The Rewatchables
The Ringer
TV & Film
Gerbil
by The Hollywood Reporter
Today: #16 in TV & Film on our combined chart.
Chart positions today
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Ranking history
History builds daily. We started tracking this show on the Trending chart recently, so the trend line appears after a second day of data.
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| Date | Pocket Casts |
|---|---|
| Oct 1 | #68 |
About the show
Everyone knows the story about Richard Gere. Few know how it started. For four decades, a salacious and unproven rumor has shadowed one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Investigative reporter Allen Salkin spent six years chasing its origins — and uncovered a story about gossip, power, politics, the internet and the peculiar wiring of our own brains.
New episodes every Thursday.
Latest episodes
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4 - Tail Between His Legs
October 1, 2026 · 47 minIn 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, real damage, and the…
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3 - Sex Object
September 24, 2026 · 46 minPlaying 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 perfect vessel for…
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1 - The Word
September 17, 2026 · 41 minSay "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 doctor changes his…
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2 - The Philadelphia Gerbil Panic of 1985
September 17, 2026 · 52 minCould 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 infected Gere?
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Gerbil: Inside Hollywood’s Most Unkillable Rumor - Trailer
September 15, 2026 · 2 minThe Richard Gere gerbil rumor won’t die. Why? Did a movie star really show up at a hospital in the 1980s with a rodent in his rectum he’d inserted for sexual pleasure? Investigative reporter Allen Salkin spent six-years examining documents…