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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 TodayAndrea Dunlop, host of Nobody Should Believe MeGypsy Rose BlanchardBree, Fancy Macelli, Audacious Audrey, and Amber & Alaura of Into the Weeds

Credits

Written and hosted by Javier LeivaEdited by Puneeth Shenoy with The Podcast PunditsTheme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net

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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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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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It's like getting to the end of a movie and discovering the twist, then going back to the beginning because every scene means something else. That's what I've been doing all week with the Rick and Tanya Fernandez interviews. This time we're looking at Shelbey Fernandez's surgeries, what the doctor told police in 2019, and new audio from Shelbey Fernandez herself, recorded before her arrest.

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Long before Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother was murdered, the tension inside that house was already at a breaking point. The private videos between Gypsy and Nick Godejohn that nobody was supposed to see. The evidence of violence that the HBO documentary never showed you. And the text messages from the night of June 9th, 2015, read out loud, minute by minute. They are not what you expect.

Gypsy's critics say she was the violent one all along. That it was Dee Dee who had reason to be afraid.

Chapters

00:00 Everyone Has A Hot Take02:26 The BB Gun04:09 Chained To The Bed05:11 Why Not Just Run Away?07:23 Nancy Simpson: She Was Shopping For A Man09:22 That Bitch Is Dead10:40 Victim Doesn't Mean Innocent11:19 The Plea Deal13:17 When Nick Became The Victim16:16 Functions Like A 10-Year-Old17:52 I Still Love Her18:43 Activating The Dark Side20:34 The Texts From June 9, 201523:58 What Gypsy Makes Of It25:15 Andrea Dunlop On The Autism Argument26:56 Grace And Accountability28:01 Why Don't They Show You The Same Grace?29:35 On The Plea Deal30:15 Is It In All Of Us?

Binge more episodes ad-free on Patreon at patreon.com/pretendpodcast or PRETEND+ on Apple Podcasts.

Written and produced by Javier Leiva. Edited by Puneet Shenoy with The Podcast Pundits. Theme music by Joe Basile, thechicken.net.

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