Selects: The Skinny on Lyme Disease

Summary

Podcast Summary

Stuff You Should Know

Episode: Selects: The Skinny on Lyme Disease
Original Air Date: April 4, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant

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Episode Overview

This classic episode revisits the perplexing topic of Lyme disease, diving deep into its mysterious origin story in the U.S., modern controversies, symptoms, and debates about diagnosis and chronic cases. Josh and Chuck explore the science behind Lyme’s cause and transmission, share stories about the first investigations, and discuss why this tick-borne illness has been both medically confounding and socially contentious. They tackle persistent myths, highlight advocates, and even detour into wild conspiracy theories and climate change’s role in Lyme’s rapid spread.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to Lyme Disease

• [02:49] Josh: “You know what ticks me off? Lyme disease.”
• The hosts immediately set the tone with humor, then clarify common misconceptions: it's "Lyme," not "Lymes," and it’s named after Lyme, Connecticut.
• Lyme is a bacterial infection caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted mainly by nymph-stage deer ticks.
• Notably, cases have more than doubled since 1997, and Lyme now appears across the entire continental U.S., not just the Northeast.

2. Rapid Rise & Controversy Over Definition

• [05:45] Josh: “CDC calls Lyme disease endemic... some say this is an epidemic... this is a very alarming spread...”
• Lyme is now the number one vector-borne disease in the U.S., outpacing others like West Nile.
• Many feel it's underdiagnosed, with patients frequently dismissed—especially those with “chronic” symptoms after initial antibiotic treatment.

3. Symptoms & Transmission

• Transmission:
  • “The nymph stage... is most likely to bite humans because they’re stupid. They don’t know any better yet.” – Josh [08:30]
  • Infection usually requires a tick to be attached 24–48 hours. “If you find a tick and get it off quickly, you don’t need to sweat Lyme disease.” – Chuck [09:18]
• Symptoms:
  • General: headaches, fever, fatigue, joint pain.
  • Classic sign: Expanding bullseye rash (erythema migrans), but appears in only 70–80% of cases.
• [10:06] The bacterium evades the immune system: “It’s like a slinky... basically reaches out and grabs the next cell without letting go of the previous... walks end over end, never unattaching.” – Chuck

4. History & Patient Advocacy

• Lyme-like symptoms found in ancient mummy “Otzi the Iceman” and described by Dr. Buchwald over 130 years ago.
• Modern recognition began in the 1970s with mysterious illness clusters in Lyme, Old Lyme, and East Haddam, CT.
• Crucial activists:
  • Pauli Murray and Judith Minch, mothers and early patient advocates, pushed for broader recognition and research.
  • “They were largely discounted, even though they had a list of 37 individuals... contacted scientists.” – Chuck [19:03]
• Eventually, Burgdorferi bacteria identified by Willy Burgdorfer—hence the name.

5. Diagnosis & Chronic Lyme Debate

• Testing issues:
  • Tests often check for antibodies (blood immune response), not bacteria—can “come back negative because the antibodies haven’t been created yet.” – Josh [26:32]
  • False negatives/positives are common—it’s “a huge problem with Lyme disease.”
  • Two-tiered testing now advocated (ELISA + Western blot).
• Post-Treatment/Post-Chronic Lyme:
  • Ongoing symptoms after treatment spark major debate. Patients feel dismissed:
    “My life has been derailed by these symptoms and you guys aren’t doing anything about it.” – Josh [07:48]
  • Theories: Persistent infection, immune response to dead bacteria, or triggered autoimmune disorder?
• Statistics:
  • 300–400,000 new cases/year anticipated; 10–20% may develop chronic symptoms.

6. Ticks & Transmission Details

• Differentiation between deer ticks (transmit Lyme) and dog ticks (do not).
• Ticks “wave their arms in the air waiting for somebody to pass by”—an image that inspired listeners’ art.
• “Ticks that are infected with Lyme... are actually better at finding hosts.” – Josh [34:17]

7. Prevention Tips

• “Don’t ever go into mother nature... Just stay in your mid-century modern home”—kidding, of course.
• Use DEET, wear light colors, tuck pants into socks when hiking, and do thorough tick checks, especially for tiny nymphs.
• Check pets as well, focusing on “leg pits,” behind ears, and under collars.

8. Lyme as a Bioweapon?

• Recent Congressional action: Rep. Chris Smith (NJ) introduced legislation about a DOD investigation into alleged bioweapon research with ticks at Plum Island and Fort Detrick, inspired by Chris Newby’s book Bitten.
• The hosts clarify: this is likely a conspiracy theory—Lyme has existed for millennia and across continents, not matching the bioweapon timeline.
  “It doesn’t make a good biological weapon.” – Chuck [43:15]
• Rep. Smith is nonetheless a “true Lyme warrior,” also sponsoring the TICK Act to fund further research.

9. Climate Change’s Role

• Warmer winters mean ticks die off in lower numbers, expanding their range northward and into new territories.
• “Wherever these ticks go, Lyme disease is game to go with them.” – Josh [46:47]
• Explosion of deer populations (due to decline of natural predators) further supports tick proliferation.
• Some suggest reintroducing wolves as natural deer control to stem the rise in Lyme cases.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Wry humor on the name:
  “Not Lymes. We should say it’s capital L-Y-M-E disease.” – Josh [03:55]
• On first recognition:
  “They said— there is a mysterious epidemic... a lot of kids who suddenly have juvenile arthritis out of nowhere. What are you guys gonna do about it?” – Josh [19:36]
• On dismissive medicine:
  “Take some antibiotics, you’ll be fine... You still have persistent symptoms? Those are probably in your head... No, my life has been derailed by these symptoms and you guys aren’t doing anything about it.” – Josh [07:20]
• On tick behavior:
  “They just hang out on blades of grass and things and just snap their little claws constantly, just waiting for something to pass by that they can latch onto.” – Chuck [33:39]
• Wild imagery:
  “From snapping their little fingers on a blade of grass to my dog’s butt, to my scrotum, it’s quite a ride.” – Chuck [34:53]
• Climate impact:
  “Moose are dying in their thousands... being bled to death by a hundred thousand ticks at once. That never happened before.” – Josh [47:17]

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Important Timestamps

• What is Lyme disease / How it's named: [03:53–04:24]
• Geographic spread and stats: [05:03–05:44]
• Why it's hard to diagnose: [11:36–13:18], [26:20–27:28]
• Early outbreak history & advocacy: [18:14–21:38]
• Discovery by Burgdorfer: [23:02–23:48]
• Symptoms and transmission details: [08:05–13:18]
• Debate over post-treatment syndrome: [28:43–30:36]
• Bioweapon conspiracy: [38:14–44:02]
• Role of climate change: [45:00–48:16]
• Prevention tips: [36:04–38:13]

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, occasionally irreverent and funny, but with genuine empathy for those affected by Lyme.
• The hosts poke fun at each other and their own knowledge gaps, making detailed science accessible and human.
• “Advocate for yourself, still people. And the wolves. Be persistent.” – Chuck & Josh [48:52–48:58]

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Summary Takeaways

• Lyme disease is now widespread, underrecognized, and medically controversial, partly due to increasingly common chronic or post-treatment cases.
• Patient advocacy was—and remains—key. Early mothers and community advocates demanded action.
• Testing remains imperfect; self-advocacy is strongly encouraged.
• Prevention targeting ticks (especially nymphs) is crucial, as is checking pets.
• While bioweapon conspiracy makes for intriguing speculation, science and history point clearly toward natural causes—now heavily influenced by climate change.
• Combatting Lyme in the future may require both improved diagnostics/treatments and ecologically-informed policy (even including predatory animal reintroduction!).

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For Further Information

• A recommended read: “Ticks Rising” by Mary Beth Pfeiffer (Aon)
• For statistics and prevention facts, consult the CDC and American Lyme Disease Foundation.
• The episode’s playful but thorough approach offers an excellent primer for anyone seeking to understand the facts—and the frustrations—around Lyme disease.

Transcript

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the Podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. This is Stuff youf Should Know, the podcast. And, Chuck, I have a question for you.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

You know what ticks me off? Lyme disease.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm so mad at you.

[Josh Clark]

Blame Yumi for that one. She's like, you should say this. And I said, you know what?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Tell her I'm so mad at it.

[Josh Clark]

I should totally say that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This is sort of a follow up to our July 27, 2010 episode, why Tics 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.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. That's right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We were just kidding. But we still get those requests of where's my shirt?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. That's hilarious. I forgot about that. I get sued today.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, probably so. Also want to point out and shout out our former website, housestuffworks.com because a couple of the articles that we used for much of this episode is from the old HSW website.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. They're holding it down over there.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

They're holding it down. And this is some good stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So we're talking today about Lyme disease in particular.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Not Lymes.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

One of the facts of the show, I think.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Who knew it was named after a town? Lyme, Connecticut?

[Josh Clark]

I knew.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Did you know that before this?

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Did we cover that and why ticks suck?

[Josh Clark]

I don't think so.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, you're smarter than me then.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's not that. I think what got me was I heard about people saying, like, no, Lyme disease. Like, people take it for granted, but it's actually this really mysterious illness. And I'm like, what are you talking about? So I think I looked into this years back, and that's when I found out. All right, that was all.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So we're equally smart, right?

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. I'm not smarter than you.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And what is smart? It's just, like, someone happens to know one thing, someone else knows another.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I say they cancel out. We're all smart.

[Josh Clark]

There you go. I'm glad you pulled that out, because I would have been like, what is smart? I couldn't have come up with the Definition.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So Lyme disease. We'll go ahead and hit you with a couple of stats here. Lyme disease in the United States has more than doubled since 1997.

[Josh Clark]

That's astounding.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It is. And it has spread too. It used to be very much localized in kind of the northeast, sort of mid Atlantic areas, some in the south. But now you can get Lyme disease in, I believe the entire lower 48. Is that correct?

[Josh Clark]

There are cases in all 48 states. Supposedly half of the counties in the United States now are considered at high risk for Lyme disease. And like, all of this happened just in the last like 20 or so years.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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 part, 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 Chikungunya or anything like that. But it's still kind of treated as like up there in the northeastern U.S. thing. And that's just not the case. It's spread in every direction except east, because it hit the Atlantic. But everywhere else, where it can spread into the interior of the United States and up into Canada, it's starting to.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And there's also a history continuing to this day, even where Lyme disease can be overlooked, misdiagnosed, not taken as seriously by your doctor as it should be, including what we'll get to later on, something called post treatment Lyme disease syndrome. And it's all very frustrating. If you have been an individual that has had Lyme disease, there's a big community out there of people that are 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?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. There's a tremendous amount of frustration in that community because there's a sentiment among the medical establishment that take some antibiotics, you'll be fine. Exactly. It's easy to cure Lyme disease. Here's some antibiotics. You still have persistent symptoms. Those are probably in your head. We're not going to say they're in your head, but they're in your head. And the people who are experiencing these symptoms are like, no, my life has been derailed by these symptoms and you guys aren't doing anything about it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's frustrating. I know there's a lot of people out there that are pretty, pretty stoked right now to be hearing this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You know, for sure we're advocating for you guys.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Not patting myself on the back, although I am literally patting myself.

[Josh Clark]

I feel like I see you, Chuck. That elbow's sticking out pretty far.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So Lyme disease is a disease. It's an infection caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Borgdeferi burgdorferi.

[Josh Clark]

We're gonna get you an apron and call you the word butcher.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Bergdorferi.

[Josh Clark]

Mork. Mork.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Mort. And we'll get to why it's called that in a bit. But if you haven't caught on by now, it is transmitted through tick bites. Right.

[Josh Clark]

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 Borrelia burgdorferi, into a human. And the reason we usually get it from nymphs, Chuck, is because an adult tick doesn't find humans particularly appetizing. But a nymph tick will, because they're stupid. They don't know anything yet. So as they're feeding on us, after somewhere maybe around 24 to 36 hours of feeding, this infected tick that has this bacteria in it, the bacteria will make its way from the mid gut to the tick saliva. And the tick transmit it, transmits it into the human bloodstream, where it just absolutely wreaks havoc on the human body.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly. If you see it's still crawling on you, it's unattached, don't worry about it at all. But when it is attached and when it has transmitted the bacteria, what it's transmitted, this B. Burgdorfer fer is like really amazing at its job, which is infecting you, giving you a bacterial infection. It has figured out how to zoom through the bloodstream, but then also take itself out of the bloodstream by latching onto the walls of Your blood vessels.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This was crazy about this cellular stuff that once it's attached to a cell, they said it's like a slinky. It doesn't let go. It just like, basically reaches out and grabs the next cell without letting go of the previous cell and just sort of walks end over end, never unattaching itself.

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly. So as it's moving along, it's never. It's not going to get kind of, you know, 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, you know, specific parts of the body. So it's really good at hanging on. That's one thing that makes it kind of pernicious and then another thing. Exactly. It's basically. Yeah, it's like the bacteria version of a tick. I didn't think about that. And then another thing it does. Chuck. I think this is really, really recent research. It can actually change its protein expression at a much faster rate than the normal mutation rate for bacteria. Something like 15 times faster.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. What that does is that just makes it really hard for our human immune system to catch up to it.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And you'll know that something bad is happening. First of all, if you find that tick. But if you get headaches, fever, fatigue is a huge, huge symptom. But the real telltale is what's called em. It's an expanding skin rash called erythema migrans. And it's like. It's that circular pattern. And I know we did talk about this on the ticks episode, but it's a circular pattern with what looks like a bullseye in the center of it.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And you can take off your butcher's apron now because you just. That was beautiful. Put on your chef's hat.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You're sweating over there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So that particular rash, that bullseye rash, that is like just an absolute telltale sign that you have a Lyme borealis.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Here's the apron.

[Josh Clark]

Borreliosis infection that only comes around in, like, maybe 70 to 80% of cases. I think if every person got that rash, we would not have this problem with lyme disease because it would be caught very quickly, because you get that within usually about a week or less of getting infected. But it doesn't come up in all cases. And with some of those other symptoms, like you said, like weakness, headaches, flu, like, symptoms like those could be a lot of different other things. Joint pain. And so the Lyme disease infection goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed in a lot of cases or did for many, many years. It's just now that they're starting to kind of recognize it or suspect Lyme when otherwise they might not have.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, literally hundreds of things can have the same symptoms as Lyme disease. So Lyme's been around for a long time. We'll talk about the history here in a minute. As far as the 1970s go and official recognition, but it's been around. I believe Yale School of public health find the bacterium in ancient North America, like 60,000 years old before the arrival of humans. They have an autopsy of a 5,300-year-old mummy that had Lyme disease.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know Otzi the iceman, Remember him?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I remember Otzi, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I was disappointed that they referred to him as a 5300 year old mummy. It's like, no, it's Otzi the eye. Everybody knows him, give him his name. But he had Lyme disease.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

He did. And there was a German physician named Alfred Buchwald who described this, that EM skin rash that we now call Lyme disease about 130 years ago.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So Lyme 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 Lyme causing bacteria in Europe and Asia. And in all three places, North America, Europe and parts of Asia, the incidence of Lyme disease is picking up at an alarming pace.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I think we should slow down our pace. Take a break.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. All right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

We'll come back and we'll talk about Lyme, Connecticut right after this.

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[Josh Clark]

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

I've had it for years.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Lime. Old Lime. And what was the third town?

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, let's just call it New Lime. It was not new.

[Josh Clark]

They're going to be so mad. Their high school football team is going to go berserk on old lime this year.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

In the 1970s, though, there were a group of children and adults in these towns in Connecticut that were having all these weird symptoms. Swollen knees, skin rashes, headaches, all this severe fatigue. And it's bad enough these days, but in the early 1970s, doctors were definitely did not have this on the radar and were very dismissive of what was going on in these towns. And if it were not for the work of Judith Minch and Pauli Murray, two just regular moms. Although Pauli Murray did work for the World Health Organization for a while, they were advocates, they were patient advocates because their families were getting sick and no one would listen. And they were like, someone's got to do something. Something's going on here and these doctors are not being any help.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And it was a big deal. Pauli Murray ended up writing a book. She made it sort of her Life's work in 1996, a book called the Widening Circle. And because of sort of the persistent sexism in science, they were largely discounted, even though they had a list of 37 individuals. They researched on their own, contacted scientists. We just really need to shout them out. Pauli Murray died just about a month ago at the age of 85.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, is that right?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

She was a persistent cuss, as they call them up in the Yankee states.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So on the one hand, yes, from everything I've read and all the impressions I have, they were very much dismissed and it was very much sexist. And also I think, because they weren't doctors. But on the other hand, the doctors who were being presented with these cases were like, I have no idea what this is, so let's just pretend it's not real. But luckily, those two women in the groups that they established, they went on and they contacted Yale Medical school, they contacted the state, and they really kind of put this on the map. They said, there is a mysterious epidemic that's going on where you have a lot of kids who suddenly have juvenile arthritis out of nowhere. What are you guys 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 Willy Burgdorfer. 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I remember that when I was a kid, that was a big news item. It was a scary one.

[Josh Clark]

He was working out in Colorado, and Colorado was ground zero for Rocky Mountain spotted fever for a while. Which is, yeah, you do not want to have that. It's a really bad bacterial infection. But by this time, they had done, thanks to the legwork done by the moms and the patient advocate groups in Lyme, Connecticut, it had been pretty well established that the common thread between all these people, besides where they lived and by the way, it was Chuck Lyme, Old Lyme, and East Haddam. Sorry. East had them, aside from the fact that they all lived in the same region, was that all of them, or almost all of them, recalled 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And he had already discovered this bacterium called. How do you pronounce that? Spirochet.

[Josh Clark]

Spirochete.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Spirochete.

[Josh Clark]

But a spirochete is a type of bacteria, and that's what spirit, Chad. That's what I know.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Give me the apron.

[Josh Clark]

There you go.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

Spirochet. You just made me think of the older brother Chet and weird science.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Now go make yourself one buttwad.

[Josh Clark]

Man, that guy had some good quotes.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. R.I.P. what?

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Bill Paxton, when he died a couple years ago. Very sad.

[Josh Clark]

Are you sure you're thinking of Bill Pullman?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No. Bill Paxton died. It was so sad because I had just listened to his Marc Maron interview, and he was like, after that episode, I wanted nothing more than to be Bill Paxton's friend and neighbor.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, neat.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

He just sounded like the best guy and best family man. And he passed away way too early.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Really? I did not know about that. I saw Frailty not too many weeks ago. It's still pretty good.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Was it the first viewing or.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no. I've seen it before, but.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, man, great movie.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But he wrote and, I believe, directed and starred in it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It was so good. And I love a good Powers booth casting call, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

It was. It was unusual and surprising, but it was perfect.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Very good. Underrated film. Where are we?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. We were talking about Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Willy Burgdorfer identifying the spirochete that was causing Lyme disease.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Spirochet.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

What a dumb. Dumb.

[Josh Clark]

No. Remember, we established we're all smart.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So he discovered this parakeet, and he was honored by this discovery in naming that thing after himself. That's why it has that interesting name.

[Josh Clark]

I get the Impression. He didn't name it after himself, they named it after him. No, go on. Yeah, okay. But there's a big difference between him saying, this thing's called the Burgdorferi bacteria and somebody saying, we're gonna name this after you.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I totally agree.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so Bergdorferi or Burgdorfer, 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 spirochete, which again, it's a kind of a snake like shaped bacteria, specific kind that walks like a slinky. Because it was a bacterial infection, the medical establishment said, oh, we got this here, take some antibiotics. And over, you know, the course of several years, starting in, I think the 90s, is when they really started to say, okay, we can cure Lyme disease, especially if we catch it early on, by a two to four week round of antibiotics. Right, Here you go. And they said, case closed, we're the medical establishment, let's go have a party for ourselves.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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 closed the book a little too soon. And a lot of people do, because that round of oral antibiotics, if you catch it early, it can really work. And I think they say, what, like, nine times out of ten, if you catch it early, then that will work.

[Josh Clark]

Right. They're so persistent with that assertion that if you find a tick on yourself and you live in an area where Lyme disease is known to thrive, if you can't say how long that tick's been on you, they're probably just going to give you that round of antibiotics prophylactically.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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, and suspect recent exposure to a tick, present your suspicion to your doctor so that he or she may make a more informed diagnosis.

[Josh Clark]

So, right, show up to your doctor and say, yeah, madam, sir, I would love to present my suspicions to you. Please sit down.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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 if you're going on symptoms alone, like we said, there are hundreds of things that share those symptoms, and lyme disease may not be the first thing they think of.

[Josh Clark]

That's a huge problem with Lyme disease. Another huge problem is that the test we use to test for Lyme disease doesn't actually test for the B. Burgdorferi bacteria.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

It tests for the antibodies that should be present in your bloodstream. If you have a bacterial infection, not even specific to that one, but a bacterial infection, the problem is it takes days, if not maybe a week or two before your body mounts an effective immune response against this infection. So if you find a tick and they give you a test, say within the first couple days, it's going to come back negative. Even though you very much have a burgdorferi infection, it's going to come back negative because the antibodies haven't been created yet. The other part of the problem is even if you take a blood test that tests directly for the Burgdorferi 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 Burgdorferi bacteria and find it in a simple blood test.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You can also get false positives. And they're advocating now for two tiered testing for confirmation of the diagnosis. So if you get that first positive test, sometimes now you'll get a different test, a western blot test that's going to really get more specific to that antibody, not just the general antibodies.

[Josh Clark]

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, that symptoms that you had actually failed to fully knock out the bacteria that created this infection, that 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?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it's a really big deal because, you know what'll happen is they'll say, you're cured, we gave you these antibiotics. They worked, but weeks and months and even Years later, when people have persistent fatigue and muscle aches and headaches and you know, like your knee joints hurt, they said like a brain fog can happen. And these are all things that are, I don't want to say generic, but if you walk into your doctor and say, I feel like a. I'm fuzzy and have a brain fog and I get headaches and I'm tired, it's sort of a wide. It's hard to pinpoint what's going on.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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 as a chronic issue.

[Josh Clark]

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, 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 the antibiotic course is not enough and that the Lyme disease is persisting elsewhere in the body and that maybe it's changed its form so that it won't show up on the tests like it should or there's remnants of it. I saw one article that suggested that the cell wall from the spirochete, the burgdorferi spirochete, can remain even after the thing's dead and persist in like joint tissue and cause an immune response there, which would explain this long term arthritis as like a post treatment Lyme disease syndrome symptom. Or is it that it converts into an entirely different disease like an autoimmune disorder?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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 Barre syndrome or just talk about it in different episodes.

[Josh Clark]

We've talked about it and I think if I remember correctly, it's Guillerbare.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Guillerbare. Give me the apron.

[Josh Clark]

I'm pretty sure, yeah, we could both be wearing the apron for this one though.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, we'll split it up.

[Josh Clark]

I get the lower half, I get the top half. I'm porky piggin it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'm gonna just cover my bits down there. But regardless of what's happening, what people know is that they don't feel right. And it's extremely frustrating to feel these symptoms months and years later and not be taken seriously in a doctor's office.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So a lot of people are saying this course of antibiotics shouldn't be two to four weeks. It should be many months, because you really need to get all of the spirochete out of there or else it's going to persist and you're going to have big problems. And then the medical establishment is saying, like, what you're talking about doesn't even exist. So there's a lot of frustration, like you're saying a big disconnect. And this is something that is probably going to keep playing out, although it seems like it may be on its way out because of the epidemic proportions Lyme is taking now in the United States.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, the statistics are mounting up such that it can't be ignored any longer. Not that it was ignored, but, you know, that's probably a harsh statement, but it's being taken way more seriously now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So something like there's an expectation that there's going to be something like 300 to 400,000 new cases of Lyme disease in the United States alone, and that 10 to 20% of those patients will end up with chronic Lyme disease.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, I spent a fair amount of time hiking around the woods with my dogs and have pulled plenty of ticks off of them and plenty of ticks off of myself. And I have fatigue a lot because I have a four year old. And every now and then I'm like, do I have Lyme disease?

[Josh Clark]

Well, probably not. And here's why.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I've never had the bullseye.

[Josh Clark]

First of all, okay, that's a big one. But also the ticks you pull off of your dog, those are dog ticks. They do not transmit Lyme. It's specifically the long leg or black legged tick, which is a type of deer tick.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Because there's deer ticks all over the woods.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. There definitely are. I don't know if deer ticks will latch onto a dog. That's entirely possible. They won't, since there's such a differentiation between dog ticks and deer ticks. But I do know that dog ticks don't transmit Lyme.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I think we should talk about my favorite thing from the Ticks episode, and this is one I will lay on people from time to time, is remember how ticks attach themselves?

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

They just hang out on blades of grass and things and just snap their little claws constantly, just waiting for something to pass by that they can latch onto.

[Josh Clark]

Right. They sense the CO2 of the mammal that's walking past them, so.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Interesting.

[Josh Clark]

And Chuck, one thing I read is that somehow the lime Lyme infected ticks because they're infected themselves. Lyme resides in, like, small mammals and rodents as a reservoir. Yeah, they're infected, but they don't have symptoms. Ticks get infected with this stuff and they're just passing it along. It's not like they're the ultimate source of Lyme disease.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, ticks are misunderstood. They're really great.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But from what I saw, the ticks that are infected with the Lyme bacteria are actually better at finding hosts than non infected ticks. Like it somehow enables them to be better parasites. That's amazing. Interesting.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that sounds familiar. Did we cover that or do I just know that Because.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sorry, I don't remember. But I do. I remember you talking about in the Ticks episode about how they wave their arms in the air waiting for somebody to pass by. And I remember one of our listeners made some art of that. We gotta find it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And from snapping their little fingers on a blade of grass to my dog's butt, to my scrotum, it's quite a. It's quite a ride.

[Josh Clark]

It's a wild ride.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And then to Emily eventually plucking that thing out for me.

[Josh Clark]

That's nice.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's what marriage is all about, folks.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. You just have your forearm thrust across your eyes. You're like, get it out, get it out.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So let's take another break.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And we'll talk a little bit about prevention. And then a little bit about some very recent interesting wacky things going on in Congress about Lyme disease as a bioweapon.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, Stop. You should. Okay. Chuck, you talked about prevention. How do you keep from having to have a tick pulled from your crotch?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Don't ever go into mother Nature. Just stay in your mid century modern home with tiled floors and don't go into the woods.

[Josh Clark]

Sounds delicious.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I love the woods. You love the woods, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Yeah, I love watching the woods on television.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

From your mid century house.

[Josh Clark]

No, I do. I love the woods myself.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm just kidding. Get in the woods. But they recommend things like deet. I don't use that stuff on my own body. But some people will say, put that all over your body and put it on your clothes and put it on your socks and shoes.

[Josh Clark]

Just walk around spraying a cloud of it around you constantly while you're in the woods.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

What I do is I just check for ticks.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sure.

[Josh Clark]

And then when you come out, like, wear light colors too, because you can see the ticks a lot more easily. And then when you come out of the woods, take your clothes off and take a 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 tymps. 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And just while you're at it, take off the adult ticks as well.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Don't just leave those on.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And check your dogs. You know, you check your dogs under their haunches, like on the armpit of their legs, whatever that's called, their leg pits. Check behind their ears, check under their collars. Cause ticks are trying to, you know, they're not gonna hang out just like on the top of their back. They may start there, but they're gonna try and find a place that's dark and warm and out of view.

[Josh Clark]

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 a Lyme infected adult tick will transmit Lyme to you too, for sure. Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

A very important distinction.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So now we move on to the US Congress. Very recently, about a month ago, end

[Josh Clark]

of July, I think.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. There was a U.S. house rep named Chris Smith, Republican out of New Jersey, who introduced legislation that said, hey, Department of Defense, you should review these claims that I'm seeing that our own Pentagon researched using ticks to spread Lyme disease as a bioweapon in the mid 20th century. I'm reading a lot about this in books and articles that we did research on Plum island and other insects, too, not just ticks, of turning them into bioweapons. And this thing passed, and a lot of this Comes from a book written by Chris Newby called Bitten the Secret history of Lyme disease and biological weapons.

[Josh Clark]

And this book, like, I think Chris Smith, the representative from New Jersey, said, like, this book really inspired me to take up this legislation. But in the book, Newby basically says the government at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and on Plum Island, New York, before it was turned into an animal disease research center, were doing.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It was an insect disease research center before that.

[Josh Clark]

I guess they were looking into. Well, they definitely were doing biowarfare research there.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Early 1950s. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then Fort Detrick for however long, if they're not still doing it now. But they were apparently looking into ticks as delivery systems for biological weapons. 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 and landed in the area around Lyme, Connecticut. And these ticks got off and they started to breed, and they. They became endemic in this area. And that's where Lyme disease came from. There was actually a biological weapon that was produced and then inadvertently, probably not purposefully released into the larger population in the northeast. Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So here's my question. I haven't read the book, but are they saying that we created Lyme disease or that we just weaponized it? Because those are two very different things.

[Josh Clark]

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

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, that's very easy to disprove if she's actually claiming that they created Lyme disease, Because we just got through saying it was in. Who was the mummy?

[Josh Clark]

Utzi.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It was in Utzi 5,300 years ago,

[Josh Clark]

over in the Alps.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, true, but also in the United States. I mean, it came around in the. We first discovered it in the 1970s, and, like, several different places. It wasn't just Lyme, Connecticut. They found it in California.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Which I think somebody who subscribed to this conspiracy theory, and it's very much what it is, is a conspiracy theory that, well then the release wasn't purpose or accidental, it was purposeful. And that they spread it around the Northeast, California and then Spooner, Wisconsin, which supposedly is the actual place where the first case of Lyme disease was described in the United States in 1960, about six years before this cluster of juvenile arthritis cases popped up in Old Lyme, Lyme and East Haddam.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, it's a very bad idea if that's what went on, because you have to depend on a lot of things, which is A, these ticks definitely finding their way to the enemy. B, they attach to the enemy successfully and transmit the disease. And then what does it transmit? A very slow acting disease that will give people headaches and fatigue over the course of a long time. Right.

[Josh Clark]

That also produces a one of a kind telltale rash.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it has to be probably in the country. They don't thrive well in the city.

[Josh Clark]

So it's just.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It doesn't make a good biological weapon.

[Josh Clark]

No. And then again, people who subscribe to his conspiracy theories say, well, they can't all be winners. But maybe it was just something they were experimenting with and it wasn't very good.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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. Yeah. It's not just a complete wacko idea.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

The other reason Chris Smith shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand is because he is a true Lyme warrior. He introduced other legislation called the Tick act. And of course he had to make tick anachronism an acronym, not an anachronism.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

What's it stand for?

[Josh Clark]

Ticks Colon Identify, control and knock out Act. He was really grasping like a tick on a blade of grass with that one. But the point is.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

But knockout's not one word unless you use it as knockout.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that's what he's saying. I guess.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So it's really the Tickos act,

[Josh Clark]

but it would create an additional $180 million in federal funding for Lyme disease research, which is sorely needed right now.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's awesome. I didn't know he was such an advocate. That's good.

[Josh Clark]

He really is. He hates Lyme disease. Like, a lot

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

of. I was about to say something, but

[Josh Clark]

I wish I could take a pill that would bulk up my analogy region in my brain.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, your analogies are great.

[Josh Clark]

What were you gonna say? I wanna know. We can beep it out if you need to.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I was gonna get political. I was gonna say he hates ticks like he hates. Okay, can we leave that and bleep it?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. We'll find out. All right, so the whole idea that it's a bioweapon, almost certainly not the case. Right. But it makes for good press. I mean, like, if you look up, like, Lyme disease and bioweapon, there is a lot of recent articles written on it. Just because a member of Congress introduced this legislation. Yeah. What a lot of people are saying is, look, it makes sense, like this conspiracy theory that people would go to that. But 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 Aon, which is a great website by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, spells it like Michelle Pfeiffer with the P, called Ticks Rising. And she's an investigative reporter, a 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, in 2014, the EPA actually started to use four new indicators about what's going on with climate change and the impact. And one of them was the spread of Lyme disease. So, like, the EPA officially uses that as a factor and an indicator in determining the impact of climate change now.

[Josh Clark]

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 over the winter. So they're surviving longer as it gets warmer and warmer, higher and higher up. Their range is spreading rather rapidly.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And wherever these ticks go, Lyme disease is game to go with them. So the spread of Lyme disease is. Is increasing as the spread of ticks is increasing, too. And ticks have gotten totally out of hand in some areas. In that same Aon article, Mary Beth Pfeiffer was talking about how moose are dying in their thousands in, like, Wisconsin and the Dakotas because they're being bled to death by a hundred thousand ticks at once.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's amazing.

[Josh Clark]

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 supp. 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Back in the day, there were things like mountain lions and there were predators that would help control the deer population.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, wolves.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Wolves. They're even suggesting reintroducing wolves to help control the deer population.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, you can bet that's gonna happen. No, really?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I mean, do you think so?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, totally. Like, if 300,000 people a year are coming down with Lyme in the United States, they're gonna start reintroducing wolves to combat if it has even a half of a chance.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'd be interested to see if that happens for sure. Because humans are gonna want to hunt those wolves.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know, it just brings it out in us for some reason. Huh.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, they hunted the mountain lions, right?

[Josh Clark]

But I think that's the idea of. Oh, wait a minute. Really weird and circuitous. Bad things happen when we over hunt 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.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Who knows? You got anything else, Man?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

So there's a solution. A round of antibiotics and some wolves. And that'll cure what ails us.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Advocate for yourself still people.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. And the wolves.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Be persistent.

[Josh Clark]

That's good advice for everything, Chuck.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

Almost everything. There's certainly cases where persistence is not a good idea, but you know what I'm saying, right?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I do know.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, if you want to know more about Lyme disease, go check out all of the articles there are to read. And again, go check out the Aon article by Marybeth Pfeiffer. It's really interesting. And since I said it's interesting, that means it's time for listener mail.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna call this neat story about how Great Stuff youf Should Know listeners are.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I like that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

From Portland, Maine. Hey, guys. My Wife, daughter and I. All Stuff youf Should Know Listeners for years decided last minute to buy tickets to the show while on vacation at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, just a short drive south of Portland. We had nosebleed seats, naturally, because we waited until just an hour before showtime, and that was more than cool by us. And we were totally stoked just to be there. Whatever the seats. When we got to our balcony seats, a friendly fellow named Matt approached us, said he had three tickets for orchestra seats and asked if we'd like them. The tickets were intended for friends of his who were stuck in Labor Day weekend traffic, couldn't make it to the show. Turns out he had been scouting the crowd for 40 minutes looking for a group of three, even enlisting the help of the ushers to find three people together. And we were the first group that he saw. A brief walk downstairs, and there we were, three rows from the stage for the supremely excellent show About Podcast topic redacted thanks to Matt and his friends being stuck in traffic. We went from not having tickets an hour before Showtime to having third row 10 minutes before you guys took stage. We considered it a little piece of true magic. So while I'm confident this lengthy setup in telling you the story is way too long for the air. No, not true. Richard Clark, the whole family would be forever grateful if you could give Matt and the Connecticut groundskeeper a huge thank you from Rich, Susan, and Emily in upstate New York for sharing those seats with us.

[Josh Clark]

That is fantastic. I love our shows, man.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's great. People are so kind. And that is from Richard Clark. Not Dick Clark, but Rich Clark.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's even better. Yeah, Dick Clark's taken.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And good for Rich Clark for recognizing that too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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'm utterly unsurprised because our fans are pretty great people.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuff you should know.com and you can send us a tweet or insta post or a comment or what have you, that kind of thing because all of our social links are there. Or you can just do it the old fashioned way and send an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast.

[Josh Clark]

Guaranteed Human.