No, no, no. I think that's real. What is that based on? His Wikipedia page.

Oh, I got you. Yeah. Okay. I was going to say. That's what I find. I thought you were just making it up and wouldn't admit it. No. Thanks a lot, Dan.

That's pretty cool, man. If you had a one hit wonder, would you have? No, you wouldn't have when you'd be a one hit wonder, right? And your name is not fake Lou Bega. We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast or you can say hey on our Facebook page at facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and you can just browse our awesome free site, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Hard Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times.

It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.