Ep. 908: The Lone Star Tick and Alpha Gal Syndrome

Summary

---

The MeatEater Podcast Ep. 908: The Lone Star Tick and Alpha Gal Syndrome

Date: July 27, 2026
Host: Steven Rinella
Guest: Burkhard Bilger (Writer, The New Yorker, author of Noodling for Flatheads)

---

Episode Overview

This episode delves deep into "Alpha Gal Syndrome," a tick-borne allergy to mammalian meat that is increasingly affecting outdoors enthusiasts, hunters, and the general public. Host Steven Rinella is joined by acclaimed journalist Burkhard Bilger, whose recent New Yorker piece “The Great Infestation” spotlights this mysterious allergy and the Lone Star Tick responsible for transmitting it in the US. Along the way, the conversation also explores tick ecology, changing landscapes, the rise of allergies, conspiracy theories, and Burkhard’s long-form reporting on American subcultures.

---

Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Introduction to Burkhard Bilger’s Work

• Steven opens with high praise for Burkhard’s reporting, referencing Bilger’s influential articles on cockfighting and bull riding and his book, Noodling for Flatheads.
• [03:13] Steven Rinella: “You found that a friend of mine in Oklahoma made a documentary called Okie Noodling... now there’s a whole noodling tournament in Oklahoma every year. But you were on to that stuff... 25, 30 years ago.”
• Contrast between urban helicopter parenting and rural risk-taking cultures is highlighted through Bilger’s reporting on bull riding ([06:10]).

---

2. What is Alpha Gal Syndrome?

• Definition: An allergy to a sugar molecule (alpha-gal, short for galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose) found in most mammal meats and dairy, triggered by a tick bite (primarily the Lone Star Tick in the US).
  • [12:46] Steven Rinella: “This Alpha Gal deal... causes like a meat and dairy allergy... has a totally different way it functions [than Lyme disease].”
• How it Works: All Lone Star ticks carry alpha-gal in their saliva. When they bite, the molecule is introduced into the human host.
  • Not every bite causes an allergic syndrome, but everyone bitten receives alpha-gal ([13:03] Bilger).
  • The allergy is unusual for being triggered by a sugar, not a protein ([14:33]).

---

3. Epidemiology & Spread of the Lone Star Tick

• Geographic Expansion: Ticks, once limited to the Southeast, now reach as far as Maine and northern Michigan—aided by climate change and changing land use ([11:15]).
• International Presence: Alpha gal syndrome exists worldwide, but different species of ticks spread it in other countries ([10:49]).
• Relationship with Wildlife: Deer are a primary host but ticks are indiscriminate, feeding on any mammal and even humans ([30:35]).
  • [25:53] Bilger: “A typical deer in a season can carry 500 to a thousand ticks... high deer populations... are breeding factories for Lone Star ticks.”

---

4. How Tick Bites Lead to Alpha Gal Syndrome

• Detailed breakdown of the tick life cycle and “tick bombs” (clusters of tiny larvae that simultaneously bite):
  • [19:58] Bilger: “One of the [phenomena] is what they call tick bombs... clusters of 200 tiny seed-like Lone Star ticks that people walk into.”
• Symptoms: Delayed allergic reactions (2-6 hours after consuming mammal products), making diagnosis difficult. Median diagnosis delay is seven years ([16:27]).
• Severity: Severe allergic reactions include anaphylactic shock; many cases are misdiagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome or other conditions ([16:28]).

---

5. Why Is Alpha Gal Syndrome Growing?

• Multiple Causes:
  • Environmental change: More ticks and wider ranges due to climate and suburbanization ([37:23], [38:30]).
  • Increasing deer (and other host animal) populations ([26:27]).
  • General “allergy epidemic” in the developed world—possibly linked to cleaner lifestyles, dietary changes, and altered immune responses ([47:11]).
• Diagnostic Challenge: Lack of awareness among doctors and common misdiagnosis.
• Possible Immunity Patterns: Evidence that people in long-affected regions (the South) may develop some resistance over generations ([40:31]).

---

6. Debunking Conspiracies & Timeline

• No Evidence for Intentional Spread: The theory that VC-backed alternative meat companies (or Bill Gates) intentionally created alpha gal syndrome is unfounded; the condition’s timeline predates these developments ([54:13]-[55:33]).
  • [55:46] Rinella: “It struck me as an imprecise, expensive, extremely risky... marketing strategy.”
• Other Conspiracies: Some plausibility with old military research on bioweapon ticks, but Lyme bacteria predates human intervention ([56:18], [57:32]).

---

7. Broader Ecology: Land Use, Ticks & Disease

• Land Use Patterns: Return of forests, suburban sprawl creating ideal tick habitats, and high ‘edge’ environments where wildlife and ticks thrive ([37:44],[38:30]).
• Analogies to Other Species: Discussion extends to raccoons, opossums, and their expanding ranges in human-altered landscapes ([36:00]).
• Deer Population Control: Human health (tick-borne diseases) is a new motivator to reduce deer numbers alongside traditional motives like crop protection ([27:00]).

---

8. Alpha Gal: Course, “Cure” & Living with It

• Natural Course: Some people recover over several years if not re-bitten; repeated exposure worsens or re-triggers the allergy ([18:35]).
• Treatment Advances: New drugs (e.g., Xolair) and alternative therapies like auricular acupuncture are showing promise ([61:31]).
• Dietary/Lifestyle Impact: Avoidance of mammal products (meat, dairy); accidental exposures possible via gelatin capsules, creams, or medications ([66:06]).
  • [99:00] Rinella: “I don’t like to admit this about myself, but I’m a big half and half guy in my coffee.”

---

9. Lyme Disease, Other Tick-Borne Illnesses & Future Threats

• Comparison to Lyme: Lyme is treatable with antibiotics, but can cause long-term damage if ignored; “chronic Lyme” remains controversial ([34:04]).
• Emerging Threats: Asian Longhorned Tick (from Asia, now in 24 states) and diseases like babesiosis and ehrlichiosis, though less prevalent than Lyme or alpha gal ([59:50]).
  • [60:34] Babesiosis and ehrlichiosis can be deadly but are rarer than alpha gal.

---

10. Reporting Deep Dives & American Subcultures

• Bilger’s Approach: Careful, respectful ethnography—never mocking, but genuinely fascinated by America’s “eccentrics” and traditional lifeways ([91:27]).
• Classic Stories: His experiences researching bull riding, cockfighting, noodling for catfish, moonshining, and coon hunting underscore the depth of rural American subcultures ([84:01], [85:01]).
  • [77:58] Bilger: “As modern Americans, we’ve gotten used to being blind to the... shrink-wrapped chicken... you show someone killing a chicken... and that’s appalling to us.”

---

11. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Every single entomologist I talked to said, I hate that tick. ...They actually pursue people... The Lone Star will actually come down and, and follow your heat and your carbon dioxide and, and track you down and crawl on, on foot.” (Burkhard Bilger, [21:53])

• “Alpha Gal is different... every Lone Star tick has Alpha Gal in its saliva… not that large a percentage of people who get the Alpha Gal into their system... will develop the syndrome.” (Bilger, [13:03])

• “The more tick bites you get, the higher [your] antibody levels go. If you really want to have it dissipate and go away, you can’t be outdoors very often...” (Bilger, [18:35])

• “Alpha Gal can be triggered by stress, by alcohol, by exercise... sometimes we have all the working materials, but it doesn’t happen unless some outside factor comes in.” (Bilger, [50:05])

• “I don’t want to get it, but I’ve thought about it... if I got it, I would hunt turkeys and fish like a madman...” (Rinella, [64:50])

• “[Cockfighting]... At some level those chickens weren’t... these were brush pits, traditions. Abraham Lincoln was a cockfighting referee; George Washington went to cockfights.” (Bilger, [79:57])

---

Notable Deep Dives by Timestamp

• Burkhard’s Early Reporting Career & Rural Contrasts – [02:38]-[07:12]
• Alpha Gal Overview: Mechanism, Spread & Symptoms – [08:49]-[16:27]
• Tick Life Cycle & “Tick Bombs” – [19:19]-[21:52]
• Relationship Between Ticks & Deer, Motives for Population Control – [25:53]-[29:28]
• Allergy Epistemology, Explosive Growth – [39:23]-[48:25]
• Conspiracies & Medical Theories Debunked – [54:13]-[57:54]
• Treatment & Living with Alpha Gal – [61:31]-[66:31]
• Cockfighting, Noodling, and American Subcultures – [75:41]-[89:47]
• On Earnest Reporting vs. Mockery of Rural Traditions – [91:27]-[92:37]

---

Final Thoughts

This episode is a masterclass in thoughtful natural history journalism, combining hard science, tradition, and storytelling. Listeners come away with a nuanced understanding of Alpha Gal syndrome, why it’s on the rise, and its impact on outdoor culture—plus an appreciation for Burkhard Bilger’s empathetic approach to American subcultures.

Recommended Further Reading:

• Burkhard Bilger, “The Great Infestation” (The New Yorker)
• Noodling for Flatheads by Burkhard Bilger

---

Transcript

[Burkhard Bilger]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

Guaranteed Human when you're in the backcountry, don't forget your own backcountry. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

bringing along wet extra large Dude Wipes. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild soaking your butt. You never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

your butt with dry toilet paper?

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Wetter cleans better so ditch the itch

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

and switch from TP to wet Extra large Dude Wipes.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Dude Wipes it is the best clean.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

Pants down.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

They're available at Amazon.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

That's where I usually order mine from,

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

but you can get them at Walmart nationwide. Fantastic product. Proud to be doing ads for these boys at Dude Wipes.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Check engine ABS or maintenance Light on Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE Certified Master Technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Auto parts.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

When you're miles deep in the mountains and carrying everything you need on your back, your boots aren't gear you think about. They're what you depend on. That's why Western hunters trust Zamberland and man. I'm telling you, I've been running around in some Zamberlands. They are so comfortable and just well built and feel great in the hills. Family owned and handcrafted in Italy through three generations, Zamberland boots combine nearly a century of boot making expertise with premium materials and new innovations for any pursuit, game and terrain. They're comfortable, supportive, resolable and built for the long haul. From rocky desert to steep shale slopes, the Zamberland's perfected their craft. To ensure your success, head to zamberlandusa.com for handcrafted boots for every season. Zamberland USA.com you're going to love getting your feet into a set of these.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case, underwearless.

[Burkhard Bilger]

We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Brought to you by first light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

First Light builds no compromise, gear that

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

keeps me in the field longer.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

No shortcuts, just gear that works.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Check it out@first light.com that's F I R S T L I.com Holy smokes. Joined today by Berard Bilger, the writer, we're going to talk about Alpha Gal Syndrome and the Lone Star Tick but we're also going to talk about a bunch more of your work. And I got to tell you flat out right here, this is embarrassing. I. I've been a fan. I've been a fan of you for. For over a quarter century.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Wow, that's great.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I like, Dude, I'm not kidding you. I. In 1999, or whenever that was, 1999, 2000, I was a graduate student and I got the Harper's magazine and it had your piece on cockfighting. And I was split between. I was split between loving you because it was so perfect, and in wanting to kill you because I was so jealous. I'm not kidding you. And I've. I've loved your stuff since, man.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, thank you.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Like, you're, you know, I know you. I know you've done books. Like, you have a book, Noodling for Flatheads, and you kind of blew that. I mean, you, like, made that whole thing. In my mind. You took this, like, esoteric, you know, backwoods practice and sort of made it to where every social media influence around the planet goes out and has their day noodling Flatheads, you know, I mean, like, you found that a friend of

[Burkhard Bilger]

mine in Oklahoma made a documentary called Okie Noodling with the flaming Nick Blips for the soundtrack. And. And he. And now there's a whole noodling tournament in Oklahoma every year.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But you were on to that stuff. Yeah, you were that stuff 20, like, over 20 years ago.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, 25, 30 years ago. Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And another favorite thing, like, one of my favorite passages ever written is you were. You were profiling the. The sort of like, up and coming bull riders. Explain to people real quick. And I'll tell you my favorite passage. But, like, how do you explain your piece about bull riding?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, it's basically about how young bull riders get made and they, you know, they get started five or six on sheep, and then they go to little calves, and then they go to small bulls and steers. And. And that has happened. That has gotten younger and younger, even as the bulls have gotten more and more fierce and terrifying and destructive. And so it's been a crazy kind of collision of. Of two cultures.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And you did most of your reporting for that. Am I remembering right? Was it mostly in Nevada or you.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It's mostly in Oklahoma, actually. I grew up in Oklahoma, so I knew a lot of. And there were. There are a bunch of bull riding families down there that I knew, so I met them.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But you were. I always tell people the story because you're writing A piece about bull riding culture and these young kids bull riding and at the same time that you're working on this in your own neighborhood in Brooklyn, right? New York, there's a park where the parents all take their little kids to play and they came in and installed rocks in the park.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean flat rocks, like 2 inches high.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. So you're writing about the parents, right, who are deeply upset about the hazard that these rocks would present to their children should they get hurt on the rocks.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And people being like, hey, I can't believe they're real rocks put in the park. And you're like, you're living in this while also living with these bull rider people, right?

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, I mean it was, I think it was the, the, the, the high point or the nadir of, of the kind of helicopter parenting thing. And, and in Park Slope, where I'm in Brooklyn, was really intense about that. These parents who want single thing create a perfectly safe bubble for their children. And then I go to Western Oklahoma and, and you know, some five year old, eight year old boy is getting thrown off, bloody face, might have a bunch of cuts and his parents are like, get back up boy, get back up on that thing. You know, and it's just. And I have to say those kids that I was with, those bull riding kids were some of the, the best kids I've ever been around. Incredibly polite, focused, like good natured, you know, I mean, you know, there was a good chance they were going to get grievously injured before the age of 20, you know, and they could have head in. It was lots of risk in what they were doing. But in terms of how they approached life, there was so much zest and appetite to it. It was kind of, they were kind of great.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. And then now the reason, the reason I want you here now is you just wrote a big piece. All your stuff is so well reported. You do a great job. I feel like you, usually you, you seem to really win the trust of people you're talking to. You paint things very fairly. And now you've done a piece on something that I've been paying a ton of attention to, which is this what you can clarify what seems to be this explosion in alpha gal syndrome to where now I've got buddies that have had it. I've got buddies that got it so long ago they got over it. It seems like there's more and more of it I went through. I recently was reading the writer Nelly Bowles. I recently read a piece she had where she called she Said that Lyme disease is a chic disease. Like people are proud to have had it. I don't know about that. I had, I've had a tick born. I had a tick borne illness from Lyme that I was treated for and got better. And ticks are part of the conversation in this country, especially in the outdoor community. Like ticks are a bigger part of the conversation now than they've ever been. And it seems like they're only going to become more and more and more of the conversation and there's more and more things to worry about and, and I didn't realize, and I'll have you explain it, but I, I recently picked a loan. I had a Lone Star tick right here on my clavicle. I called my, a friend of mine who's a doctor because I thought it was like the kind of thing you take an antibiotic for. This is just, I mean, this is a couple weeks ago, right? And she's like, no, man, this is a whole other ball game. This is not nothing to like, that's not this.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And I realized like, how little I knew about this. Yeah, but to which we're going to cover. But to start, like, what was it like? Why did you get into this idea? Like, what, what, what drew you to this, this idea of Alpha Gal syndrome and Lone Star ticks?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, it's like a lot of stories. I kind of zeroed in on it gradually. My first thought was, damn, we've had these waves of infestations over the last 30 years, you know, Lyme disease and super lice and bed bugs. And then there was this huge scabies outbreak in Europe that might be coming to this country and screw worms and, you know, it's just been like one after the other. And I thought there's gotta be a pattern here. What's going on? And so I started calling. First I called pest control people in New Jersey and then they sent me to a bunch of extension folks in Nebraska and Kentucky. Okay. And they said, well, yeah, a bunch of those things are, we're worried about the screw worm, but they haven't really come across the Texas border yet. But everybody here is freaked out about Alpha Gal. And I had heard about alpha gal maybe 12, 15 years ago as a kind of a novelty disease. There was a piece on Radiolab about a woman who'd gotten it and, and it, and it, and it felt very much like what Lyme disease was in the early days. Like maybe something that in a small pockets like the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard, which, by the way, are two of the biggest hotspots for it. Maybe people get it there, but it's not that widespread. And then I started to realize, no, it's actually those ticks have moved all the way west to the Rockies. They're like. And they're spreading and multiplying, so it's becoming a much huger thing than it was.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You just said that the ticks are spreading. When is it the. Is it that the ticks are spreading or that the. The pathogen or the diseases are spreading?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, it's both, really. I mean, in this country. I mean, if you look worldwide, Alpha Gal is all over the world now.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

More than 30 countries, six continents.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Got it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And in all these countries, all these continents, it's carried by different ticks, like the Bond tick in South Africa or the castor bean tick in Europe. In this country, it's carried by Lone Star ticks almost exclusively. And the Lone Star tick used to be pretty much contained in the Southeast. Like, up until 1950, they didn't really go past north of Virginia.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And now you look at the CDC map of Lone Star ticks, and they're all the way to the Oklahoma Panhandle. They're all the way to Maine. They're all the way to, you know, northern Michigan. So they. With climate change, and especially with the kind of wetter conditions that often come with climate change, they've kind of followed those and spread all across the country. And they're so aggressive and so bold and resilient that they've done really well wherever they've gone.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. I want to tell. Tell listeners about a thing real quick then why you'd explain elf, like, how this Alpha Gal thing works, but, like, people are very familiar with Lyme. We've been talking about Lyme disease for decades. Lyme disease is. You have a tick that carries, like, a bacterial pathogen. Yeah. The tick latches onto you, and the longer it's on you, the more it can transmit. And it transmits a bacterial infection into your body.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It's passing an infection along into your body. You can have the ticks that carry it. You have areas where there's a very low prevalence. Right. There's a small percentage of the ticks are infected. There's areas where, like, when I got it and doing my research after getting it, I Learned that about 3/4 of the ticks at that time in Hudson Valley, about 3/4 of the ticks carried the. The. The bacteria that causes Lyme disease.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So, you know, if you got A tick latched on you had a 75 chance that that thing was, had the capability of bringing it to you.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

This Alpha Gal deal, which we'll jump to the kind of the punchline here is it causes like a meat and dairy allergy, is how people become aware if they had it has a totally different way it functions.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Can you explain to people what's like what is going on when you get bit by these things?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. I mean Lyme disease, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, the ehrlichiosis, all the major tick borne diseases are they're bacteria or they're parasites. Alpha Gal is different and it, and it's different in two ways. Like every Lone Star tick has Alpha Gal in its saliva. Right. So it's not a question of if you have the bacteria or not. They all have it.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Like they're just born with it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You're born with, they're born with it. And when you get bitten, if they latch on and they stay latch on, that Alpha Gala goes into your system. Now the catch is that like not that large a percentage of people who get the Alpha Gal into their system from a bite will be, will develop the syndrome. Right. You may even have Alpha Gal antibodies in your body and still not get the syndrome. The syndrome means you're getting an allergic reaction to it. But if you get bitten by a Lone Star tick and it stays on you, you will get Alpha Gal in your system.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And what, what is that like? Like, explain that bit about that.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

All, all meat, besides like people meat,

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

monkey meat, all mammal meat contains something, right?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah. All non primate bodies contain Alpha Gal and the most of it. If you look at the ones that have the highest concentrate, it's the organ meat, it's the sinews, it's the fibers, but it's also in the meat. And dairy often has, almost always has Alpha Gal in it.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And what is it like?

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

It's a carbohydrate, it's a type of sugar.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It's a type of sugar which is another unusual thing. Most allergies are caused by proteins, our two proteins, but this case it's the sugar, which is one of the reasons it took so long for it to get identified. But it's, it's in this, you know, and so, you know, we eat Alpha Gal all the time, we're eating meat all the time and mostly we don't react to it. So the question was why do we. And, and that still hasn't been totally figured out. There's clearly something in the tick saliva, some kind of CO factor that's not only we're not only getting the Alpha Gal, but it's triggering the immune system, immune reaction to the Alpha Gal and the people who get it.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And then they get it like the tick gets it in them. Yeah, to some degree. Where the body, yeah, now the human body now reacts to, it has immune

[Burkhard Bilger]

reaction to that sugar, that foreign sugar that's in your blood.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So then you go eat a burger, right? You go eat a beef burger and all a sudden your body lights up.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah. I mean, and the crazy thing is that most allergies are quick, right? You get bitten by, you get stung by a bee and you react right away. But Alpha Gal, it can take two to six hours to manifest and it seems to be because the Alpha Gal itself is bound up in lipids and fats or it's bound up in these connective tissues and both of them, these kind of gluey connective tissues and both of them take a long time to digest. And so, you know, you're eating this stuff and no reaction at all. And then suddenly at three in the morning, you're starting to get terrible stomach cramps or you might get shortness of breath, your throat's closing up, you're getting rashes or hives and people don't make the connection. Yeah, right. I mean, there was a study in 2717 that looked at a hundred doctors visits of people who had Alpha Gal syndrome and only 1 in 10 doctors identified it correctly.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, and the people in that study, the median length for to diagnosis was seven years. So you think about people having these serious allergic reactions to the point of some of them are going into anaphylactic shock, you know, and they, and they don't know. And they go to the doctor and the doctor says, well, that might be a gluten allergy or I don't know, maybe you have some heart palpitations. We then need to do some heart things. I talked to one guy who'd had three heart surgeries because they misdiagnosed Alpha Galaxy. Really? Yeah. This is a guy in Springfield, Missouri. So that's the, that's the scary part of it. If you don't identify it, you start to think, oh, you have irritable bowel syndrome. You have all any number of things that it could be that you could think is causing it. Huh.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So when, what do you, what does it mean when people say, I got one buddy, I don't want to say his name, say his first Name, his name's Evan. He got it and then he got better.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And again, when I first heard, I should clarify this, when I first heard about this, I thought it was like I had this, I had this feeling. How many ever years ago I was there, I had this feeling that. That can't be true.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

Right?

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, it sounds, I mean I thought it was another. And, and I don't in any way want to say there's not such a thing. Like I don't want to go down and being like there's no such thing as gluten allergies, whatever. When I first heard it, what went off in my head is it's like a thing that people are becoming aware of and they're self diagnosing at a, at a higher rate than people are actually getting it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right. Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Because. Yeah, but then I'm friends by the way.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Allergists and epidemiologists were the same way for, for like 10 years. They said this is, this is not a thing. Yeah, you're lying.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

That's the feeling I had is like, I don't know what you got going on. You ate a bad burger.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

What do you mean?

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You're allergic to burger.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, Right, right, right, right, right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But what. So, but then my buddy who I know and know him well, you know, he went through it. I can't remember what it was. It was some, I don't know, five, six, seven years and he said that it started to dissipate. What's that all about?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, I mean that's the, I guess the bright side of it is that your antibody levels start to drop and sometimes three, four years even you can go back to eating meat. You know, people have all kinds of different reactions. The, the trick is though, and here's the problem is that the more tick bites you get, the higher antibody levels go. Right. So if you really want to have it dissipate and go away, you can't be outdoors very often or you have to be incredibly careful. You have to wear, you know. So about, about avoiding your diet but

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

it's watching your activities.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You can't eat meat or dairy and you can't get bitten again. Huh.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Explain a little bit about like what, what's this ticks kind of groove? Like what, what is his life cycle? What is he doing with his time?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, every, see, every spring season they, they, they, they come out and they want a blood meal. Right? They want to. And, and before that they're spending most of the time in semi hobby hibernation. Right. There and leaf litter somewhere, not bothering anybody. But then they come out in the spring and they're looking to, to, to suck blood. And they do this even as, as larvae. One of the, what they call tick bombs. Okay, which are these clusters of 200 tiny seed, like Lone Star ticks that people walk into. And you look and you think you have some dirt on your pants and on your leg and you brush it off and you've, you've had 25 bites.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And those, those little larvae, sons of bitch.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Each of them can bite. Each of them can give you alpha gal syndrome.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So, you know, you know what?

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

I've.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I haven't seen that. But you know what I've gotten tangled up with that comes in those clusters. Have you had problem with chiggers ever?

[Burkhard Bilger]

That's what I grew up with in Oklahoma.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, that's right. You're from the heartland of that, man.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that, that's what we hate because

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

they get you like a bunch, right?

[Burkhard Bilger]

And they burrow under your skin. It's, it's an awful.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, you know what's funny about those chiggers too, is there's so much. When I first got my first bad chigger infestation, where I was in. I think I was in Missouri one. Yeah, I was in Missouri. First time I ever got it bad. And the number of remedies that were suggested to me, bathing in bleach, putting nail polish on them, putting epoxy on them, right? Rubbing motor oil into them, right? And there's so much misinformation that I even went. So I, I got so bad. I was having like, I was going into, like I was having an allergic reaction to them. I was getting feverish. I mean, I was coated. And people are telling me, oh, well, it laid its eggs in you and now they're living in you, right? And I, and I quickly, like on my phone, I quickly learned that that's, that's not what this is.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But I go to a med stop, I go to see a doctor, I'm like, here's the deal. I'm so covering these chiggers. Like I need like a steroid. She goes, is that the thing that lays the eggs in you? I'm like, no, it doesn't lay eggs in you.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, my God.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But anyhow, so that, so when that tick comes out and he's got the little guys.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah,

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

those will bite you.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Those will bite you.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But the big one will bite you too.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Big ones will bite you. I think basically, there's three seasons in every tick if I have it right to bite you. And, and it's pretty, pretty restricted to the spring and summer.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

The thing about the Lone Star tick is it's, they're incredibly aggressive. I mean, the funny thing is talking to entomologists, you know, usually they love their, their beasties and they like to talk about the things they study. But with Lone Star, every single entomologist I talked to said, I hate that tick. Oh, really? I hate that thing. Like one woman said to me, Holly Gaff, she worked at Old Dominion in Virginia, and she was like, they're like the bullies of the, of the insect world. They'll beat you up and take your lunch money. They just, they, they actually pursue people. You know, unlike most ticks, like the dog tick or the deer ticket, they'll hang around on a blade of grass and wait for you to go by, and then they'll hitch a ride and bite you. But the Lone Star will actually come down and, and follow your heat and your, and your carbon dioxide and, and track you down and crawl on, on foot. On foot. I mean, this guy I talked to, this entomologist in, or the public health biologist in Martha's Vineyard, was saying, he talked to lots of people who had said that the Lone Star ticks were coming down from the dune grasses, cross the burning sand and onto the beach blankets and biting people as they were sunbathing. So these things are just so aggressive,

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

like they're detecting people's presence.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, yeah, yeah. And they're, and they're going after them. And they're really, they're really hardy, so they can handle some heat. You know, a lot of ticks will dry up too quickly to do that. But no, they're really, they're, they're problematic little animals. Oh, oh, oh. All righty.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Check engine ABS or maintenance light on. Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Variscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified Master Technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, oh, oh.

[Burkhard Bilger]

O'Reilly Auto Parts.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

When you're miles deep in the mountains and carrying everything you need on your back, your boots aren't gear you think about. They're what you depend on. That's why western hunters trust Zamberland. Man, I'm telling you, I've been running around in some Zamberlands. They are so comfortable and just well built and feel great in the hills. Family owned and handcrafted in Italy through three generations, Zamberland boots combine nearly a century of boot making expertise with premium materials and new innovations for any pursuit, game and terrain. They're comfortable, supportive, resolable and built for the long haul. From rocky desert to steep shale slopes, Zamberland's perfected their craft. To ensure your success, head to zamberlandusa.com for handcrafted boots for every season. Zamberlandusa.com you're going to love getting your feet into a set of these this summer.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

There are 250 reasons to join T

Mobile Girls Trip booked and switching to T Mobile help make it happen with

experience beyond switch and get $100 back plus $650 in value in built in plan benefits. That's $750 in your first year guaranteed.

And honestly, that hundred dollars back, I'm putting it the to towards the zip line now.

That's how you do summer.

Exactly. Best switch I ever made.

This is just one reason to join T Mobile this summer. There are 250 reasons find yours

Savings based on the value of benefits included with experience beyond like entertainment and one year of AAA classic and dash pass on US benefits may require activation C plan. For details get $100 via virtual prepaid MasterCard with eligible ported no cash access and expires in six months. Issued by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC. Allow eight weeks.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Explain the relationship between because the, the, the tick that carries lime has the same deal where they have a tight little friendship with deer.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

The deer doesn't look at it that way. They have a relationship with deer.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, I mean the, the Lone Star. I mean the same biologist on Martha Vineyard told me like a typical deer in a season can carry 500 to a thousand ticks. That's probably deer tick and lone and Lone Star ticks. But yeah, I mean they're like the perfect vessel for carrying these. There's so much blood in them, they they can't get them off. And so in areas like Georgia and all across the country where they have high deer populations, they're just breeding factories for, for Lone Star ticks.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. You even see now there's a, there's always these different depending on who you ask, there's always these different motivations to reduce deer numbers.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

In some, especially along the urban suburban interface, particularly in the eastern US there's always these different motivations to lower deer numbers. Where a traditional one would be agriculture. Okay, sure. You know, just deer come out and destroy cornfields, eat alfalfa Whatever.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And so at agricultural interest, be like, we need to suppress deer numbers.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Right.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Eating people's ranges.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

There's a thing that gets talked about probably more. It gets discussed probably in a way that's disproportionate to how impactful it is. But car insurers will now and then point out that it would be advantageous to us if deer numbers were lowered. Right. That's. People debate whether that's true. But I've seen, like, documented evidence where car insurers have advocated to lower deer numbers. I've seen lately with. With wildlife managers being under some level of political pressure to lower deer numbers because of ticks. Yeah, Like. Like that's entered the conversation.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like. I mean, I started working for science magazines almost 40 years ago, and even then, at the very beginning, there were this debate about what do we do about deer populations. My first magazine was an environmental magazine, and the question, I think, was Fire island in New York.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, yeah, I've been there.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And they were saying, what are we gonna do with the deer? And back then, the big fight was between, really, in an interesting way, between ecologists who were saying, these deer are disastrous for the ecosystem. They're eating all the native plants. They're, like, just changing the whole. And animal rights activists, you know, and people who just had. Who just loved animals, you know, not necessarily PETA people, but just people who didn't want to see these beautiful animals killed.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And it's. And it's amazing to me that it's. That 40 years later, it's still the same debate, because it felt like it was pretty clear 40 years ago that we have too many deer, that they're bad for the environment, and that there's an easy solution to this, which is, you know, relaxing hunting laws in some cases, deer. There's also some ways, you know, there's. There's vaccines and other things you can do, but it's. But it felt like that's been a kind of a natural, ecologically sound response.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. You've had for. For many decades, for many different reasons, pointing out that some of these areas have too many deer, and then you just kind of tack on whatever the like.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Now, the issue de jour.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

This problem, though, I do think the

[Burkhard Bilger]

ticks might be the thing that finally does it. I mean. I mean, talking to these folks in. In. In Missouri, but also in. In Martha's Vineyards, they're, you know, they were for a long time against killing these deer, and now they're just launching this huge killing campaign on that island. And I think it's people finally said, look, we can't live with this kind of threat.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It's direct, it's like, yeah, it's direct human health. Right. Because people can look at these, people can look at these ideas of sort of like long term negative impact on native plant species and they just kind of tune out.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But when you're paranoid to have your kid out in your yard playing on the grass, it just hits people different.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, the funny thing is it even hits people different when it's Lyme disease. And they say, well, you may get, you may have to take an antibiotic or you might get some, you know, fatigue syndrome. And, and when you say you're not going to be able to eat meat anymore or drink milk anymore, somehow that,

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

that hits all freaks people out. Yeah, I wanna, I do, I want to spend more time on that tick life history. Well, let's do that. First, I eventually want to ask you about a little bit about Lyme because I'm assuming you read a lot about Lyme and you're work and talk about lime. But so this tick like he, he, he hatches out and they got these little bombs, these little clusters and eventually they mature and then they, they, they latch onto a deer.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Why do they ever want to leave the deer or don't they?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, that's interesting. I mean, not just deer. I mean essentially they're, they're pretty indiscriminate.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Omnivorous. I mean in terms of they want blood, but they'll, a lot of you get white footed mice, you get short tailed shrews, you get possums, raccoo. You know, people in Georgia, wildlife biologists I talked to, said, look, anything that has, that moves and has blood is, is fair game.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Got it? So that tick, he's not drawn to dearness?

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, no, no, no.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay. So that part of his life stage, if he gets on your dog, opossum a person, he, that, that's all great by him.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons when they talk about how do you get rid of these things? You can't get rid of them. Right. But what you could do is drop the population dramatically. And that's where deer come in. Because deer are both so overpopulated and such incredible hosts. Right. There's just, they're just so large and could carry so many ticks. Like I said, five hundred to a thousand in a season. You know, a mouse, you have four or five, maybe four or five ticks on them. But a deer, you have 100 times that number, so.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Got it. You know, I always thought about, in reading about that, how they kind of hang out and wait for something to pass by. You wonder if, if, if finding that host and latching on to something is successful is. Is, is essential to reproductive success.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Absolutely. And then they'll get their blood meal and then they'll drop off again.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Imagine like the failure rate, right? The failure rate's got to be enormous. I mean, for everyone that. That happens to have a thing brush against it and it gets on it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

He's got to have 99 siblings right now who never were, like, who never were in the right spot.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, dragging. We were dragging these, these sheets through these meadows on Martha's Vineyard and you know, within an hour and a half we had 81 ticks on it. You know, and they're. And it's a little stretch that we were doing.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Explain that to me.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It's about. He goes tick dragging, basically. So he just has a big pole with a piece of white cotton on it, like a meter by meter square, and he just.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But it's not warm.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It's not. No. But the, it just, the, the, the ticks just latch on. You know, they're just stretching out for something and it's moving and they just get caught. And so suddenly, and you pull it up and they're just crawling all over the. And you know, and he's catching 81 in an hour. And a, in a, in 100 square feet. 100 square meters.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Meaning if you went for an hour stroll.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, yeah, you're. You're surrounded by ticks. And, and of course, there are trillions across the planet, so it's like, you know, you know, there's plenty of food for them.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Now let me get to the. My lime question. I was deep into the whole lime world 13 years ago. Okay. I always talk. It was a very, it was like a formative experience for me, man. Like, my boy got, he got. He had Bell's palsy. It was terrible. I was sick. Like, sick sick and got better. And while that was going on and while I was very like into sort of like the culture of Lyme. Lyme disease, there was this raging debate and I even got to where I, I couldn't engage in it, you know, of like, what do they call it? The sort of perpetual lime or whatever. Yeah, that like untreatable or long haul lime or. I can't remember what it's called now.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But this Idea that there were people out there that, that had it, knew they had it, but it was untreatable.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And they just lived with it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But then people at that time, people in the medical establishment that I encountered infectious disease, people, CDC people, whatever, they were dismissive of this idea. Yeah, they're dismissive of that. There's like an untreatable Lyme. When I was treated, I did the orals, I did the intravenous.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I got sick in June, I got better in November after doing intravenous. And then. Do you know though, because you still live in the area, in the hotbed tick area.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Is there still this idea that there, that there's a strain of Lyme or there's people that have Lyme that cannot be cured even with intravenous antibiotics. Like there's nothing that can be done and they're gonna live the whole life with Lyme.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right. I think it's a little bit like long covet. I think it's something that's kind of half accepted, but we haven't pinned down exactly how long it lasts, if it can really last forever. I mean, I've always heard that if you really go all out with the full rounds of multiple antibiotics, you can even get long term live out. But you know, I was just talking this morning to my, my brother in law who's a doctor, and he was saying, yeah, but you can get neurological damage. There's things that can happen from not treating Lyme that will stick with you. I do think it's, that's a scary thing about Lyme is it's, it's as opposed to alpha gal is, you know, it's curable. But then often people don't know to cure it. And then by the time they cure it, they've already had some deleterious effects. So it's, it's a, it's a different kind of problem.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. You know, when you, if you go way back in time, you'd be like, there's certain species like opossums, raccoons was just. Throughout the last couple centuries, these things have poured north and poured west.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And it's some, there's definitely a climate component to it. There's a component too that these things tend to be animals that, that do well around people.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

That, that human activity opens up range conditions or opens up habitat conditions. So, so in the absence of like, like if Europeans have never come to the new world and, and altered everything the way we altered them, raccoons and possums might still have gone north and west, but they might not have gone north as in west as much as they've gone north and west.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Meaning there's all these factors that lead to it, like probably mild, like milder winners. Probably.

[Burkhard Bilger]

They probably have more predators.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, yeah. Like predator reductions.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Probably agriculture, probably, like all these things going into it. Suburban homes and, and trash practices and leaving dog bowls out on your porch, and you get this whole soup of things.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And it's just undeniable that these animals have had a great, very successful run.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And have dramatically expanded the range.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

When. When we keep. When we hear about that these ticks are moving around. Why now?

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, it's. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's. And it's a same combination of factors.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Right.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It's. It's not just climate change. Certainly climate change, I think, has allowed ticks to move north and in some cases west when, if. If it happens to have made some area more humid, you know, where they can handle better. But the bigger thing, I think, is land use.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

So if you look at the east, you know, eastern United States, it's been reforested dramatically in the last 50 years. You know, and not just that you've. You've had people do that. At the same time, you have suburbanization, you have these sub developments out in, out in the woods. You have this kind of sense of what used to be, you know, inner city became suburb, and now you have kind of a kind of sprawl that's sending its tendrils out in, deeper into the forest. You get all these edge habitats that deer love, that all the animals you're talking about love, and that ticks then can ride on those hosts and proliferate. So we've kind of created the perfect patchy, woody, brushy tick habitat over the years along a lot of the eastern United States.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, you know, when I, when I first heard Lone Star tick, all the, whatever the hell, years ago, however long ago, I know that we were doing this show, like this podcast existed at the time I first heard of the Lone Star tick. Well, in fact, let me ask you, when would I have probably first heard the word Lone Star tickets, if you had to guess?

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, if, if you're from the south, it's been the dominant tick for a long time. Like 90% of tick bites are from Lone Star ticks. They've been used to the Lone Star

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

tick for more than a decade. For.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, for decades.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, so people were talking about Lone Star ticks in the South a long Time.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, for them it was just. But, you know, but the interesting thing is, like, there was a study done where we get our alpha GAL statistics is based on the study of blood samples from military recruits, 3,000 of them all over the country that were taken between 2001, 2007. And they looked at the alpha gal antibodies in those blood samples.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And then they kind of showed where they were most prevalent based on where the recruits came from.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, that's fascinating, man.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And it's. And it's amazing. If you look at the epicenter, which is really like southeastern Oklahoma up through northeastern northwestern Arkansas into south central Missouri, it's like 47% of those recruits had alpha gal antibodies. What? 47%? And that was, you know, that was 15. That was almost 20 years ago.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Oh.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So I was late to the party on this one.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You're like, I mean, we all were, but in the South. The interesting thing is in the south east, where they were endemic, you know, the. The Lone Star ticks, much more so than, I mean, Arkansas, southern Arkansas, Oklahoma, they Southern, they would have had it. But, you know, in places like Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons, they had just as high rates, and they didn't have endemic loan start ticks. But in the Southeast, it was only 10% of the recruits on average had Alpha Gal. So something. It. It makes you think that people who grew up with this, or it's been for decades or centuries even, there's probably some natural immunity built in. You would think.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, yeah. That what that was leading me to. And it doesn't really matter, but when I heard it, I thought it meant that it was a tick that lived in Texas.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, right, right, right. I didn't know that.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Just like that. Click. And then I realized, oh, no, because it's got like a Lone Star.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Star on it, you know?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right, right, right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I thought it was like some Texas tick and. Oh. So it's just funny to think back of, like, when you first heard it. What clicked in my head is like, there's this thing in Texas, and I don't really believe it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, no, no. That was my first thought, too. And it's. And it's just that white dot on the back. That's the only thing.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So. So do you know how with Lyme, there's a question of where it ever came from? Like, you know, there's an honest debate about where it came from. There's a wildlife disease you probably have heard of. Chronic wasting disease.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Sure.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So chronic wasting disease was Identified. I can't remember if it was 68 or 72 or it was a dent. It was identified in Colorado. What's not known is where did it come from? Was that just when we identified it? Did they. What are. You know, no one thinks that they identified the first case, right? But then it seems to be in many more places than it used to be. But prior to that, they weren't looking for it. So there's this whole thing of like, what is it? Where did it come from? Was it always here and we just found out about something that's always been here, or did it somehow emerge and we freakishly found it right when it emerged? Like, you know, we don't know. Maybe someday we will know as, as, as sort of the, the genetic things and, you know, improve. Maybe we'll get better clarity into it. But with Alpha Gal syndrome, since it's a thing that's innately in the tick, why weren't dudes.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Why.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

When you're reading about the Civil War, okay, and they're. They're dealing with malaria, why weren't people back then saying, oh, did you hear, you know, little Johnny down the road has developed a mysterious meat allergy and can't eat meat anymore. Why wasn't that a conversation?

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, I asked that question of every epidemiologist, allergist I talked to, and they all said at some level it's a mystery. I mean, you can explain it away to some degree with the fact that it's late onset and so people just didn't notice it. They misdiagnosed it, you could say. It's just, you know, people didn't, didn't take it seriously somehow. Meat allergy didn't. But, but the truth is that it didn't just suddenly appear here. It appeared in South Africa. There's huge cases in South Africa. There's a bunch of stuff in Peru. There's people in the, in the Black Forest in Germany. You're starting to get Alpha Gal in all these places. No one noticed it. And it emerged around the same time.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

Really?

[Burkhard Bilger]

So, yeah, I mean, it started to get identified between 1997 and 2007. You know, the first woman who really is woman. Cheryl Van Van Noonan. Sorry, Cheryl. Cheryl Van Noonan in Australia.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

She accepts your apology.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, she was the first person who, who really noticed the pattern in Australia. And she had local people on the north coast of Sydney who were getting. And where they have these crazy moral ticks. This was. She had her first cases, I think, in the late 80s and then she published a poster in 2003 and presented it at a conference in 2007.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And she didn't know why it was causing it, but she knew that the tick bite was causing a meat allergy. And in Australia, they have this crazy tick called the paralysis tick, which can kill small children. I mean, it's. It has this neurotoxin, and that's what I've heard. It's. It's a. It's a scary and it. And it's the one that spreads Alpha gal. So she first noticed it. But then pretty soon, you had German researchers, you. You know, people in. In southeast. In Korea. I mean, it's really all over the globe.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You know, I want to hit you with a thing that I need to make a note to myself. I need to ask you about a. I don't want to call it a conspiracy theory. A theory. You know what? I'm going with this.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Sure.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Okay.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

We'll get to it. Let me hit you with something, though. A way I think about this kind of thing. Like, why weren't dudes a long time ago developing meat allergies? So my little boy. My younger boy developed this condition called osteochondritis disacans they call ocd. What was funny is he's around on. When he was going through this, he's around on crutches. Like, I remember getting on a plane with him. The pilot is greeting people, and he's like, what happened to you? My boy says, I have ocd. So I had to follow behind and be like, it's his whole other. It was osteochondrized. Dice scans.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Okay. Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It seemed. What it is is little bits. The cartilage. Little bits of the cartilage in your joint die and fall off.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay. He got weirdly. Well, not weirdly. It's weird to get it in one leg. It's. It's. It's weirder, but not twice as weird to get it in two legs. It. Apologies to any people that specialize this, and I'm screwing parts of this up, but there's a genetic predisposition aspect to it, and there's also a use aspect to it. So he likes soccer and basketball and all that kind of stuff. So that probably complicates and he has this thing happen. We dismissed him because he'd be like, something's wrong with my knee.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Right?

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

My knee hurts all the time. He's always talking about his knees or he's laying on the floor being, my leg won't work. What do you mean your leg won't work? And he'd be like, oh, there it goes. Okay. Not hurting, but just observing this, it was like, what are you talking about?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right. All right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You get a max raid. Doesn't do any good because the X ray doesn't show.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Doesn't reveal this. You got to do an MRI to find out that you have it. So lone bold. He has. He gets these couple surgeries. My wife brings him to a specialist, and he's all fine now. But. But check this out. My mom's dad, okay, Grandpa Glenn just had bad knees. Do you know what I mean? It was just. It was a fact of Grandpa Glenn's life. No one. It was this. You know, Grandpa Glenn, he's always had bad knees.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And I don't have any reason to think, but I'm like, I wonder if that dude.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Just had this thing that our little boy has going on. But it was just that he has bad knees. No one's going to do anything about it. They're not going to MRI Grandpa Glenn. You know, 70 years ago, it was just like. It was just the deal, you know, his knees hurt all the time. Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, that was a question I asked, is it. Could it be that we just have always had this, and we used to ignore it, and everybody said no.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, really?

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

It's just.

[Burkhard Bilger]

There's just. It's too severe, and it's too. And it's been this. Too big a surge. You know, I think the other thing you can say that speaks to what you're talking about, though, is that, you know, there's been an allergy epidemic in this country in the last 50 years. I mean, food allergies have doubled and doubled again. Right. And some of it is because allergies gave us the wrong advice. You know, stay away from allergenic foods.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. Like, don't give kids honey and shit

[Burkhard Bilger]

like that, or peanuts and all that kind of stuff. So we're absolutely more prone to allergies than we used to be. So that's probably a big part of this. And there are all kinds of theories, is that we're, you know, hygiene. The hygiene hypothesis that we're living too cleanly, we're not developing, you know. You know, we're not allowed developing antibodies when we're young enough or our. Our. Our gut biome isn't good enough, kids

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

aren't eating enough dirt.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah. All those things.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

There's this idea, not licking enough rocks at the park.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right. Right. There's this one epithelial Barrier hypothesis which says that, that the chemicals we use and the, and that are in the air are making, are kind of making us more porous to allergens. You know, they're like weakening the things that protect us in our skin and in our lungs. And so where it's more easy for allergens to get into our bo. So there's all kinds of hypotheses, but we do know.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Can I hit you with some more?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Sure.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I've talked to people about this and like people in the know. In the know. Ish. Who are like, like I don't know what, what we had. I'll just. Okay. A couple years ago, we had,

[Burkhard Bilger]

A

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

couple years ago when he was, when he was running for President, we had RFK Jr. On. He's talking about allergens and things and he was talking about when these allergens exploded in these different areas where he's, he's like, we don't, I don't know when people look at the timeline like what are big shifts that happened societally, right. And he wasn't pointing to anyone, but he's like, you go and be like what, what things really happened in humanity? And you'd be the explosion of corn syrup, cellular and cellular networks, all these other things like, like medical practices, just kind of things you're talking about like, like what could have, what sort of thing could have happened, right? It would be in my lifetime where things just got different and out of it came a lot of where we see like why did childhood obesity do whatever. Why is autism done whatever. Why are allergy rates done, whatever. And is there something we missed?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, I mean I talked to this guy, Jeff Wilson at the University of Virginia. He's done a lot of really good Alpha Dale research. And, and one thing he talks about is, look, tick bites of all kinds just boost antibody levels across the board, right? And the interesting thing is that you can have really high antibody levels and not have any allergies. And weird things can trigger it. Like stress can trigger it.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You can get this call called chronic eukaryitis or something. I got the name wrong. But it works where you have these sudden flare ups of hives or rashes, you know, and you've had this kind of baseline of antibodies in your blood the whole time and something is triggering it. You know, it could be exercise, it can be alcohol though we know those things can trigger allergic reactions faster. Exercise, Exercise and alcohol. You know, like in one German study for Alpha Gal, they, they know that people had Alpha Gal antibodies and they wanted to feed a meat to see if it would trigger it, but they weren't getting it a good enough reaction. So they gave them some beer to drink and, and put them on treadmills and then they had a higher reaction.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And my body that I was talking about, big exercise guy, big beer guy.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, no, those two things together, you're more likely to get triggered. So, you know, so he was saying, you know, we can't necessarily like pin. It's not a pure cause and effect. You know, sometimes we have all the working materials, but it doesn't happen unless some other outside factor comes in.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

When the moments in your life are too important to miss, you can trust O'Reilly Auto Parts to keep you and your plans on the road. Our professional parts people can test your vehicle's battery and even give it a charge if needed. In most cases, we can install your new battery for free. It's just one of the many services we provide at O'Reilly Auto Parts to ensure life's best moments don't find you stranded.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, oh, oh.

[Burkhard Bilger]

O'Reilly Auto Parts.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

When you're miles deep in the mountains and carrying everything you need on your back, your boots aren't gear you think about. They're what you depend on. That's why western hunters trust Zamberland and man. I'm telling you, I've been running around in some Zamberlands. They are so comfortable and just well built and feel great in the hills. Family owned and handcrafted in Italy through three generations, Zamberland boots combine nearly a century of boot making expertise with premium materials and new innovations for any pursuit, game and terrain. They're comfortable, supportive, resolable and built for the long haul. From rocky desert to steep shale slopes, Zamberland's perfected their craft to ensure your Success. Head to zamberlandusa.com for handcrafted boots for every season. Zamberlandusa.com you're going to love getting your feet into a set of these this summer.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

There are 250 reasons to join T Mobile girls.

Trip booked and switching to T Mobile help make it happen with experience beyond

switch and get $100 back plus $650 in value in built in plan benefits. That's $750 in your first year guaranteed.

And honestly that $100 back, I'm putting it towards the zipline now.

That's how you do summer.

Exactly. Best switch I ever made.

This is just one reason to join T Mobile this summer. There are 250 reasons. Find yours.

Savings based on the value of benefits included with experience beyond like entertainment and one year of AAA Classic and DashPass on us. Benefits may require activation. See plan for details. Get 100 via virtual prepaid MasterCard with eligible ported, no cash access and expires in six months. Issued by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC. Allow eight weeks.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I hesitated to go there, but let's go there on this area. So I'm going to treat this, I'm going to treat this with all due respect.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay. I'm not going to lead the witness. I'm not going to do an eye roll. It is. It has been thrown out there.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Even by people within my social circle. It has been thrown out there where what they look at is they say how did, why did these big. The emergence of these big VC backed meat alternative companies beyond meat, whatever, all that, you know, fake burgers.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right, right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

The emergence of all these like high power VC backed meatless products coincided with the explosion in Alpha Gal.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And they're like they're trying to create customers in the dirtiest way possible. Did you run into this, did you have people share this idea with you?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, absolutely. And in fact, when I was like,

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

how was it explained to you?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean Bill Gates was the bad guy in that story. Right. It was like he's invested, I think in, in, in alternatives to meat and he, the Gates foundation has, has paid for or funded genetically engineering ticks and genetically engineering vaccines for cattle with tick, you know, to fend off ticks. And so there was this idea that, well, maybe something got out of the lab. You know, the problem is one, you know, the Gates foundation didn't work with lone stars. It was, you know. But two, the timelines don't match up.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right. Like, like we started to see Alpha Gal. I mean it's been around, but we know it's been around since at least the 90s, you know that people have been getting it and no one's making

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

those fake bread and no one was

[Burkhard Bilger]

making those fake burgers and, and we started to get the real explosion before the, the fake burger industry came around.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. What struck me is it struck me as an imprecise, expensive, extremely risky.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Marketing.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Strategy.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Like, like really risky.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Like you thought like when Coke changed their recipe, they made new Coke.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You thought that was caused consumer backlash. Imagine when the word gets out that you've created disease and spread it all around the country.

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, no, no.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

That's gonna be hard on your soy Burger.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Business.

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, I have to say, like, to me, I don't think it. It holds water either, but I think the Lyme disease conspiracy theory is much more convincing.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Hit me with that one.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, that was the idea.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I wanted to ask you about this

[Burkhard Bilger]

because Willie Burgdorfer, the guy that. The bacterium that causes Lyme disease called Borrelia burgdorferi, and that is named after Willie burgdorfer, discovered in 1981, I think, and he, you know, he worked for the military doing, you know, what do you call it? Bioengineering. New ticks and bio weaponry, or bio weaponry. There was an idea that you could airdrop infected ticks onto enemy populations, and they actually looked at and, you know, infecting ticks and using them as a weapon, you know, so that work was actually done. I'm not.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I'm not questioning that's true. But what does that then do for when your forces are occupying that area? Yeah, it is. Some of that stuff is insane.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But I'm not taking. I mean, it's serious. Like, it's a real.

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, it's true.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It's like, how do they not go. But hold on a minute, because after we win, we're going to kind of need to go there.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right?

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Well.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And then when you formulate.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, it makes.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It's like insanity.

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, no, no, it makes. No. I mean, any. No. And. And so that narrative made a certain kind of cracked logic, you know.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

But the truth is that, again, that the idea was there that they had genetically engineered the. The bacterium that. That causes Lyme disease. But the truth is, you know, Lyme disease predated that discovery and. And predated his work and. And the earliest examples of that bacteria, we. Collections of mice from 1894.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Is that right?

[Burkhard Bilger]

That already had that bacterium.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

So it's.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, you're kidding me.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I didn't know it was more than a century before this thing came around, you know, so it's. Again, it doesn't hold water, but it's. It's a. You can see why people would be into it on the Internet. It sounds like a kind of logic, you know.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, yeah. It's like we used to joke where we talk about friends of ours. You know, we'd be sitting around talking about stuff like this, and we'd have friends where we felt that most of the information that they traffic in would be information you'd get if you typed into Google, the truth. If you prefaced your searches with the truth about Right, right. Have you ever said the truth about blank? It'd be like that information.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right. Well, the problem is it's always most convincing and effective when it's 80% right. Sure. When the science behind it is actually kind of true. They're just missing some crucial piece of it that, that, that invalidates the whole thing.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. Are they able to go in that? I didn't know that about like finding those old like mice and museum collections and stuff. Is there a, is there a marker where you could go in and you could find. I don't know man, like, like you go back and find in, in, in, in historic Lone Star tick country that you could take some remains from someone

[Burkhard Bilger]

and look for, and look for Alpha down there.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. I don't know, maybe, maybe out of the. Without soft tissue.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You know, I mean and going. And sort of get some idea. But maybe you can't do that.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I don't know. That'd be interesting forensic work. I, I mean the guy that did that work with the, with the, with the Lyme diseases, Professor Telford at Tufts and I don't, but I don't know if they've looked into, into ancient Alpha Gal yet, but.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. What, when you were working on this, what other are there other. You know, we talk so much about Lyme, we talk about Alpha Gal. When you looked at this, are there other tick borne pathogens that, that we're going to be hearing about like in 10 years that they're just talking about now? Like what's on the horizon?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, the, the big thing that a lot of the veterinarians and, and, and livestock folks were talking about was screw arm certainly. But also the Asian longhorn tick carries a deadly disease. I forget the name of it, but it's, but it's starting to spread and it's I think 24 states now.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

That's not even a tick from this continent.

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, no, no. It's, I think it was first identified in, in New Jersey about 20 years ago or 15 years ago and it's already spreading all across the country. So that's, that's a thing people are really worried about. You know the interesting thing is like if you look at the statistics for the number of people catching these things, you know, babesiosis is, can kill you. Erlich Yosa can kill you.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

What are those two? I'm not familiar.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I think bab is a, I'm like, I want to, I don't get this wrong. I think that's a parasite borne one. But I'm not sure, but it's, it causes terrible chills and it can. But those are such small percentages compared to Lyme and Alpha Gal. I mean Lyme is 10 times as as prevalent as they are. And Alpha Gal, I mean the most recent tracking data from Virginia this year, the number of people who are reporting Alpha Gal, the blood tests that are reporting Alpha gal positive is 10 times as high as the people with Lyme disease. So it's really spreading at a huge rate. So it's a different scale that we're talking about with those two diseases.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Are they, are they closing in on any, are they closing in on any treatment? Like if it's like, if it's something like allergen, you know, I don't know, I don't know the first thing about any of this. I just wouldn't be surprised to hear that someone's like, oh, you know, we've come up with some, I don't know, treatment.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

That makes it that your body doesn't trip out about Alpha Gal anymore.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, there's three or four things. One is what you talked about, you just, just go off meat and dairy and it gradually drops. Another one is there's a drug called Xolair X O L A, I, R that was approved for asthma originally and it's since been approved for food allergies in a broad way. And it's been pretty effective. I mean it's expensive but your insurance can pay for it. But people who have had an anaphylactic shock from, who are really in danger of Alpha Gal reactions often get prescribed. This, this Professor Scott Commons at the University of North Carolina that I spoke to, he's really one of the guys who was one of the earliest discoverers and has really spearheaded. He's, he prescribes out a lot to people and it, and people have found you're not really supposed to take it regularly. It's supposed to be, but, and, but it seems to be safe and people have found they can really eat meat on it in some cases.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh really?

[Burkhard Bilger]

So it's, it's, that's, that's one possibility. Commons is looking at a potential drug that might attack. He has some good leads for drug development.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Tell me who that is.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Scott Commons is the guy at the University of North Carolina. And then I know there's some work being done in, I think University of Arizona on vaccines that could maybe the idea is there's some common denominator of all these tick borne illnesses, some CO factor that's making people react. And if we can somehow neutralize that, you know, maybe we can prevent, we can prevent some of these diseases. So there's lots of ways things people are looking at. The other thing that's non pharmaceutical that a lot of people told me is effective is what's called auricular acupuncture. Auricular A U R I C U L A R and that means around the earth. And it's when you know, and it sounds woo woo, but it's.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, I've already dismissed it, but tell me anyway.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, the thing about acupuncture is that it's actually one of those alternative medicines that has, they've had double blind try, they've had trials that have shown its effectiveness. And when I talked to Commons about it, he said, look, I'm an allergist, this is not my thing. But in some ways it makes a lot of sense to me.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Tell me.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Because the vagus nerves nerve goes up there around your ear and it goes down into your gut and the mast cells that are reacting to Alpha Gal, they're down in your gut. And so if you have something that you can somehow modulate the reaction of those nerves to that allergen, that could explain a lot. I mean, he was telling me, look, my son is allergic to walnuts. If he eats a walnut, within seconds, he's got a reaction.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

He said, nothing else in the body moves that fast except for nerves that has to have a neural connection, you know, and.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, it's not like going through your digestive tract.

[Burkhard Bilger]

No.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It's absorbed out of your colon.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Signals are shooting instantly.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So he said, faster than booze.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right. It makes sense to me that, that there would be something that's modulating your nervous system.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

That's an interesting point.

[Burkhard Bilger]

That's doing it. And, and I talked to a few people who'd had, you know, that kind of treatment or given it to their children and it had good effects, you know, that it actually were able to eat meat again.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So I'll tell you what my, like, I don't want to get it, but I've thought about it and I thought like, if I got it, I would hunt turkeys and fish like a madman. It would be a real, like, I wouldn't really change my general way of going about life. I would just really shift. Do you? I mean, I would use it. I would just be like, okay, all the energy I normally spend and getting deer meat and all that.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I was gonna get turkeys and I'm gonna fish. Right, Right. And I kind Of I used to live in, for the first couple years I lived in this fear of it, right? So I'm like, oh, it'd be like so ironic. Like, I got it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, here's the problem with that. It's not just you're not totally protected, right? Because one, you're still getting tick bites probably, right? So your, your essential activity might still go higher. And if your sensitivity goes higher, even if you're eating fish and birds, right, Suddenly you might become sensitive to things like the gelatin capsules around ibuprofen, which is made with collagen from beef, or the lanolin in a skin cream, or the lactase and lactate products and toothpaste. You get.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, really? They get that bad?

[Burkhard Bilger]

People get it. And then the worst ones are you go in to get surgery and they give you heparin, which is a blood thinner and it's made with ant. With, with animal products. Or you get insulin or you get antivenin. If you get bitten by a snake, it's made with I think horse's blood. You know, just. It's kind of, if you get sensitive enough, if you're out there hunting your,

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

well, turkeys, you know, like the, like.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, they can, Turkeys can carry ticks.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Well, turkey hunting is the most tick is the most tick bitten thing you could do on the planet, right? I mean, you're doing everything a tick wants you to do, right? Crawling into the grass and just sitting there for long.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right, right. Yeah. You're where the ticks want to be.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. You know, it's funny you mentioned that about all the other stuff that has animal protein in it. We, we got a, we got a dear friend, her daughter was. Her daughter's vegetarian. You know, she's over my house eating a marshmallow. We were camping and I said, I said, I understand you're vegetarian, but you know that marshmallow's got, what do they call it? What's the stuff in there?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Gelatin.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, yeah. So that marshmallow's got animal gelatin in it. So what, what's, what do you make of that? She says, I guess I'm a vegetarian that eats marshmallows. Oh yeah, that'll work.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, they were telling me, I mean, there are people. And again, this gets into the kind of psychosomatic stuff, but there are people who told me, look, I can't even drink bottled water because it's made with bone char. It's purified with bone char. You think well, how is that going to leave any Alpha Gal in the water? I mean, it feels like a step too far, but you start to get these psychosomatic reactions.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

That other stuff. Yeah, their stuff's legitimate.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So like, how, how do you spend, like, how do you spend your life now? I mean, you do these big, well reported pieces. Do you have days when, I mean, is that the main, is that the main thing you do? Do you have other kind of annoying stuff you got to do throughout the day or you just, you just write, like, you just work on your writing and you write?

[Burkhard Bilger]

No, I just, I'm, I write full time. But that means, you know, like right now I'm in a, in a, in a phase when I'm gathering my next story ideas. So I'm sending emails to researchers around the world and I'm, and I'm reading scientific papers and I'm, you know, calling friends who have, have leads for things and, you know, and that takes several weeks. And then I'm in the reporting phase and the writing phase is actually probably, you know, just the last third of it.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So tell me how much time you spent. Like take the, take the, the Alpha Gal paper or article. How much time did you spend on that?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, I went out to Missouri to start the reporting in late March, like the 20th of March and this. And I was done with the thing the 20th of June. So what is that? Three months? So three months. And that was fairly compressed. But yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And that was the one thing you were working on?

[Burkhard Bilger]

The only thing I was working on, yeah. You know, but I went, I went to Missouri, went to Arkansas, I went to North Carolina, went to Virginia, went to Martha's Vineyard. I talked to people all over the country. So, you know, it becomes like a big, I mean, part of the thing I felt about Alpha Gal was that there'd been lots of stories about it, little piecemeal stories.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Sure.

[Burkhard Bilger]

But no one had done the kind of, the whole thing. And that's what I love to do with the New Yorkers. They give me 9,000 words and I can talk about the history of it and I can talk about the epidemiology of it. I can talk about the allergy epidemic and I can talk about all these dimensions.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And the great thing about Alpha Gal is it really, it touches on all that stuff like the ecology, the history of our country's landscape. You know, all that stuff ties into this story.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. For listeners. Burkhardt just said a 9,000 word article. Yeah, that is, that's a Doozy.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yep.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

That, that, that's like, that's long form reporting. And, and most people, if you, if

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

you're sitting there reading, you know, newspaper,

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

whatever, and you're reading what you probably think of as a long story, you're probably reading like 1200 words.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You know, you think of like a classic glossy magazine, magazine feature. Those usually run like, like I used to write for Outside and like a big, a big one. A Doozy. And outside was 4,000.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right? Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

4, 000 words.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So 9,000 is. Well, I'll put it in perspective this way. There's a hell of a lot of books. There's a hell of a lot of books that are 70000 words.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You know, a lot of books come in around a hundred thousand words. You can get away with 70, 000 words. So when you're doing this piece, you're writing like a seventh or a tenth.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Your, your piece on these ticks is a seventh or a tenth of a book.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Which is, that's a hefty chunk.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It's a heavy chub. And it, you know, and it's a, I mean, not to dig too much into, into the craft, but it's kind of, it's a, it's a challenge, which I love, you know, like, how do you keep all these threads going? How do you, how do you keep the reader interested? And, and is there enough, are there enough dimensions to any given topic to really merit that kind of thing? Because I don't want to. I mean, back in the day New Yorker had, there was once a famous. I think in the 70s or early 80s there was a pro. It was just four 10,000 word pieces. On each one was on a different kind of grain, you know. You know, this week, wheat, you know, and, and you know, and I don't think Americans readers have that kind of patience anymore.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

No, but that's where the good stuff is, man.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, I, I do love those kind of deep dives. I mean, you know, Joseph Mitchell, my favorite New Yorker writer from the 30s, 40s, 50s, he, you know, he sometimes wouldn't get to the, to the nut graph, to the main point of the article. For three or four thousand words, you know, he would be like setting the scene, introducing you, and it wouldn't be till pretty deep in, before you really knew what you were going to write, read about.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I knew a guy, he passed away. He was a writer here in Montana. Brian DeSalvator. He did a little work for the New Yorker. I Remember, it was, it was phenomenal. He did a 10,000 word piece on the history of dynamite called Vehement Fire.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Man, I would totally read that.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Everything you'd ever want to know about dynamite.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right. And what Nobel invented it? Right?

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, that's, that's the whole story. Like picking up pigeon and getting guano. It's just the whole history of explosives.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But, but I don't know. I not. I don't want to say I miss it because it still exists, but it's not as prevalent in American culture as like these, like very informative deep dive P.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Check engine ABS or maintenance light on Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE Certified Master Technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, oh, oh.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Auto parts. Holy smokes.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

I've been running around in some Zamberland boots and my God, are they comfortable. Damn. Out of the box, ready to wear. I can't believe I haven't done it before. And the hunting tradition, right, has always been about knowledge and skills handed down from one generation to the next. Whether it's field memories with your parents or sharing the experience of a first hunt with your own kids, that shared connection is something the family at Zamberland Boots truly understands. Since its founding back in 1929, three generations of Zamberland family boot makers have refined their craft in the mountains of northern Italy, maintaining a tradition of handcrafted construction, durability and performance for the toughest conditions. Each Zamberland boot combines exceptional materials, patented technologies and the latest innovations from partners like Vibram, Gore Tex and Boa.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Because a quality boot is an investment

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

in your feet, Zamberland hunting boots are resolable with original outsoles, keeping you comfortable for a lifetime of use. Zamberland's wide range of hunting and hiking boots is [e-mail] and select retailers, including the newest Drop, the lightweight full protection 8x6 boa and coyote camo. To explore Zamberland's handcrafted hiking, hunting and work boots, visit zamberlandusa.com this summer there

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

are 250 reasons to join T Mobile Girls.

Trip booked and switching to T Mobile help make it happen with experience beyond

switch and get $100 back plus $650 in value in built in plan benefits. That's $750 in your first year guaranteed

and Honestly, that hundred dollars back, I'm putting it towards the zipline now.

That's how you do summer.

Exactly. Best switch I ever made.

This is just one reason to join T Mobile this summer. They're are 250 reasons. Find yours.

Savings based on the value of benefits included with experience beyond like entertainment and one year of AAA Classic and DashPass on us. Benefits may require activation C Plan for details get 100 via virtual prepaid MasterCard with eligible ported no cash access and expires in six months. Issued by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC. Allow eight weeks.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I want to, I want to ask you about one of the, the one of the pieces you wrote. It was the one I brought up earlier that when I first discovered you, you know, 26 years ago, 27 years ago, as your piece on fighting.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Do you feel that you'd be able to do that? Do you feel that you would be. That you'd be able to write that piece today?

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

If.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, why not? Because of what constraints?

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Just so. Because it would be like, it would just get such a reaction.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Regardless of what you said about it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It would get such a reaction.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

About, you know, like, like I don't even talk about that. That's so mean.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Do you. I mean like no matter what your take on it is, it would just be like not a thing people wanted to talk about.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah. I think the New Yorker would still publish that piece. I think part of the reason was, you know, as you remember that part of the point of that Pete was piece was, you know, we have,

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

we

[Burkhard Bilger]

have this aversion to cockfighting, this revulsion. We as a culture, we've decided this is not okay, you know, where did that come from? I mean I think it came from early. I mean, you know there was, there was some real terrible things in 19th century, like women wearing whole birds on their heads, you know, whole species of beautiful birds were decimated and the animal rights movement came out of that or the earth conservation. I mean there was a lot of really important work that got done to, to kind of stop the cruelty. But what, but you know, what we got instead was, you know, industrial meat production, you know, and, and you look at, part of what I was trying to say was, look, we have these urban values now where we are revolted by cockfighting, you know, and we think of it as cruel. But when you look at the life of a chicken, right, Would you rather be a fighting cock that has its own beautiful cage that gets literally massaged every day that gets the best feed, that gets exercise equipment in his cage and that lives a year or two years and goes out fighting. Or would you rather be a factory chicken that gets six weeks and then gets bundled onto a conveyor belt, hung from a running chain, zapped with a bolt of lightning and had its throat cut by a rotary saw? I mean, which life is a better life?

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And yet, and as urbanites as, as modern Americans, we've gotten used to being blind to the, you know, shrink wrapped chicken looks abstract sitting in our supermarket, but oh boy, you show someone killing a chicken or you think about someone watching a chicken fighting and that's appalling to us, you know, which is more appalling. So that was kind of the point in a way was to kind of flip all that inside out a bit.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And you, when you worked on that, you went to some cockpits fights in the South?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Went to a bunch of them, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and honestly there were cockfights that I almost kind of admired. And they're cockfights that I did find appalling. I mean I.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Was it common in the ones you went to? I can't remember. Were they putting the blades on them?

[Burkhard Bilger]

They were putting blades on them, yeah. I mean admire is the wrong word, but. But I went to some local small, what they call brush pits. Cockpits, but brush pits. There's small pits in Louisiana. And you know, you go there at midnight or at 1 in the morning and you're thinking, because you've been told by all the anti cockfighting folks that these, these places are dens of iniquity. Drinking and drugs and gambling, you know, and then you, and you go there at 1 in the morning, you think shit, you know, I'm an out of towner, I don't what's going to happen. And you walk in and it's a, it's a little cage with some bleacher seats around it. And, and the first night I went, there are two nursing mothers sitting on the front row with their babies. Their kids are running around up and down the aisles. You had whole families. It was like Friday or Saturday night in the country. And this is what they did. And yeah, it's bloody, but the chickens are also at some level those chickens weren't. You get some bad stuff. You get chickens that are injected with drugs, you get, you know, poisons put on their, on their blades, you get some bad stuff. But in those, in those cases it was, it was kind of an old tradition. Abraham Lincoln was a cockfighting Referee George Washington went to cockfights.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I didn't know Honest Abe was into it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, yeah, they were. You know, Andrew Jackson supposedly had cockfights in the Oval Office, you know, in the White House. I don't know if the Oval Office that I have my period wrong, but he, you know, so. So it was an old tradition. And then now it's no longer. The cockpits that I thought were kind of awful were the really big ones where you go like. I was one on the border, on the Arkansas border, Oklahoma border. And the weekend I went, there were 900 chickens fighting and, you know, and those birds. And that was just a pure betting scene, you know. And their birds are getting. They're getting these big blades on them. They're going in, they're tearing each other apart. People are betting on them and. And they're getting. And you walked around backstage at those places and they were just trash cans filled with these dead.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

This is clandestine.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, in Louisiana it wasn't. When I went in 2000, it was still legal.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Okay.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Now in 2008, it became illegal in the whole country. And in 2018, even the territories, even Puerto Rico and Guam, it's illegal. So it's become.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Got it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

So it was still legal in a couple places when I went, one of

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

the most brilliant, accidental things that ever had to be traveling. I was in the southern Philippines. It was actually time. It was actually times right after the 911 attacks, it was kind of like dicey down in the south in the southern Philippines. But I was down there and locked into a fight and spent hours there. Just. I was just blown away by it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

What kind of a place was.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Looked like a, like a, if you, if you didn't know where you were and you're driving by, you'd think it was a small, like a county fairground, right? With overhead open, open walls, overhead cover bleachers.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But they had this. The thing I remember most, man, is like. And this is the difference between like a place like the Philippines and a place like America, probably. They had this big cauldron, big boiling cauldron. And every guy, everybody, when their lost in a fight, they'd go over to that cauldron and pluck it. So they dunk it, pluck it, dress it, and just all day, right, watching guys walk off down the road carrying plug.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And then they're gonna eat that.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, like carrying plucked roosters.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right, right home to eat.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It was like. It was just brilliant to see it, man. Like, it was just amazing to see it, you know.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, that was. The waste in. In. In that big pit was like, all those birds are so injected with weird stuff, you can't eat them. Right?

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And it was a big tradition in Louisiana. You'd make it sauce, debris, piquant, you know, like this spicy sauce, and you would. And you would eat your rooster that died after. Was part of the ceremony, part of the tradition, you know, And I think once all these things happen with drugs, that kind of fell away. So that's. That's part of what's. What was lost is.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Is. Is the world you covered back then. Okay. When you did that, when you do your fight piece, that world's gone.

[Burkhard Bilger]

That. I mean, I think there's still lots of clandestine. Yeah, I think there still are, but I think it's definitely gone. I mean, even when I was reporting, you know, New York has been illegal for decades.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

But there was a big bust in Harlem while I was writing that piece. And they. There was an old theater that had been turned into a cockpit, you know, And I know it in Brooklyn, there's, you know, there's Santeria, there's a lot of Caribbean cultures and so forth. There's. There's fights going on.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. You see fighting in New Mexico.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And people like, oh, we just keep those. I used to have this. I used to have this driver I would use a lot of. He was Dominican, and he. I was going to go to doctor with him. He had, like, weirdly, this dude had a family, meaning he had a wife and kids in doctor. He had a wife and kids in the US and they knew about each other.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Wow. Okay.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. Anyways, he'd bounce back and forth. I had this whole plan where I was going to go with him to doctor and he was going to take me to a cockfight.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

It.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I never went. My wife's. Like, that sounds like just the worst idea you've ever had. But I never. I never actually did it, but I haven't seen one since all that time ago.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah. You know, it's funny because I haven't. I haven't been to one either, but it was interesting. Like, when that piece came out in Harper's, I read at least one or two sermons that were written based on the piece that were. Talked about the blood of the. Of the. And, you know, it is like, it's a deep old cultural thread, you know, in American culture and certainly Southeast Asian and Caribbean culture.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Up top. I mentioned, too, your work on. And, you know, you had. You had a book where you explored. I. I'd like you to tell people some more of the chapters. But you had a book new. It came out as newly noodling for Flatheads, and it was about southern culture. Yeah, Lay out some of the chapters. I remember they had the cockfighting one, Flatheads.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It had a thing on noodling. There was a. A piece where I hung out with modern day moonshiners and with ATF folks who are hunting them down. I kind of went back and forth between the two groups. I did a piece on. On frog farming. I did a piece on coon hunting. I. The whole way I got into the book was I was living in. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, kind of missing Oklahoma a bit. And I. And I wanted to get a coon hound. And so I went and I found an ad for a blue tick coonhound in Western Mass. And I went out there and. But I really wanted a red bone because I think they're beautiful dogs. And so I went there and I talked to the guy and I said, well, do you know where I could get a red bone? Are there any red bone mariners around here? Well, sure. And he went to the back and he came back out with American Cooner magazine, you know, and it was fat, big, full of ads and it had all these ads for like coon hunters shipping sperm across the country to each other for their champion nighthounds and all this kind of stuff. And it was. And all the different big hunts that were going all around the country. And I ended up finding a woman who fought, who took her dogs out 350 nights a year. I mean, every night she would go out at midnight and have a coon hunting contest with three other dogs. And you're not killing the raccoons. You're basically just sitting, standing in the woods for three or four hours in the dark, listening to your dog's bark. And then you're getting points for the first dog that trees. The dog hit the trail first one that trees. So anyway, so I wrote a whole thing about coon hunting. I wrote a thing about this old marble tradition in the south. You know, kind of all these obscure little subcultures that are still around that still have a lot of people doing them.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

How did you hit on. I brought this up early on. Like, how did you hit on. When did you first hear, like, oh, there's a thing noodling for Flatheads. Is it because you grew up in Oklahoma? Like, did you grow up knowing about it?

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, I didn't. Which is funny. I mean, okay, it's not funny actually, because it's typical for my family. My parents are both German. They moved over in 1962 from Germany and we spoke German at home. And my dad was a physicist and my mom was a historian. So we had a very weird little academic bubble.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, you guys weren't like hard hitting rednecks.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, we were not. And I loved Oklahoma. But it wasn't really until I started going back. Right after college, I started writing for Oklahoma Today magazine. They did on these assignments and I'd write about buffalo or tall grass prairie or I wrote about the Tulsa race massacre back in 1990. But I was. So when I started doing that, you know, I really started to think, wow, there's a whole side of the south that I just never got to know. In the middle of that, two things happened. One, I was at the environmental magazine in Cambridge where I was working. An intern came in from southern Mississippi and he told me about noodling. And I thought, what? And then I was talking to my brother in law in Oklahoma and he said, well, you know, the plumber here, Noodles, is this guy. Lee McFarland was my classmate in high school. I mean, I had been in school for them for like 15 years. Oh, Burkhart, I'll take you noodling. And then, you know, and, and he was just a genius at it. I mean, and I went out with him. The first day I went out with him, I caught a 23 pound cat pound catfish on my arm, you know, so, so anyway, that was. And he was perfect for me because when I knew him in high school, he was kind of a, A layabout. He was a guy who just didn't care. Made primate season Ds, you know.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Smart, funny guy.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But no one ever calls anybody a layabout anymore.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Yeah, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I like that.

[Burkhard Bilger]

But then when I met him again

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

in this context, he was on fire.

[Burkhard Bilger]

He was on fire and he knew his shit and he was funny and he was capable and he was a great plumber. And he was also this guy, you know, so he. Anyways, it was great.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. When you were, when you were working on all that, did you ever. Because a thing you don't do is you don't do. There's a predictable way that a guy would go about that. A predictable way because you said you had like a, you had like, you know, your dad was a physicist. Right. There's a predictable way where you would go about it. Like you're, you're, you're slumming it with these people.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

They're not in on the joke.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right, right, right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You know.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You look at, like everything's kind of ironic.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You know, you're. You're. You're showing them off. Not you, but a writer.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Might be showing them off to his friends.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Having a laugh at them.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Right.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, that's.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

But you don't do that game.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, it's not even like I'm.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It's not a game. But you're trying to. It's not where your mind goes.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, it's not. I mean. I mean, I find these people that I've written about fascinating and impressive in a lot of cases, you know, and, And. And refreshing in a way that, you know, like, I've spent the last almost 50 years, 45 years of my life on the east coast, you know, and. And in cities, and almost everybody I interview for most stories is kind of media ready. They have kind of prepared their spiel. Right. And they kind of know how to narrate their life, and they think they're going to be the next person on Survivor or whatever. You know, we kind of all package ourselves for ourselves. And, you know, when I'm talking to the coon hunters or the cockfighters, those guys, they had never been interviewed by people before, you know, and they were. And that was exciting to them to be. To have someone be truly interested in what they're doing and truly interested at the level of not just like, how many chickens died, you know, it's like, what do you feed them? How do you exercise them? What's the history of this thing? How did you get into it? You know, how. You know, I really want to know the whole dimension of it. And that to them is then. So it becomes a real exchange. It's not just me looking for the lurid bits and trying to play those up.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Does it take you a long time to win people's trust when all of a sudden, here's this dude, he's coming from this big fancy magazine, you know, and. And Right. And now I'm going to show you some things that I can't tell if you're here to laugh at me or expose my secrets. Is it hard to win people over?

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, I find, like, there's usually. There's usually the same kind of transition happens where it starts out with they're kind of tickled that a New York guy came down from New York to talk to me. They usually don't know the New Yorker, you know, or they don't care about it. Maybe they've heard of it. They don't care about. But the fact that I'm just. I've flown down from New York to come talk to them, that's impressive. So they're willing to give me the time and they kind of think of it. They're kind of. It's a joke to them a little bit. Right. And then pretty soon I'm with them for a week, sitting in their cab of their truck, typing everything they're saying, you know, wanting. Going through the muck with them. And then at a certain point they're like, ah, this guy really wants to know everything, you know? And part of the way is the way I report is. I mean, nowadays I do more recording, but in the day I always had little keyboards and I always typed everything as they said. And at a certain point they'd be like, damn, everything I say is interesting. He's taken everything down. So they kind of get excited about it.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Got it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, so, yeah, it's. It's. Anyway, I love the process.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So what. What are you gonna work on next?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, I have a bunch of leads. I don't have anything firm yet.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

You got a book? Are you working on a new book?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, I'm trying to put. I mean, one thought I've. I've had is like my last bunch of pieces have been all. I realized. I've written about a lot of the phobias. There's a top 10 phobias. I've written pieces about.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Tell me what they are.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I mean, arachnophobia, claustrophobia. I wrote a big piece on deep cave divers. Wrote a piece about a woman who collects venomous spiders. And, you know, I've written about turbulence. I've written about infestations. I've written about snakes in Florida. Snakes. So, anyway, I've been thinking about putting together a collection called like the, you know, the. The Sum of All Phobias or the Big Book of Discomforts or something like that.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Sure, man, that'd be a good one.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Because I kind of feel like it's something we're more and more in touch with, like all these. These fears that we have, like people go to therapy or CBT therapy and all these kind of stuff to address them. So it's become more of a. Anyway.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, I can see that.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And then what magazine pieces are, like, tickling your fancy right now? Like you said, you got a lot of ideas. I'll tell if they're good or not? Hit me with one. I'll tell you. I'll tell you if it's worth your time.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Here's the problem. And I don't want to tell you because this is. You guys. You have way too many listeners.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And because they'll jump on.

[Burkhard Bilger]

They'll jump on it. So that's long form.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Magazine writers. I know. I'm joking. I know what you're saying. There's certain things that are floating around my head. I don't want to say them.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Like, for instance, I have the world's greatest name for a business, but I can't say it. I can tell you, actually, the one.

[Burkhard Bilger]

The story you told me before we started taping that one. I'm ready for that.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. Okay. Dig into that, because I passed it along to another writer, and I don't think he bought.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Well, man, I want. I want to thank you again for coming on the show and talking about all this, man.

[Burkhard Bilger]

That's total pleasure.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. I think people should really, like. I think that. I'm saying it's very particular to the people that listen to the show. People listen to show you. You're gonna love. When you. When you go find. You'll have to conquer paywalls and all that, but when you go find the. Tell me the name of the. The piece. I can't remember the name of your Alpha Gal piece.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Well, you can look under the Great Infestation.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

The Great Infestation.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Or the Tick that Hunts down its host.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah, that's okay. Take the. Hunts down its host.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And it's Burkhard Bilger, so. B U R K H A R D. Yeah. B I L G E R. Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

And then Noodling for Flatheads has probably the most.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Well, that's what I was gonna. That's what I was gonna do. The Mega Plug on. Because I Is if you're in. I mean, if you're interested in American culture, if you're interested in Southern culture and like, kind of the. The under. Like the underground sort of the underground world of people who live eccentrics, who live these kind of old traditional life ways, and Noodling for Flatheads is a great book, man.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that was a fun one.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Yeah.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

Thanks so much.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

Yeah.

[Burkhard Bilger]

My kids were small when I. When I did that, when I reported that, so they kind of went around in my. In our motorhome. Oh, really? And I have great memories of being in northern Georgia in a hunting cabin, like, talking to moonshiners. And I come back every Night. And.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Anyway, were you drinking a lot of moonshine back then?

[Burkhard Bilger]

You know, I actually went to a moonshiners reunion in South Carolina, and. And I spent two or three days asking people, hey, are you. Do you moon. Do you make moonshine? I'd love to taste some of your moonshine. And they're like, no, I don't know. I. You know, they looked at me, and I had this kind of east coast accent. And, you know, they were. That was a place where they really didn't trust me. Oh, you got.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I want you to take a sniff of this.

[Burkhard Bilger]

All right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Well, no, dude, don't get too close. It's not bad, but don't. Don't get in there. Get in there. But just get in there and take a whiff of that. Isn't that something? That's the weirdest. I took a sip of that one time. You couldn't get it out of your mouth. It's beaver casters.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

So this.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

This is the way they used to save them. It's beaver casters preserved in moonshine.

[Burkhard Bilger]

That's crazy.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Yeah. Don't sip that.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Wow.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I took a sip of that, and I was tasting that taste for

[Burkhard Bilger]

the ones in South Carolina.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Like a moonshine. Dude made that for me. You know, I didn't tell him what I did with it.

[Burkhard Bilger]

He made it. But they took these native hard, little Indian peaches, and they would soak it in moonshine, and it would make this blood red, incredibly tasty moonshine. Oh, really? Yeah. I love that stuff. And I actually. I mean, I probably shouldn't say this because it's a felony, but for. I made some moonshine in Brooklyn for one year.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Oh, you did?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Because in my neighborhood, there are all these apple trees planted in the 19th century, early 20th century, and nobody picked those apples. They're all rotten. So I went around, and I. My friend Kevin and I. Kevin Bergen, and I mapped all the apple trees that we could find in our neighborhood. And then we bought a press, and we went around and asked everybody if

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

we could get the apples.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Get the apples. And we ended up just pressing carboy after carboy, These giant glass jugs full of.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Where were you doing it at?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Apple. We were doing it in the basement of my house and out on the sidewalk. And then eventually that, you know, fermented into. Into apple cider and hard cider. And then. Then I. I bought a still from Portugal, and my son and I made a batch of apple. Apple Jack distilled. And it was actually amazingly good. I could not believe it.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Huh. We Just had that. We just had a writer on Isaac Fitzgerald who wrote. He wrote that book about Johnny Appleseed.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah, yeah. Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

So we got into this whole, like, apples into this and into that and into this and into that. Yeah. We had a guy right. In explaining, like, you're just talking about this is like, this from apples makes this kind of thing and.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Take the next step and get. I forgot all what it is now, but. Yeah, yeah, no, it was distilled drinks.

[Burkhard Bilger]

That was crazy. I did not. I assumed it would be indigestible, but it was actually pretty good. Tastes like apples.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

It was good. Good. Yeah. That's good hard work and journalism right there. Yeah, right. Exactly.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Well, man, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. It was great.

[Burkhard Bilger]

I appreciate it. Thanks.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

And now, like I said, I was kind of not looking forward to getting Alpha Gal, but I had a plan. But now you make me think my plans off.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Plan's got some problems.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

I think it's got some problems. The other big thing is, I don't like to admit this about myself, but I'm a big half and half guy in my coffee.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Oh, yeah, that's done with half and half cheese. All, All. All the good things. Yeah.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

All right. I'm going to avoid it.

[Sponsor Voice (T-Mobile)]

All right.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Thank you.

[Sponsor Voice (O'Reilly Auto Parts)]

When the moments in your life are too important to miss, you can trust O'Reilly Auto Parts to keep you and your plans on the road. Our professional parts people can test your vehicle's battery and even give it a charge if needed. In most cases, we can install your new battery for free. It's just one of the many services we provide at O'Reilly Auto Parts to ensure life's best moments. Don't find you stranded.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Auto Parts.

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

Holy smokes. I've been running around in some Zamberland boots, and my God, are they comfortable. Damn. Out of the box, ready to wear. I can't believe I haven't done it before. And the hunting tradition, right, has always been about knowledge and skills handed down from one generation to the next. Whether it's field memories with your parents or sharing the experience of a first hunt with your own kids, that shared connection is something the family at Zamberland Boots truly understands. Since its founding back in 1929, three generations of Zamberland family boot makers have refined their craft in the mountains of Northern Italy, maintaining a tradition of handcrafted construction, durability, and performance for the toughest conditions. Each Zamberland boot combines exceptional materials, patented technologies, and the latest innovations from partners like Vibram Gore Tex and boa.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Because a quality boot is an investment

[Sponsor Voice (Zamberland Boots)]

in your feet, Zamberland hunting boots are resolable, with original outsoles keeping you comfortable for a lifetime of use. Zamberland's wide range of hunting and hiking boots is [e-mail] and select retailers, including the newest Drop the lightweight, full protection 8x6 boa and coyote camo. To explore Zamberland's handcrafted hiking, hunting, and work boots, visit zamberlandusa.com I'm US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

[Burkhard Bilger]

We all get distracted when we drive, whether it's from our phones or kids in the backseat bickering. But how we handle these distractions can be a matter of life or death. Before you get on the road for your next road trip, please put your phones on silent and take a mental note to focus on driving. Paid for by NHTSA this is an iHeart podcast.

[Host (Steven Rinella)]

Guaranteed human.