Selects: The Skinny on Lyme Disease

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This is Josh Clark from that podcast, you listen to. Stuff you should know. And for this week's S.Y.S.K. Select, I'd chosen our September 2019 episode on Lyme Disease. This one's pretty fascinating because it turns out,

Lyme Disease has a ton of intrigue 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 on their heads. Well, they were wrong.

You can find out about all this P.M. Moore in this episode online disease. Enjoy. - Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.

- Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark because there's Charles W. Chuck Brighton. There's Jerry over there. This is Stuff You Should Know. The podcast.

- Yeah, Chuck, I've never questioned for him.

- Yes. - You know, it ticks me off, Lyme Disease. I'm so mad at you. I blame you for that one. She's like, "You should see 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're just kidding, but we still get those requests of where's my shirt.

- Yes, that's hilarious. I forgot about that. - And also, we get sued today. - Yeah, probably so. I also want to point out, and shout out,

our former website, howstofworks.com, because a couple of the articles that we use for much of this episode is from the old H.S.W. website. - Nice, they're holding it down over there. - They're holding it down, and these things are good stuff.

- Yeah, so we're talking today about Lyme Disease in particular. - Not Lyme's. - 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, about that. - 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 tick suck? - I don't think so. - All right, well, you're smarter than me. - No, it's not that.

“- I think what got me was, I heard about people saying,”

like Lyme disease, like people take it for granted, but it's actually some, this really mysterious illness. I'm like, what are you talking about? So I think I looked into this year's back and that's what I found out.

- 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. - Here you go. I'm glad you pulled it out because I would have been like,

what is smart, so 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 and 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 that correct?

- 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 20 or so years. - Yeah. - Which is, I mean, 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 it 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. Lyme disease is the number one vector borne disease

in the United States. It's way more prevalent than things like West Nile or chicken goon year or anything like that. But it's still kind of treated as like up there

in the northeastern US 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 end up in the 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. - Yeah. - 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? Like 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, take some antibiotics, you know? - 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 gonna 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. - And there's a lot of people out there that are pretty pretty stoked right now to be hearing this. - Yeah. - Yeah.

- For sure. - We're advocating for you guys. - Sure. - Not padding myself on the back. Although I am literally paddling.

- You look like I see you, Chuck here. - That elbow is sticking out pretty far. - So Lyme disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by the bacterium. Borlea, burg d'Orphreary.

- Wow. - Borg de Ferry, burg de Ferry. - We're gonna get you an apron and call you the word butcher. - Burg d'Orphreary.

- Org d'Orphreary. - Org d'Orphreary. 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 like young adult or juvenile tick. Will transmit this bacteria,

the Borlea, burg d'Orphreary 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 ticks saliva and the ticks transmit it,

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 like, you see it's still crawling on you, it's unattached, you don't worry about it at all.

But when it is attached, and when it has transmitted

this B burglary is 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 on to 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 walks in over and never unattaching itself.

- Right, exactly. So as it's moving along, it's not gonna 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 one 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.

They'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's 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's called EM, it's an expanding skin rash called Arathema Migrants. And it's like that circular pattern,

and then we did talk about this on the ticks episode, but to circular pattern with what looks like a bull's eye in the center of it. - Yes, and you can take off your butcher's apron now, 'cause you just, that was not 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 a just an absolute telltale sign that you have a lime boreola, bore,

a lime boreoliosis infection.

That only comes around in maybe 70 to 80% of cases.

I think if every person got that rash, we would not have this problem with lime disease, 'cause it would be caught very quickly, 'cause 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 lime 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 the lime when otherwise they might not have. - Yeah, I mean, literally hundreds of things

can have the same symptoms as lime disease. So, lime's been around for a long time. We'll talk about the history here in a minute as far as the 1970s go in official recognition,

“but it's been around, I believe, Yale School of Public Health”

find the bacterium and ancient North America, like 60,000 years old, before the arrival of humans, they have an autopsy of a 5,300 year old mummy that had lime disease. - Yeah, you know, Utsu, the ice man.

Remember him? I remember Utsu. - Yeah, I was disappointed that they referred to him as a 5,300 year old mummy. It's like, no, it's Utsu, that I remember.

I know him. - Give him his name. - But he had lime disease. - He did, and there was a German physician named Alfred Buckwald who described this

that EM skin rash that we now call lime disease about 130 years ago. - Right, so lime disease 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 lime causing bacteria in Europe and Asia. And in all three places, North America, Europe and parts of Asia, the incidence of lime disease is picking up

- I think we should slow down our pace, take a break.

- Okay, all right. - We'll come back and we'll talk about lime, Connecticut, right after this. (upbeat music) - In 2023, former Bachelor Star Clayton Eckard

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Listen to no grip on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - All right, so Lyme Connecticut, something that's very old hat to you.

- Right. - Brandon about it for years.

- Lyme, old Lyme, and what was the third town?

“- I don't remember. - No, let's just call it”

new Lyme. - It was not Lyme. - They're gonna be so mad. They're high school football team is gonna go berserk on old Lyme this year. - In the 1970s, though, there were group of children

and adults in these towns in Connecticut that were having all these weird symptoms. Swole and 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 we're very dismissive of what was going on in these towns. And if it were not for the work of Judith Mench and Polymery to just regular moms, although Polymery 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 gotta do something.

Some things going on here, and these doctors are not being any help. - Right. - And it was a big deal. - Polymery ended up writing a book, she made it sort of her life's work in 1996,

but called the widening circle.

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. Polymery died just about a month ago at the age of 85. - Oh, is that right? - Yeah.

- Yes, she was a persistent cusses, they call 'em up in the Yankees state. - That's right. - So, on the one hand, yes, from the 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 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 gonna 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 on Colorado, Colorado was ground zero for Rocky Mountain spotted fever for a while, which is, yeah, you do not wanna have that, it's a really bad bacterial infection.

“But by this time, they had done thanks to the legwork,”

and 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 Lyme, and East Hadam, sorry East Hadam. Aside from the fact that they all lived in the same region, was that all of them were 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 Burgdorfer'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, how do you pronounce that? Spirachet.

- Spirachet. - Spirachet. - But a Spirachet is a type of bacteria, and that's your word, Chad. - That's what I don't know.

- Give me the apron, there you go. All right, Spirachet, you just made me think of the older brother, Chad, and weird science. - Now go make yourself one, but what? - Yeah, yeah.

- They have that guy had some good quotes. - Oh yeah, RIP, yeah. - What? - Bill Paxton? - Win.

- He died a couple years ago, very sad. - Are you sure? - Are you thinking of Bill Poement? - No, Bill Paxton died, it was so sad, because I had just listened to his Mark Marin interview,

and he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more than to be Bill Paxton's friend in neighbor. - Oh, and he just sounded like a Vabez guy and best family man, and he passed away way too early.

- Yeah, really, I did not know about that. - I saw a frail to not too many weeks ago. It's still pretty good.

- Was it the first viewing, or?

- No, no, I've seen it before, but yeah. - Yeah, great movie. - Yeah, but he wrote, and I believe, directed, and starred in it. - Yeah, he was so good, and I love a good,

power's booth, cast and call. - For sure. - It was unusual and surprising, it was perfect. - Very good, underrated film. Where are we?

- Oh, yeah, we were talking about Rocky Mountain and Spodin Fever, Willy Bergdorfer, identifying the Spire of Keat. That was causing wine to the Spire of Keat, right? - Spire of Cheat, what a dumb dumb.

- No, no, remember we established we were all smart. - Yeah, yeah, so he discovered this pair of Keat, and he was honored by this discovery and 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, he said that, I don't know. - No, go on. - Yeah, okay.

But there's a big difference between him saying, this thing's called the Bergdorferi bacteria, and somebody saying, we're gonna 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 Spire of Keat, which again, it's kind of a snake-like, shaped bacteria, a specific kind that walks like a slinky.

the medical establishment said,

oh, we got this here, it takes some antibiotics. And over 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, like, 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 close the book a little too soon and a lot of people do,

because that oral, that round of oral antibiotics, if you catch it early, it can really work. But, and I think they say what like nine times out of 10, 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 or delectically.

- 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 Lyme disease, foundation,”

quote, "If you live in an endemic area, "have symptoms consistent with early Lyme disease "inspect recent exposure to a tick, "present your suspicion to your doctor, "so that he or she may make a more informed diagnosis."

- All right, show up to your doctor and say, "Yeah, madam, sir, I would love to present my suspicion "to you please sit down." - Well, they're saying sort of still, you still sort of need to be your own advocate,

because it is so hard to diagnose still, because 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 they test we use to test for Lyme disease. Doesn't actually test for the B burglatory bacteria. 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 burglatory 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 burglatory 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 burglatory bacteria and find it in a simple blood test.

- Yeah, you can also get false positives and they're advocating now for a two-tier testing for confirmation of the diagnosis.

So if you get that first positive test,

sometimes now you'll get a different test, a Western blood 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 what'll 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 like your knee joints hurt, they said like a brain fog can happen. These are all things that are, I don't wanna say generic, but if you walk into your doctor and say,

I feel like I'm fuzzy and have a brain fog and I'm getting headaches and I'm tired,

- Sure.

“- 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 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 they're 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 test like it should, or there's remnants of it, I saw one article that suggested that the cell wall from the Spirokeet,

the burgdore-free Spirokeet can remain

even after the things dead and persist in joint tissue and cause an immune response there, which would explain this long-term arthritis as like a post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome symptom. What the, 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 Guillain-Barris syndrome or just talk about it in different episodes.

“- We've talked about it and I think if I remember correctly,”

it's Guillain-Barris. - Guillain-Barris, 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. (laughs)

I get the top half, I'm poor, keep pigging it. - All right, I'm gonna just cover my bits down there. (laughs) But regardless of what's happening, what people know is 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 that we, these course of antibiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks,

it should be many months, right? - Right. - 'Cause you really need to get all of the spiral keyed out of their or else it's going to persist and you're gonna have big problems.

And then the medical establishment is saying like, this, what you're talking about doesn't even exist. So there's a lot of frustration like you're saying, a big disconnect and this is something that is probably going to keep playing

now, 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 that's probably a harsh statement, but it's being taken way more seriously now. - Yeah, so 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's 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, "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 for your dog, those are dog ticks. They do not transmit Lyme. It's specifically the long-later black-lated 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. - 'Cause there's deer ticks all over the woods.

- Sure, they're definitely are. I don't know if deer ticks will latch onto a dog. It's entirely possibly, well, since there's such a differentiation between dog ticks and deer ticks.

But I do know they dog ticks don't transmit Lyme. - Well, I think we should talk about my favorite thing from the ticks episode, and this is when I will lay on people. From time to time, as 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. - Yep, they can see that too. - Yeah, they can see that too. - Right.

They've since the CO2 of the mammal that's walking past. - So interesting. - And Chuck, one thing I read is that, somehow the Lyme infested ticks, because they're infected themselves.

Lyme resides in 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.

- 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 get somehow enables them to be better parasites.

- That's amazing. Interesting. - Yeah, that sounds familiar to me. Cover that or do I just know that, 'cause I'm wrong. - 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 hair wave as somebody passed by, and I remember one of our listeners made some art of that. We gotta find it.

- That's right, and from snapping their little fingers on a blade of grass to my dogs, but to my scrotum. - Mm-hmm. - It's quite a ride. - It's quite a ride.

- It's a wild ride.

- And then to Emily eventually,

blocking that thing out for me. - That's nice.

“- Kinda, 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. - It's a little bit about prevention,

and then a little bit about some very recent interesting wacky things going on in Congress about life disease as a bioweapon. - Okay. (upbeat music)

- In 2023, former Bachelor Star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. - The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.

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- Was this before he wrote his stories? I must have been.

“- Our new podcast series, the secret world of Rural Doll,”

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Listen to no grip on the I-Hart 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 to into Mother Nature, just stay in your

Sounds delicious.

I love the woods. You love the woods, right?

Yeah. I love watching the woods on television. Yeah, from your mid-century house. No, I do. I love the woods myself. Yeah, I'm just kidding. Get in the woods, but they recommend things like deed. I don't use that stuff.

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 where light colors too,

'cause 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 shower as soon as you can, and just inspect yourself, inspect your groin, your armpits, your scalp, part of the problem with Lyme disease,

though, is remember 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 let them just leave those.

And check your dogs, you know, check your dogs under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs, whatever that's called, their leg pits, check behind your ears, check under their collars, 'cause 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 is, but an Lyme infected adult tick will transmit Lyme to you too.

Yeah, very important distinction. Yeah. So now we move on to the U.S. Congress very recently about a month ago. And to July, I think. Yeah, there was a U.S. House rep named Chris Smith,

Republican 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 bio-weapon in the mid-20th century. I'm reading a lot about this in books and articles that we did research on Plum Island, and we in other insects too, not just ticks, of turning them into bio-weapons, and this thing passed.

And a lot of this comes from a book written by Chris Newbie, called Bitten, Colin, the secret history of Lyme disease, and biological weapons. And this book, like I think Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, said, like, this book really inspired me to take up the legislation.

But in the book, Newbie basically says the government at Fort Dietrich, Maryland,

and I'm Plum Island, New York before it was turned into an animal disease research center. We're doing, it was an insect disease research center, but right, I guess. They were looking into, well, they definitely were doing bio-warfare research there. Probably early 1950s, yeah. But in the Fort Dietrich, 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 Newbie 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,

in 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. Yes, 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 were two very different things. Yeah, I don't know what she's saying either, and I think she stopped 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 it's really close to this ground zero of where the tick epidemic began,

come out and say it, but that she lets the readers realize 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 that it was in, who was the mummy?”

It was in Uti, over 100 years ago. Over in the Alps. Well, true, but it also in the United States, I mean, it came around in the,

we first discovered it in 1970s, and 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 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

was constant, 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 Adam. 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 is 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 tell-tail 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 doesn't make a good biological weapon. No. And then, again, people who subscribed as conspiracy theory say, well, they can't all be winners, but maybe there 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 Chris Smith 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 anachronism. That, anachronism, not an anachronism. So what's it's in for? The 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 knockouts not one word unless he uses it as knockout. What that's what he's saying,”

I guess, because it's really the tick goes act. But it would create an additional $180 million

in federal funding for lime disease research. That's really needed right now. That's awesome. I didn't know you such an advocate that's good. He really has he hates lime disease like like a lot. I was about to say something, but I wish I could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy region in my brain. Oh, your analogies are great. What were you going to say? I want to know. We can beat it off. I was going to get political. I was going to say he hates ticks like he

hates. Okay. Can we leave that and believe it? Oh, no, 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 to like lime disease and bio weapon, there is a lot of recent articles written on it. Just because a member of Congress introduced this legislation. Yeah. A lot of people are all are saying is look, it makes sense like this conspiracy theory that people would go to that.

But on the same 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 Aion,

which is a great website by Mary Beth Fyfer, spells it like Michelle Fyfer 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

So like the EPA officially uses that as a factor in an indicator in determining the impact of climate

“change now. Right. And so the whole the whole basis of this idea is that because of warmer weather,”

ticks are being killed off in far fewer numbers from 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, lime disease is game to go with them. So the spread of lime disease is increasing as the spread of ticks is increasing too. And ticks have gotten totally out of hand in some areas. And that same aeon article, Mary Beth Feifra was talking

about how moose are dying in their thousands in like Wisconsin and the decoders because they're

being bled to death by a hundred thousand 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. No, I mean, do you think so?”

Yeah, totally. Like if 300,000 people a year are coming down with lime in the United States, they're going to start reintroducing wolves to combat it. If it has even a half of a chance. 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 a 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 the solution around of antibiotics and some wolves, and that'll cure what ails us. Yeah, advocate for yourself, still, people. Sure. Be it in the wolves. Be persistent. It's a 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 lime disease,”

go check out all of the articles there are to read. And again, go check out the A on article by Mary Beth Fife for it. 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. Who 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 nose bleed 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, it's 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 could 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, and we were the first group that he saw. Brief walk down stairs, 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 set up and telling you 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 and 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. Dick Clark's taken. That's right. Thank you for Rich Clark for recognizing that, too. Thanks for coming to the show, Rich, and bringing the family, and thank you, Matt,

for being such a cool dude. That was very nice of you. I am utterly unsurprised because our fans

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I'm Lori Seagull, and on my new podcast Mostly Human, I'll take you to some wild corners of the tech world. I'm about to go on a date with an AI companion and a real world cafe right here near a city. There's no playbook for what to do when an AI model who hallucinates a story about you. Mostly human is your playbook for how tech can work for you. Anyone can now be an entrepreneur, anyone can build an app, and it's very empowering.

Listen a mostly human on the I HeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. In 2023, Bachelor Star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. "You doctored this particular test twice in selling, correct?" I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.

Two more men who'd been through the same thing. "Ragillespie and I don't manage any." "My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is LoveTrap." "Lora, scoffs their police."

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the I HeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. "You know Rolldall. He thought I'd bully Wonka in the BFG, but does you know he was a spy?"

“In the new podcast, the secret world of Rolldall. I'll tell you that story, and much, much more.”

"What?" "You probably won't believe it either." "Was this before he wrote his stories? I'd must have been." "Okay, I don't think that's true." "I'm telling you. I think I was a spy."

“"Listen to the secret world of Rolldall. On the I HeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts."”

"This isn't I Heart Podcast." "Gear and Seed Human."