Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Everything that happens now, I assume there's going to be some kind of conspiratorial reaction to it, right?
[00:00:12] Speaker B: If you have a question, have no fear.
You can simply ask your trusty dear Queer.
Dear Queer,
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Today on the podcast we have Nathan Radke, who has degrees in philosophy and sociology and is a professor, author, podcaster, and a TV and radio analyst. He has been studying conspiracy theories as a social phenomenon since before the world ended in 2012, which we're gonna have to come back to that. Alongside his partner in crime, Dr. Lee Kunle, Professor Radke co hosts the conspiracy themed podcast the Uncover Up. And this July, the book they have co authored will be published by ECW Press. So please look out for that. When Nathan is not sifting through thousands of CIA documents, badgering the Canadian government with freedom of information requests and his fieldwork amongst apocalyptic sex, you can find him rebuilding Soviet era electric guitars and is a gentleman shrimp farmer.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: It's true. They're both. They're all in his department. Guitars and the shrimps.
[00:01:34] Speaker C: Well, welcome to the podcast, Nathan. You made me work for that one.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Long time listener, first time talker.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: And actually, I used to be on the podcast on the Uncover up with Nathan and Lee, and we are all colleagues, and that's how I know Nathan. And I must say, Nathan has been one of my biggest allies. And I think you were the first colleague I came out to.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: I think that's right about three pints in.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: And you were so.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: With no name.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And you were so chill. It was like just one of the best reactions you can. You can hope for from someone.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: I love that.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: I was relieved.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: I thought something was wrong.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. You thought I was, like, deathly ill. I'm like, I have something to tell you.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Can you go for a drink?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Can you go three drinks?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: So it probably sounded. Probably sounded bad. And then he was like, oh, thank God. That's nothing. Congrats.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Did you. Did you leave the coming out till, like, the third drink?
[00:02:24] Speaker A: No. You specifically did. I specifically did because after two drinks in, I was like, what is going on? Okay, like, one more drink. All right.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: That's so funny. I don't remember. It's all a blur, but I just remember it being the response you want from someone.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: I love that.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Well, thank. We're super, super excited to. To have you here with us. I kind of want to start with what I read at the top in your bio.
I. I might have missed this, but the world ended in 2012.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Wait, you don't remember that?
[00:02:51] Speaker C: I'm like, 2008, 2001 there. You know, there's been some things.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Well, I mean, the thing is that we're old enough to have survived several apocalypses.
[00:03:00] Speaker C: Yes.
Y2K, I remember.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Yep. And 2012 was another one where somebody had kind of taken a mistranslation of a Mayan calendar and then used that, remember? And then they said, oh, the world is going to end either because the sun's going to explode.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Right. Or because.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Or the. The magnetic polarity of the Earth is going to flip. And then, of course, it 100% didn't happen.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Can confirm.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Although it kind of doesn't. It sort of feel occasionally like the world sort of did end.
I mean, and now we're living in some kind of weird postscript sometimes because
[00:03:36] Speaker B: it just seems impossibly bad at times.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah. When was the last time anything made any sense at all?
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Not in a long time, Nathan.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: No, not for me, certainly.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: But I must say, the Artemis 2 stuff was like a glimmer of hope and just like, joy and perspective.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: It was adorable.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: It was adorable.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: And I know from the conspiracy stuff that I've read in the past and studied in the past how the moon landing initially was just ripe for conspiracies.
I'm wondering if you've seen any or, like, can anticipate what might be coming out of Artemis 2, if there's going to be any similar kind of conspiracy theories that it's born.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: Well, the thing is, space is very fertile ground for conspiracy theories. I mean, for one thing, because that's where aliens would be, but also because it's sort of mysterious, we don't have access to it. And when we're talking about something like this, not only is it about space travel, but it's also about government programs.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: And so if you have any kind of combination between those two things, either of them by themselves is sort of going to be conspiratorial. Put them both together and you've really got yourself again, just, like, some prime territory for it. And because we're currently living in an extremely conspiratorial time for a bunch of reasons. One, because I think that people just have the understandable feeling that something is wrong, as we kind of talked about before, and the idea that we are being lied to, that things are being concealed from us, and when we don't have the, I guess, the knowledge of what's actually going on, that can just leak out into all aspects of society.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Well, especially post Covid too. Like that was such a time that was ripe for, I mean, so many conspiracies coming out of that.
And then there are so many bad things going on in the world and we want someone to blame often too, right?
[00:05:29] Speaker A: No, 100%. And you mentioned Covid. Yeah. I mean that was such a transformative moment in our society because we were told about this sort of invisible threat which got, you know, everybody's sort of backs up, everybody's nervous systems were totally activated, but then everyone was sort of locked inside. And so the things that kind of help us when we're feeling that way, like being social, were not options.
And we were sort of trapped with our kidnappers because all we had were our screens.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: And of course through those screens we were bombarded with what appeared to be social interaction, but was this sort of strange kind of like pseudo interaction.
And all it did was just sort of again, amplify our anxiety and our fears, which then drove us back to the screens which gave us more anxiety and fears and this extraordinary feedback loop. And so everything that happens now, I assume there's going to be some kind of conspiratorial reaction to it.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Especially something like this.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Have you seen anything yet from Artemis?
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Yes, yes, all sorts of stuff. And some of it is, I think, genuine. I think some of it is genuinely people trying to struggle with the way they're feeling and trying to understand stuff. And some of it is cynical clout grabbing. People just putting stuff out that they know is either going to convince people, in which case they're going to respond and reply to it, or it's going to make people think it's nonsense and ridiculous, in which case they're going to respond and reply to it. So either way, so much of our
[00:07:11] Speaker C: social media and news coverage now is just like, it's an all consuming, like it needs to feed almost. So regardless of whether something's true, not true, that's, you know, the machine has to be fed.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Um, what do you think?
Well, based on what you've seen, what makes someone more likely to believe in a conspiracy theory?
[00:07:32] Speaker A: I think everybody sort of, because we're all people with people brains, like people brains are good at noticing patterns.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Right, Right.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: And one of the things about conspiracies, because it's hidden, you've got to sort of put this sort of elaborate series of patterns together in order to figure out what's really going on, which is
[00:07:48] Speaker B: so satisfying if you feel like you're doing it.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Ye, because we love puzzles, we love mysteries. And so you get that kind of rush when you're like, oh, I've got this. And then, of course, when it's like a secret, hidden, concealed knowledge, almost a suppressed knowledge, that's even better.
And so with something like Artemis, like, people are taking some pretty wild swings.
One that you see a lot in the conspiracy world is the idea that the astronauts are actually actors.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Just stunned silence.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: I mean, what do you, what do you say to that?
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Well, what you say to it is, you say, okay, let's assume that was true. This is the thing you can do with conspiracy theory. All right, Assume it's true.
What would have to happen then?
So if they were actors who were hired to play astronauts, these would be people with families and friends and backstories and histories and things. Yeah. And so when they became extremely famous and were on TV a lot floating around with Nutella, the. If they were actors, and the families and friends would be like, you know what?
That's my son.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: That's weird. I didn't know he was an astronaut.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: People that went to school with them and like, people like ex boyfriends and girlfriends and like, all of these things would, Would be a problem if you were trying to invent somebody new out of actors.
[00:09:09] Speaker C: Or, or, or the kid who grows up and wants to be an astronaut and takes all his science classes, or she's in her engineering classes, whatever, all the things that lead to that path. And then she gets to Nassau and then they pull back the curtain and say, hey, here's what's actually going on.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Right. But don't tell anybody.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Yeah, don't tell anybody.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: They keep it quiet.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Like, okay, well, I guess it is a paycheck.
Yeah. Well, that's the other thing. How many people. This is another conspiracy question. How many people would need to be in on something like this?
[00:09:42] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: And we saw this with Apollo 11. Which is partly why people are thinking that Artemis is fake now, is because people have long thought that Apollo 11 was fake.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: But then when you go through all of the evidence for something like Apollo 11, people say, oh, there's no stars in the photographs from the moon landing. But of course, that's easily explainable because
[00:10:02] Speaker B: all the reflective light from.
That's in space.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: I was going to say that as well.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: I only know that from previous work.
[00:10:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: It was the day. Yeah, it was the middle of the. Of the moon day.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: And the flag, they say, look, the flag is waving again. Understandable? There's no atmosphere on the moon, so the flag wave. But then you look at the footage and it's like it's only waving when somebody twists the flagpole.
But I mean, so much of that conspiratorial stuff from Apollo 11, again, is understandable because it comes out in the 1970s.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: And I forget if we can swear on this podcast.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Oh, okay. So in the 1950s and 60s, those for the American government and for agencies like the CIA and the FBI and the military, those were the fuck around years.
And the 1970s were the find out years.
Because all of that stuff started to come out in the 1970s.
[00:10:57] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: And so understandably, when people found out about things like MK Ultra and cointelpro or sea spray or Mongoose, bad things.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: The government was doing terrible things.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: The government was doing, like, cartoonish ridiculous things.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Mind control and like biological warfare and sex. Spies and exploding seashells and like everything with acid. LSD, rather.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: And Watergate comes out. So in the 70s, it's understandable that people were like, woof, that's a lot of nonsense that our government's been up to. Why should I trust them about anything?
[00:11:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: And so something like Apollo 11 gets sort of drawn into that.
And so same thing with Artemis. People have, like, I would say, record low levels of trust in institutions right now.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Again, completely understandably.
[00:11:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Our reality right now is oftentimes so much worse than what the conspiracies are. You look at the Epstein files.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: Everything that's coming out with our governments and our government to the south.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Well, and what I was going to say too was that now first you might argue, well, now our photography is better and everything. So the photos they're bringing back, surely that would convince people. But now we have AI, we have all, like. So now we have this like, equally strong argument from the conspiracy theories saying, oh, well, that's doctor, that's AI, that's generated. So, like, there's no winning, even in that area, to gain any ground with, like, in certain terms of credibility. True. We're.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: We're facing a complete crisis of reality because again, going back to what we were saying about COVID this idea that increasingly we started to look through our screens for reality.
We love eyeballs. Human beings love eyeballs. I mean, of course, different humans have different abilities with their eyeballs. I'm colorblind, for example.
But in general, like, a big chunk of our brain is devoted to eyeballs. And we tend to trust vision and we can't now yeah. So you combine those two things. One, tens of thousands of years of humans looking at stuff and saying, okay, I believe that.
Whereas now so many of the images that we see are so easily manufactured,
[00:13:10] Speaker B: our first instinct is skepticism. Probably more likely now it has to be. Yeah.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: I mean, how many times have you seen a video, even if something pretty mundane, and asked a weird question that you wouldn't have asked five years ago? Is this real?
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:25] Speaker C: So obviously we try and ground this podcast in queer themes.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: I mean, it's right in the name. It says it right on the tin.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: It does, exactly.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: I'd love to know, from your perspective, any of the conspiracy communities and how they intersect with queer folks.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: I mean, it's a good question. And we were just talking about the fact that all people are conspiracy minded.
But I think if you come from a group, like a marginalized group within a society that claims to be equal and fair, but if you come from a group in a society that claims that, that has been historically persecuted and prosecuted, like, how do you not then have your guard up more?
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: And when our guard is up more, we have to look for those sort of hidden meanings.
[00:14:13] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: All of the time. To keep ourselves safe.
The other thing, too, that's interesting about the queer community is that, like, historically you had to have sort of little hidden signs and signals because you couldn't come out and just be out of the closet with things because it would literally be dangerous.
[00:14:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: And so you had to become extremely good back in those days at detecting subtle little signals and subtle little signs and subtle little patterns.
[00:14:40] Speaker C: Flagging.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Which then all of those skills translate over into conspiracy theory. And this is something, Elinda, that you and I have talked about in the past when we're talking about something. Something like the lavender scare, like the. The queer community was targeted in a conspiratorial way. We're in Canada. Have you guys ever done an episode, I forget, on the machine?
[00:15:02] Speaker B: No.
The Fruit Machine, where they literally made a machine that they thought could detect if you were. If you were gay.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: The Canadian government did.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. I'm. I'm glad I don't know this.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: And they show you photos to see if you were around good looking men in bathing suits.
Yeah.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: And then they would measure eye dilation.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: And if your eye dilation, even if you were just like, that's a nice bathing suit.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: But if you had enough eye dilation, then they would say, okay, you must be gay and therefore you are fired.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: And so, like, this idea of Things being hidden and also the like, power being used in this sort of ridiculous, absurd way.
I think all of those things would definitely lead the queer community to have a history and a relationship with those things. That could definitely make them more conspiratorial minded for safety reasons and just like, because those are skills you had to pick up.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Okay, so then how can we strike a balance between kind of protecting ourselves against conspiracy theories and misinformation while still maintaining some level of healthy kind of skepticism?
[00:16:09] Speaker A: I mean, it's a good question and I'm going to answer it in a long and elaborate way.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Amazing.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: With a bunch of metaphors.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Great.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: So this winter we were all sick all the time.
There were like colds going around. They were ridiculous flus, flus. It was a mess. Somehow I dodged them all. And I don't know how, but when we're out here in these streets surrounded by germs, we have an immune system.
And that immune system is good at recognizing pathogens and then kind of coming up with ways to fight back against them. And it allows us to be out here and stay reasonably healthy.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: But our immune system can overreact. And when our immune system overreacts, it puts us in. In danger. The thing that's supposed to protect us, hurts us. If we get a little bit of pollen or, you know, a little bit of dust and our body freaks out and says, oh, we're under attack.
Bring on the phlegm, bring on the mucus. Yeah, that's unnecessary.
Or if your body gets a bit of peanut and says this is like something lethal and starts closing up your throat to protect you, that can be extremely dangerous.
So our immune system is sort of there to protect us from pathogens, but when it overreacts, it can kill us in the same way that our skepticism is kind of like our immune system protecting us from dangerous idea pathogens.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: But when it's cranked up too far, instead of an allergic reaction, what we end up with is paranoia.
And that difference between healthy skepticism and paranoia is like the difference between a healthy immune response and an allergic response.
[00:17:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: And so that's the thing to dial up your skepticism enough to protect you from the many scams and lies and cover ups that are out there without dialing it so far up that it collapses into paranoia. Because the danger of paranoia kind of like the danger of institutional distrust, even though it makes sense, especially for many communities to distrust institutions.
But in that vacuum caused by that distrust and paranoia, that's when the manipulators can come in that's what Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid spokesman. Someone who's going to try and sell you paranoia and then sell you the cure to that paranoia.
[00:18:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: And the irony is, in the same way that an immune system can, your own body turns against you becoming paranoid. And I've seen this with many of my own contacts, it makes you more vulnerable to manipulation, which is the thing that you're afraid of and causing the paranoia.
[00:18:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: So it's another feedback loop.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: It's that self fulfilling prophecy.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:50] Speaker C: I think too. It's also that skepticism and, and sometimes paranoia in the queer community is also though why you see a lot of queer and trans folks at the like front of social movements and because like they, they understand that collective liberation and it's like it's.
And our minds are more attuned to it.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Because they have to be.
[00:19:18] Speaker C: They have to be. Yeah. Especially for folks like. I think it's so important to. I mean, I didn't obviously know about the fruit Machine, but you think about the AIDS crisis and things that went on with that. It's so important for us to know those histories so that we can protect ourselves moving forward.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Stonewall or what's the place on Bathurst? The Toronto Stonewall.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: Oh, I don't know.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: Bathurst.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Toronto had a Stonewall too. I mean, because we're Canada. We had it about 10 years later. Yeah, yeah, place on Bathurst. The building is still there.
It's a bathhouse on the bathroom.
[00:19:49] Speaker C: We'll have to look it out.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Maple Leaf Lodge or something. And we had. In the 80s there was a RA.
[00:19:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: So it was again, it was very similar to Stonewall.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: And then it had a similar reaction where a lot of Torontonians were like, seems unnecessary. What are you doing?
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:03] Speaker C: One of our previous guests, Peter Knett, he has a book on queer history in Toronto. So I wonder, he might be.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Oh, I guarantee you.
[00:20:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm sure it's listed in there.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: What should we. Let's say we have a family member, you know, uncle at the Thanksgiving table. Someone who's we see, you know, reaching deep into the rabbit hole and perhaps losing them a little bit in there.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Tipping over into paranoia.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah, Like, I mean, I think a lot of queer folks are already good at having difficult conversations at the family tables. Yeah. Actually I had a funny one recently for Easter, but it was good like, so my mom is conservative, but Trump is so terrible that we're actually more politically aligned these days, which is great.
And I was in the living room, and she was in the kitchen, like, ranting about Trump. And I was just like, oh, man, I'm missing the Trump rant. Like, I want to be in on this with mom.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: That's so sweet that that brings you guys together.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: And then she came in. I was like, I heard a Trump rant. I'm like, I'm coming in.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: You know, I mean, it's maybe the only good thing he's ever done, honestly.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah, he's. He's brought us together from different sides of the aisle.
But let's say we do have, you know, the opposite of that, and we're not aligned and someone is. Has gone down a Covid conspiracy hole or something.
How. What do you recommend for us having a conversation with them? Like, how can we engage? What should we be doing? What should we not be doing?
[00:21:26] Speaker A: The temptation is to respond with facts.
To try to debunk.
Does not work. Another temptation, it's not a great temptation, but it's an understandable one, is to mock.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Which never works and has the opposite effect that you would. Like. No one's ever been mocked into changing their life.
Said, you know what? You've really made me feel like crap.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm in.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm on board with what you have to say.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: The first thing you have to do is if you're not in relation with the person, you're not going to be able to communicate with the person. And so don't do things which move you out of relation with them. The other thing that that does is it isolates them further. Chances are that they're already experiencing isolation, and that isolation is one of the things that's driving their conspiratorial feelings.
So try to understand rather than the facts, because the facts aren't the reasons why they're believing this stuff.
[00:22:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: There's going to be emotional reasons why they're believing this stuff.
I mean, the first thing you should do is look at the content of the conspiracy and ask, is there something to this?
Because, of course, some conspiracies are real. You mentioned Epstein before.
That might have sounded ridiculous to people 15 years ago. And we have all of the receipts. Yeah.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Or when QAnon first brought it up.
Yeah.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: QAnon's having a hard time with the Epstein thing.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: Oh, interesting.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's not quite what they wanted.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah, right. They wanted the. To be the Democrats.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: They wanted to be the Democrats, and they wanted Trump to be the person, the crusader who would come and. Whereas quite the opposite.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Not the one who's mentioned a million times in the files.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're actually struggling with that.
So once you've determined that, yeah, this conspiracy theory, there. There's nothing to it.
There's still stuff we can learn from a false conspiracy theory because there's going to be subtext, right. Like, why this lie? Why are they. What is it about this lie that's attracting them?
And a lot of the time we've come across this over and over again is a key aspect to conspiratorial beliefs
[00:23:25] Speaker C: is trauma and fear.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Trauma and fear, which can make people feel as though there's just something desperately wrong.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Something desperately wrong with the world, which, again, completely understandable.
And once you feel that, there will be people who are willing to again, sell you an explanation and a solution to that.
And the problem is, a lot of these explanations and solutions actually won't be helpful.
Believing in the flat earth is not going to make you any less isolated.
If anything, it's going to make you more isolated.
So looked at the content of the conspiracy and tried to figure out, okay, what. What is it really about?
Why are they really into this? Try to find some kind of shared values. Even if you're disagreeing about the facts, you're going to be able to find values. Like if you were talking to a QANON supporter, again, very briefly, this idea that there was a satanic cannibal cult that was abusing children and controlling all of the world's governments.
I mean, try to find even. Even in that, you're going to be able to find some kind of ground to stand on together.
Like the fact that exploitation of minors is wrong. You're like, yeah, I agree. That would be terrible that the world is crooked. You can talk about the crookedness of the world and how that feels.
And if you're just like. If you spend time with the person, it's extraordinary. Rather than arguing with them, if you try to understand them better, it's actually much more effective in sometimes weaning them away from these harmful, false conspiracy theories.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: I have to say, Nathan is extraordinarily gifted at remaining so calm in engaging in these conversations with conspiracy theorists, which I.
So I. I can't do.
I mean, maybe I could. I'm probably better at it now than I was five years ago, but it's incredibly difficult.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: I mean, a lot of those beliefs are dangerous or offensive.
[00:25:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: And offensive on a bunch of. On a bunch of levels.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Sometimes they're offensive because there's aspects of them obviously racist or sexist or homophobic or Islamophobic or anti Semitic. I mean, these are all common things in false conspiracy theories.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: And so the content's going to be offensive.
The fact that they're so ridiculous is kind of like, epistemologically offensive.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: And. Yeah, and so it is. But it's important, again, to be like, if you had allergies, if you had a runny nose, I wouldn't consider that a, like, a personal failing of yours.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: And the same thing is kind of true with conspiratorial beliefs.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: A person has contracted it.
[00:26:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: A person has developed it. It's not them.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: And they're not all bad. It could, like, you know, there's many that are helpful to it. You were speaking on earlier and what did.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: So a couple years, many years ago now, we did. We went to this, like, alien. What was it? It was a. It was an art show with, like, alien themes, but there was a meeting as well. And they had these speakers, like, one of which claimed that he was.
That something was implanted in his brain during a flight somewhere.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
By somebody with long fingers.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Long, really long fingers. He was sitting beside him and no one else noticed.
But what stood out to me from that was really how it's a belief system for many people. Like, we had people standing up, being like, to this guy who was. Claims. Was there another one who thought he was abducted or. No, that was just the implant.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Maybe there was an implant guy. There was someone else who talked about in the audience who said that he had been abducted.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Right. But there are people standing up being like, you are so lucky for getting that in. Like, as if they're chosen. I wish I could get, like. It was this real kind of like, belief system, almost religious vibe.
And really what stood out was the fact that it's a lot of people also just seeking community. And I think that's something we can all relate to. And that's a point of entry for empathy and relation, too, to be like, I get it. You want to feel like you're with people that you relate to and that understand you.
So that really, like, has stuck with me from that time we went there.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, the loneliness. You can hear the loneliness from people, which, again, is a very human thing.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Although we have a theory about alien abduction, of course, because we've talked to people who say they've been kidnapped by aliens.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: And I don't think they're necessarily lying. Yeah, I think they did experience that, but I don't think they were Kidnapped by aliens. Instead it was probably sleep paralysis.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Sleep. Have you ever had sleep paralysis?
[00:28:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Oh, it's amazing, isn't it? How scary.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: It's terrifying.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Like on a scale of 1 to 10, how frightened were you up there?
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:28:13] Speaker C: I used to have like lucid dreams and all sorts of. Yeah.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: When you had sleep paralysis, did you have hallucinations, did you see stuff? Or was it just the physical sensation of immobility?
[00:28:24] Speaker C: It was in, in a dream, basically. It's the classic like trying to get away. You can't move, all of that.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Trying to scream, trying to scream and feeling like someone's there, but you can't tell them.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: You're like some. Something bad is going to happen to someone else and you lost your voice
[00:28:39] Speaker B: and all that in so many cultures. Like this is a common theme in different cultures. They just call it different things.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Sometimes it's a demon or a witch
[00:28:47] Speaker B: sitting on your chest or something.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: And so in the same way that you can have that experience and it's so frightening and confusing that it turns into an alien abduction.
[00:28:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: Without you like lying or anybody lying to you in the same way. Just the experience of being out here in a world that is often crooked can be then reconstituted into an elaborate conspiracy narrative where there's shape shifting reptiles that are in control of everything. I mean, when people are treated so inhumanely, it's not difficult to imagine that somebody must think this can't be human then.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And especially if it's in the zeitgeist that people are talking about like alien abductions or, or conspiracy theories. Like you said, we're living in an age of them. So that's often the lens that we're. That people are putting on it, which. Okay, one last thing I want to ask about, unless you have another question.
What was the Jim Carrey situation recently?
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Did you see the Jim Carrey stuff?
[00:29:40] Speaker C: Yes, I'm perpetually.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: What do you think? What's your explanation for that?
[00:29:43] Speaker C: So you want to catch people.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: So. Yeah. So Jim Carrey made an appearance at some awards show and he was like,
[00:29:48] Speaker A: I think in France.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: In France. And he was like unusually jovial. Like usually he's kind of like a bit of a curmudgeon and grumpy and not really like giving much to the people who are interviewing, but he was really like lovely and effusive and. But he looked. And he also looked so different. Yeah, like something. His eyes look lighter, his hair looked different. You could see more of his face and there it just seemed like so many people were like, who is this man? Because it can't be Jim Carrey.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: It's a clone.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And a lot of people online were saying, well, he's been cloned because he was going to blow the whistle on the Illuminati.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Because he has actually made Illuminati jokes for years.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Oh, has he?
[00:30:26] Speaker C: Yeah. There was, like, previous videos of him saying, too, like, I might. If I disappear, like, you know, look to this.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: No way.
[00:30:33] Speaker C: And all these other things.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Yeah. He'll be on, like a talk show.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:37] Speaker A: And he'll make Illuminati jokes or he'll throw hand signs and things like that. And so, of course, people are like, oh, they've done it.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Yeah. I would say two things. One, aging is hard.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Two, celebrity is bad for you.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: I think, like, a lot of the celebrity cloning stuff that we see, because that is a big conspiracy that celebrities get replaced. Avril Lavigne or who are some other ones?
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Well, it wasn't. What was the one? I can't remember.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: I mean, Avril Lavigne is a big one.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Avril Lavigne is a huge one.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: I don't. I'm not actually that up on celebrities.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: No. I can't remember.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: I want to say, if I had
[00:31:16] Speaker C: to guess, I'd say Tom Cruise. I'm sure there's lots of conspiracies around him.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: But who. Wasn't there one like R B.
Yeah. Who? No, not.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: No, but she was one of.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: Oh, she was one of the people.
I mean, it's just. Are we just not used to celebrities aging?
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Well, that's the thing. I mean, we don't want them to age.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: No.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: We also have the strangest relationship with celebrities, which is one of the reasons why conspiracy theories about celebrities are so common. We've got these parasocial relationships. Again, it all comes back to loneliness. I wonder if I'm okay.
But it all comes back to loneliness. And this idea of we desperately want connection, and so we. We find it in these places that it doesn't really exist. And so then when our celebrities, who we think we know do something strange, we're like, well, that's not the celebrity I know, but it isn't the celebrity. You know, you don't know. We don't know them.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: And. Yeah. In plastic surgery, we're not great at it.
[00:32:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: And so often I'll see a celebrity and it'll trigger my uncanny valley response.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: That. That feeling that you get when something is sort of, like, very close to human, but not quite human. Like, if you're watching that Christmas animated film, the Polar Express.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Right. Yes. Very weird.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: And very weird in a very specific way. That's the uncanny valley when you encounter something that's almost human but not quite.
And because celebrities have to do so much plastic surgery, like, I get that uncanny valley feeling sometimes from humans, which then means that we feel uncomfortable. We feel like something's wrong. We feel like something's strange.
And they were like, well, it's gotta be clones.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Even though that's entirely not how cloning works.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: And they were also saying that there was. There's this one person on TikTok who does a good Jim Carrey impression, who's a woman, I think. And they were saying, oh, maybe it's her pretending or there's some other actor who does a mask thing. And they were like, or maybe it's them acting and pretending to be Jim Carrey. But it was probably just Jim Carrey looking different than usual. Just aging.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Just aging and popsic. And celebrity is bad for you.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:20] Speaker C: And, you know, cameras are higher death than when totally started acting, which has
[00:33:25] Speaker A: made it even harder on celebrities because then it's like, oof. Who wants like.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: Yeah. We see everything.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Every pore, every hair, every wrinkle, every Everything. All the crags. Who knew? Who knew we were all so craggy?
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: Who knew we were all Harry Dean Stanton?
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Oh, man. Do you have any other. Any other ones you want to ask Nathan about while you have him here?
[00:33:45] Speaker C: Think we have.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Free question.
[00:33:47] Speaker C: Free question.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Bonus question.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: So conspiracy related question.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: Do aliens exist?
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: Have they been here?
[00:33:54] Speaker A: That's a very different question.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: I mean, the universe is enormous.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: It's like, so enormous that it kind of makes you a bit seasick and it's kind of hopeless how enormous the universe is.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: It's wild.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: I don't even want to think about it.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Also, life is very pushy.
[00:34:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: And we know that because we're down here on Earth, and down here on Earth, life is very pushy. You go to the desert that's hard to be alive there and yet full of life. You go to the bottom of the ocean, there's like little crabs and stuff. Why. Why are you down there doing this? Why are you crabbing it up?
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: There's frogs that live in the desert that, like, cover themselves in goo and hibernate for years, waiting for, like, the one time it rains and then they all come out and they all make more frogs and a big frog orgy and then bury themselves again. And it's like, guys, why, though?
It's because life is crazy pushy.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: So, yes, there's aliens.
[00:34:47] Speaker C: I love it.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Let's end on that.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Aliens exist.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Nathan.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Well, thanks for having me on. It was great to see you guys. And, yeah, I really enjoy and appreciate your show.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Sweet.
[00:34:58] Speaker C: Thank you.
Happy Thursday or whatever day this is coming to your ears.
This has been another episode of Dear Queer. Just a reminder, we are not actually experts. Any advice given should actually come from our experts, who we will bring in from time to time. Music brought to you by Sean Patrick Brennan. Produced by myself, Lauren Hoggart, and your host, as always, Elena Papiamas.
