Episode 318: Tick Talk

Summary

Blocked and Reported, Episode 318: Tick Talk

August 10, 2026
Hosts: Katie Herzog & Jesse Singal

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Episode Overview

This episode of Blocked and Reported dives into two main stories: first, a deep historical look at Harry Hay, a foundational yet controversial figure in American gay history, and his curious association with the "two-spirit" concept and NAMBLA; and second, a critical, fact-filled examination of current paranoia and conspiracy theories circulating online about ticks, Lyme disease, and supposed bioengineered tick booms in the United States. The hosts explore internet hysteria, conspiracy logic, the actual rise of tick-borne diseases, and what ecological and public health realities underpin the tick panic.

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1. Catching Up and Setting the Stage

[00:10–10:00]

• After some comedic “long time, no pod” banter and vacation talk (including near-death by logging truck and a day at a mechanic), Katie and Jesse joke about gut feelings, intuition vs. reason, and neurotic Jewish anxieties.
• Katie: “If I listen to my gut, I would never leave the house because, like, nine times out of 10, my gut is saying, don't do this.” [01:40]
• The hosts riff on travel misadventures, dog antics (Moose and the tickle-dog treat incident), and the logic of ignoring anxiety to avoid living in fear.

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2. The Origins and Politics of "Two-Spirit"

[10:10–24:11]

How "Two-Spirit" Became a Thing

• Katie introduces a listener mail about the “two-spirit” concept and its supposed white gay originator, Harry Hay.
• Two-spirit is explained as a term popularized among Native/First Nations organizing in 1990, sometimes misrepresented as an ancient, universal Native gender category akin to nonbinary identities.
• Katie: “This idea that the two spirit is like the indigenous version of trans or non binary collapses this very diverse population into one thing, which is obviously ahistorical.” [21:44]

Harry Hay and Cultural Appropriation

• Hay’s infatuation with Native cultures is addressed—his vision of gay men as a quasi-mystical third category, not simply “straight with a twist.”
• Hosts explore the contemporary criticisms: that “two-spirit” is both historically shallow and shaped by white gay activists’ search for legitimacy or spiritual ancestry, with some pushback from Native communities.

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3. Harry Hay: Radical Fairies, Gay History, and Problematic Legacy

[16:00–33:43]

Harry Hay as Founder and Visionary

• Founded the Mattachine Society (1950s), a secret society for gay men, and later, the Radical Fairies, a countercultural movement in the 1970s featuring ritual, costume, and spirituality.
• From New York Times obit: “Plant the idea among American homosexuals that they formed an oppressed cultural minority of their own, like blacks, and to create a lasting organization…” [18:45; Jesse reading]

Hay and "Two-Spirit"

• While Hay didn’t coin "two-spirit," he and collaborator Will Roscoe were instrumental in shaping early representations of Native-inspired nonbinary/gay categories for white audiences.

The NAMBLA Connection

• Hay's unapologetic support for NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) is covered at length. He never renounced NAMBLA, marched with their sign, wrote materials for them, and argued some adult-teen relationships could be consensual, based in large part on his own “positive” sexual encounter at age 14 with a 25-year-old sailor.
• Quote from Hay’s biographer:
  “As a child, he explained, I molested an adult until I found out what I needed to know. ...Far from being in an experience of molestation, Harry always described it as the most beautiful gift that a 14 year old ever got from his first.” [25:11; read by Jesse]
• The hosts contextualize (not defend) this thinking historically—pointing to different eras, “rite of passage” narratives among gay men, and how social stigma and lack of peers used to push minors toward adult partners.
• Jesse: “The puritanical aspect is to say...every 14 and 15 year old, especially boys, is traumatized by sexual activity is just stupid because that's not how 14 and 15 year old boys are.” [29:38]

NAMBLA's Demise

• NAMBLA’s public role collapsed post-90s, especially after being linked to real abuse cases. Even Hay, late in life, told the group they needed “to vanish.” [34:00]

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4. TikTok (TICK talk): Tick Panics, Online Paranoia, and Reality

[36:41–65:22]

Surge in Ticks and Online Hysteria

[36:41–41:38]

• Katie: “It is tick season America. Although really it seems like these days every season is tick season.” [36:41]
• Reports of tick numbers exploding, both online and IRL, especially in the Southeast. Tweets and posts circulate conspiracy theories:
  • “When will Bill Gates be held accountable? ... The ticks that are biting us…” [39:47; reading]
• Memes claim Bill Gates, the CIA, or Big Pharma are releasing ticks to drive Lyme disease and then profit off the cure.

Bill Gates, Pfizer, and Boxes of Ticks

[41:38–55:26]

• Conspiracy theories link recent uptick in ticks to government and corporate actors, namely Bill Gates, using “bioengineered ticks.”
• Joe Rogan and other influencers amplify rumors of “boxes of ticks” being deliberately released on farms, leading to millions of video views.
• Fact-check: No farmers or health officials could confirm boxes full of ticks.
  • Actual rare "tick boxes" exist only as bait stations to control rodents, not as sources of loose ticks. [57:42]
• Pfizer enters the narrative after announcing a (real) promising Lyme disease vaccine—immediately followed by accusations that “pharma created the crisis to sell the cure.”

Notable Quote:

• Jesse: “Bill Gates has over $100 billion. The idea that he's so evil that he's like, I don't have enough billions of dollars. What I'm going to do is release ticks everywhere and then sell the treatment for—I just, I don’t believe this, Katie.” [40:33]

Are There Real Reasons for Tick Increases?

[58:38–65:03]

• The actual science:
  • Climate change (warmer winters, fewer freeze days), suburbanization (more habitats for deer/mice), predator collapse (fewer foxes/coyotes), and surging acorn crops (food for mice) all contribute to more mice and deer ⇒ more ticks.
  • Lyme—not officially recognized until 1975, and cases have multiplied (from 500 reported in 1982, to nearly 90,000 in 2023).
  • Efforts to control ticks: promethrin-treated clothing, ecological interventions, but culling wildlife is unpopular.
• Vaccine development is real and promising, but online, this just triggers more “problem-reaction-solution” conspiracy content.

Notable Quote:
Katie: “This is a man made crisis, just not the way that conspiracy theorists think.” [64:55]

The Bioweapon Myth (The Real History)

• U.S. government did experiment with insects as weapons:
  • Operation Big Itch (flea bombs), Big Buzz (mosquito drops), and radiotagged ticks in the '60s to track movement—not to infect people. [49:16–50:07]
• Speculation about secret labs (Plum Island near Lyme, CT), books and documentaries, but zero credible evidence for bioengineered tick epidemics.

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5. Notable Quotes and Moments

• Jesse on tick bites:
  “I've had two ticks in my life and it was not a pleasant experience.” [37:05]
• Katie’s Lyme story:
  “I actually got Lyme disease a few years ago in January. I took a course of antibiotics and I was fine.” [41:38]
• Katie on chronic Lyme skepticism:
  “It just seems like this would be karmic payback for all the times I said TikTok autist and people who claim to have multiple personalities are faking it.” [41:59]
• Jesse on conspiracy thinking:
  “People just can’t take good news.” [57:00]
• Katie’s main takeaway:
  “Ticks and tick borne illnesses are increasing because of this combination of warmer weather, abundant populations of deer and mice... habitat fragmentation, and probably also just more people doing stuff outside.” [64:55]

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[Timestamps for Key Segments]

• [12:33] – What is two-spirit? History and misconceptions
• [24:12] – Hay’s relationship to NAMBLA and his “child molestation speech”
• [36:41] – The great American tick panic, conspiracy memes
• [49:16] – U.S. bioweapon tick operations explained
• [58:32] – Explaining what really causes tick booms
• [61:26] – Can we control the tick crisis? Public health and ecological realities
• [62:54] – Role of climate change in tick trends

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Tone & Style Recap

The episode is driven by the hosts’ signature blend of research, banter, and irreverent humor—even during grim subject matter, including joking about their own athletic abilities, making sex jokes, and deflating both internet outrage and paranoia with deadpan wit (“You just talked over me. Did I mansplay?” [00:29]).

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Summary Takeaways

• “Two-spirit” is a modern term—rooted in both Native organizing and white gay activism—with a contested history and mixed acceptance even within Native communities.
• Harry Hay was both an American gay rights pioneer and a defender of positions and people (notably NAMBLA) now widely seen as reprehensible.
• Conspiracies about ticks, Lyme, and shadowy actors like Bill Gates or Pfizer are thriving online—not because of real evidence, but through viral rumor and “grain of truth” distortions from Cold War legacy and pharma distrust.
• The real rise in ticks and tick-borne disease is a result of ecological changes, not deliberate malfeasance.
• A Lyme vaccine is on the horizon—though online discourse ensures the panic will remain.

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For full resources, links, and the tick-bait box video, see show notes at Blocked and Reported.

Transcript

[A]

Jesse. Long time no pod. Except for the primo episode that we just did.

[B]

Long time, no pod. It's been. It's been a summer.

[A]

It has been. How was your. How was your vacation? Was it a vacation? Did you finish the book?

[B]

Nope. No, still working.

[A]

Well, mine was good. Thanks for.

[B]

It's fine. I can't complain about, like, not. Sorry, do we vlog or did I just talk over me?

[A]

You just talked over me.

[B]

Did I mansplay.

[A]

All right, let's go back to you.

[B]

I was gonna say something, but you go ahead.

[A]

Okay. No, mine was good. Thanks for asking.

[B]

Okay, let's both say what we're gonna say at the count of three. One, two.

[A]

Mine was good. Thanks for asking.

[B]

I didn't. Okay. What. Okay, so. Yeah. What did you. We've talked a little bit about your car breaking down and you're doing a live. That I muscled in on. But what else did you do during your vacation?

[A]

Yeah, so I did. That happened. Janet and I went camping, but my family came out. That was nice. Good to see them. Then Janet and I went. We. We took a couple trips in the van down to the coast. On the second trip, actually. Tell me what you think about this. We decided to take the van down to. Down to the river.

[B]

I'm a male of a certain age. I can't not say. Down by the river.

[A]

There was a river. Yes, we.

[B]

Did you take your van down. Did you live in a van down by the river?

[A]

No, we. We were upstream.

[B]

Do you know what I'm. Do you know what I remember saying?

[A]

It's a Chris Farley thing, I believe.

[B]

Of course, everything's.

[A]

Which I've never actually seen, but anyway, so we were taking the. Down Highway 101 to go camping for a couple days, and I didn't want to take this trip. I just had like a feeling. I just didn't want to do it. But I try not to listen to my.

[B]

To your feelings?

[A]

Yeah, I try not to listen to my gut, my. My instinct.

[B]

I try not to have feelings. Yeah, But.

[A]

But in this case, like, I. My instinct was like, don't go. Something bad is going to happen. And I just. I was like, don't listen to this. And the reason is because if I listen to my gut, I would never leave the house because, like, nine times out of 10, my gut is saying, don't do this.

[B]

Don't, don't.

[A]

Just don't. But I did. So I try.

[B]

I always think I feel the same way, and you need to fight it. If you're like A neurotic Jewish guy. Like, we both are. You need to fight it.

[A]

Exactly, exactly. So I'm like very practiced at not listening to my gut. And then we get. We're on Highway 101. I was driving the van and a logging truck came screaming down the other side. Its load had disengaged. Smoke coming off of. Off of the truck. We were. Came very close to being killed.

[B]

Did you say it's load disengaged?

[A]

Yeah, a bunch of logs. Like, like extremely dangerous situation. It's not funny. It was. It was terrifying. Like a logging truck.

[B]

I find it funny.

[A]

It wasn't funny like coming at us with the, with the.

[B]

You almost died. We.

[A]

It was okay. We. It didn't hit us. I was actually very calm and collected and just swerved out of the way. But I called 911. It was like that bad. The highway was closed. It was really. It was genuinely scary.

[B]

So you saw the law, the load being disengaged. Like the logs rolling.

[A]

Yes. We get down. So. But we kept going. Was like, should we turn around?

[B]

Like.

[A]

And at that point, both of us, like, now we both have bad feelings about this trip, but let's just keep going. Went down, camped at a lavender farm, Had a lovely night. And then the next day we got up and we were. We were driving up to this hike and. And we were like up halfway up a mountain and the van started making this horrific squealing sound. Like the sound like, I've never heard you be tickled. But it was probably like that, like a very high pitched squeal.

[B]

You've never heard me. That's not true. You've heard me get tickled a lot. You don't.

[A]

Okay, I did hear. Okay, I did hear once.

[B]

When you came to New York, basically all that happened was you watched people tickle me. I don't like. We don't need to be quiet about this.

[A]

No, that didn't happen. That didn't happen. But when you were out at my house in last fall, I did do this thing with you that I like. I want to take this trip to. To nursing homes. You put someone down and then you put dog treats. Like you're like laying on the couch. You remember this? Laying on the couch. And I put dog treats like behind your ears and like behind your head. And then let Moose.

[B]

Oh, and Moose like licked my head.

[A]

You did do a little scream.

[B]

Went to town on me that I thought Moose was going to dislodge his load for a minute.

[A]

Stop. And I, I almost died. And. And so anyway, so we're like half.

[B]

You just side two thirds of the way through her own story. And then.

[A]

So we're. So we're halfway up a. We're halfway up a mountain. Not moose. Van starts making squealing SOUND Hike is over. We have to like coast down, down the mountain to get to the only mechanic in town. And we ended up spending the full day, like waiting outside this garage. So a bad trip. We ended up going home after the van was fixed, you know, several hundred dollars later. And I just thought like, I should have listened to my gut. But again, like, I don't want to do that. So what, what do you think about this? Like, as a rational person? There's no. Like I don't have any insight into the future. I don't really believe in premonitions. So what do you do? Like if you have an over overwhelming feeling of dread, do you listen to it or are you like no science man, go forth and whatever. Go get that slice of pizza. You're not going to get struck by lightning because you know rationally that you don't actually have insight into the future.

[B]

There's like my. I'm always teetering on the brink of severe mental illness anyway. If I started listening to the part of my brain that's like, don't do that. I would never do anything. I would just play video, right? Play video games all day. I'd probably, ironically, probably live a happier, more balanced life if I just stayed in and played video games rather than engage in the world. But no, but because you yourself said you get those feelings all the time and what usually happens when you go out.

[A]

It's horrible.

[B]

Well, yeah, it's horrible, but nothing bad happens. There are. You'll occasionally hear stories of like someone who gets a migraine right before going to the airport and their plane crashes. But the whole point is everyone's always getting migraines and having premonitions about everything and they're hopefully usually wrong.

[A]

What are premonitions? Do you know?

[B]

A premonition?

[A]

What are feelings? Yeah. Like, what is that? What is the source of that?

[B]

Have you ever seen the documentary series Final Destination?

[A]

No.

[B]

Uh, it's these documentaries about people I know. It's not a documentary. Death stalking death stalks people and finds ways to get them. She gets us all eventually. I'd like to think of her as a woman.

[A]

Okay. Anyway, the rest of my trip was. Or the rest of my vacation was fine. I got a colonoscopy. Recreational. No reason for it. Um, which I. If anybody ever wants to lose weight. Quick. Highly recommend. Weight just pours out of you.

[B]

The single. The single best sports media story of the summer involved a colonoscopy. So there's some nice synergy here. I like that.

[A]

Wait, what is this? I thought the single best sports story of the summer was Sophie Cunningham knowing what a woman was.

[B]

No. Sports media, you know? Yeah.

[A]

No. What's the story?

[B]

Do you know Bill Simmons?

[A]

I know who he is. He's like a sports podcast guy.

[B]

Yeah, he's our team, the Boston Celtics. There was this crazy trade involving Jaylen Brown, and it's like the kind of trade. So Jaylen's out, Jalen's out, and it's a kind of Jaylen Brown. Why is he out?

[A]

Yeah, I thought he was good because

[B]

of the second apron, which is effectively a hard cap. Do you want to go into this more?

[A]

No.

[B]

So it's the kind of trade where given Bill Simmons reputation, like, there were probably a million people who. The first thing they did was go to Bill Simmons Twitter feed to watch him freak out at what appeared to be us giving away our second best player for, like, a pile of beans or magic beans. Now, the problem was, at the moment Jaylen Brown was traded, Bill was under general anesthesia for his colonoscopy. Oh. So I don't know if it's general, but he was.

[A]

I mean, I don't know what's going on with his colonoscopy, but it does take very long.

[B]

But the point is, he. He woke up and he's in this fuzzy state, and his wife is like, jaylen Brown was traded to the Sixers. And as he tells it, he originally, his first thought is, I must have died because it made so little sense. And this in. In the. My NBA podcasting world, this became a whole thing. And I think some people even printed shirts saying, Jaylen Brown was traded during Bill Simmons colonoscopy because it was such a good.

[A]

Interesting. Okay, let's go forward. All right, so, Jesse, we have a podcast today. Oh, wait. Shit. Jesse, there's one more thing I need to tell you before we get into it. I put this. There's a link in our notes there to something I just tweeted yesterday. Click that link.

[B]

I saw. I saw this. It's crazy. You were. So you were just watching tv?

[A]

Yes, Last night. I like, like, long day at work as usual. Sit down to relax for a few minutes before my woman brings me my steak and martini. Turn on the local news, and there on my local news is our fucking furry friend tracing wood Grains on Seattle Local news.

[B]

Washington allow some grads to skip bar exam requirement. Not. Not him. It's weird to see. I mean, I've seen him in a suit before, but I just always associate him with furrydom. But he looks very, like, diligent and serious.

[A]

Yeah. And the. The. The even stranger thing was that this wasn't a segment. So they didn't explain it at all. It was like, apparently. So Trace moved out to. To Seattle. And for people who are newer to the show, Trace is our. He was our first Jessica the 80s baby. He has since gone to law school, graduated. He moved to Seattle and he. He recently went to take the bar. Was some technical up.

[B]

I saw this. Crazy.

[A]

Yeah. And so they like canceled the bar. And Trace was talking about this on Twitter. In the local news. Someone from the local news must have seen his tweets and interviewed him. They did a segment about it. I guess what I saw, what they had on the news last night was not a segment. It was just like that image, just like in the middle, like between two segments with no explanation. So I assume. Now what happened is that they tried to interview him and he just yipped.

[B]

That's probably what it was. Yiffing or yipping, which is yip.

[A]

I said yip. I think yipping is more disgusting, but yeah. So Trace is here and he didn't get to sit for the bar. And he was on my tv. Very strange. Not in a fursuit. It's very strange to see a furry out of the fur suit. He was wearing an actual suit, but he seemed naked.

[B]

What are we talking about today?

[A]

Katie, Jesse, I've got two stories for you today. One from the past and one very much happening in the present. So in the second half of the show, we're going to be doing a little TikTok. And I am not talking about the brain melting app. I am talking about the blood sucking insect. Literal tics. They are having a moment online and on our bodies. But before we get to that, I

[B]

felt there was a. You missed such an obvious joke.

[A]

What?

[B]

Continue.

[A]

No, no, no. What was the joke?

[B]

It's like TikTok. Of course. I don't mean the blood sucking force that threatens our health. The Chinese app.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I mean the insects.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Do you get it?

[A]

I got it.

[B]

Do you get it? Okay, continue.

[A]

Okay, before we get to that, I fell down a pretty dark rabbit hole a few weeks ago, and I want to take you into the rabbit hole with me. So this started.

[B]

Wait, I'm gonna put on my rabbit fursuit. Okay. Yeah, let's go.

[A]

So this started back in June when we got an email from a listener. It read, a number of years ago I read this really interesting article about the origin of the term two spirit. Your recent episode about Marsha P. Johnson reminded me about it. The central figure is an affluent gay white American man named Harry Hay. Jesse, do you recognize that name?

[B]

No. It's kind of funny because like Harry.

[A]

Hey, you know, hey, there's a. One of my favorite Norwegian murder novelists. The main character and his, his detective is named Harry Hole.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

I think it's pronounced Harry Hull maybe, but it looks like Harry Hole.

[B]

I actually just. In 2012 there's a, there's a sprinter named Tyson Gay, but some website had a ban on the word gay, so he was referred to as Tyson homosexual. And then Donald Trump implemented that policy formally the U.S. government.

[A]

Okay, so the reason that this email got my attention was because Harry Hayden came up in the first part of our Stonewall Riots two part episode. I mentioned him as an early figure in the gay liberation movement. It wasn't called at the time. Not even, not even gay liberation movement. Gay wasn't the term at the time. The term more commonly used was homophile. And Harry Hay was the founder of the Mattachine society in the 1950s which was basically a secret society for gay men. That's pretty much all I knew about Harry Hay. So it was then a surprise to get this email claiming that he had something to do with the invention of the two spirit concept. So Jesse, remind people what two spirit.

[B]

It's this thing that mostly white people use to talk about how indigenous people have this category of two spirit that is like our non binary. It's part of a ongoing and sometimes very funny effort to pretend indigenous cultures think about gender in the same way we do or that they were like woker than we are when the truth is often interesting in its own right, but much more complicated than that.

[A]

Yeah, and after I got that email from a listener, I also a couple days later got an email from Stuart Regis. Jesse, can you remind people who he is?

[B]

Oh, see that he was the UW University of Washington professor who got in trouble for being offensive. Basically.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, basically. So he wrote. Years ago he wrote a defense. He's on the computer science. Did you say computer science?

[B]

I don't know. It's so hot here. I didn't mention it. But it's so hot here.

[A]

So years ago, he's come up on the show a bunch of times. Years ago he wrote in defense of James, Damore and Colette. Then the computer science department disavowed the piece. Students and faculty demanded he be fired. He wasn't fired. He was demoted. He was placed on probation for a year. Then he later did this like shitposty land acknowledgment on a syllabus basically saying natives don't own the land. He was again investigated. He sued with fire and won. And so Stuart, friend of the show, he emailed me and said that he also listened to our Stonewall series. And then he said, actually, will you read this, this excerpt from his email?

[B]

Jesse, Personally, I'm more impressed with Harry Hay. He was openly gay as an undergrad at Stanford. In 1931, we invited him to speak at a gay and lesbian Aw week invite. While I was there, he told us funny stories about being a communist in Hollywood in those years and dating Will Gear.

[A]

So that's the guy who played Grandpa on the Waltons. And then Stuart said this.

[B]

Jesse, Wait, this guy was an undergrad in 1931? And then Regis invited him to. He must have been old. Here's my Harry Hay story. He had a group of us gathered a circle, just gay men. His theory is that. Oh, Regis is gay.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. His theory is. I don't see sexual orientation. His theory. I feel it. His theory is that gay men are like cuckoo birds who lay their eggs at other birds nests. When they grow up, they go seeking their own kind. He believed there was something special about gay men. He said, quote, raise your hand if they told you that you throw a ball like a girl when you were young and, quote, most hands went up. He said, they told me that as well. So I went and asked the girls if I throw a ball like them. They said, no, you throw a ball like a. They understood there was a third option.

[A]

Jesse, did anybody tell you you throw like a girl?

[B]

No. I was. I have, like, pretty. We don't need to get into my Little league achievements, but I wasn't. I'm consistently, surprisingly athletic. Well, I wouldn't say surprisingly athletic, but. Well, there was one year when either you got to play in the majors or the minors in fifth grade. And I got to play in the minors, which was a defeat. But then I hit.700 against kids who were smaller than me, and that was the peak of my athletic achievements.

[A]

That's the thing. You're just very large.

[B]

I know, but it doesn't. It's funny how little it translates to size or ability, but as I said. Wait, have we already posted the episode about the kettlebells yeah.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I'm a fitness influencer now, so ask me soon. Anyway, I throw incredibly well. That's the point. I'm a really good athlete.

[A]

Anyway, this is a really important part of Harry Hayes legacy. He thought that there was something different, something special about gay men. And Stort told me that in addition to founding the Mattachine Society, Harry was also one of the founders of the Radical Fairy. So, Jesse, are you familiar with the Radical Fairies?

[B]

I'm familiar with fairies, but not the Radical Brethren, the Radical Sisters.

[A]

The Heterodox fairies.

[B]

That could be. Stewart's a little bit of a heterodox. I mean, he's not. I wouldn't use that.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah, he is. Anyway, so the Radical Fairies, this is a group founded in the late 70s by Harry Hay. It still exists today all over the world. It's. I'm sure it's more gender inclusive than it was in the beginning. It was all men there. The article that the listener sent me that started me on this historical journey, it was published on a blog called Stone age herbalist in 2020. Stone Age herbalist is a synonym, pseudonymous, synonymous blogger and anthropologist who is a part of the kind of dissident, right, Bronze Age pervert scene. And in his post he quotes one of Harry Hayes biographers, Stuart Timmons, who described the first Radical fairy gathering as 200 men doing workshops on, quote, such varied subjects as massage, nutrition, local botany, healing energy, the politics of gay and spirit meant English, country dancing and Otto fellatio.

[B]

I have a.

[A]

Now you're interested.

[B]

I was at a grad school reunion and a guy we hadn't seen in a while informed us that there was a brief period he could do that.

[A]

Was he a yogi there that.

[B]

There's more anatomical detail than I'm comfortable going into here. But it was not his load. I don't think his load dislodged.

[A]

We're gonna have to put a fucking trigger warning on this episode. This is a history episode.

[B]

We're trying to do basically a Ken Burns thing here. And we keep getting sidetracked.

[A]

You keep sidetracking us. Okay, back to the quote. Those assembled took part in spontane rituals, providing invocations to spirits and performing blessings and chants, with most participants discarding the majority of their clothes, instead wearing feathers, beads and bells and decorating themselves in rainbow makeup. Many reported feeling a change of consciousness during the event, which one person described as a four day acid trip without the acid. So Harry Hay was radical. He was also a fairy. And as Stuart Regis said he thought that gay men were fundamentally different from straight people in some spiritual way. He was not an assimilation. He didn't think gay people were just, you know, straight with a twist. He was also very into history, particularly Native American history. He had this fascination with Native American stuff, and he had this idea that there was this third option, but besides men and women. He was very into that. That's where gay men fit. And so he would have these radical fairy gatherings in the woods or in the desert. They would get naked, do rituals and wear beads and feathers. It's all quite problematic by today's standards. I do wonder how they've dealt with the Great Awokening. And if there are any radical fairies out there, get at me. Anyway, all of this is just the tip of the Harry Hay iceberg. He's a guy who is considered by some to be the single most important finger figure in gay American history. So Jesse read this passage from his New York Times obit. He died in 2002.

[B]

Although little known in the broader national culture, over the years, Mr. Hayes contribution was to do what no one else had done before, plant the idea among American homosexuals that they formed an oppressed cultural minority of their own, like blacks, and to create a lasting organization in which homosexuals could come together to socialize and to pursue what was at the beginning the very radical concept of homosexual rights. So he's like a heroic figure.

[A]

Yes, but also, as you will hear, extremely problematic. Not because he was culturally appropriating Native American shit, but for other, darker reasons. We'll get to that shortly.

[B]

Wait, so did he coin two spirit?

[A]

No. So the term two spirit was coined in 1990 at the third annual Inter Tribal Native American First Nations Gay and Lesbian Conference. This was outside the Winnipeg, Canada. He wasn't there. Some accounts credit an elder named Albert, Albert McLeod, as proposing the term at the gathering. Other accounts credit an Anishinaabe woman named Mira Laramie. The story is that Mira said it came to her in a dream from her elders or from her ancestors and was meant to describe someone who was holding, you know, both the masculine and the feminine spirit. And there's a video that's hosted on the City of Winnipeg's YouTube channel of Mira Laramie talking about this dream. There's a break in the video that says this. I put a screenshot in our notes there.

[B]

Jesse read this to protect the dream Mira had of two spirit. Only a portion of it was shared in this recording.

[A]

It must have been a spicy dream.

[B]

So maybe they're just being nice. And it was just like one of the. Nothing makes sense. So then I was in a library, except the books were hammers. And I go to leave the library and they're like, okay, wrap it up, Mira.

[A]

So there had already been a term used to describe this concept before. Two spirit. But it was offensive. So the term was beer dache. Have you heard this?

[B]

Beer dash.

[A]

B E R D A, C H E. I could be mispronouncing this.

[B]

I feel like I've seen it. I wouldn't have known how. I wouldn't have known how to pronounce it.

[A]

It's basically a slang French term for a bottom. Not an ass, like a bottom. Like top and bottom. Not pants either. A receiver. You get what I'm saying?

[B]

Someone whose load is dislodged.

[A]

You're going to make a fucking. Yeah. Stop. So they're trying to. To update that word at the conference because that term was amazing. A slur. And they. And they came up with two spirit.

[B]

But I hadn't. Haven't this come up on the show before? The theory being that two spirit was like invented by a white woke anthropologist or something?

[A]

Yeah, I think I told you that a couple years ago. Whoops. Got that one wrong.

[B]

What else have you lied to me about?

[A]

Nothing. That was it. That's. This is the one correction I've ever had to do. So I was under the impression that the term two spirit was coined by a white gay historian named Will Roscoe. Not true. It was at this first name. It was these First Nations Canadians. Will Roscoe and Harry Hay were part of the movement. Harry was Will's friend and collaborator. They were both very into native spirituality and Roscoe was an Advisor to that 1990 Winnipeg conference where the term came out. But they didn't invent the concept like that term Beer dash. This allegedly preceded them by hundreds of years. Early Europeans reportedly use it to describe Native Americans who didn't fit traditional roles. You'll notice I'm using terms like allegedly and reportedly here because there's some debate about how widespread this was. Harry Hay himself visited tribes looking for evidence that this concept existed and supposedly found it. Although again, lots of debate about whether or not this was a concept that existed organically within these tribes or if he basically superimposed his own values on them because he wanted it to be true. He wanted there to be this. This like. Like it affirmed his perspective that. That gay men were something else. Right. Gay men were special, were spiritual. Just like there's a reason they didn't fit into the like hard binary. Right. I don't know what the truth is here, but regardless, decades later, this term has really spread. And in the, in our show notes, I'll link to a piece by a couple of skeptics. One is Andrew Doyle. One is a Native American woman named Marionette Pember. She says that the two spirit meme has, quote, morphed into a cocktail of historical revisionism, wishful thinking, good intentions, and a soup song of white entitled appropriation. And what's interesting to me about this is that today there's some pushback within Native and First Nation circles against the whole concept of two spirit because, you know, there are thousands of tribes and first nations groups all with different theologies and philosophies and traditions and ways of being. And this idea that the two spirit is like the indigenous version of trans or non binary collapses this very diverse population into one thing, which is obviously ahistorical. So that's one criticism. And then the other is that even if the term wasn't coined by two white guys, the concept was shaped by these non natives who were trying to prove their own point, which was that gay people were sacred. And so. And so this is seen as sort of co opting Native American cultural additions to make gay men seem special.

[B]

Okay, so it sounds like on the whole there's like, there's elements of this that point to actual Native traditions, but it's gotten perhaps very flattened and oversimplified and co opted because. Yeah, which makes sense to me because like the people who, who mention two spirit, it often seems like they're just trying to signal. They don't. It seems like a pretty superficial way of like interacting with like complex different cultural traditions.

[A]

Yes. And now I want to skip forward to the point where Harry. Hey. Becomes truly problematic. I'm not talking about feather headdresses. I'm talking about namblo.

[B]

Oh God, yeah. North American Man Boy Love association.

[A]

Yes, at NAMBLA. So starting in the late 70s and continuing until his death, Harry Hay was an unapologetic supporter of nambla. This is the organization that advocates for legalizing sexual relationships between adult men and underage boys. They want to do away with age of consent laws.

[B]

I'm against that.

[A]

Glad to have that on the record.

[B]

But was, was Hay himself like actually into that stuff? Was he a pedophile?

[A]

No, he wasn't. So that's an interesting, interesting part of this. There's no record of Harry Hay himself having relationships with boys when he was an adult, but he had at one point been A boy himself. And as a boy he had sex with grown men. So his first sexual experience was with a man. Harry Hay was 14. The man was 25. He was a sailor named Matt. So Jesse, read this quote. This is from Stuart Timmons biography, the Trouble with Harry Hay, founder of the modern gay movement.

[B]

Sorry, but who's Stuart Timmons?

[A]

His biographer.

[B]

When in later years he told this favorite coming out story, he referred to it ironically as his child molestation speech to make the point of how sharply gay life differs from heterosexual norms. As a child, he explained, I molested an adult until I found out what I needed to know. This is very Milo Yiannopoulos. He recalled that Matt's promise of a new world and a future served as a life raft during the isolated period of high school. Far from being an inexperience of molestation, Harry always described it as the most beautiful gift that a 14 year old ever got from his first.

[A]

Yeah, so this would have been mid-20s. So we're talking 100 years ago. And it would be easy to sort of write this off as, you know, like different times, different norms. But I think that would be disingenuous because there are plenty of men today who were not born in 1912 who will tell you that their first relationships were with older men. And they are not scarred by those relationships. They do not feel abuse. You just mentioned Milo Yiannopoulos. Do you want to expand on that? Do you remember what he did?

[B]

Yeah, the right wing provocateur who lost his funding basically. And so he said incredibly offensive things about everything. What got him in trouble was basically saying that there are situations where like gay teenagers have sex with older gay men. And it has been this sort of rite of passage thing. And people, as I've said before, on the list of offensive things he said, this does not rate very highly because like I think things are different now. But I think, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, you're significantly gayer than I am. But I think part of the point was like if you were a gay 14 year old at the age when like some people start fooling around with other people, you're not going to find like other gay people your age because they're equally similarly afraid to come out and that might direct you toward adults, which definitely opens up the possibility of exploitation, is not good and is illegal, but you can, I don't think you need to endorse that to understand A, why that might happen and B, why not every person would feel traumatized by it.

[A]

Right?

[B]

It's also like, sorry, it's, it's so different for men. If I had been 14 and a 25 year old had had any interest in me, which would be unusual because when I was 25, 25 year olds didn't have interest in me, I would promise you I would not have been traumatized by it. It's just, it is this part of this is like a inability to maybe accept some sex differences stuff.

[A]

You don't think he would have been traumatized? Let's say it was like a. What if it was a teacher, hot teacher in your middle school? The quirky art teacher. She's blind, but she likes the way you laugh.

[B]

So she's like, jesse, do you want to get some extra help with your pottery project after school? Yeah, I slip into something a little more comfortable.

[A]

A smock.

[B]

I would have been. If someone, a boy caught in this situation who slept with a 25 year old teacher, the much more likely outcome, I think is they would have been traumatized by the resultant circus when it came out.

[A]

Right.

[B]

For, for most, yeah. And again.

[A]

But also you would have, you would have told all of your friends, you

[B]

would have told everyone. You would have caused the circus and

[A]

then really regretted it.

[B]

To this day, whenever I literally do the thing from the I just had sex video, to this day, whenever I have sex, I immediately call all my friends to tell them. I need them to know.

[A]

As if you do you know what you would do? You would have in your, in your Twitter bio, you would have like a little cherry and then like a popping emoji. And you would have. And then it would have been like

[B]

1997, like AOL instant message profile.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Milo got canceled for saying that these man boy relationships could be perfectly consensual. And he was talking about his own experience. He later tried to take it back and say, oh, wait, I was molested. But at the time that he said this, he very clearly did not feel like he was a victim. This is the argument that NAMBLA and Harry Hay were making that some of these relationships could be consensual. I'm not endorsing this view. I think any grown man who has sex with a child is a creep. Don't have sex with kids. I don't hear how cute they are. I don't care if they have cute little butts. But I do think there are plenty of examples, particularly in the gay community, where the victim does not feel like a victim. And I suspect, like you said, this was even more true when there were Fewer gay people out, fewer gay people around. So like if you were a teenage boy today, you can find other teenage boys to date. Most likely. Even if you live in small town America, you can get online. There are ways to meet boys your own age. Gay boys. But in 1920 or even 1970 or even 1990, not some even 2000, not so much. Again, not defending it. But I'm trying to contextualize this and explain. We're Harry Hay.

[B]

People are going to say you're defending it.

[A]

I'm not defending. I'm not defending it. You're defending it. So you're defending it.

[B]

I'm not defending it. Okay, again, it's just like there's a level of. Okay, I want to be clear. Yeah, there's a level of puritanism. Not with saying, you know, if you're 25 and you're fucking a 15 year old, you should probably go to jail or face jail. I agree with that completely. The puritanical aspect is to say, and the reason someone like that should face jail time is because of the possibility of exploitation. But to say that every 14 and 15 year old, especially boys, is traumatized by sexual activity is just stupid because that's not how 14 and 15 year old boys are. They could be traumatized, they could be raped. It's a very terrible vulnerable position to be in and it speaks to the horrible situation for like young gays back in the day and still in some places. But yeah, I think we can be adults about this.

[A]

Anyway, Harry Hay. There's no evidence he moles. He molested boys. Other NAMBLA members did molest boys. I want to be really clear about this. This was not all men in consenting, you know, post pubescent. Like the NAMBLA's official position has always been about these so called consensual relationships between men and post pubescent teenage boys. That's the official position. And yet multiple NAMBLA members have been convicted.

[B]

So you would say they're a Febophile, not pedophiles. This is a point you would make back when you worked at the Stranger.

[A]

Yes, and also because it's true, it's accurate.

[B]

A lot of people on Blue sky at the peak of some of the madness, people would sometimes post headlines you wrote as though they said anything about me.

[A]

I hate it when people do, like when you do something stupid, people will tag me in tweets about it. In this case, you should not have been getting credit for my absolutely reasonable and correct argument.

[B]

You're brave defense of Jeffrey Epstein of Jeffrey Epstein.

[A]

Okay, back to the point. Multiple NAMBLA members have been connect. Convicted of abusing prepubescent children.

[B]

No.

[A]

And there are some really horrific cases. I think Harry Hay was probably just a very free thinker, but some NAMBLA members are genuine monsters who rape children. So it's hard to justify his support of this group, a group that would have people like that in his ranks.

[B]

But how deep did the support run? What was like the actual relationship?

[A]

He was an extremely public supporter. So he spoke at NAMBLA conferences, he wrote a promotional blurb for a NAMBLA published book. And in 1986, when lesbian activists succeeded in getting NAMBLA banned from marching in the LA Pride parade, he marched anyway, wearing a sandwich board that said NAMBLA walks with me. Oh God, I have that T shirt, actually. And then in 1994, on the 25th anniversary of Stonewall, there was a march in New York. NAMBLA was again barred from participating. He boycotted the Martian protest. I think for him, even beside the. Besides the fact that he'd enjoyed his own man boy love as a kid, this was intellectually consistent for him. Right. Like again, he did not think that gay people were straights with a twist. He thought gay people, it was this totally separate thing, a third gender, if you will, not meant to fit into normal society. And as gay men, different norms.

[B]

Gotcha. Did he ever like, renounce the group?

[A]

He did not. And this has come back to bite some allies in the ass. So like in 2009, Fox News wanted to discredit an Obama Department of Education official named Kevin Jennings. They resurfaced the fact that Jennings had once publicly praised Hay to discredit him. They ran a whole segment on it. So it became dangerous to appear to sympathize with Harry Hay for obvious reasons. And you know one interesting fact about this. So he had been. He had been kicked out of the Mattachine Society and the Communist party in the 1950s.

[B]

The.

[A]

The Mattachines. He was kicked out because he was a commie. The commies. He was kicked out because he was a. Because he was gay. And then. Or he actually self exiled. But anyway, so he had been disavowed by these groups that he'd been a member of. And then when he got to nambla, he was obviously a liability to the modern gay rights movement. But the one group that always stuck by him was nambla. And when he died, nambla's own newsletter put him on its cover as tribute.

[B]

Huh.

[A]

They were the real friends. They were loyal.

[B]

Is NAMBLA still around? I Don't want to Google it?

[A]

Kind of not. I mean, they still have a website. It's a very GeoCities website. It was most recently updated in 2024. And it's. It's kind of funny. Like in the FAQ, they say they are fighting ageism.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not sure you should use the same term that is used to describe firing 6 year olds as you used to describe fucking 14 year olds. There's also on the website, there's a cartoon called Boy Moment, which is just as creepy as you would expect. The cartoonist is in prison, probably for tax fraud. So the website is periodically updated, but it's really a shell of itself and has been for a long time. So the organization started collapsing in the 90s. But the real death blow came in 1997 when two men connected to Nambla murdered a 10 year old in Massachusetts. The boy's parents sued the organization and they alleged that its own materials contributed to the crime. The suit was eventually dropped, but the fallout effectively ended namla's ability to operate in public. And even Harry hay, like in 1996, he himself told a NAMBLA conference that the group needed to learn to vanish. That's in quotes. Because they couldn't operate in public any longer. So it's. It's kind of full circle for Harry Hay. Right? He started his career as a gay activist in a secret society and he ended it in one, two.

[B]

Quite a life.

[A]

Quite a life. All right, Jesse, that's it for Harry. Hey, we will get to TikTok shortly. But first, how about housekeeping?

[B]

This is a podcast. You can find [e-mail] where that's the best place to support us. For a modest monthly fee or an even more generous annual fee, you can get a bunch of extra content, premium content, early access to events. Should we do future events, Annual open threads that get like thousands of comments. People just discussing the matters of the day. What else do they get?

[A]

Katie, did you say the three extra episodes a month?

[B]

Yeah. Well, I said extra content. I was vague because sometimes it's more lives. We do live hangouts.

[A]

I did a live with. Yeah, I did a live with Ian Strauss a couple weeks ago about.

[B]

That's not his name. Ethan. You said Ian.

[A]

No, I said Ethan.

[B]

Oh, you have a weird accent.

[A]

Ethan Strauss. About the WNBA and what's going on in basketball. It was a very fun. I think we might need to have Ian now. I said Ian. I think we need to have Ethan back sometime. What do you think?

[B]

I think that'd be Great.

[A]

Okay. So, yes, we do these lives and we have some great primo content for you right now. We just published an episode a couple days ago about the Jason R. Day story. Crazy, fascinating story. Troubled man. Jesse went deep into that one. And we have. I'm working on something that I don't want to say too much about, but is spicy really good? Caliente is really good. Yep.

[B]

Caloric.

[A]

It might be another couple weeks before it comes out. It's been a long, long process.

[B]

But you can also email us tips or [e-mail] and you can rate and review us on Apple podcasts.

[A]

All right, Jesse, thank you for that. Now for TikTok, it is tick season America. Although really it seems like these days every season is tick season. And this has led to some very interesting and often psychotic discourse online. Jesse, have you gotten any ticks lately?

[B]

I mean, I have a tick story that's not fit to tell on this podcast, but I've had two ticks in my life and it was not a pleasant experience.

[A]

Ball sack.

[B]

One of them, yes.

[A]

How did you get a tick on your ball sack?

[B]

Dude, they crawl into your clothes. The other one.

[A]

This is why you need to wear short. This is where you need to wear really tight underpants.

[B]

I saw a YouTube video. There's this kind of bird whose name I forget, and homesteaders or farmers or whatever, this bird, all it does is eat tick ticks. And I just want to release breed.

[A]

Is it a chicken?

[B]

No, no, no. It looks a little like a chicken, but it's called something else. But I just want to release trillions of them across this great nation of ours. Because there's. There's ticks make mosquitoes look pleasant. Like, why do. Why do we have ticks? What. What ecological benefits do they provide? All they do is give us horrible diseases and latch onto our genitalia.

[A]

They're. Well, they're food for that chicken look alike that you mentioned.

[B]

Yeah, but once the ticks are gone, I don't care if they weird chicken birds die. Anyway, I've already said too much about my own tick history. What? Why do we have a TikTok? Why do we have TikTok right now?

[A]

Okay. There are many reports online about increased tick encounters recently. So, Jesse, here's an example of one of these posts. Click this link here.

[B]

Jack Danger, presumably his legal name says siren emoji. America is being overrun by ticks. Frowny emoji. Bug emoji.

[A]

That's like wide eyed emoji.

[B]

Wide eyed he's got red and then tick emoji. And then there's a video.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Of a. That looks. Isn't that bigger than a tick?

[A]

It's a tick.

[B]

That's a tick. Jesus.

[A]

I don't know. It could be zoomed in. It's a tick. It's a. It's a tick crawling across. It looks like a floorboard or.

[B]

It's not a floorboard. It's like a.

[A]

A baseboard.

[B]

Yeah, but it looks more like. I don't know what it is. Anyway, it's gross. I hate these kind of plastic.

[A]

It doesn't matter. Read the text.

[B]

I just found this tick.

[A]

Oh, it's a table.

[B]

I just found this tick crawling across my table in North Carolina. Good. Good journalism. Not in the woods, not hiking, not camping on my table. And if you live in nc. Hold on. Can I just say for a second, how does he think. Where does he think that tick came from? Why is he surprised? It's inside? That's the whole.

[A]

He probably bought the table and ticks were crawling out from inside the table.

[B]

That's where ticks come from. Tables. And if you live in North Carolina, you already know. The explosion this year has been insane. Ticks are everywhere right now. Yards, pets, homes, furniture. Even inside businesses. Experts blame the mild winter and booming deer population. But it's much worse than ever before. People are reporting more tick bites than they've ever had dogs covered in them. After minutes outside Lyme disease, skyrocketing Lone Star ticks, spreading meat allergies across the South. It's also a thing on Martha's Vineyard right now. I think this doesn't feel normal anymore. Anyone else seeing a massive increase in ticks this year? Drop your city below. Okay. What a weird form of influencer.

[A]

All right, read the. Read the first comment.

[B]

Oh, Jesus. Yeah, Patriot. Who has like a sort of totem coffee looking American flag themed skull.

[A]

Grandpa does have that tattoo.

[B]

When will Bill Gates be held accountable? How many times does he have to commit crimes against humanity before something happens, happens. The air we breathe, the meat we eat, the ticks that are biting us, the jabs, spraying all of our vegetables. What else? And then there's a graphic that's too deranged for me to even really describe.

[A]

It's AI slop. Shocking. It's like a flyer.

[B]

Well, it's like the Pepe Sylvia scene from Always Sunny, except imagine he was obsessed with Bill Gates. It's really bad.

[A]

I don't know what that means, but yes, it says shocking. Bill Gates has the Ticks, the meat and the cure. And then read the first comment under that.

[B]

Jesse, that's a great pick. Where did you get it?

[A]

That's Jack Danger.

[B]

That's Jack Danger himself.

[A]

So there is tons of this content all over. Wait, can I get.

[B]

Well, hold on. Can I just say one thing?

[A]

Yes. Yes.

[B]

Bill Gates has how many billions of dollars?

[A]

At least two.

[B]

$106 billion. Who knows this AI, he has a lot. He has a lot of money. He has over $100 billion. The idea that he's so evil that he's like, I don't have enough billions of dollars. What I'm going to do is release ticks everywhere and then sell the treatment for. I just. You know what, I don't believe this, Katie.

[A]

On Monday he's curing malaria and on Tuesday he's releasing ticks out into the world.

[B]

Well, but who do you think he, who do you think gave those African kids malaria?

[A]

Bill Gates. Yes. So this is obviously psychotic, but yes, there has been a very obvious increase in ticks, particularly in North Carolina and I assume around the Southeast. I don't think I ever got a tick as a child. Yes, we had dogs. Yes, I was outside a lot, but I spent the last like five winters in North Carolina and it was not that rare that I'd be sitting at my desk and a tick would crawl across my laptop screen or my table. I always blame.

[B]

In the winter.

[A]

Yeah, in the winter.

[B]

Well, it's because of moose. Moose has so much hair. He. Moose is like a tick paradise.

[A]

Yes, absolutely. And I wasn't the one rolling around in the grass, but it was definitely weird and gross, particularly because this was happening in winter. Moose got a tick borne illness just this past winter called anaplasma. I thought he was dying. It was awful. I actually got Lyme disease a few years ago in January. I took a course of antibiotics and I was fine. But do you remember that I sent you a pic of the bullseye on my butt cheek?

[B]

Yeah. I mean it was not.

[A]

It's your, it's your, your, your phone screen. Now I don't worry as much about ticks and tick borne illness as now that we're back out west. But I was really concerned about it, it particularly chronic Lyme back in North Carolina because I think I'm the sort of person who would get one of these chronic illnesses that people don't believe in, like chronic fatigue or long Covid or Lyme. Chronic Lyme. There is a test for Lyme. I got the test and most people, they Just get the tick bite and they take. And they get the rash, and they take a course of antibiotics, and it's fine. But there's a subset of people who don't recover, don't fully recover, and they're often considered kind of nuts or like, it's all in their heads because there's no detection on a blood test. And it just seems like this would be karmic payback for all the times I said TikTok autist and people who claim to have multiple personalities are faking it. It just seems like spoonism is in my future. So I worried a lot about Lyme, and indeed, it is very much on the rise.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, Jesse, how much do you know about Lyme disease?

[B]

Everything I've read makes it sound bad. That's what I know. And, like, I know it can. It can cause fatigue. It can cause, like, long term unexplained symptoms. Growing up in Massachusetts, we were taught to fear ticks from a young age because they're like, there's like, big swaths of the country. This is why we got to get those chicken birds.

[A]

Ticks and Italians.

[B]

Yeah, Ticks and Italians. We were taught to fear. Yes. Wait, which I want to. Hold on. I want you to see this bird. Which bird eats ticks?

[A]

He's still on the bird. It's gonna be a fucking chicken.

[B]

Guinea fowl. Guinea fowl.

[A]

Okay. Guinea fowl.

[B]

Which is kind of a racist name.

[A]

Yeah, it is. Okay, so I have some history for you. Lyme itself was not recognized as a distinct disease until 1975. It was, I guess, discovered. Is the right forward for it? I don't know. Discovered. In the small town of Lyme, Connecticut, a local woman named Pauli Murray had been sick for years. Joint pain, fatigue, rashes, neurological symptoms. She'd been complaining to doctors, but was getting nowhere. Her husband and kids had the same symptoms, and she had noticed an unusual number of children in her neighborhood had been diagnosed with juvenile, but juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which is rare and terrible. And Murray, who to her credit, was a genuine pain in the ass of the local health establishment, she kept pushing until she got the attention of the Connecticut state health department, which referred the case to Yale. So a rheumatologist there named Alan Steere, he started investigating, and by 1977, had documented over 50 cases of what he called Lyme arthritis, which later became known as Lyme disease. And then a few years later, a researcher named Willie Bergdorfer with Rocky Mountain laboratories in Montana, he was dissecting ticks and found a novel bacteria in black legged deer ticks that he connected to Lyme disease. That bacteria is now known as Borrelia burgdorferi in his honor. And this is important, so we'll come back to this in a second. But what started in Connecticut as this pretty localized thing has just bloomed. So here are the numbers. Jesse. When the CDC began national surveillance for Lyme in 1982, there were around 500 reported cases in the entire country, all concentrated in the northeast. Obviously an undercount. Not every case gets reported. But in 2023 there there were almost 90000 cases reported. Now part of that spike is methodology. So in 2022 the CDC changed the reporting standards. So that partly explains the increase, as does awareness. Few people were aware of Lyme when they started tracking. But while it's hard to get precise numbers, it's undoubtedly true that Lyme and other tick borne illnesses are on the rise. So I just saw an article recently in the Astral Watchdog about a study there. Researchers from UNC and elsewhere collected and analyzed ticks in one area of Asheville and they found that a third of them tested positive for the bacteria that causes Lyme. So this is a legitimate concern, as are other tick borne illnesses like alpha gal. That's the very strange allergy that's spread by the Lone Star tick and it makes people allergic to meat. It sounds like PETA's revenge, but it's a really serious illness and it can actually be deadly if someone gets it and has a severe reaction to meat exposure and goes into anaphylactic shock. So like a 47 year old man with alpha gal died in 2024 after he ate a hamburger.

[B]

Not fun. But where, where does the online bullshit come into this?

[A]

Okay, so as I mentioned, ticks are hot on the Internet these days. People are seeing them, they're getting them, they're concerned about them. And that understandable concern is leading to some very strange places. So Jesse, click this link here.

[B]

So this is just someone complaining that they have a lot of ticks on their animals despite their best efforts. But then they say these ticks are bioengineered and you cannot tell different. They are resistant to all known preventions. When I heard stories of boxes of ticks being dropped off, I laughed. It sounded so stupid and tinfoil hat. I'm sorry, I was wrong. I'm wondering if one didn't get dropped off nearby. I need to buy more tinfoil. So who's bioengineering the ticks? In toward one. Is it Bill Gates so that he can make money off the cure?

[A]

He's one suspect. There's also the CIA. So you know the name Robert Malone.

[B]

So. Okay, Malone. Yeah, he was, he's like a big Covid skeptic guy.

[A]

Yeah. So he's a. He's a researcher that parts legit. Also a physician and he. So he says that he invented the MRNA vaccine. He was part of that developmental effort, but like this is like hundreds of people were involved in that. He didn't single handedly invent the MRNA vaccine. He was also banned from Twitter for Covid misinformation under the old regime. He was brought back by Elon. He's been on Joe Rogan a bunch of times. He's basically. He's like a Covid contrarian type. So read this, read this tweet by the account, the Twitter account MJ Truth Ultra Heads.

[B]

Heads need to roll as there are tick outbreaks all over the United States right now. People are asking if the government or Bill Gates is doing this. Are they asking that? Here is Robert Malone confirming, yes, the US government dropped radioactive ticks on American apostrophe s Americans. Three really virulent tick borne diseases mysteriously showed up in Lyme, Connecticut in the late 60s right across from Plum Island. A US government. This person is not America. This is like literally a Russian troll. Just all these sorts of spelling mistakes.

[A]

Or it could be Trump.

[B]

Or it could be Trump itself.

[A]

Very similar.

[B]

A US Government's anti animal crop headquarters for the, for the biological weapons program. Lyme arthritis. Rickettsia. Babesia or Babesia Babesia.

[A]

Okay, so we'll get back to Plum island shortly. But the post includes a clip of Robert MALONE on the One American News Network saying, yes, the U.S. use tick.

[B]

Yes, the U.S. i just say something. He's like, he's a handsome older man. Yeah, when I have all white hair, I hope I can pull this off. I don't think I'll be able to.

[A]

So he says, yes, the government, the US government used ticks as bioweapons. Corporations, quote, it's actually in CIA documents that have been declassified. For instance, infected ticks were deployed from C130s flying low over sugarcane fields back in the day under President Kennedy. He also says that he conducted an AI investigation and uncovered, quote, the release of a large number of Lone Star ticks that had been radioactively tagged in Virginia. Jesse, have you ever conducted an AI investigation?

[B]

It's. I don't do actual journalism anymore. I just asked Claude to tell me what to think.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Radioactively tagged. Okay. Anyway. What? What? Yeah, explain this to me.

[A]

Okay. Like any good conspiracy theory, there's a grain of truth here. It is true that the US Military did run a bioweapons program that involved insects, which is awesome.

[B]

We can admit in the benefit of hindsight that that's awesome. That's Cold War spy. We're gonna drop radioactive or disease mosquitoes on the Ruskies, and then we're gonna march in there and build some McDonald's.

[A]

Something like that, yeah. So there was Operation Big Itch. Great name. They tested flea bombs. Like bombs with fleas in them, not the thing that you set up in your house to get rid of fleas. They wanted to see if fleas would survive and spread disease. There was also Operation Big Buzz, 1955. They dropped 300,000 mosquitoes over Georgia to test dispersal.

[B]

The Russia of the South.

[A]

It's also true that in the 1960s, the military released radioactively tagged Lone Star chicks in Virginia to track their movements.

[B]

That's what I assumed is meant by radioactively tagged. That doesn't mean they're like.

[A]

Yeah, they're not gonna. Yes, it. It makes it sound. The term radioactive makes it sound more nefarious or dangerous than it is. They were tagged with a mild radioactive isotope, like a tracking dye. They weren't giving anyone radiation poisoning or cancer. The scientists wanted to see how far they spread. And then researchers used Geiger counters to track their movements. So Malone isn't lying. But these ticks released in Virginia were not infected with anything. They weren't bio weapons. They were part of dispersal studies. And there's zero credible evidence that increases in tick borne illness today are part of a government plot. So that one tweet mentioned Plum Island. This is an odd coincidence. Lyme, Connecticut is like 12 miles away from the Plum Island Animal Disease center, which is a secretive government lab that does research on animal pathogens. So, like foot and mouth disease, things like that. And in 2004, a lawyer named Michael Christopher Carroll published a book called Lab 257 that was based on documents he got from the National Archives and some interviews with former Plum island employees. And he claimed that they had tick hatcheries at the facility and that they released ticks on the island in 1975, which happens to be the exact year that Lyme was first discovered in Lyme, Connecticut. Now, Plum island researchers rebutted his claims. They say flat out, they do not work with human pathogens. But his book is a prime source for these conspiracy theories. And this isn't new. Again, the public. The book was published in 2004, so it's been circulating for quite a while. But there's another reason that people think that these tick booms have been manufactured.

[B]

Why is that?

[A]

Okay, I mentioned the name Willie Bergdorfer earlier. He's the man who actually discovered the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. So in 2019, a journalist named Chris Newby wrote a book called Bitten Newby has chronic Lyme herself. It took her 10 years to get a diagnosis, and she felt like, I think many Lyme patients do. She felt dismissed by the medical establishment. She's not a crank. She also made a documentary about chronic Lyme called Under Our Skin. It premiered at Tribeca, and it was a semi finalist for an Oscar. And in the book, she explains that after the movie came out, she was kind of done with Lyme. She'd taken a job at Stanford. She was moving on, on. And then she met a guy at a birthday party who said he was an old CIA operative. And he told her that he personally had dropped infected ticks in Cuba during the Cold War. And then a few weeks later, a filmmaker friend of hers sent her a video. This was an interview with Willie Bergdorfer. And he said that his discovery of Lyme bacteria was related to bioweapons. This convinced her to look into the story. So she goes to meet Bergdorfer in Montana. At that point, he's old, he's sick, he's got Parkinson's, he's at the end of his life. But she interviews him. He doesn't say, yes, Lyme is a military experiment gone wrong. Here's the proof. But he did talk about his work with military bioweapons research. He described weaponizing ticks. So, like growing microbes and ticks. And when she asked about the first documented outbreak in Lyme, Connecticut, he said things like accidents happen and sometimes experiments don't turn out as planned, which she interpreted as an admission. And so she wrote about this in her book.

[B]

Okay, so this. This guy says these vague but sort of menacing sounding things almost on his deathbed. Is she able to confirm any of this?

[A]

No, she looked for documentation. She couldn't find it. The book comes out and it starts to get big in these sort of more conspiratorial sectors of the American public. It was also cited by a New Jersey rep named Christopher Smith, who became convinced that infected ticket ticks were from secretive military bioweapons experiments. And he sponsored an amendment to the defense bill ordering the Defense Department to investigate this and Trump signed that. That bill into law last year. So there's.

[B]

I'm sure we'll know soon. Yeah.

[A]

Yes, there's now an actual federal investigation into whether the military used ticks as bioweapons underway. But these sort of things have led to a not small number of X posters to conclude that the surgeon ticks and Lyme is manufactured probably by Bill Gates, if not the government, because he's got his hands in every public health plot, obviously. And then it also doesn't help that you have people like Joe Rogan spreading unconfirmed rumors. So like Rogan had a Tennessee representative named Tim Burchett on the show. Kind of a nutty guy. He's part of the UFO Caucus, which does exist. And Rogan talked about his friend who got Alpha Gal syndrome from a Lone Star tech. So that's the meetup allergy. And Burchett said that it was quote, because of Gates obviously offers no evidence of that. And then Joe said he'd seen videos of farmers finding boxes of ticks on their land. And we saw this in the. In one of those earlier tweets you read boxes of ticks and then this just supercharged rumors.

[B]

Wait, so what are the. What are the videos show exactly?

[A]

Okay, so the original one that went super viral on TikTok wasn't a farmer. It was a woman who calls herself a holistic doctor named Sarah Outlaw. Sounds credible. She posted a video of horses just doing horse stuff, like running through a field. And the caption read, farmers are reporting boxes of ticks being found in fields. This should concern you.

[B]

So the. But the video does not show that. It just shows horses doing horsey things.

[A]

Yes, that video got 10 million views very quickly. So journalists started looking into it, interviewing local farmers. No one said they had found boxes of ticks. And this woman, when she was asked who her sources were, she kept changing her story. So first it was farmers, then it was horses. Trusted practitioner colleague. That's what she told Snope. Snopes did a really thorough investigation into this. They contacted hundreds of state officials in Missouri. This is where this was allegedly happening. None had heard of boxes of ticks. And then later Sarah Outlaw said it was happening in Amish country. So that's why they were. No photos. She was not credible at all. But the story was already out there and spreading. And coincidentally, this was posted less than a week after Pfizer announced that they had completed phase three of a clinical trial on a new Lyme vaccine. So there's your boogeyman. It's Pfizer. Pfizer did it. So Jesse just read this tweet and then some of the replies to it.

[B]

Pfizer reportedly has a new safe and effective Lyme disease vaccine designed to prevent infections from tickling bytes. Per Dr. Mark Siegel, whoever that is. This is something called leading report with a million followers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then it's just a bunch of schizophrenic people. One one says it's like they create the problem. I'm not trying to be mean to schizophrenic people. This is not great. It's like they create the problem to then offer the solution. Oh, how curious. Spectacle emoji. There's an image of bush in front of the Twin towers. Bush's Pfizer. The Twin Towers are your immune system.

[A]

Every reply.

[B]

My immune system was never that strong. Yeah, Every reply. Psychotic.

[A]

Yes. Is people assuming that Pfizer People just

[B]

can't take good news.

[A]

And people should be thrilled that there's a human linebacks in our future. If it's effective.

[B]

Potentially if they're taking.

[A]

If it's effective. This is a very good thing. I will be first in line.

[B]

Phase three. Phase three is a good sign. That's like they're like actually testing it.

[A]

Yeah, they did have. There was a. A Lyme vaccine on the market in the early 2000s and it was discontinued because there wasn't enough demand. I think the demand exists now. Like I would get the dog version if my vet were more open minded. But no big pharmacy enemy. And once again, like any good conspiracy, there is actually a tiny grain of truth to the idea that there are tick boxes out there. Although Pfizer has nothing to do with it.

[B]

Explain.

[A]

Okay, so Lyme is often thought of as a deer disease, and it is. Deer do spread it, but they don't actually. They're not vectors of it. The vectors are actually rodents. So mice can carry dozens of ticks. And there are bait boxes that have basically the same medication that I give to moose to kill ticks. The mouse goes into the box, eats the bait and then gets the medication. And then when the ticks bite the mouse, the ticks die. So there aren't boxes full of ticks, There are tick boxes, if that makes sense. So what's happening is not people putting these boxes on farmer's land. It's like farmers putting it on their own lands or conservationists working with farmer or whatever. Whatever. The point is there's a. It's not boxes full of ticks, it's boxes full of ticks bait. And there's a YouTuber named Gordon Crumb who did a good video explaining all of this link in the show notes.

[B]

And the tick population has gone up. We actually think that's not just like social media hysteria.

[A]

No, it is true that there are more ticks than there used to be. And the reason why is the subject of some debate. So conventional wisdom is that it's the deer, the ticks that spread Lyme, are colloquially called deer ticks for a reason. There's no doubt that the deer population has exploded in many parts of the countries, and their explosion is partly due to conservation efforts, but it's also because of predator collapse and suburbanization. Deer love the suburbs. There are no wolves in the suburbs for the most part, but there are very nice gardens to munch. So that's one potential factor. There are more deer, and then there are the mice. So, like I said a second ago, the deer don't actually transmit Lyme disease. The tickets infected from the mouse. The mouse carries the bacteria. Then the tick hitches a ride on the deer. And because deer are large, they can move hundreds of ticks from place to place every season. So if you just look at those two populations, you've got an explanation. There are more deer and more mice. So, like, there's a Lyme researcher named Richard Ausfield. He's been studying Lyme for 30 years, and he's known for challenging the conventional wisdom that that Lyme is a dearborn illness. This. He has a book out called Lyme Disease the Ecology of a Complex System. And he argues that the fundamental issue is not a single species, although he does attribute the problem more to mice than to deer. But he thinks it's this cascade effect of what's really a broken ecological chain. So the land is increasingly fragmented due to urbanization, suburbanization, habitat loss. This leads to predator collapse, which leads to a mouse population boom because there's nothing left to eat them. And then Ausfield also notes that acorns have something to do with it. So, like when oak trees have bumper crops, which is not every year, if there's a bumper crop in. In. In acorns, like, two years later, you'll see a spike in ticks. And that is, in fact, true this year. So 2003 was what's called a master for acorns. I actually remember this. We had oaks in our yard in Asheville, and there were so many acorns that Jana was trying to make flour out of them. But Osfeld's point is that that his basic point is that less biodiversity in the ecosystem means more ticks and more tick borne illness. Now there is some debate over this, over the relative import of mice versus deer. So like the New Yorkers, Burkhart Bilger, he just did a piece on the tick crisis in Martha's Vineyard and he really focused on the deer connection more than mice. And this is a genuine crisis on Martha's Vineyard. You mentioned it earlier. It's more Alpha Gal than Lyme people are worried about. That's the one that causes the meat allergy. But this can be so severe that people can't even go to restaurants where meat is cooked on open grills after they get it. They can't go to barbecues. Cattle farmers who get it can't be near their own calves. So one local epidemiologist told Bilger, this is an existential threat, not just to our health and well being, but to our economy. People will leave and not come back. So this is a, this is a genuinely very serious issue.

[B]

Other than like the potential vaccine, are there like promising ways to actually control the uptick and up uptick, as it were?

[A]

Sort of. So there are things the individual can do. Like you can put something called Promethen on your clothes. That's an effective treatment. It kills ticks on contact. Don't put it on your cat. It's very toxic to cats. You basically spray it on your clothing before you go outside. And fundamentally the problem is that the ecosystem is unbalanced. So, you know, we don't have enough predators to keep mouse and deer or whatever populations in check. Their natural habitats are destroyed. They move into places where people live, live, and attempts to cull deer populations, for instance, they just don't tend to be super popular. Like an editor at my local paper here, he just, we have, you saw there are an insane number of deer in this area, like more deer than children. And I mean that literally. So an editor at the local paper, he just wrote a piece arguing that deer hunting should be allowed in state parks because of the deer overpopulation program. Like an 85 year old woman was just attacked by a deer and ended up in the hospital. But this was like, from the local reaction, you would have thought that he was arguing for a municipal puppy drowning. Like it is just the idea of killing the deer is incredibly unpopular. Although people might change their minds if they start getting allergic to hamburgers. So I, I mean things can be done, but the things are difficult to do.

[B]

I would, what, I would have guessed the like one possible explanation for the Ticks is just climate change. Is that, is there anything to that?

[A]

Yeah, this is something that people often assume and I did some digging into this because it just, it annoys me when CL change is treated like an omni cause. You know, like it particularly bugs me when it comes to wildfires. I've complained about this before because there are many reasons that wildfires are getting worse. Climate change is just part of it. There are land management issues and other human behaviors, like for instance, fireworks, that have just as much to do with wildfires as climate change. And those program problems can be solved without decarbonizing the climate, which is very hard to do. So I don't want to do that thing where you just like take any environmental issue and assume that the, the base culprit is climate change. But yes, I do think climate change does have something to do with the ticks. Again, not an omnicause. We just talked about the mice and the deer and the acorns. But as I mentioned, I got infected with Lyme in January during a very mild winter. So I'm just going to take Ashland as an example because that's where I got it. I looked up the average January temperatures from 1975. So the year lime was first discovered to now the average January temperature difference over that period is about 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. That probably doesn't explain a tick explosion explosion. But what's more important than average temperature is the number of freezing days. Ticks don't necessarily die when it freezes, but they are less active, they're less likely to bite you at your dog. And there have been significantly fewer freezing days in Asheville in the last 10 years than there were in the 70s. So in the decade of the 70s there were around 88 freezing days annually. And then from 2016 to the end of 2025 there was an average of just 66 freezing days annually. That's a drop of about 25%. There's not a one to one correlation here. 25% fewer freezing days doesn't mean 25% more ticks. But in general I do think it's safe to say that ticks and tick borne illnesses are increasing because of this combination of warmer weather, abundant populations of deer and mice, particularly after big acorn yields, habitat fragmentation, and probably also just more people doing stuff outside. So yeah, this is a man made crisis, just not the way that conspiracy theory there is. Think. Okay, Jesse, that is it for Tik Tok. Any questions?

[B]

No. As we recorded that a bunch of ticks latched onto me, so I'm going to go get those checked out.

[A]

They're just friends. They're pets.

[B]

They're pets. They're my pets now. Pets that live on my body and suck your blood.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Thank you everyone, for listening. This has been blocked and reported. As always, we are produced with help from Jessica the 80s baby. Bye bye.

[A]

It.