So Supernatural - CONSPIRACY: The Moon Landing

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

On July 20, 1969, mankind achieved the impossible: setting foot on the Moon. But alongside one of the nation’s greatest accomplishments came a conspiracy that refuses to die — the belief that the Moon landing was a hoax. Despite millions watching as astronauts stepped onto the lunar surface, skeptics have since pointed to strange shadows, waving flags, and other inconsistencies saying the event was staged. The theory has endured for decades, blurring the line between historical triumph, government secrecy, and one of the biggest controversial mysteries of the modern era.   For a full list of sources, please visit: https://sosupernaturalpodcast.com/conspiracy-the-moon-landing   Did you know you can listen to So Supernatural ad-free? Join the Crime Junkie Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/fanclub/ to view the current membership options and policies. So Supernatural is an Audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social! Instagram: @sosupernaturalpod Twitter: @_sosupernatural Facebook: /sosupernaturalpod Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Since the dawn of humanity, we have looked up to the sky for reassurance that we never have to face the dark alone. Because above us is one faithful rock, always right there locked in orbit around Earth. The moon. So it's no wonder we've projected so much onto it. Ancient Mesopotamians believe the moon god was king of all God. rulers of the skies, the stars, and time itself. The Egyptians tied their moon god to wisdom. And those weren't just fringe beliefs.

They were the thoughts of entire civilizations. And the impulse never died. Astrologers today say the moon shapes your emotional life, pulling at something inside you, stirring up joy, fear, anger, or even unease. Plenty of people swear they sleep terribly during a full moon, myself included. Even the word lunatic traces back to the Latin word Luna. For most of human history, madness and moonlight were considered one in the same.

For thousands of years, the moon felt like the greatest mystery in the sky. So naturally, humanity did what it always does. It reached out. On July 20th, 1969, world-famous astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped off a ladder and became the first human being to set foot on the moon's surface. And his conclusion? It was just a big rock. Nothing mystical, nothing magical. At least, that's the official story. Because nearly 60 years later, the moon still holds plenty of secrets for a lot of people. And some believe Armstrong's findings were never the whole truth, that what he really discovered up there was buried by the government. And everything we think we know about the Apollo 11 landing on the moon is one massive hoax.

I'm Yvette Jintili. And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecorero. This is so supernatural. It's easy to look back on the past with nostalgia. When you think about the 1960s, you might picture the hippie era and fantastic music. A time when the television pushed our imagination beyond the fourth dimension and to the final frontier. When shows like the Twilight Zone and Star Trek were making waves. Or maybe you think about the fashion and the glamour.

It's tempting to picture everyone dressed like Don Draper from Mad Men. But the reality. was in 1961, things were going terribly wrong in the United States. The Cold War was heating up, and the USSR was outperforming the U.S. at every turn, including the space race. And that all started back in 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite into space, Sputnik. Since then, NASA had been working to put the first man in space. But on April 12, 1961, just two weeks before a scheduled launch, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin beat them to the punch.

If that wasn't enough at the same time, President John F. Kennedy was accused of botching up military operations. In mid-April of that same year, the CIA, with Kennedy's approval, attacked Cuba in an attempt to topple the local government. The operation which was known as the Bay of Pigs invasion was a total failure and a precursor to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. So Congress was less than pleased with Kennedy, which is why on May 25, 1961,

he called a session to take accountability for his screw-ups. Kennedy knew he needed to do something drastic to save face. Moreover, his presidency. So during this meeting, he publicly announced a bold new program. He said by January 1, 1970, Americans would put a citizen on the moon. And they'd be the very first nation to do so. It was a bold promise, and exactly what Kennedy was, needed to regain America's respect and admiration.

So NASA leapt into action to make his goals a reality. Over the next eight years, they employed more than 400,000 people in what they dubbed the Apollo program. This included engineers to design their rockets and equipment, mathematicians to calculate exactly how to get to the moon and safely land there, doctors and medics to ensure their staff, were healthy enough to survive in space, and of course, astronauts to make the groundbreaking journey. The operation took place at dozens of facilities across the U.S., labs, factories, offices, and military bases.

Like any other workplace, these locations had countless other staff members, like janitors, administrative professionals, managers, PR reps, the list goes on and on. While those jobs weren't as showy or as glamorous, they were just as necessary to keep things running smoothly. All told, the Apollo program was the largest peacetime operation ever in all of human history. When the Apollo program began, it opened a lot of doors and created new opportunities that hadn't existed before. Just take the story of Catherine Johnson. Most of us know about her because of the incredible 2017 film Hidden Figures with Taraji P. Henson. Catherine was an amazing mathematician.

People nicknamed her the human computer because she was so good with complicated formulas. In 1937, she graduated at the top of her class after majoring in mathematics at West Virginia State College. But as brilliant as Catherine was, there was a problem she couldn't solve. Catherine lived in a time of intense discrimination against women and people of color. In spite of her amazing qualifications, she was limited because of her identity. Her first job after college was as a school teacher because that's all that was available to her. But in 1952, she learned that NACA, the predecessor to NASA, was hiring. She was only allowed to apply for certain jobs, because the company was segregated,

and was only willing to consider black people for particular positions. So while Catherine was more than qualified, she landed a very junior position. But two weeks into her employment, her managers realized just how brilliant she was. They later transferred her into a department where she analyzed data from plight test, and from there, she used her math skills to figure out the most efficient ways to get rockets into orbit, to the moon and back again, all while accounting for gravity, acceleration, speed, and fuel limitations. I mean, if y'all haven't seen this movie Hidden Figures, I highly recommend it. It really talks about how brilliant Catherine was, I mean, alongside so many other people, right,

that you don't learn about in school. Exactly. You don't learn about in school. Anywho, over the years, Catherine became well known for her skills and brilliance. When the Apollo program launched, NASA recruited her to their team, and she played a key role in designing and planning the mission. But even with the best of the best working for the program, the Apollo team still faced disasters and tragedies. One of the worst occurred on January 27, 1967,

with the Apollo 1 crew. The team was planning to go into space one month later on February 21st. They would have been the first Americans to go into orbit. And that January day, they were on the ship to practice the launch sequence. Except during their rehearsal, their chambers caught fire. And since the chamber was sealed and pumped full of oxygen, the flames grew rapidly. The astronauts in their bulky suits couldn't open the door, and it took NASA workers four minutes to get it open.

All three of them, Virgil Gus Grissom, Edward White, And Roger Chaffey died in the blaze. As you could imagine after that, NASA officials were very hesitant to schedule another manned expedition. So the next few Apollo missions were all automated satellites and probes. But on October 11, 1968, seven years after Kennedy's declaration to Congress, Apollo 7 put three men into the Earth's orbit, safely, and successfully. Two months later, on December 21st, the Apollo 8th team was the first to orbit the moon. But still, they didn't land on it. In March 1969, Apollo 9 orbited the Earth, and in May of

1969, Apollo 10 sent astronauts back around the moon. They didn't break any records, but the missions went off without a hitch, which gave NASA scientists. a bit more confidence, and they were ready for the big show. The Apollo 11 mission began on July 16, 1969. A rocket called the Saturn 5 took off from the Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. At the time, the Saturn 5 was the biggest and most powerful vehicle on Earth. It had a crew of three men on board, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Coulouse. Collins. Since most of the Saturn 5 was made up of thrusters and fuel tanks, the men had to cram

into a very tiny chamber called the Columbia Command Module. It was about the size of an average car. This was going to be their home and office for the duration of their eight-day journey. The astronauts had spent nearly a decade preparing for this mission. They'd trained, they'd studied, and they'd learned everything about their equipment so they could repair it in the event of an emergency. Now they were ready to make history. That's right. 25 million people from the United States

tuned into the live broadcast and many others across the world. At the launch site itself, there were congressmen, military officials, governors, members of the press gathered in bleachers so they could safely be. viewed the takeoff. They held their breath while the countdown began. 11. 10, 9, 8. Ignition sequence starts. Six, five, four, three, two. At one, the rocket's thrusters ignited.

Lift-off. We have a liftoff. 32 minutes past the hour. Lift-off in Apollo 11. Smoke and flames poured out the bottom of the Saturn 5. Inside the Columbia Command module, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong braced themselves and felt the ship push off the ground. Millions watched and cheered as it blasted into the sky and vanished from sight. It took four days, but on July 20th, Saturn 5 reached its destination. It went into orbit around the moon, but it couldn't touch down. because the rocket was too bulky to land and take off again. So instead, two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, wrote a smaller detachable ship called the Eagle Lander to its rocky white surface.

Michael Collins stayed on the Columbia, monitoring the equipment while staying in contact with mission control in Houston. But he took one for the team, allowing his colleagues, Buzz and Neil, to become the first human beings to ever land a craft on the moon. The eagle has landed. Roughly 600 million people tuned in to the live feed. And for context, that was about one-fifth of the world's total population.

Everyone watched as Neil Armstrong climbed down from the Eagle lander just before 11 p.m. Eastern Time. As his foot hit the lunar surface, He uttered that famous phrase. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. After about 20 minutes, Buzz Aldrin also descended from the lander. They walked across the moon together, taking pictures, collecting scientific samples, and setting up equipment that could be used in later studies.

In total, the men spent about two hours on the moon. all of which aired on television. After their moonwalk was over, Buzz and Neal returned to the Eagle lander and removed their spacesuits. A day later, they flew back to the Columbia. Then the three astronauts began their long journey back to Earth. On July 24, 1969, they splashed down, safe and sound in the Pacific Ocean, Not far from the shore. of Hawaii.

The moon landing marked the dawn of the space age, and NASA cedes the opportunity to build on their success. From 1969 to 1972, they launched six more Apollo missions to the moon. They showed again and again that it was possible to reach for the sky and touch it. But after the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, these journeys just sort of stop. NASA officials announced that they had other priorities, and it wasn't worth their while to send people to the moon anymore. And we haven't been back since. There have been other manned missions to space and into orbit around the moon, but nothing that has landed on the surface.

And no other nation has ever put a person on the moon either, although it's been 57 years and counting since Apollo 11. It's almost as though something is preventing the world's top scientists from even trying. And it's enough for some people to think they aren't telling the full story about the moon landing. Or perhaps, wild as it may seem, the moon landing never happened at all. In 1976, a technical writer named Bill Kasing, who is very knowledgeable about mechanics and engineering, published a book. He called it, We Never Went to the Moon. As you can probably guess by the title, Bill didn't think the Apollo 11 astronauts really made it to the lunar surface. In his book, Bill highlighted a lot of discrepancies and strange details about the moon landing. One of his biggest arguments

was about something called the Van Allen Belt. In simple terms, space is full of deadly radiation. The sun and other stars are constantly emitting it. Luckily, Earth has a natural defense. Our planet's magnetic field captures incoming radiation and traps it into two massive rings encircling the globe, known as the Van Allen belts, keeping most of it safely away from the planet's surface, which is great for us, but this means that those bands of radiation are permanently circling our world. And there's no way to get into space without passing through them.

And NASA officials warn the radiation in the Van Allen belts are powerful enough to kill anything. Neil, Michael, and Buzz made it to the moon and back. They lived full lives. So some people believe this is definitive proof they never actually travel through the Van Allen belts

because they should have died from radiation poisoning. And NASA would have known that even before the launch. Since 1958, they'd been sending satellites and probes into space that could measure radiation levels. They had plenty of data showing just how dangerous the Van Allen belts were. According to Bill, NASA had to have known that they couldn't send Buzz Michael and Neil into space. It would have been a complete disaster.

The astronauts would have died, and the United States would have been humiliated on a global stage. So rather than risk all that, it said they came up with an alternate plan, to fake the moon landing and film the astronauts from the safety of a Hollywood movie set, just like it was depicted in the 2024 movie, Fly Me to the Moon. According to Bill and other conspiracy theorists, the hoax was a bit, let's just say, sloppy. For example, in many photos, you can see Buzz Aldrin planting an American flag in the soil,

and then he salutes it. But in all those pictures, the flag appears to be waving. You can see these ripples in the fabric, which Bill says should not exist. Why, you ask? There's no wind on the moon. Bill and other skeptics said this was proof, that buzz and the flag were somewhere on earth standing in a stiff breeze,

or maybe on a Hollywood soundstage near a fan. Another theory suggests it was shot somewhere in a remote desert. Some people think the landscape in the Apollo 11 footage looks a lot like rural Nevada. Assuming this was all an elaborate production, nothing could be left up to chance. millions of people would be watching, millions of critics. To stage the moon landing, NASA would need the best film crew on Earth, such as Hollywood director Stanley Kubrick. Just one year before the Apollo mission, Kubrick released his masterpiece 2001 A Space Odyssey.

It featured mind-bending scenes of space shuttle. docking, astronauts flying, and yes, the moon. It showed actors in spacesuits moving around, floating, and walking, and handling equipment all in low gravity. While obviously fabricated, some scenes still hold up today. Kubrick had wanted his film to be as realistic as possible. So during production, he hired actual NASA scientists to work as consultants on the film. They advised him on how the sets should look, how rockets would work, and how his actors should move in scenes set in space, which meant Stanley Kubrick already had a close working relationship with NASA

well before Apollo 11. Adding fuel to the fire of this conspiracy are little details hidden within Kubrick's work, not 2001 A Space Odyssey, but a film he released over a decade later. The cult classic, The Shining. Oh, Lord, that is the most scariest movie on the planet. Agreed. If you watch closely, you might notice, let's just say, a few Easter eggs. One of the characters wears a rocket ship sweater with Apollo 11 written on the front.

In a scene, on a shelf, there's a can of tang, which is the brand of orange juice astronauts drank. It's possible these were merely fun references, but many people believe Kubrick was feeling guilty about his role in the moon landing cover-up, and afraid of coming clean and angering the government, he left subtle crumbs in the shining. But theorists also point to other discrepancies, like how in the Apollo 11 footage, there are several pictures of lunar landscapes with hills, craters,

the Eagle Lander, astronauts, and other equipment, all in front of an endless black sky. There are no visible stars, which, according to Bill Kasing, was evidence that the photos were staged. He argued that filmmakers probably didn't have the technology at the time to create a lunar night sky. So instead, they'd filmed everything in front of a black backdrop

hoping no one would notice. Bill also pointed to the shadows in the photos. In any naturally lit environment, shadows all fall in the same direction. But in several moon landing shots, they don't. One image shows an astronaut and a piece of equipment with shadows casting in different directions. Bill argued that the scene must have been lit by multiple stage lights pointing at different angles, exactly like what you would get in a Hollywood studio. He also spoke about several moments when Neil and Buzz were on camera together.

And this includes the iconic moment when Neil first climbed out of the Eagle Lander and he set foot on the moon. Many skeptics have noted that he certainly wasn't filming himself because you could see his hands and his legs on tape. Right. He wasn't holding anything. Right. Michael was back on the Columbia and Buzz was inside the eagle. So, again, who was holding the camera? Ferris say this shot shouldn't exist, not unless there's a secret fourth astronaut. And according to Bill, it was another sign that a film crew was with Neil and Buzz somewhere on Earth.

And many people also questioned who was actually in the footage. The boot prints left on the lunar surface didn't match Neil or Buzz's shoes. sizes, and the tread patterns didn't match the boots they were documented wearing. So he wondered, whose friends were they? We could go on for days discussing all the oddities and theories suggesting that the moon landing was fake. But what if it wasn't? What if it really happened? What if it really happened? And what if what happened had been covered up and classified? When Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned from the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969,

they had to spend 21 days in quarantine. This was to ensure that they hadn't picked up any space viruses or bacteria that could infect people here on Earth. Ultimately, the astronauts were cleared. There was no evidence that they'd picked up any alien germs. It's partly for this reason that NASA scientists were confident in thinking there was no life on the moon, at least until they made a new discovery just four months later. In November of 1969, the second manned mission to the moon called Apollo 12 launched. And just like with Apollo 11, this operation involved three astronauts traveling into space. Two of them, Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, walked on the lunar surface while one remained on the ship.

And they took lots of photos and videos. But while they were snapping those pictures, they kept noticing these odd lights in the skies. I mean, obviously, they weren't drones, airplane, blimps, or any other kind of ship from Earth. The Apollo 12 astronauts knew that these lights weren't coming. from their own ship either. So the men radioed mission control asking about the lights, but nobody knew what they were talking about. They told the crew to just take pictures,

which their teams would study later. When the astronauts returned to Earth and developed the film, they saw a number of what were later dubbed anomalies. The photos showed lights that seemed to hover in the air and strange streaks in the sky, as though an illuminated craft was racing away. At the time, it was impossible to identify these strange sightings, but NASA got another shot at solving the mystery three years later in 1972.

That's when another mission, called Apollo 17, brought more astronauts to the lunar surface, and they captured even more photos of strange lights in the sky. This time, there were three of them all at once flying in a triangular formation. Astronaut Jim Lovell also saw lights during the Gemini 7 mission, and he knew just how strange the whole situation was, so much so that as he was snapping photos, he blurted out, quote, this is an actual sighting. Afterward, he and his team brought the film back for experts to examine, and once again, NASA's top scientists could not explain what those things were.

That's right, at least not officially, but longtime listeners know, as you know, we all talk about this all the time, the U.S. government has an extensive history of covering up evidence of alien life. So if they saw possible UFOs in those photos, they may not have wanted the public to know. I mean, perhaps that's why they killed the Apollo program because they didn't want to accidentally broadcast something that we weren't meant to see. I mean, it is a possibility. But it contradicts the most mainstream conspiracy theories

about the Apollo 11 landing being fake. I mean, you can't say astronauts found aliens on the moon while also saying we never went there to begin with. And while it has been nearly seen, 60 years since the first moon landing on July 20th, 1969, to this day, many people still think it never actually happened. That's in spite of the fact that government officials, including NASA leaders and the Apollo 11 astronauts themselves, have spoken up. They've poked holes in all of the supposed evidence suggesting it was staged. Take the claims that the American flag

seemed to be blowing in the wind. And yes, we can acknowledge it looks like it's flapping in the still images. But watch the footage closely, and it's pretty straightforward. The flag had a horizontal rod sewn into the top edge. It was designed to keep it fully extended. NASA knew that without it, the flag would just hang limp on the pole. As for the ripples in the material, those are wrinkles. space was tight on the Columbia,

which meant little space to store a flag and no space to store an iron. By the time they made it to the moon, the flag was crumpled and creased. Okay, well, there's also a very simple explanation for why the lunar boot prints weren't a match for Neal and Buzz. They wore special weighted boots

to help them move around in the moon's low gravity, and these boots fit over their shoes leaving prints that were bigger and had different treadmarks. So that too makes sense to me. Yeah. And the shadows, let's talk about the shadows. That's just the terrain playing tricks. On uneven surface, parallel shadows can appear to diverge or angle away from each other.

The same way railroad tracks look like they're converging in the distance, even though they're not. The missing stars also have a simple. explanation. Camera exposure. The lunar surface indirect sunlight is extremely bright, so the cameras had to be set for that brightness. And at that setting, the faint light of distant stars simply don't register. The same reason you can't see stars in the daytime sky on Earth. And some of those photos were taken by cameras mounted to the outside of the Eagle lander. NASA engineers put them there to film at angles which Neil and Buzz wouldn't be able to reach for themselves. So, if you're wondering, who was holding the camera when Neil took his first steps or,

in all those photos of him standing next to Buzz, the answer is, the ship was recording everything. No separate film crew necessary. It was an engineering feat, especially because in 1969, film and TV effects weren't nearly as good as what we have today. Frankly, no one had the technology to fake the moon landing footage. For

example, look at the way Buzz and Neal bounced across the lunar surface. Since the moon has lower gravity than that of Earth, the astronauts moved in ways that aren't physically possible on our planet. You could fake

that sort of thing today with advanced CGI programs or generative AI, but even the greatest directors of the 1960s, like Stanley Kubrick, couldn't have forged those effects in real time, not with the tools he had then. That leaves us with just one more critique, that Neil, Buzz, and Michael should have been killed when they were flying through the Van Allen belts. And we'll acknowledge this region of space is highly radioactive. It could kill you if you spend too long in it. But the Apollo 11 astronauts,

spent barely any time inside the belts, only about an hour. The Saturn 5 was traveling quickly when it passed through, and it had very thick walls that shielded the crew from the radiation. So while the astronauts were briefly exposed to radiation, it was a very low dose, not enough to make them sick. And if you don't find all of that compelling, consider this. During their Moonwalk, Buzz and Neal collected 50 moon rocks to bring back home. Some were small, while others were very large and heavy. Or at least they would have been heavy at Earth's full gravity. All told, the astronauts collected 400 kilograms of samples, nearly 900 pounds. In order to accommodate their weight, the team had to leave some other bulky and heavy equipment behind on the surface,

and this included some scientific equipment, their heavy-weighted boots, and the flags, which are still standing on the moon today. Plus, the stones and soil are very different from anything found on our own planet, with their own distinct minerals and particles. But if you don't trust the U.S. government, then take the Soviet Union.

Throughout the past six decades, the Soviet Union sent robotic probes to the moon to collect their samples of soil and rocks. And guess what? Their samples are identical to the ones Neil and Buzz had. Perhaps more fantastical than a man on the moon is a world in which the Soviet Union would willingly confirm supposed U.S. propaganda.

In fact, in 1969, Russia's top scientists followed the Apollo missions very closely. They read every news report and interview and watched the footage when it was broadcast. They did not want to lose the space race. They had considerable motive to look for flaws in the Apollo program. And if there had been any indication that they were faked, the Soviets would have pounced on it.

Instead, they publicly confirmed that the moon landing was real and even congratulated NASA for their achievement. That's pretty big. Yeah, and basically, there's a ton of very solid evidence that the moon landing did happen. So given how solid the proof is, why do people believe the conspiracy theories? We can't speak for every true believer or every conspiracy theorist, but astronomer Rick Feinberg has a theory. He does PR for the American Astronomical Society, and he spends a lot of time debating conspiracy theorists and debunking their claims. Rick notes that the rumors about the moon landing first gained traction in the midst of the Watergate scandal.

This was also when the Pentagon Papers leaked, which showed American troops had committed war crimes before and during the Vietnam War, and that the Department of Defense and President Kennedy had lied to the public. about how the conflict was going on. So all through the 1970s, the news was full of stories about how the U.S. government was being dishonest. They were spreading misinformation and deceiving their own people.

In that context, it was only natural to distrust elected officials, and when citizens looked back on the government's greatest triumph, the moon landing, they felt skeptical. I can see where they're coming from with that. Yeah, I mean, I totally can too, and it's no wonder why so many people bought into the conspiracy theories. And we understand why some people are skeptical of everything, right, that they read, see, or hear.

Because when powerful people work together, as we know, they can abuse their privilege, spinning cover-ups, complex lies, and elaborate deceptions. But they can also work toward incredible achievements. Human beings can reach beyond our planet and into space. They can make a mark on the universe that will last forever. They say Buzz and Neal's footprints are still up there today, undisturbed. They've become a reminder of just how far we've come and what we're capable of achieving in the future. So we hope the story of the moon landing fills people with a sense of

awe and wonder instead of doubt. We want to believe it's true, and that it is a tale of incredible achievement and breaking boundaries, and redefining what we always believed was possible. This is So Supernatural, an audio check original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at so supernaturalpod.com. Join Rasha and me next Friday for an all-new episode. I think Chuck would approve.