Lyme science, translated for patients.
Tick Boot Camp brings researchers, clinicians, advocates, and patients into long-form conversations about Lyme disease and related chronic illness. Its best moments slow down dense medical ideas, recap them in everyday language, and connect the science back to real suffering and recovery.
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Tick Boot Camp is a long-running Lyme disease and tick-borne illness show with a clear patient-advocacy center. It treats chronic illness as complicated, disputed, and deeply human. The format is mostly long-form interviews, but the strongest pattern is translation: a guest explains a technical issue, and the conversation pauses to restate what it means for someone living with symptoms. That makes the show unusually useful for listeners who want both science and emotional context. Recent episodes cover ILADS education and policy, pediatric Lyme, autism regression, PANS/PANDAS, congenital tick-borne illness, persistent infection, molecular mimicry, immune response, diagnostics, metagenetics, and experimental treatment research. The range is wide. The center stays Lyme. Rich Johannesson and Matt Sabatello are presented in its episodes as co-hosts, and their style is curious, conversational, and protective of the audience. They ask guests to define terms, explain credentials, and walk backward into origin stories before the discussion gets technical. A pediatric practitioner may explain how Lyme work expanded into neuroimmune and autoimmune care. A microbiologist may describe research into infectious contributions to chronic fatigue-like symptoms. A Stanford Medicine guest may discuss potential Lyme treatment approaches while carefully noting limits around therapy advice. A Mayo Clinic guest may compare direct testing methods and speak cautiously about unconventional urine testing. An MIT professor may map why two people bitten by ticks can follow different illness trajectories. The show does not flatten those conversations into tidy answers. It lets uncertainty remain visible. That can make episodes feel sprawling, but it also makes them feel grounded in the real confusion patients face. Tick Boot Camp is at its best when it bridges lived experience, research vocabulary, and practical skepticism. It is warm without being casual about suffering. It is hopeful without pretending the science is settled. For people navigating Lyme disease, supporting someone sick, or trying to understand why testing and treatment debates remain so charged, it offers a substantial, community-minded listening archive.
Made for: For Lyme disease patients, caregivers, advocates, and medically curious listeners who want detailed conversations about tick-borne illness, chronic symptoms, and recovery. It especially suits people comfortable with long interviews and complicated medical terrain.
What sets it apart: Tick Boot Camp combines patient advocacy with unusually granular scientific and clinical conversations. Its signature strength is slowing down expert language so persistent infection, diagnostics, immune response, and treatment questions become easier to follow.
The goal of the Tick Boot Camp Podcast is to help people liberate themselves and others from suffering caused by Lyme disease through validation, community building, belief that healing is possible, and modeling success. Listen to our Tick Boot Camp podcast using all major podcast streaming services such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music. Our podcast is also integrated with smart home devices, such as Amazon Alexa and Apple TV. Ask your device to "play the Tick Boot Camp Podcast!"
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Tick Boot Camp translates Lyme disease research into patient-centered interviews without sanding away the field's diagnostic uncertainty.
Tick Boot Camp treats Lyme disease as both a research problem and a lived chronic illness. Its interviewers bring laboratory scientists, clinical staff, physicians, and advocates into detailed conversations about diagnostic limits, immune response, persistent symptoms,…
A urine test lands in front of a Mayo lab director, and you get a careful answer.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Stanford-linked Lyme discussion that stays technical, patient-centered, and concrete.
This episode follows Lyme topics that sit outside standard care, with Stanford Medicine's Dr. Jay outlining how a tick-borne illness initiative took shape around 2012 and why chronic Lyme and chronic fatigue syndrome drew Stanford attention.
A practical, technical look at Lyme testing that keeps the science readable.
This conversation stays practical as Dr. Bobbi S. Pritt walks through the main tests clinicians use for Lyme diagnostics, including PCR, culture, and antigen testing, and where each one can run into limits.
A clear, measured look at why similar tick bites can lead to different Lyme disease paths.
Lyme disease comes into focus through a plain but useful contrast: two people get tick bites, and their illnesses may head in very different directions. Dr. Tal, a principal scientist at MIT with her own lab, guides the hosts through the main possibilities.
A practical look at MAESTRO enrollment, chronic Lyme research, and what participants may help make possible.
TickBootCamp's conversation with Yuri Kim places the MAESTRO Project where Lyme research meets people still waiting for clearer answers. Kim, the project's clinical study nurse and research nurse, keeps the focus practical: MIT's work centers on Lyme disease and long COVID, aims…
A Texas Lyme advocate links recovery, pediatric care access, and legislative work in a candid patient-centered conversation.
Texas follows a Lyme advocate whose public work is rooted in a private ordeal. The founder of Texas Lyme Alliance describes being bedridden, wondering who was speaking for patients, and later tying her recovery to a promise to advocate once she was well enough.
Horowitz connects his chronic-illness book to environmental pressures, system limits, and proposed care reforms.
Dr. Richard Horowitz's return to Tick Boot Camp centers on his forthcoming book about chronic illness and why some patients remain sick, then widens into a critique of the care system around them.
Beauty talk with real-life stakes.
Training, honesty, and Parkinson's in motion.
Whole-life care for chronic bodies.
Dr.
Kristina Petterson Bauer, founder of Texas Lyme Alliance, joins the Tick Boot Camp Podcast live from an ILADS conference in San Antonio.
This episode features an interview with Yuri Kim, the clinical study nurse for MIT's MAESTRO Project, discussing their large-scale research on chronic Lyme disease and long COVID.
Talon Yorn tells Matt on Tick Boot Camp how congenital Lyme disease left him undiagnosed until age seven and unable to keep up with other children.
This episode features an ILADS expert panel webinar discussing diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses, moderated by hosts from Tick Boot Camp.
Dr.
This episode features an interview with Frédéric Roscop, an osteopath discussing his approach to healing chronic Lyme disease through terrain, stress physiology, and liquid intelligence.
This episode features an interview with the hosts of Tick Bootcamp discussing how healing from Lyme disease involves more than just physical recovery, including identity restoration and patterns learned from over 600 interviews.
Dr.
Dr.
Dr.
The hosts welcome Dr.
Yuri Kim explains her role as the leading clinical study nurse and research nurse for MIT's MAESTRO Project.
This episode features an interview with MIT researcher Yuri Kim about the MAISTRO study's efforts to measure brain fog in infection-associated chronic illnesses like Lyme disease and long COVID using both subjective surveys and objective neurocognitive assessments.
Mark Ouellette, a retired cop and bodybuilder, shares his personal journey with Lyme disease to spread awareness about the condition.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Dr.