Gerbil

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 here. Trump, Liz Taylor and Michael Jackson all somehow wander into this one.

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 surprising extra motivation for Gere's '93 Oscars speech.

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, give unsettling clarity about when and how it might have started.

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 York's "Rat Czar" to sort out smuggling logistics.

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.