Mac PyCharm 2017.3.4 Proxy with HTTP/HTTPS Request fails

I'm using feedparser to grab an external RSS feed. My python script works fine from a Mac Terminal; I can also curl the feedparser URL (without authorization) from the Terminal inside Pycharm within my project, as well as ping the server.

However, when I actually debug or run the script, the http request fails:

'https://twitrss.me/twitter_user_to_rss/?user=%40prattprattpratt'

<urlopen error [Errno 8] nodename nor servname provided, or not known>

If I can get the HTTPS request to work in my Mac terminal, and in the PyCharm Terminal, what would prevent it from working while the code runs or debugs?

What I have tried so far:

1) Proxy settings in File/Preferences: No Proxy, Autproxy and Proxy (authenticated with my work proxy) all fail to make a difference.

2) My etc/hosts file has the proper localhost setting (I'm using Sierra 10.12.6)

3) latest/greatest PyCharm, Python 3.5.6 etc. all updated

4) using requests to setup a Session() request (this results in a 407 or the same error as 1 above)

I have also seen:

407 errors

A crash(?) in my connectionpool.py with an unknown parameter error