Bonus: Was Gypsy Rose Actually Medically Abused?
PRETEND
09/07/26
•44m
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I sat down with Alaura and Amber from Into the Weeds, the podcast that first dug through the Gypsy Rose Blanchard FOIA files. I wanted their honest reaction to my microdeletion episode, including the part where they felt like I'd pitted them against a genetic expert.
We discuss:
Is there actual evidence Gypsy was medically abused? I put a page from Dee Dee's medical file in front of them, a handwritten list of Gypsy's supposed diagnoses, and we argue about whether it points to Munchausen by proxy, malingering, or something the DSM-5 doesn't cleanly cover at all. We also get into the prison calls and how Gypsy seems to become a different person depending on who's on the other end of the line.
This is part one of a longer conversation.
The full, lightly edited cut is up on the PRETEND YouTube channel. Into the Weeds is part of Military Broadcast Radio, a nonprofit supporting veterans and military families, so go give them a follow.
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Previous Episode
The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 4
September 1
•39m
According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've got the receipts. Gypsy really had leukemia. She really needed that bone marrow treatment, and the feeding tube and the surgeries were all real and documented, not fabricated. Case closed, they say. Munchausen by proxy, debunked.
That's the claim, anyway.
Three hundred pages of Gypsy's private medical records ended up online, and I got my hands on them. So do the documents validate the claims? We're going to dig in.
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More at thisispretend.com.
Written and hosted by Javier Leiva
Edited by Puneeth Shenoy with The Podcast Pundits
Theme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net
2026 © Creative Babble
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Next Episode
The Gypsy Rose Obsession, part 5
Tuesday
•42m
According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've found it. The smoking gun. Gypsy Rose Blanchard has a rare genetic disorder, a microdeletion on chromosome 1, and depending on who you ask online, that one word explains the feeding tube, the leukemia, the paralysis. All of it. Which means, according to them, Dee Dee Blanchard wasn't abusing her daughter at all. She was just a mom trying to help a sick kid.
So I brought in a genetic counselor and made her explain this thing to me like I'm five, because I am not a geneticist and neither is anyone else arguing about this on TikTok.
Kira Dineen, a genetic counselor, walks through what a microdeletion on chromosome 1q21.1 actually is and what it can and can't explain.
Featuring
Kira Dineen, genetic counselor and host of DNA Today
Andrea Dunlop, host of Nobody Should Believe Me
Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Bree, Fancy Macelli, Audacious Audrey, and Amber & Alaura of Into the Weeds
Credits
Written and hosted by Javier Leiva
Edited by Puneeth Shenoy with The Podcast Pundits
Theme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net
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