Gerbil
The Hollywood Reporter TV & Film · EN · 11 episodes · latest 2026-11-12
What it is about
Publisher’s own description, taken unchanged from the podcast feed.
Latest episodes
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10 - Blood on the Scrubs
The doctor's daughter finally talks. So do Cedars-Sinai nurses and doctors who've stayed quiet for decades. This is the testimony the whole season's been building to and a hard look at how memory bends the closer you…
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9 - Up America's Ass
Pretty Woman turns Gere into America's boyfriend right as the rumor detonates. A full-page denial ad. A chicken joke gone wrong in US Weekly. A San Francisco performance artist with a habitrail we cannot fully describe…
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8 - The Alibi
Gere has a story he tells friends about where this all started but does it hold up? We chase an espionage angle, consider Chinese disinformation as retaliation for his Tibet activism, file CIA FOIA requests and find…
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7 - A Guide to Dating Gerbils
The Toronto Film Festival, a Hollywood sitcom writers room, and a Manhattan humor magazine provide clues through the murkiest origins of the rumor. Testimony from writers and reporters, and a key archival discovery,…
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6 - Fear and Biting in Mesa
Gerbils have been illegal in California since 1924. So how does the rumor even work? Allen road-trips to Arizona to meet real gerbils, becomes a casualty of a nasty hamster, consults Sigmund Freud, and calls up New…
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5 - Without a Base, Without a Trace
Is "gerbiling” actually a real thing? Between a bestiality investigator's case file, a 2024 FBI report, and doctors who've seen things, we go looking for the line between urban legend and actual medical phenomenon.
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4 - Tail Between His Legs
In the 1980’s after Rock Hudson's death, Hollywood's homophobia is in full panic mode, and American culture is whispering about – and mocking – the sexuality of leading men. Plus: another newsman, another gerbil rumor,…
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3 - Sex Object
Playing pimps and hustlers, attacking the press, projecting an unreadable sexuality — welcome to early Richard Gere. Bret Easton Ellis, Karina Longworth, and journalist Michael Gross help explain how the star became the…
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1 - The Word
Say "gerbil" to someone and watch their face. Everyone's heard the rumor. Nobody knows where it came from. Reporter Allen Salkin isn't sure he should be the one to dig into it, but a tip from the daughter of an '80s ER…
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2 - The Philadelphia Gerbil Panic of 1985
Could Jerry Penacoli — Philly's golden-boy newsman, be the Gerbil rumor's actual patient zero? Eyewitnesses and archival tape tell a wilder, sadder story than anyone remembers. Did the rumor jump cities before it…
Episode details from the publisher’s feed. Playback happens at the publisher.
Publisher details
- Oldest episode in feed
- 09/2026
- Typical length
- 37 min
- Format
- Serial Meant to be heard in order
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