Stuff You Should Know - Selects: The Skinny on Lyme Disease

Episode Date: April 4, 2026

If you live in the Northeastern U.S. then you may know someone who has had Lyme disease. But it's spreading all over the country and parts of the world. Learn all about this tick-borne disease in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotok-Kot. be starting June 10th on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Josh, Josh Clark. No, not the Josh Clark you went to high school with. Sorry to get your hopes up like that. This is Josh Clark from that podcast you listen to. Stuff you should know. And for this week's SYSK Select, I've chosen our September 2019 episode on Lyme disease. This one's pretty fascinating because it turns out Lyme disease has a ton of influence. intrigued associated with it. It started out with a cluster of weird symptoms of people in Connecticut,

and then they finally figured out it was coming from ticks. But the mystery wasn't over because people started developing chronic Lyme, and at first, the medical community didn't believe they had any disease whatsoever. They thought it was all in their heads. Well, they were wrong. You can find out about all this and more in this episode on Lyme disease. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio Hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh Clark There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant

And there's Jerry over there This is stuff you should know The podcast And Chuck, I have a question for you Yes You know it ticks me off Lyme disease I'm so mad at you

Blame you for that one She's like you should say this And I said you know what I should totally say that Yeah, this is sort of a follow-up to our July 27th, 2010 episode, Why Ticks Suck, which is sort of a legendary episode because we falsely promised to send people T-shirts if they made it all the way through the episode.

That's right, that's right. We were just kidding, but we still get those requests of where's my shirt. Yes, that's hilarious. I forgot about that. We get sued today. Yeah, probably so. also want to point out and shout out our former website, how stuffworks.com,

because a couple of the articles that we used for much of this episode is from the old HSW website. Nice. They're holding it down over there. They're holding it down, and this is some good stuff. Yeah, so we're talking today about Lyme disease in particular. Not Lyme. No, we should say it's capital L-Y-M-E disease,

and the reason it's called that is because it's named after a town, which is one of three towns where the initial outbreak of Lyme disease that led to this bacterial infection, persistent bacterial infection, was first described medically. Yeah, one of the facts of the show, I think. Oh, yeah? Sure. Who knew it was named after a town, Lyme, Connecticut? I knew.

Did you know that before this? Sure. Did we cover that and why ticks suck? I don't think so. All right. Well, you're smarter than me, though. No, it's not that. I think what got me was I heard about people saying, like, no, Lyme disease, like, people take it for granted, but it's actually this really mysterious illness.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? So I think I looked into this year's back, and that's when I found out. All right. That was all. So we're equally smart. Right, exactly. I'm not smarter than you. And what is smart?

It's just like someone happens to know one thing, someone else knows another? Sure. I say they cancel out. We're all smart. There you go. I'm glad you pulled that out because I would have been like, what is smart? I couldn't have come up with the definition. So, Lyme disease, we'll go ahead and hit you with a couple of stats here.

Lyme disease in the United States is more than doubled since 1997. That's astounding? It is. And it is spread, too. It used to be very much localized in kind of the northeast, sort of mid-Atlantic areas, some in the south. But now you can get Lyme disease, and I believe the entire lower 48 is, correct there there are cases in all 48 states supposedly half of the counties in the united states now are considered at high risk for Lyme disease and like all of this happened just in the

last like 20 or so years yeah which is i mean there's there's a lot of debate over the CDC calls Lyme disease endemic which is a disease that has become a like an ongoing part of an area or region and some other people are saying guys what we're talking about here is an epidemic this is an epidemic and you should start calling at that because it will kind of raise the alarm to the next level or two where it should be because this is a very alarming spread of disease that we're seeing right now lime disease is the number one vector-borne disease in the united states it's way more prevalent than things like west nile or chicken guinea or anything like that but it's still kind of treated as like a up there in the northeastern U.S. thing.

And that's just not the case. It's spread in every direction except east because it hit the Atlantic. But everywhere else where it can spread into the interior of the United States and up into Canada, it's starting to. Yeah. And there's also a history continuing to this day even where Lyme disease can be overlooked, misdiagnosed, not taken as seriously by your doctor as it should be. including what we'll get to later on, something called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.

And it's all very frustrating if you have been an individual that has had Lyme disease. There's a big community out there of people. They're like, why won't anyone listen to us? Why won't our doctors take us seriously? And what do we have to do here? Do we have to start dropping dead? Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of frustration

in that community because there's a sentiment among the medical, establishment that, you know, hey, man. Just take some antibiotics, you'll be fine. Exactly. It's easy to cure Lyme disease. Here's some antibiotics. You still have persistent symptoms. Those are probably in your head.

We're not going to say they're in your head, but they're in your head. And the people who are experiencing these symptoms are like, no, my life has been derailed by these symptoms, and you guys aren't doing anything about it. It's frustrating. I know there's a lot of people out there that are pretty stoked right now to be hearing this. Yeah. You know?

Yeah, for sure. We're advocating for you guys. Sure. Not patting myself on the back, although I am literally patting myself. I see you, Chuck. That elbow is sticking out pretty far. So Lyme disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by the bacterium, boralia, bergdorfereri.

Wow. Borgdaferi. Borgdaferi. We're going to get you an apron and call you the word butcher. Bergdorferi. Worm, mork, mork. And we'll get to why it's called that in a bit. Okay.

But if you haven't caught on by now, it is transmitted through tick bites. Right. So a tick, and in particular a nymph stage of a tick, which is a young adult or juvenile tick, will transmit this bacteria, the Borrelia Bergdorferi, into a human. And the reason we usually get it from nymphs, Chuck, is because an adult tick doesn't find humans particularly appetizing. But a nymph tick will, because they're stupid. they don't know anything yet. So as they're feeding on us, after somewhere maybe around 24 to 36 hours of feeding,

this infected tick that has this bacteria in it, the bacteria will make its way from the mid-gut to the tick saliva and the tick transmits it into the human bloodstream, where it just absolutely wreaks havoc on the human body. Yeah, and you said something really key there, 24, 36, 48 hours later, really, really important. They have to be attached to you for that long, sometimes even longer, to transmit this bacterium. So if you find a tick on you and you get it off, you don't need to sweat Lyme disease.

No. If you get it off in due time. Right, exactly. If you see it's still crawling on you, it's unattached, don't worry about it at all. But when it is attached and when it has transmitted the bacteria, what it's transmitted, this B. Bergdorferi is like really amazing at its job, which is infecting you, giving you a bacterial infection. It has figured out how to zoom through the bloodstream, but then also take itself out of the bloodstream

by latching onto the walls of your blood vessels. Yeah, this was crazy about the cellular stuff, that once it's attached to a cell, they said it's like a slinky. It doesn't let go. It just like basically reaches out and grabs the next cell without letting go of the previous cell and just sort of walks end over end.

never unattaching itself. Right, exactly. So as it's moving along, it's not going to get kind of washed away in the extracellular matrix. It's stuck to the cell if it wants to be stuck to the cell. It can do the same thing to the blood vessel walls to pull itself out of the bloodstream

and then go attack specific parts of the body. So it's really good at hanging on. That's one thing that makes it kind of pernicious. And then another thing, exactly. It's basically, yeah, it's like the bacteria version of a tick. I didn't think about that. And then another thing it does, Chuck, I think this is really, really recent research. It can actually change its protein expression at a much faster rate than the normal mutation rate for bacteria, something like 15 times faster.

Yeah, well, what that does is that just makes it really hard for our human immune system to catch up to it. Right, because our immune system will produce antibodies based on the initial infection, but by the time the antibodies come around, the bacteria may have changed itself so that the antibodies won't recognize it. It'll just go right past it because it doesn't fit the description that the antibodies have. That's right. And you'll know that something bad is happening. First of all, if you find that tick, but if you get headaches, fever, fatigue is a huge, huge

symptom. But the real telltale is what we're going to. what's called EM. It's an expanding skin rash called erythema migrains. And it's like that circular pattern. And I know we did talk about this on the Ticks episode, but it's a circular pattern with what looks like a bullseye in the center of it. Yes. And you can take off your butcher's apron now because you just,

that was beautiful. Put on your chef's hat. You're sweating over there. Yeah. So that particular rash, that bull's-eye rash, that is like just an absolute telltale sign that you have a Lyme borreolus borreleosis infection. That only comes around in like maybe 70 to 80% of cases. I think if every person got that rash,

we would not have this problem with Lyme disease because it would be caught very quickly because you get that within usually about a week or less of getting infected. But it doesn't come up in all cases. and with some of those other symptoms, like you said, like weakness, headaches, flu-like symptoms, like those could be a lot of different other things, joint pain.

And so the Lyme disease infection goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed in a lot of cases or did for many, many years. It's just now that they're starting to kind of recognize it or suspect Lyme when otherwise they might not have. Yeah, I mean, literally hundreds. of things can have the same symptoms as Lyme disease. So Lyme's been around for a long time. We'll talk about the history here in a minute as far as the 1970s go and official recognition,

but it's been around, I believe, Yale School of Public Health, find the bacterium in ancient North America, like 60,000 years old. Right. Before the arrival of humans, they have an autopsy of a 5,300. year old mummy that had Lyme disease. Yeah, you know, Utsi, the Iceman. Remember him? I remember Utsi.

Yeah, I was disappointed that they referred to him as a 5,300-year-old mummy. It's like, no, it's Utsi, the ice man. Everybody knows him. Give him his name. But he had Lyme disease. He did, and there was a German physician named Alfred Buchwald,

who described this, that E.M. skin rash that we now call Lyme disease about 130 years ago. Right. So Lyme disease is a lot of, has been around a while, but we are just now seeing a huge, again, an epidemic of it and a massive spread of it, not just in North America, but there's also two other kinds of ticks that transmit two other kinds of Lyme-causing bacteria in Europe and Asia. And in all three places, North America,

Europe, and parts of Asia, the incidence of Lyme disease is picking up at an alarming pace. I think we should slow down our pace, take a break. Okay, all right. We'll come back and we'll talk about Lyme, Connecticut right after this. But stop you. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio.

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Listen to Saigon on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So Lyme, Connecticut, something is very old hat to you. Right. Brand new to me. Lime, old lime, and what was the third town? I don't remember. No, let's just call it new lime.

It was not new lime. They're going to be so mad. Their high school football team is going to go berserk. on old lime this year? In the 1970s, though, there were a group of children and adults in these towns in Connecticut that were having all these weird symptoms,

swollen knees, skin rashes, headaches, all this severe fatigue. And it's bad enough these days, but in the early 1970s, doctors were definitely did not have this on the radar and were very dismissive of what was going on in these towns. And if it were not for the work

of Judith Minch and Polly Merck, to just regular moms, although Polly Murray did work for the World Health Organization for a while. They were advocates. They were patient advocates because their families were getting sick and no one would listen

and they were like, someone's got to do something. Something's going on here and these doctors are not being any help. Right. And it was a big deal. Polly Murray ended up writing a book. She made it sort of her life's work

in 1996, a book called The Winding Circle. And because of sort of the persistent sexism and science, they were largely discounted, even though they had a list of 37 individuals, they researched on their own, contacted scientists, we just really need to shout them out.

Polly Murray died just about a month ago at the age of 85. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Yeah, she was a persistent cuss, as they call them up in the Yankee states. That's right. So, on the one hand, yes, from everything I've read

and all the impressions I have, they were very much dismissed, and it was very much sexist, and also, I think, because they weren't doctors. But on the other hand, the doctors who were being presented with these cases were like, I have no idea what this is. So let's just pretend it's not real. But luckily, those two women in the groups that they established, they went on and they contacted Yale Medical School.

They contacted the state, and they really kind of put this on the map. They said, there is a mysterious epidemic that's going on. where you have a lot of kids who suddenly have juvenile arthritis out of nowhere, what are you guys going to do about it? And because of their agitation, this mystery made its way to the desk, or I guess the microscope of a guy named Willie Bergdorfer. And he was at the time the world's foremost authority on what's called Rocky Mountain spotted fever,

which is another tick-borne bacterial infection. I remember that when I was a kid. That was a big news item. It was. A scary one. He was working out in Colorado, and Colorado was ground zero for Rocky Mountain and spotted fever for a while, which is, yeah, you do not want to have that.

It's a really bad bacterial infection. But by this time, they had done, thanks to the legwork done by the moms and the patient advocate groups in Lyme, Connecticut, it had been pretty well established that the common thread between all these people besides where they lived. And by the way, it was Chuck Lyme, Old Lyman, East Haddam, sorry East Hadam. Aside from the fact that they all lived in the same region,

was that all of them or almost all of them, were called being bitten by a tick, and a lot of them had a mysterious rash right before the symptoms presented. So it came to this guy, Willie Bergdorfer's microscope because they had said, there's something in the ticks here that is creating this disease that we haven't encountered before.

That's right. and he had already discovered this bacterium called it. How do you pronounce that? Spirochet. Spirochete. But a spirochete is a type of bacteria, and that's what I know. Give me the apron. There you go.

All right. Spirichet. You just made me think of the older brother Chet in weird science. Now go make yourself one, but wad. Yeah. Man, that guy had some good quotes. Oh, yeah, R-I-P. What?

Bill Paxton. When? He died a couple years ago. Very sad. Are you sure? You're thinking of Bill Pullman. No, Bill Paxton died. It was so sad because I had just listened to his Mark Maren interview, and he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more than to be Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor.

Oh, neat. He just sounded like the best guy and best family man, and he passed away way too early. Yeah, really. I did not know about that. saw frailty not too many weeks ago it's still pretty good was it the first viewing or no no no i've seen it before but yeah man great movie yeah but he wrote and i believe directed and starred in it yeah it was so good and i love a good powers booth cast and call for sure it was it was unusual and surprising but it was perfect very good underrated film where are we oh yeah we were talking about

rocky mountain spotted fever willie bergdorfer identifying the spiro keat um that was causing wine disease. Parakeet, right. Spirochet. What a dumb, dumb. No, no, remember we established, we're all smart. Yeah, so he discovered this parakeet, and he was honored by this discovery

in naming that thing after himself. That's why it has that interesting name. I get the impression he didn't name it after himself. They named it after him. No, so said they honored him. No, go on. Yeah. Okay. But there's a big difference between him saying this thing's called the Bergdorferi bacteria

and somebody's saying, we're going to name this after you. No, I totally agree. Okay. So Bergdorferi or Bergdorfer, he figures out what is the basis of Lyme disease, which is great. That's an enormous breakthrough. It establishes that, yes, it is its own thing. It's its own disease. And because it was a bacteria, it's a spirokee, which again, it's kind of a snake-like shape. bacteria, a specific kind that walks like a slinky. Because it was a bacterial infection, the medical establishment said, oh, we got this here,

take some antibiotics. And over, you know, the course of several years, starting in, I think the 90s is when they really started to say, okay, we can cure Lyme disease, especially if we catch it early on by a two to four week round of antibiotics. Right. Here you go. And they said, case closed. we're the medical establishment.

Let's go have a party for ourselves. Yeah, and here's the thing. Many times that can take care of the problem. So it's not like they were just lazy and not doing their work. But I think they closed the book a little too soon, and a lot of people do. Because that round of oral antibiotics, if you catch it early, it can really work. And I think they say, what, like nine times out of ten, if you catch it early, then that will.

work. Right. They're so persistent with that assertion that if you find a tick on yourself and you live in an area where Lyme disease is known to thrive, if you can't say how long that tick's been on you, they're probably just going to give you that round of antibiotics prophylactically. Yeah. And again, like you said, in a lot of cases, and I believe from what I've read, the vast majority of cases in early stage Lyme disease, that round of antibiotics, should work. Yeah, and they say that if you, and this is from the American LimeD's Foundation, quote, if you live in an endemic area, have symptoms consistent with early Lyme disease and suspect

recent exposure to a tick, present your suspicion to your doctor so that he or she may make a more informed diagnosis. So. Show up to your doctor and say, yeah. Madam, sir, I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please sit down. Well, they're saying sort of still, you still sort of need to be. be your own advocate because it is so hard to diagnose still.

Because if you're going on symptoms alone, like we said, there are hundreds of things that share those symptoms, and Lyme disease may not be the first thing they think of. That's a huge problem with Lyme disease. Another huge problem is that the test we use to test for Lyme disease doesn't actually test for the B. Bergdorferi bacteria. Right. It tests for the antibodies that should be present in your bloodstream if you have a bacterial infection. Not even specific to that one, but a bacterial infection. The problem is it takes days,

if not maybe a week or two, before your body mounts an effective immune response against this infection. So if you find a tick and they give you a test, say, within the first couple days, it's going to come back negative, even though you very much have a burgdorferi infection. It's going to come back negative because the antibodies haven't been created yet. The other part of the problem is even if you take a blood test that tests directly for the Bergdorferi bacterium, it moves out of the bloodstream really easily and within several days. So there's a very brief window of time where you can directly test for the Bergdorferi bacteria and find it in a simple blood test.

Yeah, you can also get false positives, and they're advocating now for two-tiered testing for confirmation of the diagnosis. So if you get that first positive test, sometimes now you'll get a different test, a Western blot test, that's going to really get more specific to that antibody, not just the general antibodies. Right. So part of the other problem is the reason a lot of patient activists and patient advocate groups say, no, doctors, you're wrong. Like, this is not good enough.

is that there's a sneaking suspicion among people who have what's called chronic Lyme or post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome is that the round of antibiotics, the two to four week round of antibiotics that seemingly cured the Lyme disease symptoms that you had, actually failed to fully knock out the bacteria that created this infection, this created this Lyme disease in the first place, that it just burrowed further into your body. And because the medical establishment said, we got it, it's fine.

These antibiotics cured it and didn't go deeper. That bacterial infection is allowed to fester and then present in worse ways later. Yeah, and it's a really big deal because, you know, what will happen is they'll say, you're cured, we gave these antibiotics, they worked, but weeks and months and even years later when people have persistent fatigue and muscle,

aches and headaches and you know like your knee joints hurt they said like a brain fog can happen and these are all things that are i don't want to say generic but if you walk into your doctor and say i feel like i'm fuzzy and have a brain fog and i get headaches and i'm tired uh it's sort of a wide it's hard to pinpoint what's going on sure and they're and they think you're cured of the Lyme disease. So that's where some of the more dismissive, at least from the Lyme disease community, they're saying, like, I have this chronic issue. And they're saying, but no, there's no such thing that's a chronic issue. Right. Well, they're also saying, like, look, we gave you a test for Lyme disease and you came back negative, you know? We know you had it before. We tested you. We came back

positive. We treated it with antibiotics. Now we've tested you again, and it's coming back negative. You don't have Lyme disease anymore. So there's a huge debate. whether the antibiotic course is not enough and that the Lyme disease is persisting elsewhere in the body and that maybe it's changed its form so that it won't show up on the tests like it should or there's remnants of it. I saw one article that suggested that the cell wall from the spirochete,

the burgdorferi spirochete can remain even after the thing's dead and persist in like joint tissue and cause an immune response there, which would explain this long-term arthritis is like a post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome symptom. Or is it that it converts into an entirely different disease like an autoimmune disorder? Yeah, some people think that it could trigger an autoimmune response

and the infection's gone, and this is what's happening later on is you have this autoimmune response that can lead to other things like rheumatic heart disease, I think we, did we cover Gion Bear syndrome or just talk about it in different episodes? We've talked about it

and I think if I remember correctly it's Gie A-Barre. Gia-Barre. Give me the apron. I'm pretty sure, yeah. We could both be wearing the apron for this one though. Well, we'll split it up. I get the lower half. All right.

I get the top half on porky pig in it. All right, I'm going to just cover my bits down there. But regardless of what's happening, what people know is that they don't feel right. and it's extremely frustrating to feel these symptoms months and years later and not be taken seriously in a doctor's office. Yeah, so a lot of people are saying,

this course of antibiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks, it should be many months. Right. Because you really need to get all of the spirochied out of there or else it's going to persist and you're going to have big problems. And then the medical establishment is saying, like, what you're talking about doesn't even exist.

So there's a lot of frustration like you're saying big disconnect, and this is something that is probably going to keep playing out, although it seems like it may be on its way out because of the epidemic proportions Lyme is taking now in the United States. Yeah, I mean, the statistics are mounting up such that it can't be ignored any longer. Not that it was ignored, but, you know, that's probably a harsh statement. But it's being taken way more seriously now. Yeah, so something like there's an expectation that there's going to be something like 300 to 400,000 new

cases of Lyme disease in the United States alone, and that 10 to 20% of those patients will end up with chronic Lyme disease. Yeah. I mean, I spend a fair amount of time hiking around the woods with my dogs and have pulled plenty of ticks off of them and plenty of ticks off of myself. And I have fatigue a lot because I have a four-year-old, and every now and then I'm like, do I have Lyme disease? Well, probably not, and here's why.

Well, I've never had the bull's eye, first of all. Okay, that's a big one. But also, the ticks you pull off of your dog, those are dog ticks. They do not transmit lime. It's specifically the long, or black-legged tick, which is a type of deer tick. Well, but here's the thing. There are plenty of deer ticks in the woods. Are you saying that they would not latch onto a dog and they'd be like, ooh, no?

I don't know. I don't know. Because there's deer ticks all over the woods. Sure, there definitely are. I don't know if deer ticks will latch onto a dog. It's entirely possible they won't since there's such a differentiation between dog ticks and deer ticks. But I do know that dog ticks don't transmit lime.

Well, I think we should talk about my favorite thing from the ticks episode, and this is one I will lay on people from time to time, is remember how ticks attach themselves? Sure. They just hang out on blades of grass and things and just snap their little claws constantly, just waiting for something to pass by that they can latch onto.

Right. They sense the CO2 of the mammal that's walking past them. So interesting. And Chuck, one thing I read is that somehow the lime infected ticks, because they're infected themselves.

Lime resides in like small mammals and rodents as a reservoir. Yeah. They're infected, but they don't have symptoms. Ticks get infected with this stuff, and they're just passing it along. It's not like they're the ultimate source of Lyme disease.

No, ticks are misunderstood. They're really great. Right. But from what I saw, the ticks that are infected with the Lyme bacteria are actually better at finding hosts than non-infected ticks. Like, it somehow enables them to be better parasites. That's amazing. Interesting. Yeah, that sounds familiar.

Did we cover that? Or do I just know that? Because I'm smart. I don't. I don't remember. But I do, I remember you talking about in the ticks episode about how they wave their, arms in the air waiting for somebody who passed by. And I remember one of our listeners made some art of that.

We've got to find it. That's right. And from snapping their little fingers on a blade of grass to my dog's butt to my scrotum, it's quite a ride. It's a wild ride. And then to Emily eventually plucking that thing out for me. That's nice. That's what marriage is all about, folks.

Yeah, you just have your forearm thrust across your eyes. You're like, get it out, get it out. So let's take another break. Okay. We'll talk a little bit about prevention and then a little bit about some very recent, interesting, wacky things going on in Congress about Lyme disease as a bioweapon.

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plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride Come together celebrate love Take pride with you anytime, anywhere Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada Stream us on your phone Or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers and guess what?

We have some big news. What's the news, news? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas, we invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts.

Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was...

This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys.

Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. The United States will not stand by and allow any power. However great, take over another country. From My Heart Podcast, Saigon. Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman.

You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much. I like hearing you talk. One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart. This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. Deuterate me. They're pouring petrol all over him.

He's holding matches. I'm on a landmine. For free. Let's get out. Freedom for me. Saigon, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict. Sting, here's madness. The world should hear about this.

There's a fire coming to this country, and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, you talked about prevention. How do you keep from having to have a tick pulled from your crotch? Don't ever go into Mother Nature. Just stay in your... mid-century modern home with tiled floors and don't go into the woods sounds delicious no i love the woods you love the woods right yeah yeah i love watching the woods on television you from your mid-century

house no i do i love the woods myself yeah i'm just kidding get in the woods but um they recommend things like d't i don't use that stuff uh on my own body but some people will say put that all over your body and put it on your clothes and put it on your socks and shoes. Just walk around spraying a cloud of it around you constantly while you're in the woods. What I do is I just check for ticks. Yeah, a good thing to do seriously,

it looks super dorky, but what do you care is to tuck your pant legs into your socks? Yeah, sure. And then when you come out, like wear light colors too because you can see the ticks a lot more easily. And then when you come out of the woods, take your clothes off and take a shirt, shower as soon as you can and just inspect your groin, your armpits, your scalp.

Part of the problem with Lyme disease, though, is remember you get it from timps, oh wow, you get it from ticks in the nymph stage, which are really, really small. So you've got to check really, really well to see if you have that tick on you. Yeah, and just while you're at it, take off the adult ticks as well. Yeah. Don't leave them. Don't leave them. And check your dogs, You know, you check your dogs under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs, whatever that's called, their leg pits. Check behind their ears, check under their collars. Because ticks are trying to, you know, they're not going to hang out just like on the top of their back. They may start there, but they're going to try and find a place that's dark and warm and out of view.

Yeah, I don't mean to say you can't get Lyme disease from an adult, Chuck. It's just that the nymphs are far more likely to feed on a human than an adult. but a Lyme-infected adult tick will transmit Lyme to you too, for sure. A very important distinction. Yeah. So now we move on to the U.S. Congress very recently, about a month ago. End of July, I think. Yeah, there was a U.S. House rep named Chris Smith, Republican out of New Jersey,

who introduced legislation that said, hey, Department of Defense, you should review these claims that I'm seeing that our own Pentagon researched using ticks to spread Lyme disease as a bioweapon in the mid-20th century. I'm reading a lot about this in books and articles that we did research on Plum Island, and other insects too, not just ticks, of turning them into bioweapons. And this thing passed. And a lot of this comes from a book written by Chris Newby called Bitten, colon, the secret history of Lyme disease and biological weapons.

And this book, I think Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, said, like, this book really inspired me to take up this legislation. But in the book, Newby basically says the government at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and on Plough Island, New York, before it was turned into an animal disease research center, were doing... It was an insect disease research center before that, I guess. They were looking into... Well, they definitely were doing bio-warfare research. there. Early 1950s? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And then Fort Ditrich for however long, if they're not still doing it now. But they were apparently looking into ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons. Yeah. I couldn't find that that is actually verified, but I find that highly believable. But what Newby is saying is they were doing that research. And then the way we got Lyme disease is whatever research they were. coming up with, escaped, say, a tick attached to a bird that flew off of Plum Island and landed

in the area around Lyme, Connecticut, and these ticks got off, and they started to breed, and they became endemic in this area, and that's where Lyme disease came from. There was actually a biological weapon that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposefully, released into the larger population in the northeast. Yeah, so here's my question. I haven't read the book. But are they saying that we created Lyme disease or that we just weaponized it? Because those are two very different things. Yeah, I don't know what she's saying either.

And I think she stops short of saying that, but that it's implied that if you put two and two together, the government was looking into biological warfare and they were talking about using ticks at some point. and, you know, it's really close to this ground zero of where the tick epidemic began, you put two and two together. That's the impression I have is that she didn't actually come out and say it, but that she lets the reader surmise for themselves, which is the problem.

Well, I mean, that's very easy to disprove if she's actually claiming that they created Lyme disease because we just got through saying it was in, who was the mummy? Uzi. It was an Utsi, 5,300 years ago. Over in the Alps. Well, true.

But also in the United States, I mean, it came around in the, we first discovered it in 1970s in like several different places. It wasn't just Lyme, Connecticut. They found it in California. Right. And you can't just, that just, it doesn't add up that it would be popping up in all these random places if it escaped from Long Island Sound in 1953. Right, which I think somebody who subscribed to this conspiracy theory, and there's very much what it is, is a conspicuous. conspiracy theory, that, well, then the release wasn't purpose or accidental, it was purposeful.

Okay. And that they spread it around the northeast, California, and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the actual place where the first case of Lyme disease was described in the United States in 1969. Yeah. About six years before this cluster of juvenile arthritis cases popped up in Old Lyme, Lyme, and East Hadam. Well, it's a very bad idea, if that's... what went on because you have to depend on a lot of things,

which is, A, these ticks definitely finding their way to the enemy. B, they attach to the enemy successfully and transmit the disease. And then what does it transmit? A very slow-acting disease that will give people headaches and fatigue over the course of a long time. Right. That also produces a one-of-a-kind telltale rash. Right. That tells you supposedly in plenty of time that you have this disease that needs to be treated with a simple course of oral antibiotics.

Yeah, and it has to be probably in the country. They're not, they don't thrive well in the city. Right. So it's just, it doesn't make a good biological weapon. No. And then, again, people who subscribed to his conspiracy theory say, well, they can't all be winners, but maybe it was just something they were experimenting with and it wasn't very good. Trust me, I mean, we've done enough research on stuff our American government used to do and continue. to do that it's not the most outlandish thing in the world.

No, it's not. And that's also why Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand because it's entirely plausible. It's, yeah, it's not just a complete wacko idea. Right. The other reason Christmas shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand is because he is a true lime warrior. He introduced other legislation called the Tick Act.

And of course he had to make Tick an acronym. That, um, an acronym, not an anacronism. What's it stand for? Ticks, colon, identify, control, and knockout act. He was really grasping like a tick on a blade of grass with that one. But the point is, but knockout's not one word unless you use it as knockout. Well, that's what he's saying, I guess.

So it's really the tick-o's act. But it would create an additional $180 million in four. federal funding for Lyme disease research, which is sorely needed right now. That's awesome. I didn't know he was such an advocate that's good. He really is. He hates Lyme disease like a lot. I was about to say something, but...

I wish I could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy region and my brain. Oh, your analogies are great. What were you going to say? I want to know. We can beep it off if you need to. I was going to get political. I was going to say he hates ticks like he hates... Okay.

Can we leave that and bleep it? I don't know. We'll find out. All right. So the whole idea that it's a bio weapon, almost certainly not the case, right? But it makes for good press. I mean, like, if you look up, like Lyme disease and bioweapon, there is a lot of recent articles written on it.

Just because a member of Congress introduced this legislation. Yeah. What a lot of people are saying is, look, it makes sense, like this conspiracy theory that people would go to that. But at the same time, there's another really great explanation for it. And it's climate change, that this whole thing came about in the 70s because we're starting to see what was called the first epidemic from climate change. And there's this really great article on Aeon, which is a great website, by Marybeth Pfeiffer, spells it like Michelle Pfeiffer with the P, called Ticks Rising. and she's an investigative reporter of science journalist

who really went to a lot of trouble to explain how climate change has created a new world for ticks, and we are now living in it. Yeah, I mean, in 2014, the EPA actually started to use four new indicators about what's going on with climate change and the impact, and one of them was the spread of Lyme disease. So, like the EPA officially uses that as a fact, and an indicator in determining the impact of climate change now. Right.

And so the whole basis of this idea is that because of warmer weather, ticks are being killed off in far fewer numbers over the winter. So they're surviving longer. As it gets warmer and warmer higher and higher up, their range is spreading rather rapidly. Oh, yeah. And wherever these ticks go, Lyme disease is game to go with them. So the spread of Lyme disease is increasing as the spread of ticks is increasing too.

And ticks have gotten totally out of hand in some areas. In that same Aon article, Mary Beth Pfeiffer was talking about how moose are dying in their thousands in like Wisconsin and the Dakotas because they're being bled to death by 100,000 ticks at once. It's amazing. That never happened before. And now all of a sudden it's kind of becoming routine because the ticks aren't dying off in the winter like they're supposed to. And again, it's because of climate change.

And then in the Northeast Chuck, one of the reasons why there's been this explosion of ticks is because there's been an explosion of deer to support the tick population. Sure. Back in the day, there were things like mountain lions and there were predators that would help control the deer population. Yeah, wolves. Wolves.

They're even suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control. the deer population. Oh yeah, you can bet that's going to happen. No, really. I mean, do you think so? Yeah, totally. Like, if 300,000 people a year are coming down with Lyme in the United States,

they're going to start reintroducing wolves to combat it, if it has even a half of a chance. I'd be interested to see if that happens. For sure. Because humans are going to want to hunt those wolves. Yeah. You know? It just brings it out in us for some reason, huh?

Well, I mean, they hunted the mountain lions. Right, but I think that's the idea of, oh, wait a minute, really weird and circuitous bad things happen when we overhunt mountain lions and wolves. Maybe when we reintroduce them, we won't have to, you know, or we won't follow that impulse. We'll just let nature take its course. Right. Who knows? You got anything else, man? I got nothing else.

So there's a solution, a round of antibiotics and some wolves. And that'll cure what ails us. Yeah, advocate for yourself still, people. Sure. And the wolves. Be persistent. That's good advice for everything, Chuck. Agreed.

Almost everything. There's certainly cases where persistence is not a good idea, but you know what I'm saying, right? I do know. Okay. If you want to know more about Lyme disease, go check out all of the articles there are to read. And again, go check out the Aon article by Merrill. Mary Beth Pfeiffer, it's really interesting. And since I said it's interesting, that means it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this neat story about how great stuff you should know listeners are. Oh, I like that. From Portland, Maine. Hey, guys, my wife, daughter, and I, all stuff you should know listeners for years, decided last minute to buy tickets to the show while on vacation at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, just a short drive south of Portland. We had nosebleed seats, naturally, because we waited until just an hour before showtime. and that was more than cool by us,

and we were totally stoked just to be there, whatever the seats. When we got to our balcony seats, a friendly fellow named Matt approached us, said he had three tickets for orchestra seats and asked if we'd like them. The tickets were intended for friends of his who were stuck in Labor Day weekend traffic couldn't make it to the show.

Turns out he had been scouting the crowd for 40 minutes looking for a group of three, even enlisting the help of the ushers to find three people together. We were the first group that he saw. A brief walk downstairs, and there we were, three rows from the stage for the supremely excellent show about podcast topic redacted.

Thanks to Matt and his friends being stuck in traffic. We went from not having tickets an hour before showtime to having third row 10 minutes before you guys took stage. We considered it a little piece of true magic. So while I'm confident this lengthy setup in telling you of the story is way too long for the air. No. Not true, Richard Clark.

The whole family would be forever grateful if you could give Matt and the Connecticut groundskeeper a huge thank you from Rich, Susan, and Emily in upstate New York for sharing those seats with us. That is fantastic. I love our shows, man. It's great. People are so kind. And that is from Richard Clark. Not Dick Clark, but Rich Clark.

Oh, that's even better. Yeah. Dick Clark's taken. That's right. And good for Rich Clark for recognizing that, too. Yeah. Thanks for coming to the show, Rich, and bringing in the family. And thank you, Matt, for being such a cool dude.

That was very nice of you. I'm utterly unsurprised because our fans are pretty great people. Yes. Okay, well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to Stuff You Should Know.com and you can send us a tweet or an insta post or a comment or what have you, that kind of thing, because all of our social links are there. Or you can just do it the old-fashioned way and send an email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. One hits, millions of records sold, sold out tours. You think that Jonas Brothers are satisfied? Nope, it's podcast time. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Hey, Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one.

Paul Rudd. You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition for the office or something? I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchorman. Clearly, I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me, right?

Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. This is Teddy Mellencamp. And Tamara Judge from Two Tees in a Pod. There's been one scandal that's consumed our lives these last couple of months. We're recapping the three parts Summer House reunion. And as always, we're being rudely honest. We're dissecting timelines, receipts, blind items,

previous episodes. Amanda and Wes, watch out. We're not getting to be easy on you. Listen to two T's in a pod on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joy is essential and it's also elusive. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101.

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