Plain English with Derek Thompson - America in the Age of Conspiracy: Q-Anon, JFK, Aliens, and More

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

Americans are unusually conspiratorial as a nation. But in the last week, we have really outdone ourselves. The beating of Paul Pelosi—husband of the Speaker of the House—by a Q-Anon conspiracy theorist led to even more unhinged conspiracies about the media. Kanye West has been all over the news spreading nonsense theories about Jewish control of the world, and in basketball Kyrie Irving published a social media post about a book and movie that featured antisemitic tropes and questioned the Holocaust. What makes certain conspiracy theories so successful? Why do conspiracy theories thrive in 21st century America? And aren't some conspiracy theories ... actually true? Like, what's the deal with aliens, and 1950s UFOs, and the assassination of JFK, and government projects on astral projection and military psychic powers? It's all here in today's episode, featuring the hosts of the popular podcast Stuff They Don't Want You to Know. Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Noel Brown, Ben Bowlin and Matt Frederick Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An Instagram post gets an unexpected boost. A TikTok catches in the algorithm. Sometimes that's all it takes to launch someone into internet fame. But then what? This blew up is a new podcast documentary that reveals how social media stardom is made. It's a different kind of fame. That's not always as glamorous as it looks. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Alyssa Beresnak.

You can listen to This Blue Up on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode is about conspiracy theories. A couple months ago, I received in the mail of the book, Stuff They Don't Want You to Know, the new offering from the podcast by the same name, which covers the history of conspiracies in a way that I really enjoyed, intelligent, informed, lighthearted, but appropriately serious. And I reached out to the podcast, and I said,

hey, guys, the podcast is three guys. I said, hey, guys, I'd love to talk to you about my favorite conspiracy theories, aliens, the JFK assassination, your favorite conspiracy theories, and maybe we can bat around some grand overarching theories for why conspiracy theories seem to be especially buoyant in America today. And so we scheduled an interview for this week. And holy shit, what a week to schedule an interview on the state of conspiracy in America today. If you only follow politics, or if you only follow music, or if you only follow basketball, one of the biggest stories in the world, in your little corner of the world that you follow, what of the

biggest stories has been a conspiracy theory? In politics, Paul Pelosi, the husband, the Speaker of the House, was beaten in the head with a hammer by a troubled San Francisco assailant, whose online history shows a history of left-wing and right-wing conspiracy thinking, most recently the convoluted QAnon story. After this beating became news, another convales. conspiracy theory came to light, accusing Paul Pelosi of lying about the entire situation. So conspiracies both motivated this beating and emerged from this beating. In music, the artist Kanye West, or Yay, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has been all over the news spreading nonsense theories about Jewish control of the world,

one of the most famous, most popular conspiracy theories the last few decades, maybe the last few centuries. and not to be outdone in basketball, Kyrie Irving published a social media post about a book and movie that featured anti-Semitic tropes, including the claim that the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust is, quote, one of the five major falsehoods espoused by the Jewish-controlled media in America.

So look, we're not going to do a deep dive on anti-Semitism in today's episode. The truth is, I find the issue of anti-Semitism I'm really hard to talk about, and really hard to think about. I try in my life and on the show to see the reason and the reasonableness

behind other people's points of views. I'm not a Republican, but I really want to know how Republicans think. I am not a vegan, but I'm really interested in the set of values that leads one to that lifestyle. I think this is the only way to be in the world, not just to preserve a democracy of diverse viewpoints,

but to learn, you have to have time for opinions that aren't immediately obvious to you. But I can't do this with anti-Semitism. I am Jewish. My mother's family is Jewish. My grandmother escaped from Berlin in 1939, just weeks before Christenlock, and films in media that deny the Holocaust

or downplay the Holocaust, or try to cleverly contextualize or minimize the Holocaust, are beyond the horizon of compassion. for me. I do not even have an image in my mind of the sort of horrific stupidity you have to fall prey to to believe in these things. That said, there are a lot of conspiracies that for me are absolutely in bounds for discussion. I don't consider myself conspiratorial, but I believe the government lies to people. I don't think we have the full truth about UFOs. I don't think we have the full truth about aliens or our understanding of alien intelligence or the JFK assassination.

or the level of medical experimentation on the American public in the last 100 years. I'm not subscribing to any particular theory in any of these cases. What I'm saying is, I want to know more. Today's guests are the hosts of the Stuff They Don't Want You to Know podcast. Ben Bolin, Matt Frederick, Noel Brown, and I'm Derek Thompson. This is plain English. Ben, Matthew, Noel. Welcome to the podcast.

Oh, so glad to be here. Thanks for having us. You can call me Matt, by the way, there. Matt, okay. We're at that friend level. The first question that I have is sort of a 30,000-foot question. I want to know what you guys think makes a conspiracy theory successful. Because there are an infinite number of stories that we can tell about the chaos of the world.

But for whatever reason, some conspiracy theories catch on, go viral, become cultural narratives, and others just die by the wayside. So what would you say makes a conspiracy theory successful? What are the key ingredients? What a great question. To kick it off, let's say, let's think of it like a recipe that you would use in a kitchen or, you know, if you're cooking in a potluck to impress your friends. The first thing you'll need is something that does not have a satisfactory

explanation. Some sort of issue, event, a person's life that does not have a satisfactory explanation. That does not mean there's a lie. It just means there's something that people would rather have a different narrative for. For that to be effective, the second ingredient you need is a lack of transparency. In the absence of transparency, speculation thrives. The third thing you need, I would say, this is just my opinion, is you need something that implies some sort of control. Conspiracy theory always argues that there is some person, there's some group, some entity that has a largely unacknowledged vast ability to control events. And of course, the key ingredient here, the real umami of the thing, is to have a

is to have a participatory aspect. That's why you see the ones that really stick around in a zeitgeist. They are able to become a part of modern folklore. Now you are embellishing the story each time it is told. You're adding your own stuff as well. That's what I would think. Think of the conspiracy Pinterest board with the red string, and Charlie Day, like, gesticulating wildly.

Like, anytime that people can, like, you know, get in the game, because it is a game to some degree for folks. Like, it's almost this interactive, experiential kind of life game, you know? I mean, it's kind of wild. And now we see this with the Internet and the furthering of that participatory aspect with things like QAnon, which thrived in the vacuum that was COVID, and folks going stir crazy and needing literally. something to do, something to believe in, something to blame, you know? And then that just takes

on a life of its own because of the participatory aspect where people sort of start to feed that particular conspiracy theory and it just balloons and spider webs out into this insane matrix of batshit, you know, narratives. That, jump right in. Well, I think a lot, I agree with what you guys are saying. I think a lot of it is based in fear. Like, if you can start at a place of a shared base fear that everybody's got and then have a villain that represents that fear. Usually somebody who's not well liked, you know, by around 50% of a population. Put a face on it.

Any way to other a group, you know, or like blame a group or like in some way separate them and then be like, no, that's where the problem lies. and then add what Ben was saying those ingredients that are unverifiable those things like there's no way to prove this is true or not right if you add that to the sauce oh buddy it's gonna stick around

what do you think's going on on the moon huh you an astronaut you know any astronauts bro this is this is great I love the fact that you guys went beyond my initial theory which is that it's mostly a matter of the world is chaos and we have to inscribe some explanation into that chaos to feel like we have an element of control over it.

No doubt. Clearly, that is at play. But I think you're right to put your finger on the fun factor. Like, conspiracy theories thrive when it is fun to derive theories about what happened. I mean, I say fun with enormous quotations. Like, you know, the murder of people isn't fun. You know, assassinations aren't like fun necessarily, but they are cinematic. And like, there is that fun factor that I think has to collide with the high.

Hollywoodization of a story. So it's like, wow, participating in this is an incredible hobby for me. I have one follow-up question, which is that I think that when people say, I believe in a conspiracy theory, they mean very different things. So, for example, I love theorizing about the JFK assassination, which is a story that we're going to get to later. I love thinking about aliens. But like when I read and enjoy a book like Don DeLillo's Libra or, you know, watch Oliver Stone, JFK, Nixon, I am participating in a conspiracy theory to a certain extent. But I actually don't think of myself as a deeply conspiratorial person. I am consuming a kind of, literally, I'm consuming art. I'm consuming conspiratorial art.

Whereas some people make this, they fold it into their lives in a really fascinating way. So have you guys thought a lot about sort of the spectrum of one's participation in conspiracy theories? Some people are your spectators and others are in the friggin arena. 100%. Yeah, it's extraordinarily rare for someone in the West to say categorically, I am a conspiracy theorist, right? even before everything went off the rails in the past few years and conspiracy theory became weaponized as a, you know, a rhetorical device, right? In the years before that, you would see people typically having one or two things that they had questions about, maybe is the most diplomatic way

to put it. I'm no conspiracy theorist, says, you know, are average Johnny or Jane on the spot? But I'll tell you what, something's weird about that whole Kennedy thing. And I love that you mention that. I love we're going to get to it because it is one of the most widespread conspiratorial beliefs, you could call it. The issue there then is that we have to understand human beings are the most successful primates because they are great pattern identifiers. That is a primal urge. And then when it goes, when it crosses that line, self-awareness tends to go off the window too, where it's like once you're in it, like you said, in the arena, as it were, it's just kind of your life. And it's usually you believe it without having to even acknowledge that it's a belief. It just is the truth as far as you're concerned. I heard a really great quote. It was Anthony Hopkins was talking about portraying evil people and how a journalist who interviewed Hitler said, Hitler has. has like thousands of books in his library and he doesn't have to, he hasn't read any of them

because he doesn't have to, he's already made his mind up. That's sort of like the, you know, the crux of the true believer of a conspiracy theory, to some degree, because nothing that you can put in front of them oftentimes, if they're really down that rabbit hole, will, we'll convince them otherwise. No, could I lightly push back against that? It's possible that we fundamentally agree here. But I wonder if one of the reasons why the internet seems like a booster engine for conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theories are a little bit like collage projects. There's this mystery that you have to solve and you're tearing little pages out of different proverbial magazines and newspapers to put together your Charlie Day project to figure out

who's in control of this phenomenon that you can't explain. And the internet seems like this incredible, steroidal library, this really efficient way of sorting the world's information to help people make their own collages. So it's as if people have people have. It's as if people have, have people find themselves. They awake in a world that's this, you know, Borgesian infinite library. And they have all these questions. Yes. Very good.

They have all these questions about the world. And they're like, just go to the shelves. And they're like, I wonder if I can sort of piece together my own bespoke theory for, you know, why Democrats seem to control these states and, you know, why certain things are happening in government that I don't like. It is this kind of superpowered collage project. It is. But there's so much information out there that you can.

can be very selective and there's a lot of confirmation bias at play. That's all I'll say about picking which ones you decide to piece together to make your collage. You can kind of work backwards to get to the outcome that you already believe. So it tends to, you know, obviously there's also good research and good information out there, but folks that are all in on Q&ONON, they're not looking up research. They're looking up hyperbolic kind of like, you know, inflammatory statements from unverified sources, which is, you know, a big part of the internet, too. People also can have a, can create their own personas online. Now, I want to be very careful about this point in the conversation because, man, what, what we're saying may sound,

may sound accidentally dismissive. The reality is that there, that conspiracy theory as a term, is a thought terminating cliche, meaning that, it can be used as a descriptor in mass media often to imply that what is being said is whackadoo or clearly factually incorrect. That's not always the case. The drug cartels partnership with international banks like HSBC was dismissed originally as a conspiracy theory right along with the idea that Queen Elizabeth is a hybrid or was, excuse me, a hybrid alien lizard person and for some reason no one was supposed to know. The difference between those is that the latter is absolute bunk and the former is absolutely true. That did happen.

So I would say we have to be careful to realize that especially in the United States, there are conspiracies. there are conspiracies afoot. The government has lied to people. These are true things. And, you know, the original language of the U.S. itself is conspiratorial. The U.S. was started by this conspiracy, this cabal of dudes who are like, you know what, I don't think the United Kingdom thing is cool. So, of course, so this is homegrown folklore.

It's, you know, the U.S. is a very young country, but it speaks. Conspiracy is a native tongue. I'm really glad that you said that. I think you're absolutely right. The conspiracy theory can often be used as a conversation-ending epithet. But what you're pointing out is that maybe the secret ingredient, the most important ingredient to a successful conspiracy theory, is a kernel of truth, or at least a kernel of truth that is broadly recognized as factual

by lots of people. So at this point, I think we just have to dive in to the stories. Ben, I reached out to you guys asking about your favorite conspiracy theories. You made the mistake of forwarding along your answer, so I'm going to pick on you first, your first in the barrel. You said that your favorite kind of conspiracy theories involved government experimentation into alleged psychic powers or other extraordinary abilities. Real X-Files, Agent Mulder's shit.

Tell me about the Stargate project. Okay, true story, man. And this is going to sound more and more nuts as we go. But true story, high level, as we said, 30,000 foot view. The United States Army, not too, too long ago in about 1978, said, all right, you know, this is still Cold War era, right? And they said, okay, we're a little concerned that the USSR might have psychics, like extraordinarily gifted individuals.

The way their order of operations was, okay, you know, okay generals, we're worried that psychic powers may be real. One, we're worried that the USSR knows this, too,

and we're worried that they're way ahead of us if these first two things are true. So three. And then, of course, being a government program, they were like, four, we need a lot of money.

So in 1978, the U.S. Army established something called Stargate, and they worked with the idea of clairvoyance, of remote viewing. This is the concept that through meditation or through a sensory deprivation situation, certain individuals are able to project some intangible form of their consciousness over vast distances. would be great for a tradecraft if it were, if it worked. From all we can tell, it didn't. They experimented with about,

for all we know it didn't. For all we know, my man, yes. But it looks like it was about 15 to 20 people here in the U.S. And whatever the case may be, it was terminated. Gosh, I know it was declassified in 1990. and there's still, you know, it's now... I'm reading along, yeah, it was indeed terminated in 1995.

So this is at least officially no longer ongoing, according to the record that we have. I got to add, we interviewed this guy Russell Targ years ago on the podcast, and to this day, I think one of the most fascinating interviews I've ever been a part of. This guy is what you would call a parapsychologist, and he was part of Stargate, I believe,

if I'm not mistaken, to a degree. and he also did a lot of experiments. And I think with MIT into training people to be psychic, essentially. Remote viewing, right? Remote viewing, exactly. And the thing that was so interesting, talking to him. Can you define remote viewing? Remote viewing is sort of when you project your mind to a location that's be outside of yourself

so that you can like find a body or something. Isn't that right that? Astral travel. Yeah, think of that. So like a test, a test could be anything like there is an envelope upon which a symbol has been drawn, right? Or a phrase has been written. This is in this other location. Try to find it through remote viewing, astral travel, and all the way up to something on the far side of the spectrum, which is journey through time and space. Tell us what Mars was like

billions of years ago. And this again was taxpayer funded. So this is the opening scene of Ghostbusters. My guy, Russell Targ. Dr. Vancomen has the cards. Russell Targ is basically who Egon Spangler was based on. Russell Targ is like a real-life Egon Spangler. He also is brilliant, nicest guy. Yeah. And it was the Stanford Research Institute.

I really like the work they're doing. I just wanted to last thing, the reason I bring him up is speaking to him was the coolest kind of example of someone that is a scientist, is trained in science, and speaks about this stuff that we're talking about in more or less scientific terms, but then at some point you're kind of like, this is something else. This is a little bit beyond the pale of what science, you know, can explain. But I just loved how measured he was in his discussion. He truly believed he can train anybody to be a psychic spy. And just to keep expanding on a little bit more, Ben, just one of the things that you turned me on to after we looked into Stargate was the Soviet

psychotronics program and the rationale behind why the U.S. had to get into the psychic game because the Soviets were doing it, at least according to the intel that the U.S. had. And then according to the intel, the Soviets had, oh, wait, now the U.S. is getting into it. So now we all have to put our funds into this psychic program to make sure we've got the best psychics hands down. Feedback loop. Yeah. It's really interesting to me how, quote, oh, no, the Soviets are doing it. end quote, can be a motivation for both spending millions of dollars on astral projections and spending

billions of dollars on the Apollo program. Like it can lead to the dumbest possible, maybe not the dumbest possible, but extremely conspiratorial efforts to turn humans into psychics and lead to essentially the development of the microchip and the space program. So like, you know, global political competition can have diverse outcomes. Speaking of global political, competition. Let's talk about aliens. I'm a total sucker for aliens. I think just mathematically, the odds of humanity being alone in the universe as a technological species is unlikely, not to mention sort of existentially lonely. You have an amazing chapter on UFO conspiracies. Let's start with stealth aircraft and the Invention Security Act of 1954. Who wants to pick it up from here?

Invention, well, here, I'll get you started. I've been knows a lot about this. Is this the thing that the U.S. government can step in and take a patent, basically, and just straight up say, no. Nope. We already have that. That is a threat to national security. You don't get to have this idea. Yeah. Oh, it's spooky stuff.

The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, this is something we always have to talk about when we talk about suppression of technology. This is a very real thing. And it's one of those things that has. become so normalized that people forget how dangerous it can be. Now, is it a necessary evil? That verges into philosophy, right? Because there are many valid points to bring to this. But to what Matt was saying right there is to that point, it is this law that allows the U.S. government to take a patent, you know, do the Reddit thing where it's like, this is mine now. And in addition to that, It comes with a gag order.

It's sort of a combo meal of legislation. The next step is that the inventor doesn't just lose that patent. They are not allowed to speak about it in public, to write about it, to publish work. And we know that collaboration and peer review is the, you know, it is the spine of science in the modern day that has to happen for humanity to progress. So what usually happens is almost like an imminent domain law when a road is being widened. People get paid some sort of market rate according to some arcane calculus that they are also not allowed to see the working behind. And then I'd say typically if they're not associating with supervillains and terrorists, typically if their invention is good enough, they probably get offered a job. But yeah, it's a real thing.

So if you think you have, it's a weird way to end the episodes too, Derek, because it's always, the idea is always like, well, if you have been affected by the Invention Secrecy Act, we wish you could tell us. I would just take, yeah, take the Information Security Act and bring it through Project Blue Book, because this is where I think the certainty among some people

that UFOs exist is built upon a bedrock of truth. Like, these things happen, and they should make us skeptical about believing the government story on UFOs and potentially aliens. So tell me about Project Blue Book. Well, it was an attempt by the U.S. government to actually take a look at UFO sightings

that were becoming more and more prevalent and to classify them, and divide them up basically between what do we know was ours, what do we think possibly was an enemy aircraft, and what do we know is currently unexplainable, or at least we don't have a good explanation for it. And as they were going through and dividing it up, they did notice there were a few cases that they just couldn't explain,

but there were a lot of weather balloons involved. I was about to say, yeah. The stats from your book, I'm reading from page 84, for those following along at home, between 1948 and 1969, the U.S. Air Force investigated 12,618 reported sightings. Of those total sightings, 11,917 were found to have been caused by material objects such as balloons, immaterial objects such as lightning,

astronomical objects, such as planets, weather conditions, and hoaxes. Only 701 of the 12,600 reported sightings remained unexplained. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. But as you guys pointed out, and I had never thought about this, the U.S. government had a vested interest in maintaining the spooky uncertainty of these unidentified flying objects.

Why would the U.S. government potentially want the public to think that maybe these things really are unexplained and unidentified flying objects? We need you to need us. We need... Yeah, it's just generally nice to have secrets. No, it's a great question, Derek. So, obviously, anytime something enters public sphere, the world knows about it. And a lot of this research that's occurring in the years prior and in the decades hence,

it's involving really tricky stuff. Stealth aircraft. the thing is there's not an aircraft good enough to be totally invisible to the naked eye when it takes off when it lands, right? That's the weird thing about satellite programs like Corona. You cannot really 100% hide some of this stuff in the air. And given that the average person then as of now is not an expert at identifying stuff in the air, right? We have to remember anything you see in the air that you cannot identify is technically a UFO. So they're able to spend this story and there was a calculus made that said, look, we can let people see things that are going to come out much later, right?

Like bombers that may as well look like spacecraft to the average American. And if we admit that, then we're risking lives and treasure with our good friends over in the USSR who will then know our capabilities. We want to obscure. We want to hide our hands. We don't want the other guy to know our full capabilities because they'll react to it. Like you said. Oh, yeah. 100%.

There are no friends in geopolitics. So what you're saying is like among that 700. UFOs that were unexplained according to this report. It's possible, in fact, likely, that many of those UFOs were actually pieces of technology, stealth aircraft that the government knew about, but did not want to publicly identify because they were manufacturing and maintaining technology, some partially stolen from the public, given the 1951 Act, that they didn't want people to know what they were building. And as a result, their disinclination to be fully transparent to the public helped to feed this idea that the skies were filled with UFOs, not from the U.S.

government, but rather from other planets. Is that basically the big picture? Yeah. And I think, again, like this lack of transparency, there's always kind of a twist of the knife that can take place there. I mean, in terms of control, you know, anytime you can silo information like that and have people maybe let them keep believing that they're foreign invaders that we alone can keep them safe from. I mean, I think it helps put a little bit of trust in a weird

way, even though it also creates a lack of trust in terms of like you're lying to us, but more normal folks that maybe want to feel like Uncle Sam's got their back. If they think that potentially we could be invaded by, you know, foreign entities that mean to do

us harm, then I think it's in the government's best interest for them to believe they're the only thing standing in the way of these invaders, you know, taking over Earth. There are a lot more alien stories we can get to, whether it's Roswell or there's other stuff. It's all in your book. I want to fast forward to 2021, the UAP report, because I have a lot. Okay, great. We got Matt pump in his fist.

Matt, we're coming to you next. I have a lot of friends that I consider extremely sober-minded friends, not conspiratorial friends, who looking at the evidence that came out in 2021, think, you know what? If I had to bet, gunned to my head, I think the 50.1% chance is that, yes, there are aliens and these UFOs were alien spacecraft. Tell me about this 2021 report and what is most interesting and important in it to you. What's most interesting in it? The government is spending a lot of time paying attention to this and letting us know they're paying attention to it, right? And they're putting money into it. That's interesting to me.

They're doing it publicly. What's important? They haven't said anything besides we need more money to look at this problem. And just take a half step back. What's the problem? Just describe to me some of the pieces of evidence in this report. Okay. Yeah, there's quite a bit of video evidence that was released by our friend Jeremy Corbell

through various sources of actually. naval personnel taking footage of strange objects that seem to be flying, floating, moving around in the air that are, they're somewhat unexplainable. They're moving in ways that physics can't really explain exactly, or that we can't fully explain in terms of going from under the water to like in full flights and just the way they move and bounce around. We can't really fully explain with the technology that we're aware of. Is that kind of the deal?

That's what the videos appear to show, right? There are few that have some problems that may have been explained, actually, like a light phenomena that was occurring because of some lensing effects, but there are others that are much less currently explained and understood. So it is a bit of, it is a strange situation. It's worth someone looking into. I'm very happy that the U.S. government is spending money to do this, But it's a case of needing to know if there is advanced technology out there, is it us?

Is it an enemy or is it other? And if it's other, we got to start preparing. Right. The wallet opens up when you can bring out the boogeyman of national defense, right? And ethics also can go to the wayside. The interesting things that happen here, these videos get leaked and purported videos. of unusual craft get leaked all the time, right?

Or get posted on some form of choice all the time. What's different here is that Uncle Sam publicly reacted. And there were experts who were coming to bear. There were experts speaking about this on record despite the clear stigma it would have for their career. Often people ask,

well, how come this person, this pilot didn't talk about something they saw in 1950 until they were retired and on their way to a hospice. Well, it's because they wanted to keep their jobs, put plainly, right? They didn't want to harm their chances at promotion. So one of the things that this UFO report does, it does some good things, it does some bad things. One of the good things it does is it changes the nomenclature.

So now it's not UFO, it's UAP, unidentified aerial phenomenon. So that could, you know, mean it's not always an object. Also, it's kind of the government's way of saying, all right, kids, take this seriously. Nobody say UFO. Nobody say aliens. There's nothing like that in the report. But one thing they did incorrectly, kind of scoring an old goal on oneself, is they didn't release one report.

They released two. And the classified one, which is not for public consumption, is much longer than what was released to the public. What's released to the public is quite short. It's quite reasonable. Like Matt said, it lists off these mundane things, but then it gets to one very scary part. And even if you surprise, surprise, are listening now and you're not a person turned on by the amazingly sexy language of congressional wording, then rest of the short, this is still very short. It's easy to get through.

It's worth your time. The scary part is that by. far the most powerful, dangerous military in the world by any metric admits that it has no idea what some of this stuff is. For people outside of the U.S., here's just a weird statistic. The two largest air forces on the planet are both from the U.S. military. One's the Navy, one's the Air Force. They know stuff about the sky. And they, for all purposes, appear baffled. That becomes a national security risk.

Is it possible that there are factions in the U.S. government that aren't always aware, don't have full visibility on the other person's work, right? That's the point, Noel, you brought up about information siloing. And Matt, I know that's something we've spoken at length about the idea that one hand might not know the actions of the other. It's a possibility. Absolutely. That's what I wanted to bring up the SR-71 Blackbird,

and it's kind of one of the things we always talk about. This is a highly advanced aircraft that was first flown in 1964, developed by Lockheed Skunkworks for the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, flying out of Area 51. And 1964 is when it's first flying, and it doesn't get acknowledged until well after that. and there were sightings of this thing. And, you know, the government at the time is like, we have no idea what that is.

That can't, we don't have any aircraft that could go that fast. That's unexplainable. And could this be the same thing? Is it a chess move by the U.S. government to say, we don't know. There's nothing that could explain that. That's weird. Or are they being truthful? And I think that's where we end up being left in the dark again as a public because we don't know

what game they're playing. Well, this is why it's such a great conspiracy theory, because if you were simply, as Ben said earlier, if you were simply going to pattern match, you would say, all right, in the 1950s, there were UFOs that the government said it couldn't identify. And it turned out that a lot of those UFOs were just these stealth planes

that were being developed and flown out of Area 51 that they didn't want to acknowledge for geopolitical reasons, and then later acknowledged 20 years later. The same thing might just be happening now, that the federal government is making a show of pouring all of this money into these UAPs, when in fact there are parts of the federal government that are entirely aware of what these things are,

which of them are lens-based phenomena, which of them are new U.S. skunk works projects, and which of them are, you know, whatever else, they basically know we just might not find out 15 years. And in fact, a lot of the nitty-gritty details are in that longer congressional report that Ben said that none of us can see. Last thoughts on aliens before we go to JFK. Yeah, I just want to, Derek, you put these ideas together so well. I really appreciate the way you synthesize some of the things that at least I ramble on about. So thank you, man. Absolutely.

This is great. Last word on aliens. Let's bookend it. Let's circle back to what you said originally, man. It's something that I think is quite inspiring. Due to everything humanity knows about the size of the universe and the space. of what we call time, it is a, it is very much a near-stitist, a near-certitude, statistically, that there have been other advanced civilizations there will be, or there may indeed be now.

It's inspiring to think about until you realize that same math also almost virtually guarantees you will not meet these civilizations. We're going to be lonely. Hey, Derek, do you know about Project Bluebeam? No, tell me about it. Oh, no, I'm not going to tell you about it. We're going to move on. But look up Project Blue Beam.

Sorry, listeners. After this. Check out the stuff they don't want you to know. You got your blue book and you got your blue beam. There's two different groups. I'll give you the log line. It's a pretty, it's a far out there conspiracy theory. But the logline is false flag judgment day.

If you've read the graphic novel, The Watchman, think about what's happening in that. I don't want to give any spoiler. But think of it's like a real world theory about that happening. Well, and also just to leave with one other concept that I think we're all fascinated by the idea of the Seleurian age, which is an episode we did recently, which posits like some really smart, you know, scientists posit that there could be evidence in our fossil record of other civilizations that have reached industrialization. that literally just like fragments of like star stuff from like other galaxies that you know sort of like were embedded in our planet during the Big Bang so that's another fun one. True. Like Atlantis shit, right?

Like this idea that there were civilizations that were near our technological sophistication and the record's been totally wiped out. Or far beyond. Or far beyond. The crazy thing is, yeah, over the millions of years you would never be able to tell if there was an intelligent race of lizard people. Like, we would never see any evidence because of what the earth and time does. Yeah, the earth eats unless they were on the moon.

It is funny that we always think of them as lizard people because we go back to the Jurassic era and we're like, they probably just looked like big walking lizards. They might have looked just like us. They might have been like the recording podcast about the assassinations of their presidents. And then, you know, a huge comment comes and smashes the ocean. They all die. a billion years elaps, and then we have to go through

the whole damn thing all over again. So what are you guys think about this comment? What are you guys think about this comet in the sky? Brought to you by me undies, when it's the end of the world, make sure your pants are snug. You know what I mean? I love the podcast.

Oh, no. Man, the Silurian hypothesis. That's great. I have no idea how to cleverly transition from the Silurian hypothesis to JFK. So we're just going to say that chapter's over. And now, JFK. Oh, no.

Something completely different. You want to build the en route for me? Go ahead. Well, it's just the passage of time. I think that's the on ramp. Like, in the same way we're talking about solarian hypothesis, what does time do to things? It erodes them until they're gone.

If you get far enough away from an event, let's say, you know, an assassination, it makes things way more difficult to discern, because you can't go back to any primary sources, right? Well, who controls the past controls the presence, right? And who controls the present, controls the future and so on. Shout out to Orwell, this, okay, so the, a huge percentage of the U.S. population, 100% believes that there is something wonky, something fishy about the official narrative

surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. And the reason they think that is because they're reasonable people who are looking at a cavalcade of tremendously tragic, but also often sketchy events. The assassin is himself killed. The guy who kills them, the things don't end well for him. So Oswald kills JFK. Oswald is murdered by Jack R.

Ruby. Ruby. Ruby dies while awaiting retrial on January 3rd, 1967, and one year later, RFK, his brother, is also assassinated. I mean, I am not endorsing any specific conspiracy theory there, but like that's a lot of shit. Can you tell me, where I really want to start with JFK is what are the inconsistencies that we should look at that should make us even curious about developing a conspiracy theory about JFK's assassination. Yeah, the inconsistencies, which are found by the assassination records review board due to the work of a guy named T. Jeremy Gunn, the inconsistencies are such that if you are just an average person, a civilian, and you receive this autopsy for a loved one, you would freak out.

And now we have to remember this is the president. we're talking about. They skipped basic steps. The guy performing the autopsy, Dr. James Joseph Humes, skipped, he was one of three doctors who did an autopsy, and he skipped fundamental stuff

that these inconsistencies were not found until this other guy, Dr. Gunn, comes along far after the fact, to Matt's point. We're looking at lack, we're looking at a lack of original paperwork.

It just disappeared. That's weird. We're looking at tremendous inconsistencies in ballistic evidence. Again, none of this proves a specific conspiratorial narrative, but it is also interesting that stuff keeps disappearing, including original photos of the corpse, which were later just found to be missing. It has, again, all the ingredients we discussed in the beginning. something appears to be a problem.

There appears to be a discernible pattern, right? And it's participatory and there's a lack of transparency. I want to briefly pause here to say about this conspiracy theory and others. The boring thing just might be true. You know, the Warren Commission might just be correct. The lone gunman theory might just be correct. End of story. But, but you go all the way down the rabbit hole here and there is a lot of spooky stuff.

So number one, you mentioned the autopsy. The original autopsy was rushed and incomplete, and conspiracy theories love any incomplete data set. JFK was shot twice in the back, but the direction of his head jerked forward, and the injuries to other people in the car somewhat circumstantially point to other bullets being fired. Maybe, maybe.

That's just, that's a fun element here, fun, in quotation marks. Number two, the Oswald factor. There's evidence that weeks before the assassination, the CIA intercepted a call between an individual contacting the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, claiming to be Lee Harvey Oswald. But when FBI investigators obtained photographs and audio recordings of these encounters, they determined that the person who contacted the embassy was not Lee Harvey Oswald. Pretty frigging weird.

Like maybe the simple, non-conspiratorial answer is the right one. maybe Oswald was paying someone to impersonate him to get visas from the embassy after they rejected his application. Maybe it's something really boring like that. But also maybe this is the smoking gun evidence that he was part of a larger plot. So, Matt, where do we go from here? Well, for me, it goes back to that concept of a base fear. And one of our fears is wrapped up exactly what you're talking about, like who's at the wheel, who's controlling what happens. and I think this is the same reason that deep state conspiracies

have been so prevalent recently and it goes back to JFK there are power structures within the government but mostly the military that exist and will continue to exist controlled by somebody doesn't matter who gets elected

doesn't matter who's controlling the White House or the legislature or the who's sitting on that Supreme Court they will be there they'll be in power and they can have they can hold sway and they have the guns. And, you know, I think, and that's just a fact. That's just true, right?

Heads of a FBI can be appointed or taken away, heads of a CIA. But then in the end, you know, the military structures are there. And they're the same structures that are hiding UAP from us, or at least hiding the technology from us. I think all of it kind of works together to make the feeling that somebody within the government or the military would want to take out a president if they didn't like the direction.

It feels like that could happen, at least, to a lot of people. The other thing that I think is at play here is that people don't want to think that the world can turn on a dime because of a loser. Like, Lee Harvey Oswald was, by all accounts, kind of a loser. I mean, I don't know that much about him,

and I certainly don't want to bring my knowledge from a Don DeLillo novel, because that's not a biography. It's a good novel, though. It's a great novel. Everyone should read it. But this guy was kind of a loser, and it's a little bit uncanny

to think that losers can change the world in this way. I mean, one of my favorite podcast episodes in the world is hardcore history's episode about the beginning of World War I where Gavrilla Princeep assassinations Archduke,

Franz Ferdinand, and incidentally starts World War I. And the long story short, is that Gavrilo Pinchip is another loser who's part of this sort of loser band of terrorist that's trying to kill Archdufranz Ferdinand over local ethnic differences and a power struggle in Austria-Hungary. And they fail in their initial attempts to assassinate him. Archieu-Franz Ferdinand's entourage, his carriage, is redirected toward a different part of the city. it gets stuck outside of a tavern.

Gavrilla Princechip happens to be drinking away his sorrows in that tavern, steps outside and kills Franz Ferdinand, which thereby helped to trigger World War I. We don't like to think that history is that contingent, that like these little tiny mistakes that happen in the world can be the result or be the cause of just like absolute mayhem. I also just think, as a final note for me on JFK, that that is part of the picture.

There's no way this little man could have caused such a big tragedy. It's not Shakespearean enough. It doesn't give us the high drama that we expect, right? When we read the great movements of history, but I love that you pointed out, yeah, sometimes there's no one at the wheel.

It is. That's a terrifying concept that nobody's at the wheel. That a random person can change the course of history right now just because. And it could affect you and your family and whether or not you can eat tomorrow. I mean, that is like existential dread to the max.

But it's the reality we all live in. I mean, just pretend. You mentioned on a previous episode that you met your wife on Bumble. You know, I met my partner on Bumble as well. And if you get some little glitch with the app or some new feature that allowed her to re-swipe you or something, brought her back. And then because of that, you met this person. and now, you know, you're married. It changed the whole course of your life.

A little silly blip like an app update. You know what I mean? I mean, if that happens to us, like on that micro scale, you know, when you really zoom out, it can happen, you know, I mean, complex systems are real. Like, we're part of this crazy kind of, you know, I don't know, machine that is history. And things can change on a dime. There's no question about that. Things can be mucked up by, like, you know, throwing a wrench into the works, you know,

for example. I mean, it really is a real thing. It's a fantastic point. And I don't want to fly off into the ether of like, you know, existential, blah, blah, blah. But like, the truth is that like, you're right, life and history are both contingent, right? Losers can assassinate Archdukes and start World Wars. App updates that are randomly distributed throughout the world can change the course of people's lives and cause marriages that otherwise wouldn't exist, cause meetings between people who get married that wouldn't otherwise exist. Life and history are just contingent as hell. My last question for all of you sort of scope out to current affairs, do you think America is more conspiratorial or less conspiratorial than it used to be?

A hundred percent more because there is more opportunities to build connective tissue. We also have to remember, again, the earlier point, conspiracy is a native tongue of this country. I like to point this out. I'm just going to be real with you, man. this is something he got cut from the book and I wish we kept it in. The average U.S. resident,

whether considering oneself a skeptic or a true believer, is intimately familiar with the concept of conspiracy before it was weaponized and stigmatized. The first conspiracy that a lot of people learn about

occurs during their childhood in this country. It's Santa Claus, right? Be good so that this guy, will break into your house and he'll leave you some shit. You know what I mean? And he'll leave you stuff you like if you obey these social mores, right? And don't violate taboos. And every adult goes along with this. You would be an absolute pill if you went to a strange child who was happy at Christmas and gave them the trench coat fedora treatment and like, look into a deeper checking your parents closet. Conspiracies exist.

in a way that has simply been accepted. So what does a social vaccine against conspiratorial thinking look like? How do we protect ourselves from falling victim to the wackiest, dumbest, most dangerous theories about the world? It's such a tough thing to do because you cannot fully inoculate yourself against it. What you can do, if you haven't read much about critical thinking, I don't know, high school or maybe a college course, I would say one of the first things to do is to just read up on that for a little bit.

It's kind of boring. It's a little dry, but just read some of the techniques that you can use to find fallacies in arguments and in things you're going to find posted online. We were all purposefully divided for viewership share by major media corporations when everybody here, when we were kids,

when our parents were like, you know, in their 30s, we were all divided purposefully because companies needed more profits and they needed to divide that market share up so that they could have a, you know, a certain percentage of Americans watching. And this is the same for every country around the world. So as an individual,

as an individual, what you can do is always question sources. Find sources that disagree with each other, right? And be aware that, If there are, let's say, 50 studies on the dangerous potential of oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, and there's one of those studies says, hey, it's not that bad. Take the time to figure out who paid for that study and why 49 other institutions, all with their own different funding sources, say it's whack, you know? Like this is something we have to do as individuals because, you know, for the same reason that terms of service and conditions are written in very difficult to read language, for that same reason, these studies, the way information is presented to you is often presented or can be presented in a purposely dry, purposely obtuse, difficult to find way, because it's

stuff they don't want you to read. Just to be very clear. And I'm not saying it's an organized cabal doing this. I'm just saying it's a technique that works the same way that multiple countries stage coups in multiple other countries. They don't all get together and say like, oh, guys, 2032. You know what I mean? Let's get rid of Lasotho.

I mean, just look at who stands to benefit. I mean, there's this excellent vice mini doc about a town. in Russia, I believe, literally called asbest, where they still mine asbestos, and that is what this town is all about. And the documentarian, you know, tries to talk to some scientists,

quotation fingers there, who literally are in the pocket of the government. And it just couldn't be more clear. And we all know that asbestos is bad for you. And they're interviewing these families that have lived there for generations who all seen their loved ones die of, like, you know, horrible lung conditions.

And yet these scientists, quote-unquote are still saying, no, it's fine. We'd love it if we can just keep mining asbestos here because we think it's great. That's all fantastic. And then delete your social media. That's all fantastic. One of the things that came away from eating your book

is feeling like a good antidote to conspiratorial thinking is developing a sophisticated taste for when to be uncertain and when to be certain. Because a lot of conspiracy theories fall into the gaps. It's people applying false certainty when we actually just don't know. Like, we just don't know if there are aliens. It's just going to be a while for us to figure out

if there's another technologically sophisticated species in the entire universe. And then sometimes it's people being uncertain about that, which we do know, and trying to make up explanations for things that we actually have a lot of information about and they shouldn't necessarily be conspiracy-minded. This was fantastic.

I had an absolute blast. The book is wonderful. Thank you guys so much for being here. And I might have you back to keep talking about conspiracy theories. because they're not going away in American society. I don't know about you guys, Matt Null. I had an absolute blast. Like Captain America said, I could do this all day.

Terrible time. This was awful. This is the worst time. This is great. You monster. No, absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you for listening.

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