Transcript [00:00] This style of thought that that sees Western power as the kind of universal evil. So once they [00:06] think that they're going to go around looking for facts, that'll support it. Well, you know, yeah, [00:10] Israel probably did 9/11. I wouldn't put it past them that that is one more thing that [00:16] people can kind of put in their knapsack of arguments why Israel is a uniquely evil country [00:21] in the world. And and I'm just not sure how we're going to argue these people out of it. [00:29] Welcome to the honest. Take the show that goes past the headlines to find out what's actually [00:34] true about Israel and the people covering it. I'm Ben Chertoff. I'm joined today by Jim Meigs and [00:39] Michael Shermer, two of the most experienced conspiracy debunkers in the business. And we're [00:45] going to unpack how the 9/11 conspiracy theories that were investigated, tested and put to bed 20 [00:52] years ago have come back with a new villain. Yep. Israel. [01:02] Let's start out by saying the quiet part out loud. It's a little bit absurd that we're here 25 years [01:09] after 9/11. We should be talking about the people we lost. Instead, we're going to spend the [01:14] next two hours explaining again why the towers fell the way physics said they fell, and why a [01:21] shipping company's office move is not evidence of a Mossad plot. That's the sad part. Because this [01:28] was settled. It was investigated, it was tested, it was published, and now it's back. Only now it's got [01:35] a new villain. 25 years ago, the story was that the government did it today. Increasingly, the [01:42] story is that Israel did it. Same claims, same non evidence. New target. So if you're [01:49] gonna untangle that you want two people who have actually done the work and I've got them both. Jim [01:56] Meigs was editor in chief of Popular Mechanics, and in 2005 he did something almost nobody in [02:02] journalism was willing to do at the time. He took the 9/11 conspiracy claims seriously [02:08] enough to actually test them. He put his staff on it. They went to hundreds of sources engineers, [02:15] demolition experts, accident investigators, aviation specialists and took the most persistent [02:21] myths apart one at a time. That became the March 2005 cover story and then the book debunking nine [02:28] over 11 myths, which is still the definitive account. Jim is now a senior fellow at the [02:33] Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal's Free Expression newsletter, and [02:38] he writes about all of this at City Journal and Commentary. I should also disclose Jim was my [02:43] editor. I was on that team. I ran the fact checking department at Popular Mechanics, so it will be [02:48] revisiting some of our own work here. And Michael Shermer is the founder and publisher of Skeptic [02:53] magazine and executive director of the Skeptic Society. He wrote a monthly column in Scientific [02:59] American for 18 years, and he's written two books that matter most for this conversation. Conspiracy: [03:06] Why the Rational Believe the Irrational and Denying History, which is about Holocaust denial, [03:11] how you recognize pseudo history and how you argue with it in the open instead of trying to [03:17] make it go away. Here's a fun detail when Popular Mechanics published its 9/11 report back [03:23] in 2005, it cited Michael's Scientific American writing on arguing from anomaly. So these two men [03:30] have been in the same document for 21 years. They've just never been in the same room until [03:35] now. Michael Shermer, welcome to The Honest Take. Thanks. Thanks for having me. And Jim Meigs, also, [03:41] welcome to The Honest Take. Great to be here, Ben. Thank you for being here. Now I have. As I was [03:46] saying before, the smartest guys in the room to talk about 9/11 conspiracy theories. Jim, I want to [03:50] start with you in 2012, Tucker Carlson called 9/11 truthers parasites. [03:57] He said on camera, in order to imply that there's a conspiracy behind 9/11, you ought to [04:02] have some evidence and you have none. You should stop now. Fast forward November 2025. He [04:09] puts out a five part documentary saying that the official story is a lie and intimating, not too [04:14] quietly, that Israel did. Nine over 11. You wrote the takedown of that in City Journal. [04:21] What happened to Tucker Carlson? That is way over my head. I think many of us who [04:28] used to respect on the conservative side, you used to respect Tucker Carlson as a smart, charismatic [04:34] commentator. And I think I was on his show a couple of times and he, um, [04:41] he took a turn. And it was it driven by the reaching a certain audience that is passionate [04:47] and financially supports him. Um, is it something inside of him? Some. Some moral [04:54] turn? It's hard to say, but I like the old Tucker Carlson a lot better. Jim, can you walk me [05:01] through what his claims were and where those landed? Yeah. And, Ben, you and I have a lot of [05:08] history here because we worked together starting 20 years ago on one of the first. And [05:15] to this day, it's still really the only comprehensive, uh, analyzes of the core claims of [05:20] the truthers, which have evolved quite a bit. But they but they maintain some of the same [05:26] characteristics. And one of the techniques that conspiracy theorists use is they throw a [05:32] lot of claims out there. They don't feel they have to defend every single one. So, for example, [05:39] if you claim there were bombs in the World Trade Center towers, it wasn't really the impact of the [05:46] jets. Jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel. You know, as Rosie O'Donnell said. And [05:54] that was one of the claims we we, we looked at in our Popular Mechanics analysis, which focused only [06:00] on physical claims about physical reality that were either provable or disproven. We didn't get [06:07] into big, elaborate geopolitical theories about whether the US is a malevolent player on the [06:12] world stage or anything like that. And I think that was important because at bottom, every theory [06:18] has to have some contact with reality. So what Tucker does in this new series is minimize the [06:25] places where he makes really specific claims that he has to defend. He [06:32] although he'll sometimes accept a notion that maybe there were bombs in the bill in a in a [06:37] building. As you may remember, when conspiracy theories move past the Twin Towers and on to the [06:44] somewhat more baffling collapse of World Trade Center seven, which really wasn't very well [06:48] understood for a long time. So conspiracy theorists tended to glom onto that and say, well, [06:54] you know, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but, you know, that was something strange happened there. And it [07:00] turns out it wasn't really that strange. It was just had never happened building, never falling [07:04] down. And exactly that way before, because it had never, you know, been built like that or burned [07:08] like that before. So what Tucker does is he goes through, um, um, [07:15] a number of these claims. He also spends a lot of time with a number of former people in [07:22] government positions who make vague, broad claims, for example, that, you know, some of our foreign [07:28] allies must have known, Israel must have known somehow they, you know, they failed to warn us, or [07:35] maybe they were in on it. He leaves it all pretty amorphous, so that by the end he can weave this [07:40] idea that that of course, there was a big conspiracy, but I don't. But he doesn't have to lay [07:46] out in detail how it really functioned, or what exactly the conspirators conspired to do, or who [07:52] they were. And at the end, well, not at the end, but he quotes former CIA officer [07:59] Michael Scheuer saying that the Israelis are always for the Israelis first. They don't like the [08:06] United States, except for the most part, our money. And I think you got that pretty clearly. The [08:12] message there is Jews equals money in those five parts. Um, was [08:19] was there anything beyond any firsthand witnesses, anything, any physical evidence or resistance? They [08:25] say it was a lot of they say there were in the episode on World Trade Center seven and a couple [08:31] of the spots he does tangle up. He does get into some of the evidence. People who follow this for a [08:35] long time, for example, will remember the obsession that truthers have with thermite. You know, [08:41] thermite is a combustible compound includes a mix of iron oxide and [08:48] powdered aluminum that can that can combust at a high temperature. Sometimes it's used for things [08:54] like destroying weapons caches and stuff. So. But there was a paper published in a [09:01] supposedly peer reviewed scientific journal that claimed that traces of thermite had been found [09:07] around the World Trade Center, and that somehow thermite was the tool used to bring down the [09:13] towers. Now that's migrated to World Trade Center seven, because wiring conspiracy theorists often [09:18] have trouble explaining how the, you know, thousands and thousands of pounds of explosives [09:24] and hundreds of miles of wire and, you know, people busting through sheetrock and wiring explosive [09:31] charges to to a building, structural elements, how all that could have happened in busy office [09:36] buildings with people coming in and out all day long. Uh, that's kind of hard to explain. So people [09:41] turn to this thermite theory instead. They loved the idea that it was supposedly peer reviewed. [09:48] And, um, and of course, nobody knows how you would bring down a building with thermite because no [09:53] one has ever done it. It wouldn't be very practical. So presumably it would be easier. But in [09:57] some ways, maybe it would be a whole lot harder. No one knows. But that vagueness sort of serves them. [10:03] And so he does get into a few details like that. He also makes some specific claims about [10:09] foreknowledge. For example, there was a weird incident where a BBC reporter, she says in [10:16] the middle of the afternoon on that terrible day, she says something. Well, like World Trade Center, [10:20] World Trade Center seven has collapsed. That that was not true. She was echoing some false [10:26] information. A lot of people must have expected it to collapse because it had been burning [10:30] ferociously all day long. Um, but it actually had not collapsed. So instead of instead of [10:37] writing that off as a mistake, you know, there are no mistakes in the world of conspiracy. There are. [10:41] There are no accidents. Nobody ever misreported. If they say something that serves your interest, even [10:46] if it later seems to be wrong. You know, they knew exactly what they're doing. So Tucker concludes, [10:51] well, clearly the BBC had been tipped off in advance, and it kind of hit me like the absurdity [10:58] of some of these theories. It's like, yeah, you're a global conspirator. You're trying to, you know, to [11:03] bring down the American empire or you're trying to or prop up the American empire by giving us an [11:07] excuse to go to war. It's a vast, top secret explanation. And you make sure to include the [11:14] BBC. I mean, it's just sort of bizarre and. But but then he says, [11:20] and they weren't the only clearly they weren't the only ones who were in on it. It's like, well, [11:25] you haven't proved that they were in on it. The reporter made a mistake under the stress of the [11:30] worst day, the worst, most stressful day of her life. And and you think that that proves that [11:35] various governments and others around the world were in on it. The conspiracy theories are full of [11:41] those kinds of leaps of logic. Yeah, Jim, you described that in the story as, uh, [11:48] kind of like a hiker crossing a stream. Like hopping rock to rock, completely ignoring this [11:55] river of evidence underneath them. You know, these anomalies. Rock to rock. And, Michael, you've written [12:00] about this arguing from anomaly. Um, what is the fallacy of that [12:07] thinking, and why does it work so well on intelligent people? Well, that's anomaly hunting, we [12:13] call it. And so any major event with, you know, big media coverage and so on, everybody focuses on [12:20] their attention, on the details, and you can always find weird things that happen in any particular [12:26] event. Now, most of the weird things that happen day to day are just completely ignored because [12:30] they're not important, you know? But you just take JFK, you know, how do you explain the, you know, the [12:34] bullet did this or you know, that Oswald got the job at the Book depository bill, you know, and they [12:40] just keep going. They have a list of, you know, like 100 weird things associated with the JFK [12:46] assassination. Right? And so, you know, 9/11, you know, draws that kind of attention as would [12:51] anything like the death of Princess Diana, you know, cause of death, drunk driving, speeding, no [12:56] seatbelt. You know, it happens 50,000 times a year in the United States alone, right? Uh, automobile [13:02] deaths. And those are the three primary causes. And. But she's a princess, right? So we call this the, [13:09] um, proportionality bias. That is, the size of the event should be matched by a cause that's equally [13:16] big. And, you know, JFK cannot have been taken out by this lone nut. It has to be the CIA and the FBI [13:22] and the KGB and the Mafia and the Russians and the Cubans and LBJ. And, you know, everybody was in [13:29] and out. They all met at Madison Square Garden. You know, uh, I mean, that's what it would take. And, you [13:34] know, 9/11, you know. Are you telling me 19 guys with box cutters? Come on. There's no way. You [13:41] know, this just has to be, you know, a big, massive operation. The Bush administration had all these [13:47] operatives secretly. Jim, you know, mentioned this kind of rapid fire factoid anomalies, [13:54] right? Well, in in, uh, when we were debating the creationists, we used to call this the Gish Gallop. [13:59] Duane Gish would debate a evolutionary biologist. And this is in the day of slides, you know, in your [14:05] debate, you got I got my slide tray of 50 slides. And so he would go first and go, here are the [14:11] reasons I doubt that the evolutionary theory is true. And then he just, you know, here's this fossil [14:15] and here's this find, and here's this weird animal, and here's the left elbow of the frog. If you [14:20] can't explain this, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then, you know, after 20 minutes, the guy, the host [14:25] goes, okay, you're up in the evolutionary biologist is like, well, this takes me a whole semester to [14:30] explain all of those things, right? How am I going to respond to this? And so the audience sitting [14:35] there is like, oh my God, I didn't know about all these things, right? And you put them all together. [14:40] It sounds devastating, but in fact it isn't. You know, Michael, I was on a back when we released our [14:47] first iteration of the of our 9/11 reporting in Popular Mechanics. I was doing a lot [14:53] of radio interviews, and somebody arranged to have Alex Jones, um, you know, call in, and he did [15:00] exactly that. You know, it was one thing after another. I worked for the Hearst Corporation, which [15:04] was involved with, you know, William Randolph Hearst, yellow journalism, the, you know, [15:07] Spanish-American War. No, no, no, no, no. And just, you know, this, this sort of scattershot him through. If [15:12] you're not really informed, you know, you can understand why a regular observer would just [15:19] think, well, some of that something has to be true. You know, that's a lot of claims. And, uh, and [15:26] I think that idea that the I think your idea about the anomalies is something [15:33] I hadn't really thought about in that way until after our report came out. You wrote a really [15:38] insightful article about it. I think it might have been in your Scientific American column. And. And [15:44] you raised this point about how the argument from anomalies is, is typical with creationists and, [15:50] and various, um, you know, what you call crank theories of physics. People think they found some [15:57] exception to a widely supported viewpoint, and that one exception is or two, you know, a couple [16:04] of little anomalies is enough to bring down this whole edifice. But one of the secrets is they [16:09] don't talk about the edifice or, you know, as I said, when I was sort of channeling your thinking [16:14] in my City Journal piece about the Tucker Carlson series, it's like the rocks in the stream are [16:21] those anomalies. They focus on those. They don't want you to think about the river. Of of [16:26] well-supported, persuasive facts. You know, the fact that there are thousands and thousands of [16:31] eyewitnesses to the 9/11 collapse. They always find just the one person here, the one [16:37] person there who report something a little different or something anomalous because it was [16:41] such a confusing, hectic day. I mean, one thing that at one point that day, somebody reported their [16:47] firing rockets from New Jersey. Well, you know, if I was a firefighter out there and there was hell [16:51] was raining down all around me, I would believe anything's possible. Who knows? And I was surprised [16:57] that never came out. And probably well, now they never came out in the 9/11 conspiracy [17:02] theories, you know. But it was the understandable mistake that people make under stress. And by [17:07] focusing just on those things, these these arguments can be very persuasive. And I even found [17:14] out myself sometimes I would spend late nights digging into these, these conspiracy websites. And [17:18] after a while you kind of go and you go down the rabbit hole, you know, and and your head starts to [17:23] spin. You start thinking, well, oh, well, you know, and then you sort of step back and give it a little [17:28] bit of rational thought, and you realize that it's a very seductive way of thinking. Yeah. The other [17:34] strategy there. Just last point on that is a negative evidence. They never focus on your own [17:38] explanation positively about what you think happened, but only the negative parts, the [17:43] anomalies, the things you say they can't explain. Then when you're put on the spot, you can you can [17:48] just say what 9/11 truthers say, which is I'm not saying I know who did it or exactly how [17:52] they did it. I'm just saying. So I call that just asking questions. It's called JAQing off — just [17:57] asking questions. Tucker has become I mean, that's become his whole shtick. It's like, I, I'm no expert. [18:03] I don't know this and that. But here's this claim that I'm saying is absolutely true in presenting [18:09] as fact. Michael, you talk about the, the the notion that [18:15] extreme what is equal was an extreme degree. [18:22] Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. yet? Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan yes, actually, [18:27] going back to David Hume, but yeah. Yeah. Right. But that's but that's the idea that you should have [18:32] to be able to prove your thing as opposed to just pointing out this weird stuff. Can you explain go [18:38] into a little bit more about the difference there? Yeah. So, you know, this actually goes back to Hume [18:43] and his idea that you should proportion your beliefs to the evidence. And other people have [18:48] said it. Sagan repeated what somebody else had said more clumsily. But, you know, as quotes always [18:53] migrate up to the most famous person who said it and said it most cleverly. So it's usually Mark [18:58] Twain or Yogi Berra or something like that, right. Anyway, so but it's a but it's a, it's a sound [19:03] principle. So it's not an extraordinary claim to say, well, the CIA and DARPA had developed some new, [19:10] um, you know, high, high tech stealth technology for jets. Yeah, I hope they're working on that stuff [19:17] because, you know, that's their job. Right? But to go from that to and this is an extraterrestrial [19:22] alien spaceship. Okay. Hang on. I've seen the U-2 spy plane. I've seen the SR-71 Blackbird. I've seen [19:29] the stealth bomber fly over my house on the over the rose on the Rose Parade January 1st. Okay, I [19:34] know those are real. Show me the spaceship. Okay. And then I'll believe. Right? And it's like, well, [19:41] it's top secret, it's classified. And. Okay, so I'm that's that's the proportionality there. You just [19:47] just show us. You know, Michael, your example of the person who gives us long narrative of [19:54] things in the, the provable world and then just slips in the, the extraordinary [20:01] claim. It's something I've seen in a lot of conspiracy theories. You know, the they'll tell a [20:07] story. They often go back in history to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which was, you know, later [20:14] I, um, an a claim that the North Vietnamese had fired on our ships and it was blown out of [20:20] proportion to become a justification for the Vietnam War. Say so. You know, they'll have some [20:25] examples like that. And, um, and then they'll. And then the assumption will be, well, we did it at [20:31] that time. So that should make it more believable that we'd do it this time or in. Tucker Carlson's [20:37] documentary, he spends a lot of time talking to these experts who go on at great length with [20:42] legitimate complaints about the failures of our government, especially the the the lack of, [20:49] you know, the CIA handing over vital information to the FBI to track some of these, these [20:55] terrorists that they were keeping an eye on, and the fact that our government really did drop the [20:59] ball, those are legitimate concerns and and should have gotten you know, some of those were flagged [21:05] in the 9/11 Commission report. But but I think even more thorough investigation would have [21:11] been called for. So and then you but then you move from the, from this set of [21:18] of facts that are can be established to this extraordinary claim that it was all done on [21:23] purpose, you know, and that it was it was a master plan coordinated from somewhere. And [21:29] that's and they and if you set up your, your stuff in the foreground enough, I think a [21:36] lot of listeners will just make the leap with you not even realize they're making a leap. They'll [21:40] they'll think, well, yeah, that kind of makes sense when in fact you're making an enormous jump in [21:45] logic. Mhm. Yeah. The the fact that X is true doesn't mean Y is true. Right? I mean they could be [21:52] right about those stories and they are true, you know, the Gulf of Tonkin or Watergate or, you know, [21:57] the Iran-Contra or MKUltra or COINTELPRO. I mean, there's all these stories I write about in my [22:03] conspiracy book of what the FBI and the CIA were really doing in the 1950s. And 60s 70s it it's [22:10] crazy. You know, the whole Church Committee hearings that came out in 1977 about the JFK [22:16] assassination also covered all the other stuff that the CIA was doing. It's like, oh, we were doing [22:21] what? Or they they they lied about Roswell. That's right. They did. They they said it was a weather [22:26] balloon. It wasn't a weather balloon. It was Project Mogul. It was a high altitude balloon with [22:30] surveillance equipment, listening for upper atmosphere Soviet nuclear tests. And of course, [22:36] they're not going to tell everybody in the 1950s and 60s. That's what we were up to. Right. It's a [22:40] top secret. Okay. But that doesn't mean the aliens are being hidden by the US government today at [22:46] Area 51 or Wright-Patterson or whatever. It only means. Yes, they did that. That was bad. [22:51] Understandable. But that was then. This is now. Okay. You know, so each each case has to be taken [22:56] individually. Show us the evidence. You know, science isn't about trust. That's not a word you [23:02] use in science. Science is about evidence. If you're in a position of authority. Don't ever make [23:07] it look like you're hiding something. I want to walk back to the seedy underbelly of the internet [23:13] here. Um, Jim, the The Nexus of the Popular Mechanics story [23:20] in 2004 was a full page ad in The New York Times about a book called Painful [23:27] Questions, written by I think it was Eric Hufschmid. He he also trafficked in Holocaust denial. [23:34] And then there's that. The seismic spike claim that we took apart that was from Christopher [23:40] Bollyn, writing in the American Free Press, which was Willis Carto's paper. And yeah. Not to be [23:46] confused. Not to be confused with. The current Free Press, which. Is quite ideologically more [23:52] ecumenical. Exactly. Um, but, um, you know, an anti-Semite and a [23:59] Holocaust denier. How aware were you of the anti-Semites kind of lurking under these rocks [24:05] when when we started looking into this? Not at all. I mean, I mean, or just barely, [24:12] I, I literally I saw that ad in the paper. I thought, huh, that's interesting. A full page ad in [24:17] the New York Times, and the ad listed a series of questions that seemed quite sensible, like, how [24:23] come I'm paraphrasing because I don't have it exactly in front of me. But, you know, you know, jet, [24:28] one of them was jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel. How did the buildings fall down? You [24:32] know, why didn't why didn't our air, um, defense forces intercept these planes [24:39] and shoot them down, and and, uh, why did why was the hole in the Pentagon so small? It was way too [24:45] small to be made by. I believe it was a 777 jet and so on. And he was like, wow. Well, you know, [24:52] those are sound like the valid questions. And we're Popular Mechanics. Uh, you know, we've [24:59] been writing about how buildings are made and what happens in fires and how jets crash and, and [25:04] stuff like that. For a hundred years. Well, there were no jets. Wouldn't it be? The pop magazines [25:09] started, but you'd get my drift. And so, you know, why not just basically take these specific claims [25:15] and fact check them the way you would fact check an article. So it didn't require any enormous [25:19] expertise. It just required diligence to to hire. We hired a team of reporters. And [25:27] Ben, you helped lead this effort. Uh, you know, you you brought in, um, a number of very, you know, [25:34] top notch reporter slash fact checkers. And we just started running down all the claims, calling [25:39] people, looking at documents, talking to experts just the way you would anything something that [25:46] that the conspiracy theorists almost never do is actually reach out to experts and [25:53] and learn. And it was so fascinating to see how simple [25:59] mistakes, simple claims could be misinterpreted, always ratcheting in the direction towards the [26:06] conspiracy. Yeah, I remember the the idea that there were seismic spikes. There was a claim that [26:12] that the explosions in the, um, the World Trade Center were. Were so [26:19] intense that it was picked up. The alleged explosive explosions, that it was picked up by [26:25] a seismograph, that Lamont-Doherty Observatory. Well, that's right across the river from where I'm [26:30] sitting right now. I can practically see it. And so instead of just looking at what they said and [26:35] looking at their chart, that they that they blew up, we we called them and the scientists there [26:41] were like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you called. People keep asking about this and we're just [26:45] trying to set the record straight. Doesn't show that at all. That's not right at all. It shows the [26:50] collapse of the building. That's gradual. Uh, you know, the seismic image. They did pick up the [26:56] collapse of the buildings, but, you know, in a gradually slow, you know, escalating cascade of [27:01] vibration that would was totally consistent with the building collapse. But they couldn't get the [27:06] truth out there because this false claim was circulating. Yeah. When you know who used to place [27:13] ads at newspapers. Was a guy named Bradley Smith. In the 1980s, he placed ads in college university [27:19] newspapers about the Holocaust. You know, like like here are some of the questions that you know that [27:26] are legitimately debatable. So why don't we have a debate? I'll give $100,000 to any college that [27:31] will host a debate with, you know, one of my people and, you know, your history professor or whatever. I [27:37] don't think anyone ever took him up on this, but I remember the ads. Yeah. You know, it's just a ploy [27:42] to get people. You know, it's a debate strategy. Really. You know, kind of challenge people like [27:47] that. On the other issue of errors. Yeah, everybody makes errors. The errors are all over the place. So [27:52] one of the detections of fraud is if the errors all go in one direction. So you know, with [27:57] scientific fraud for example, I mean it could, could it be that the guy was just sloppy in his [28:03] lab notes. Yeah. Okay. But if all the errors go in one direction. Do you think? Okay, this is not just [28:09] error, right? Richard Evans wrote a good book on this called Lying About Hitler. He was Deborah [28:13] Lipstadt, expert witness in the trial, when she was sued by David Irving for calling him a Holocaust [28:20] denier, which was weird, because I called him that, too. But. But I'm not Jewish. And she is. So, you know, [28:24] there's that element. But he you know, he showed that, you know. Yes. Irving made errors. Any [28:31] historian like, you know, they in that trial, they went through every single thing Irving ever wrote, [28:36] every footnote he ever had. Right. And there's errors all over the place. But that would be true [28:41] for any historian, right? You made a mistake there, there, there. And so but his all moved in one [28:46] direction and that's how they proved it. So I think that's the problem with the 9/11 [28:50] truthers. They're you know, they're always picking the errors made by, you know, this guy said this. It [28:54] turns out that wasn't true. Yeah. But every error they identify always moves in their direction. [28:59] That tells you there it's a it's an ideologically driven belief. Yeah. And and Eh, Ben? You asked about [29:05] the. Was I aware of the anti-Semitism that kind of underscores this. So I wasn't really and and you [29:12] know, as I explained, we started out really just trying to focus on the facts and, you know, on a, on [29:18] a keeping in Popular Mechanics turf of, of verifiable fact. But one thing that really struck [29:25] me as we got into it is at that time, people forget this. Now, at that time, the 9/11 conspiracy [29:31] theories were really embraced on on the progressive left. Like, you know, these articles [29:36] would appear in progressive left wing progressive weeklies, you know, in Seattle and elsewhere. And [29:43] but if you went to the source, the people who were originating a lot of the material that gets got [29:48] repeated the most, it was people like Christopher Bollyn and others who were associated, as you know, [29:54] as you said, with with these long standing racist, anti-Semitic organizations. And I thought, like, [29:59] well, that's funny that the that people who consider themselves, you know, you know, extremely [30:06] liberal, progressive, open minded, tolerant people are recycling claims made by professional [30:13] racists and anti-Semites. And and because they liked the [30:20] conclusion that, you know, George Bush was evil. They were they showed no skepticism towards this [30:25] stuff. And I think it helped, you know, a lot of things that contributed to this rise of [30:30] anti-Semitism today. But I think that the, you know, conspiracy theories are a little bit like a mind [30:36] virus. Once once it gets in there, it makes you more likely to believe other, other [30:43] exotic claims. And and all of these theories about what? [30:50] That there's some vast entity really controlling events. I mean, you know, I feel like so many of [30:55] them just come back to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the, you know, the famous faked [30:59] anti-Jewish document. I just have to remind people it is fake. By the way, if anybody's just anybody's [31:06] just confused on that point, right? Um, you know, you have to these days, you have to clarify these [31:11] things. And, uh, so it it was it's kind of like people could be born and [31:18] be raised in an environment with no anti-Semitism at all, but kind of but it's like a it's like a [31:23] black hole whose gravity pulls them in once they're in the world of conspiracies, because so [31:28] many of them come back to that, that there's some secret global organization, that it's pulling the [31:34] strings behind the scenes. And, and so I feel like, you know, you know, maybe some of the roots of this [31:39] stuff were planted back with the the enormous popularity of these theories in the first wave of, [31:45] of fascination with 9/11 conspiracy theories back there in 2005, 2006, oh seven, those [31:51] years. Yeah, that was my first introduction to the horseshoe theory, which of course, we're seeing in [31:57] full effect with with Hassan Piker quoting the same things that Candace Owens is saying. And it's [32:04] because it it propels the same, you know, at the base anti-Israel anti-Semitism. [32:10] Um, so, Michael, you wrote the book on Holocaust [32:17] denial. Are these the same? Are these. Is this just like, uh, these people just share a mailing list, [32:24] or. Is this the same. Ecosystem? I think it's yeah. I've thought a lot about this. There's a kind of a [32:31] strategy that they seem like they all use. You know, we're going to use the same techniques. The [32:36] Holocaust deniers did exactly what the creationists were doing, for example, you know, [32:40] never say anything positive about your own position. Just challenge the the other the other [32:44] position, you know, quote people out of context and make it sound like they're supporting what you [32:48] say versus what they actually said and, and so on. And I think it's just a natural way [32:55] of thinking about how am I going to challenge the mainstream dogma? And, you know, here's a half a [33:01] dozen strategies that seem to work without having to actually have read somebody else's techniques. [33:06] Right? I was going to say like in 9/11 truther circles, there's two ideas, LIHOP and [33:12] MIHOP. So LIHOP is let it happen on purpose. You know, this was the debate George W. Bush [33:19] actually orchestrated. He made it happen on purpose, MIHOP. Or did he just know about it and [33:24] let it happen on purpose? Light hop. And this was also applied to Franklin Roosevelt and the [33:30] bombing of Pearl Harbor. You know, did he make it happen on purpose or did he let it happen on [33:35] purpose? Well, neither. Right. You know, Roosevelt needed an excuse to get the United States into [33:39] the Second World War. Pearl Harbor, was it? Bush was looking for a reason, uh, you know, to avenge, um, you [33:46] know, that his father's war didn't get finished up the way it should have in Iraq in the 90s. So what [33:52] are we going to do? And then 9/11 happens and he's like, okay, now I can do something and no one's [33:58] going to, you know, challenge me. And so I call that capitalize on what happened on purpose. COWHOP. [34:02] That's it. Capitalize what happened on purpose. Right. So of course, you know, 9/11 and the oil and [34:08] all that stuff, you know, that's why you did it. No, but but, you know, in terms of U.S. foreign policy, [34:14] it is good to have an excuse to do the things you'd like to do as a president. Right. We see this [34:18] with, you know, Trump does it. They all do it. And you know, I so if you're going to criticize Bush [34:24] there's plenty to criticize about you know, in terms of U.S. foreign policy, uh, you know, about, uh, [34:29] you know, what happened in Afghanistan versus Iraq, you know, okay, we can look back at that. But to let [34:35] him off the hook and go, no, no, no, it's none of that. It's actually this other thing, you know, this [34:40] this secret conspiracy. It's like, no, you're missing the bigger picture here, I think. Well, that [34:46] MIHOP/LIHOP distinction is something that that kind of emerged as we, as we worked on this [34:53] project, as you remember, Ben. So we did our original cover story that came out in, I believe, [34:58] February of 2005, and most of us had gotten to the magazine not that much longer, which of course [35:03] became part of a conspiracy that James Meigs, you know, took over the magazine and fired a lot of [35:08] the staff, you know, and, you know, a true fact. But, um, you know, sometimes [35:14] and and but they don't say that. I replaced it with a lot of some of those people with a lot of [35:20] real cutting edge magazine professionals who were good reporters. But, um, this, this evolution [35:27] from made it happen on purpose and with a lot of very specific claims like that. A missile hit the [35:31] Pentagon to LIHOP, showed something that, since I've kind of learned, is characteristic of a lot [35:36] of conspiracy theories, you might start with really concrete, provable, disprovable claims. But if [35:41] you're one of the smarter conspiracy theorists after a while, it's, you know, it was hard to defend [35:46] the idea that a missile hit the Pentagon, which was one of the first big ones that, um, that French [35:52] writer wrote the book. The Incredible Fraud, I think, is when you translate traveled all over the [35:56] world giving lectures about that in the first couple of years after 9/11. Um, but there [36:01] are all these pictures of the wreckage of the plane. There's so much evidence of, you know, they [36:05] they found, you know, the landing gear and human DNA and all kinds of stuff inside the Pentagon. Uh, [36:11] so it became hard to defend some of those points. It became hard to defend the idea that they wired [36:17] the entire buildings with bombs. So some of the smarter theorists will keep moving farther and [36:21] farther away from from hard facts that can be proven or disproven. So the beauty of the lead it [36:27] happened on purpose is you don't need facts anymore. You know, you just have to say, well, they [36:33] had all the look, they had the me, they had the means. And the conspiracy theories also really [36:38] love jargon that makes them sound like they're super. They're insiders, you know, legally or they [36:43] use a lot of, you know, like, you know, false flag operation and, you know, a lot of jargon from, from [36:49] the world of security or law. So, you know, they had the means, motive and opportunity to to make it [36:53] happen. And once you accept that, then they don't need to to really, really prove anything. And [37:00] and you also see that in how the focus of 9/11 conspiracy theories gradually moved from the [37:06] Pentagon and the Twin Towers to which we you know, there's, you know, we have pictures and a lot of [37:13] evidence of what happened to the more mysterious World Trade Center 7. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a [37:18] few years ago made a you know, he said, well, you know, there's something weird that I'm not a [37:22] conspiracy theorist, but something weird that happened. I think he said building nine. But, you [37:26] know, he meant building seven. Uh, I mean, he didn't have to know any of the facts, but he knew he was [37:30] right. That right was in World War 11. Yeah. And and then. Oh, [37:36] yeah. And then the, um, the thermite thing is like that, like they went from making these really bold, [37:42] big claims. Some people said those weren't actually airplanes that hit the building. They [37:46] were tankers or, you know, are other things. Or holograms. Are hardly. Two to the most. Like [37:53] we're literally collecting a few grams of dust off of the windowsill, you know, a half mile from [37:59] the World Trade Center and claiming that these tiny particles of iron oxide and aluminum, little [38:05] flecks of aluminum are positive proof, you know, of exactly how the building came down. It's like, wait, [38:11] there was a giant dust cloud that covered of a collapsed building that covered lower Manhattan. [38:18] Can you. What are the odds? Would have a little bit of ordinary rust and a little bit of shredded [38:23] aluminum in it? I mean. You know, and yet and yet people seize on that, you know, as, as really, [38:30] really compelling proof because they've backed away from the bolder, more, more tangible [38:37] claims. They're literally, you know, talking handfuls of dust or, or just nothing, just a vibe [38:43] that, you know, I don't like Bush. He must have done it. You know, when it comes to the let it happen on [38:47] purpose theory. That's also what's happening now. I feel like it's evolving, especially as we move [38:53] into this. Israel did 9/11 thing that the Mossad did 9/11. There's no evidence [38:58] that's well, okay. There's dancing Israelis, which has been disproven. Guys who work for a moving [39:05] company who saw 9/11 happening and predictably, as anybody would, watched it happen. [39:12] Have you guys heard it? Have you heard of this book called The Three Christs of Ypsilanti? This [39:17] was written. In. 1958 by a psychiatrist at the mental hospital at Ypsilanti, Michigan. And he had [39:24] three different mental patients, each of whom said he was Jesus Christ. So he thought, well, this will [39:28] be interesting. I'll get them all in the same room together and see how they respond. Right. And each [39:33] of them said, well, you know, the other two. Are there a bunch of fakes? These people are crazy. You [39:37] know, I'm the real one. Right. So I was thinking about that with, you know, the concept of your line [39:42] of demarcation between science and pseudoscience so that the smarter. Nine over 11 truthers, they [39:49] look at the no planners like, well, those people are crazy. I mean, holograms, come on, you gassed the [39:53] patients. I mean, the the the the. Well, Michael, let's let's take a second one, because not [39:57] everybody is that well briefed in this. There was literally a theory. And it was it was in the first [40:02] version of the, um, of the big movie. Um, Ben, you were changed. I'm [40:09] sorry I blanked on it for a second. It was in the first version of Loose Change that the. The jets [40:15] were all sent to some airport, that people were all disappeared or gassed or something like that. [40:21] I mean, it was this what did they call it, the Bumble Planes theory or something? I mean, it was [40:25] the most fantastical, outrageous thing, but it was it was in currency of what was being argued at [40:31] the time. So. So with that background, sorry, I. Just. I just want to make sure people understand just [40:36] how out there and ridiculous some of this stuff was. So go ahead. So but all of us have to draw the [40:41] line of demarcation somewhere. On any subject like, what's it going to take to tip me over into, you [40:47] know, accepting this theory is true or else I'm just not there. Right. In terms of in terms of the [40:52] anti-Semitic streak, I did see that fairly early because I had just come off writing my book about [40:56] the Holocaust, and I was like, oh, here we go again. You know, the Jews, right? Or Israel or Mossad. You [41:02] know, Mossad is a pretty badass intelligence agency. They've done some some big things. Right. [41:07] But that doesn't mean everything. You think that that's weird that happened is due to beside. Right? [41:12] They didn't kill Charlie Kirk. That's the latest one. Right, right. It's. Yeah, it's moved into, [41:19] uh. Yeah. Israel killed Charlie Kirk. And then when the Iran war started or the the Epstein, you know, [41:25] the Mossad and Epstein were connected. And then when the Iran war started, it turned into [41:30] Operation Epstein's fury. I mean, it's just everything now is going back to, you know, there's [41:37] this massive rise in anti-Semitism with absolutely zero evidence. I wonder if that's is is [41:43] that the consequence of being in a world now where we have so much information at our [41:48] fingertips? This stuff is so easily, you know, falsifiable and checked. Even LLMs these days [41:55] as as unreliable as they are. You can put most of these theories in there and get a pretty good [42:02] fact check and debunking. I mean, is that why we're moving into this arena where it's just as as you [42:07] said in your book, Michael, people are saying this. People are saying, yes, that's right. Well, so we [42:14] know from the study of conspiracy theories, it's a very old topic. You know, people have been thinking [42:20] about what powerful people are doing behind closed doors since, you know, the Roman Empire days [42:26] and or even before that. And so there's nothing new about conspiracies. Um, what's new is the the [42:32] speed with which they could spread. I mean, the JFK assassination conspiracies, you know, in the 60s, [42:36] 70s and 80s, they're just meeting in small hotel rooms, and they have their little mimeographed [42:41] newsletters and, and, uh, you know, self-published books. And there was just nothing to it, you know. [42:47] And then Oliver Stone comes along with his, his film, and then the internet takes off and, you know, [42:51] all these self-made movies and web pages. And now all of a sudden, you know, millions of people are [42:57] involved, and and you could do that now overnight. I mean, Loose Change was the first viral video, as [43:01] far as I know, that really took off like that. I mean, and he had numbers that, you know, any [43:06] Hollywood director would die for. Right. I mean, he didn't make any money on it, but, you know, still, [43:11] you see the spread of it. So there's an interesting thread in the study of conspiracies [43:16] and conspiracy theories and by scholars, that is, when does the phrase that's a crazy [43:22] conspiracy theory take off? And that's really. Right after JFK. And there's some evidence that [43:28] maybe this was slightly directed, you know, by the FBI. Let's call this anyone who believes this a [43:34] crazy conspiracy theory. And so now there's I just got I haven't read it yet. There's a huge book [43:39] about, you know, the history of the concept of conspiracy theory. Where does that come from? And [43:44] the problem is, is I write about, you know, there are conspiracies that really happen, two or more [43:48] people plotting the secret to do something nefarious or immoral or illegal against the third [43:52] party without their knowledge. Okay, that happens all the time, right? But that doesn't mean every [43:57] conspiracy theory is true. The conspiracy theory is about possible conspiracies. So then you have a [44:02] signal detection problem. Is it is it a signal in the noise, or is it just more noise? And then, you [44:09] know, the psychology of it and all that. But what I'm trying to do is move people away from this [44:13] idea of calling somebody a crazy conspiracy theorist. Like with the lab leak hypothesis, that [44:17] was never actually a conspiracy theory. Anyway. No one was accusing the Chinese of a bioterror [44:23] weapon. It was just a bio error, which is not really a conspiracy. It's like people fuck up. Well, [44:27] they do that all the time, right? This is. Normal. And so I always thought that was kind of a weird [44:32] to call that a crazy conspiracy theory, a racist conspiracy theory against the Chinese. You know, it [44:37] was never that. So that was that was an odd one. Um, anyway, so I think that's an important distinction [44:43] to make. Yeah. And I think that's a really a good point. I mean, we you're not going to win people [44:49] over by telling them they're dumb or, you know, they have no right or they have no expertise, you [44:56] know, to investigate something. It's a free country. People should be should feel free to ask [45:00] questions and investigate things. And as we saw, the lab leak is a good example. There were a [45:06] handful of scientists I was just emailed chatting with the scientist Alina Chan yesterday, who was [45:13] very bravely as a young postdoc at Harvard, MIT's Broad Institute, you know, waded into this issue [45:20] when no one else would touch it, at great risk to her career. She was going up against the consensus [45:24] of all the leading scientists in the field. And she was right. And she she exposed some really [45:30] important questions about the the likelihood she never said, oh, it's the it's open and shut, but the [45:37] very strong likelihood that the virus leaked out of the Wuhan lab. And we want to encourage that. [45:42] You know, we don't want to we don't want to encourage things like, you know, um, Dr. Fauci [45:47] thinking he could shut down legitimate questions just by calling them a conspiracy theory. So [45:51] people like you and and and me, Michael, we do have to be careful to and to [45:58] not just, you know, um, be dismissing this stuff, um, and, and [46:05] to meet people where they are. I like your idea of just asking people, you know, in good faith to give [46:10] their, their evidence instead of, you know, trying to trying to shout, shout them down. But, but but I [46:15] think it is a, um I think it is getting harder to do that as we [46:22] get more polarized in people are in their little algorithmic rabbit holes where, you know, if you [46:28] have a certain worldview, you keep getting fed information that confirms the those those views, [46:35] and you keep getting spun deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole. Yeah, that's one of the things [46:40] I'm very concerned about is our lack of a common truth that we, the [46:47] relativism of experience trumping actual fact. Michael, you wrote about that [46:54] in your newest book, In Truth. Can you talk a little bit about where you think we're headed [46:59] with that? Well, again, back to where we started with independent journalism. I like this as an [47:05] antidote to the bias liberal bias in mainstream media. I do know when some of these independent [47:10] journalists write about something. I know a lot about, that they make more mistakes. And the [47:15] problem is, is that, you know, most of them don't have fact checkers or editors. That's a bit [47:19] troubling. When I write for a big newspaper or whatever, you know, a half a dozen people go [47:25] through what I write and they mark it up and they send it back, and I get to a fact check this and [47:29] double check that quote. And and I got to cite this and so on. And it's and it's bothersome in a [47:35] way as a writer it's like, you know, I got things to do. I'm kind of busy here. And I'm like, okay, [47:39] actually, maybe this is good because actually I got that one wrong. Right? There's nobody doing [47:43] that for these independent journalists and that, you know, now, I think Free Press has made the [47:48] transition to before they got bought even, they, they had enough money to hire people to actually [47:53] fact check stuff. So their articles are, are reliable but less so on others. So I do worry [47:59] about, um, you know, the fact checking of this, the I use the LLMs, I use Gemini and Super Grok pretty [48:06] much every day. And they I think they usually get it right. But you got to look you got to double [48:10] check the sources, you know. Right. Read it. Like read it. Really? That's the source. Yeah. Okay. How [48:15] about, you know, YouTube. Uh oh. New York Times. Okay. Or Wall Street Journal. Okay. All right. So I'd like [48:20] to see something a little more solid there, right. So that, you know, I don't know what's going to [48:24] happen there. I think we'll, we'll there'll be market solutions to the problems as we develop. [48:30] You know, fact checking, more fact checking sites like PolitiFact or Snopes or US or whatever, you [48:35] know. Just more, more people jumping on these things in real time. And what's troubling, too, is [48:42] that these, you know, Reddit and then the LLMs, they're sucking in information from things like [48:49] Wikipedia, which we now know is so easily. Well, not easily, but it is. If you have enough [48:56] people and you're coordinated enough, you can manipulate it and literally rewrite [49:02] history, which you know, is mildly terrifying. Um, my my [49:09] real worry, my other real worry. And this is something that we struggle with at honest [49:14] reporting every day, is that when some of these ridiculous claims come out, it it's a question. Do [49:20] we do we even give this any credence. You know, do we even look at this? Because in looking at it, it [49:27] is in some ways amplifying it. And I remember when we were, when we were doing the Popular Mechanics [49:34] story and we were talking to the FAA, and it took months of talking to them to get them to actually [49:41] go on the record, because in those days, there standing policy was we don't engage with [49:46] conspiracy theorists because there's no winning. Yeah. So I don't know. This is a question for both [49:51] of you who are, you know, really professional debunkers in this where where do you guys draw [49:56] the line between when it hurts to, to take these things on and to where it actually will help? [50:03] You know, when we launched the 9/11 work at Popular Mechanics, I wasn't really thinking so [50:10] much about those questions. I learned a lot as we went along and and learned partly from experience [50:15] that it can be sometimes, you know, that sort of, um, like, yeah, let's have a debate about this [50:22] issue. Um, uh, you know, and then you're confronted with the Gish galloping conspiracy [50:29] theorist, and they're throwing out a lot of stuff. Are that so fast that, you know, somebody can make [50:35] a claim in a sentence that would take 3000 words to debunk. And that's one reason we expanded our [50:42] mechanics reporting into a book length version. And then I think for the 10th anniversary of nine [50:47] over 11, we, we we updated that book. It's still I'm still available and I highly recommend it for, for [50:52] people who want to get to the bottom of of this, at least, you. Know, link in the show notes. Yeah. At [50:57] least you know where these debates were, were at that at that time. But it is a, um, [51:04] but it can be counterproductive, you know, to, to enter into the debate. We did one TV show, [51:11] the, the left wing, um, show Democracy Now! Oh, wow. Okay. [51:18] I don't remember that. Yeah. This is, um, you paid Amy Goodman. You played a role in this? Yeah. The [51:24] the the respected left wing broadcaster. Amy Goodman. Um, and because people would ask us, oh, do [51:31] you want to debate, you know, Alex Jones or this one or that one? And we would say we're not doing [51:34] debates. Our work stands on its own. You're welcome. After you're done with us to go talk to whoever [51:38] you want to talk to. But but, uh, you know, we we put a team of ten or whatever number of [51:45] reporters on this for several months. And, you know, I don't want to spend half my time responding to, [51:50] you know, one person's charges. But, um, behind the scenes, we later learned that [51:57] Amy Goodman had had a had one of her producers was a big truther. And so he he arranged [52:04] to have the filmmakers from Loose Change on the show. And, Ben, actually, you were monitoring their [52:09] stuff and you came into my office and you said, did you know the guys on Loose Change said, [52:13] they're going to be debating the Popular Mechanics guys. And so. Right. I do remember that. [52:18] Yeah. So our executive editor, David Dunbar, who did such yeoman's work on this project and really [52:24] steered it through the the Shoals of all the different ways it could have gone, gone wrong and [52:30] kept it really focused on hard facts, provable facts. So he and I were going on the show the next [52:35] day and we said, oh, well, she'll be pull out. Oh no, that'll look terrible. Like we're afraid to debate [52:39] these yahoos. Uh, and and so we went it went on and, um, and [52:46] as the show went on, they did that Gish galloping thing. They were probably in that version of Loose [52:52] Change. There were probably 25 concrete claims about what had happened. And we had in our work. We [52:57] had debunked every single one. So instead of arguing us about why, no, no, you really could why [53:02] are the buildings, you know, or whatever they, they, you know, they they came up with five new things [53:08] like, well, what about this woman who says she saw da da da da? And they were like, you know, never [53:12] even heard it. I mean, that's a new one. I guess we could look into it. But that there's always [53:19] something new. There's you can always, you know, appear to win a debate by just bringing up yet [53:26] the latest wrinkle and just abandon like like I said in the hiker sort of hopping from rock to [53:31] rock across the river, you know, you just abandon your old position and land on a new one, but with [53:37] just as much conviction that you must be right, you know, never admitting like, jeez, 25 of the [53:42] claims that we based our viewpoint on, they've all been demolished. You know, maybe there's something [53:46] wrong with our core viewpoint that typically doesn't happen. At least it doesn't happen with [53:51] the hardcore people. I do think there are people in the middle who can be persuaded, and I think a [53:55] lot of people were persuaded by, by our work. But I, you know, I don't have much confidence that you [54:01] can persuade the, the diehards. And so I'm still a little torn, you know, do you sometimes risk [54:07] calling more attention to an issue? Michael, I'm kind of curious. Do you have a lifetime experience [54:11] with this? I'm kind of interested in your experience. Well, first of all, we're not going to [54:15] convert the, you know, hardcore conspiracist that we're after. The undecided voters, which is the [54:20] vast majority of people have not made up their mind about that. So for us, we decide, you know, what [54:24] to cover or not, you know, based on how popular is it, how important are people talking about it? Is [54:29] this a culture war issue? Is this something important? I mean, people send me articles all the [54:34] time that are just super obscure, have nothing to do with anything, particularly that anyone cares [54:38] about. And it's like, well, look, you know, yeah, it's kind of interesting, I guess. But who will read it? [54:42] Right. So it has to be something like, oh, yeah, I heard about this. Yeah, I saw Tucker talking about. [54:47] Yeah. What's the answer to that. Right. You know, so I was thinking, um, a couple stories here for you. [54:52] Well, so first of all, like Richard Dawkins famously said, explain why he doesn't debate [54:57] creationists. It looks better on their resume than mine. You know, the 9/11 truther thing, [55:01] it was pretty fringy right at the start, but it caught on fairly quick. So I thought, yeah, okay. So [55:06] when you guys came out with yours. Yeah, we got to do something. Skeptic. Yeah. This people are asking [55:09] about this. And I remember reading, uh, when I first encountered the Holocaust deniers. I started [55:14] looking at the literature. You know who's written about this? Not many people. And then Deborah [55:18] Lipstadt wrote about it, but her take was more like, well, they're, you know, they're anti-Semitic [55:22] and they have these motives like, yeah, I know, but what's the answer to these questions? They're [55:27] they're making, you know, they had this document they sent me like the 19 Unanswered Questions [55:32] about the Holocaust by historians. I went to some Holocaust historians and said, yeah, I know, but [55:36] what's the story here about why the door doesn't lock at the gas chamber at Mauthausen? What's the [55:41] what's the deal here? And no one seemed to know a lot of these things. I thought, I'm going to get to [55:45] the bottom of this. Not that I think they're legitimate arguments, but that somebody who's just [55:50] curious, like, yeah, I'm sure the Holocaust happened, but what is the answer to this question about why [55:56] there's no blue staining on the bricks and the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau? And so, you [56:02] know, yeah. Okay. What is the answer to that? Right. So that's what my book Denying History does, you [56:08] know. Yes. Here's all their motives in free speech, all this stuff. But here's the reason they're [56:14] wrong, right? This is why they're wrong. This is why the 9/11 truthers are wrong. This is why [56:19] the JFK assassination, you know, the CIA did it. This is why they're wrong. Uh, now we can change [56:24] our mind. Just show us the evidence. But anyway, that's my take. Yeah. Science especially. And you [56:31] mentioned that, um, when you were just starting to answer that the whole point of science is to [56:38] question itself and to continually evolve and never really have a, you [56:45] know, a point of certainty where nobody's 100% sure how does. I mean, that's one of the [56:52] more frustrating things dealing with conspiracy theorists is that uncertainty and [56:58] that, um, you know, the fact that one day, you know, a theory can be true and then can be [57:05] disproven, that is, is seen as like the, the opening into which these guys kind of [57:12] drive themselves. One problem. If we could talk epistemology for a moment, is the difference [57:18] between scientific questions that we could get an answer to through an experiment, or a lab or test [57:24] or something like that. It's repeatable versus a more of a history or legal [57:31] type judicial question. Did he do it or not? Right. It's a one off event. It already happened. We're [57:37] not going to replicate it. The guy we locked up, is he the guy that did it? You know, there. Then it [57:43] becomes, you know, eyewitness testimony. What are the credentials of this person? Those things do [57:48] matter. You know, to me, for the UAP, people always talk about the credentials of the pilots. It's [57:53] like, what were the credentials of the pilot that shot down the Chinese spy balloon? I don't know. [57:57] Yeah, of course you don't know. No one cares because we have the balloon, right? So. But when we [58:02] don't have the US spaceship, we don't have the spaceship. Then the credentials of the person that [58:07] said they saw it matters and that puts it into this more. How truth is found in the legal system, [58:13] which in which case you have two competing lawyers, the adversarial system and the peer [58:17] review peer reviewers, the judge of the jury. And the goal of the of the lawyer is not to find the [58:23] truth, the goal of the lawyers to win. That's it. That's their only case. I thought Bari Weiss did [58:28] a nice interview with Alan Dershowitz last year. She asked him, how many of your clients were [58:32] guilty? He goes, all of them. I'm an appellate attorney. They've all been trying to get to me. [58:38] They're guilty. That's it. My goal is just to get them off somehow from a technicality, right? It's [58:43] crazy when you think about how that system works, but in a way, it has to be because it already [58:49] happened, right? So 9/11 happened. We can't replicate it. So, you know, who is it that said that [58:54] they saw this? That kind of matters in terms of science, like what Jim is talking about. Yeah. Okay. [59:00] Can thermite actually do this? That's a legitimate scientific question. But did they actually do that? [59:05] Historically, that's more of a kind of historical or legal type question. You said something. Been [59:12] there about the, uh, the our understanding of the scientific method, that no theory is ever [59:18] completely confirmed. And, you know, we all have that hopefully we all got some of that classic [59:24] kind of enlightenment education in, in, um, in high school. I worry that there's less and less of that, [59:31] but I think there's been a pernicious effect on our understanding of how science works. And it, uh, [59:38] it dates back to Thomas Kuhn, uh, a philosopher of science who wrote a really [59:45] influential book, I believe it was 1964, called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. And he was [59:52] the guy who, who really organized this idea that a scientific theory holds sway [59:59] for a period of time when it seems to explain the relevant evidence and and can be useful in [60:06] helping scientists do their work. So the Copernican excuse me, the pre-Copernican theory [60:10] that the the um, that the you know that that the sun and everything rotates around the earth. It [60:17] worked for a while to explain to explain, um, what was going on in the skies, but it became quite [60:22] complicated to explain the retrograde motion of planets and stuff. So Tycho Brahe and Copernicus [60:28] and and others, uh, began becoming skeptical of it. And, and Copernicus proposed, you know, [60:34] the heliocentric model. So that would be your classic example. Or Darwin, you know, would be [60:39] another classic example of a scientific revolution where the old system worked for a [60:43] while, but it starts breaking down, and then, uh, and then some pioneering scientist kind of breaks [60:49] through. He rejects the old paradigm and proposes a new paradigm. And this is where that term [60:55] paradigm shift comes from. So, uh, this book was not much notice for the first couple of years. And [61:00] then it caught on like wildfire. Not so much among scientists, but among people in the humanities. And [61:07] I heard Thomas Kuhn give a lecture in the 80s when I was at college, and the audience was full. [61:12] There weren't I don't think there were a lot of physics majors there. There were a lot of of [61:16] people in like, you know, studying Foucault and Derrida, you know, in the in comp lit department [61:23] because his, his, his idea, which is obviously is obviously true in its narrow sense. [61:30] But people took it as a model for all science. And in the world of education, people started saying, [61:35] well, you know, we now know that every scientific theory ultimately is going to get overthrown and [61:40] rejected. So we don't really need to teach kids these, these scientific facts because it's all [61:46] kind of contingent on on culture. Everything is going to going to get changed and overthrown. And [61:52] this was an incredibly corrosive idea and incorrect and went way beyond what Kuhn actually [61:56] said. So I'm sort of on your turf here, Michael, but, yeah, I'm sure. You can apply for anything. That I. [62:02] Do. Such a great example. Because all the fringe, the theories of everything, guys, you know, they [62:08] always. Well, you know, there were these paradigm shifts, and that's what I'm proposing. Right. And [62:13] they said they laughed at the right. They they laughed at the Wright brothers like they laughed [62:18] at the Marx Brothers. So what? Right. I mean, but the deeper problem is, yes, of course, anomalies do [62:24] build up. But when there's a shift, usually it's not a complete overturning of the old system. I [62:30] mean, Einstein did not replace Newton. Newtonian mechanics works just fine for most physics [62:36] experiments. And, you know, if you want to get a spacecraft to the moon or whatever, mostly [62:41] Newtonian mechanics will get you there. If you want to fine tune it down to the meter where you [62:46] land. Okay, you need to use some, you know, some relativity theory or whatever. Uh, and so usually [62:52] it's a building on. Right. So people like Michio Kaku and other, uh, popularizers of physics have on [62:58] their web pages. Like if you have an alternative theory of physics that you're writing me about, [63:02] please go to this page and answer these questions which says, basically, your alternative theory has [63:08] to explain all this stuff that the mainstream theory already explains and the anomalies that [63:13] you're worried about. Right? You can't just say I the stream and the pebbles, right? So you can't [63:19] just ignore the stream, you know, you got to account for that too, right? So that's always a [63:23] problem, I think. Um, but, you know, my fear is in the, in the general public are [63:30] the, the we don't want people to have, you know, um, just blind obedience to [63:36] anything that, you know, science or, you know, public health officials or anybody says. But I think that [63:43] partly because of the way that even people who've never heard of Thomas Kuhn, this this concept is [63:49] filtered through our education system, this kind of it's and it's gone hand in hand with the kind [63:54] of postmodern relativism at the college level where nothing is. Is real. Everything is a [64:01] social construct, even gender. You know, everything in our world is is manufactured by society, [64:07] enforced by different instruments of power. Once you see the world that way, then it's very [64:14] tempting to not pay a whole lot of attention to the, you know, the physical questions about, you [64:20] know, you know, specifically about 9/11 theories and, and especially if you think it's all [64:26] enforced by some kind of power structure, then it's very easy to mesh this kind of [64:31] anti-scientific thinking with, with left wing, you know, what the left wing ideology that says, well, [64:37] who has power? You know who's got you know, who has, you know, well, the Bush administration has power, [64:42] Israel has power. Power is bad. Therefore they're there. They have to be the bad guys, somebody else. [64:48] Some oppress group has to be the good guys. And I want to side with the good guys. So I think today [64:53] what's changed a little bit since the early days is the people who are some of the people who are [64:58] embracing this. It strikes them as a moral, um, as kind of a moral argument. They're not that [65:04] interested in the tangible facts, but they are interested in deciding who's virtuous and who's [65:08] bad and wanting to be on the right side. That used to be a real sort of far left thing. Now it's [65:14] being picked up by the by the populist. Right. So I'm a little pessimistic about our ability [65:21] to get back to what I consider solid kind of enlightenment values of, of, of of science and [65:28] the need for verification and evidence and, and responsible arguments. So I please talk me out of [65:35] my, my pessimism. No, I think that's right. People are so anxious to virtue signal and moralize. You [65:41] know, Pinker always points out, the problem is not that we're not moral enough. We're too moral. [65:46] Everybody's moral. Well, and we deal with this every day at HonestReporting, where we're dealing [65:51] with people throwing around terms like genocide and war crimes and all these, you know, calling the [65:57] crime of crimes. And if you if you try to refute that, you know, if you try to [66:04] say, talk about these, you know, the cover of The New York Times where they put a baby that looks [66:10] terribly emaciated. It turns out that it was because of a congenital disorder and that, you [66:16] know, the other people in the other frames from the same shoot are clearly not emaciated. But if [66:21] you start talking about that, you sound like, like a, like a monster, but it's like so it [66:28] becomes incredibly frustrating to engage in this at all. And, you know, I feel like [66:34] we have to, at least from where I'm coming from, a lot of this is, you know, [66:41] helping people understand that they're not crazy. You know, that that. Yeah, these like, there is no [66:47] conspiracy. You're not nuts. The that that emotional, that moral into it. [66:54] I often think of this as a moral intuition. These are not fully developed ideas. These are not [67:01] ideas that are challenged by being placed in a rational framework. They're they're like impulses. [67:07] They're like instincts. And, and, you know, the, the instinct to be helpful to the oppressed. And, [67:14] you know, I want to protect people. Those are good instincts, but they can be hijacked for bad ends. [67:20] And I think with a lot of what we see on college campuses, the the anti-Israel mania is a really [67:26] good example for this people. They start with they're actually, you know, um, I just remembered, [67:33] you know, we we got a lot of comments on our website if we first put that story up and they [67:38] were all like, you guys, once, once the revolution happens, you guys are going to be lined up and [67:42] shot with, you know, because of hiding the truth about the. Yeah, but one guy wrote. He said, well, [67:49] thank you for doing this. He goes, I've always noticed that these kinds of arguments, some people [67:56] start with a search for the facts and they determine the facts, and then they they make a [68:02] moral conclusion from that. Other people start with their moral conclusion, and then they [68:07] assemble the facts that seem to justify it. And that's what the conspiracy people are doing. And [68:12] it's like, wow, that's really it in a nutshell. So today, with this whole Israel debate, it's so hard [68:18] to win these arguments because people are starting with the moral intuition. It's an [68:21] incorrect one, but it's it's supported by, you know, all the progressive education, you know, the [68:28] lingering impact of Foucault and Derrida and all these, these thinkers who even people who don't [68:34] remember their names and never read them, are influenced by by this style of thought that that [68:40] sees Western power as the, as the kind of the universal evil. So when they come to this debate, [68:46] well, the you know there's a colonizer and there's the colonized, and colonizers are always bad, even [68:51] if they were, you know, refugees from from other Arab countries, you know, which is about half of [68:58] Israel's population. Um, and, and the oppressed people are always virtuous and noble and can do [69:04] no wrong and have no real agency. And so once they think that they're going to go around looking for [69:09] facts, it'll support it. So if they see that picture in the New York Times, there must be [69:12] somebody in the New York Times who said, wait a minute, this picture doesn't show what you think [69:15] it is. I don't know, maybe they just didn't want to ask. The question, is this is this photo valid [69:21] because it was so useful to their ideology? And I worry that now, as we get back to 9/11 [69:28] conspiracy theories, well, you know, yeah, Israel probably did 9/11. I wouldn't put it past [69:33] them that that is one more thing that people can kind of put in their knapsack of arguments why [69:39] Israel is a uniquely evil country in the world. And and I'm just not sure how we're going to [69:43] argue these people out of it. I mean, I don't know if they're going to be that interested in a [69:48] discussion of like, well, how does thermite work anyway? Right. It starts to become like, you know, [69:52] turtles all the way down, but with conspiracies where this 9/11 conspiracy is now [69:57] supporting another conspiracy. Like all these proxy conspiracies, that is. I don't know if they [70:04] actually did it, but it's the kind of thing they would do. Right. So, you know, does, you know, does the [70:08] populace, whatever the percentage was, actually believe that Hillary Clinton was running a [70:12] pedophile ring out of a pizzeria? You know, probably not very many people actually believe [70:18] that, except that one guy, Edgar Welch, who went to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., with [70:22] his gun and and asked where the basement was, where the kids are. The we don't have a basement. [70:27] There's just people eating pizza. Like what? Anyway, um, but the answer I think they give is like, yeah, [70:34] maybe that one's not true, but, you know, those Democrats, you can't trust them, right? They would [70:38] do something like that. Right. Everybody does this. And, uh, you know, it's kind of a stand in for [70:44] something else. I also use the O.J. trial. You know, O.J. was acquitted by the jury on a conspiracy [70:50] theory that the police planted the glove, bloody glove, and the other blood spatter and all that [70:56] stuff. Evidence. But, in fact, they did do that sort of thing back in the 50s and 60s, there was an [71:01] expansive doc series called O.J.: Made in America and attract the migration of African Americans to [71:08] Southern California post-World War II. And then the clashes in the 60s between the [71:13] African-American community and the police. And it was pretty bad. You know, there were a lot of, you [71:17] know, kind of racist assholes in the police force at the time. And they did plant evidence. They did [71:23] do things. You know, I don't know if this this perp did that particular thing, but we know he's a bad [71:28] guy. So we're going to put this guy away. And they did do that, right? So there's enough of that that [71:33] by the 90s the jury is thinking, yeah, I don't know if, you know, Fuhrman really planted the bloody [71:38] glove behind the house, but, you know, it's the kind of thing those police, they did do bad things. So [71:43] we're going to the little jury nullification. We're going to stick it to them. You know, kind of [71:47] thing. You mentioned, um, you know, virtue signaling just a while ago. And you talk about tribal [71:54] conspiracies, right? Or tribal conspiracies. Um, in your book, can you explain that, that concept? [71:59] Because it seems to be that that is that's what's going on with the lot. Well, yeah. For for a lot of [72:03] those political ones that have a political taint to them. Yeah. So, you know, this is what our team [72:07] believes. And, you know, I don't know about the other team, but most of us do that anyway, just [72:12] kind of in general, you know, who our friends are, our tribe, our religion, our political ideology or [72:18] economic ideology. A lot of that happens for conspiracy theories. Most. But there's a general [72:25] larger problem here with with cognition. Most of us don't know about most things because who has [72:30] time, right? So there's studies about this, you know, kind of funny, funny examples like could you draw [72:34] a bicycle? Almost everybody goes, yeah, of course I could draw a bicycle. Okay. Here's a pad of paper [72:39] and pencil. Go. And you see, people are like, um. Wait, where are the pedals going? You know, they can't. [72:45] They don't. You know, or, uh, you know. Are you in favor of NAFTA or against it? You know, North [72:49] American Free Trade Agreement. I'm against it or I'm for it. Okay. What is it? Um, well, you know, it's this. [72:55] I forget who's in it and I forget what the details are, but, you know, but I'm against it, right? [72:59] And, uh, or the other example, you know, do you accept Darwin's theory of evolution? You know, [73:03] almost all college students go. Oh, yeah, of course. All right. Explain it. How does it work? They don't [73:08] know. You know, they allow. The giraffe stretches his neck, and the baby giraffes have longer necks. [73:12] No, that's not it at all. So really, they're signaling? Yeah. Okay. The scientists usually get it [73:18] right. So. Okay, I'll just say I agree with that. Right. Or my team believes this or whatever. [73:24] Because who has time to fact check all these things, you know, was the 2020 election rigged? How [73:29] would I know? I've never been to that polling station in Arizona, where you see the videos that [73:34] are kind of grainy, of people bringing boxes in the back with a truck backed up to. Yeah, I don't [73:40] know, but you know, who knows? Attorney General Bill Barr and the Department of Justice, and he's a [73:43] lifelong Republican, voted for Trump twice. And he said, I'm going to get to the bottom of this. He [73:47] looks into it. He goes, we didn't find any fraud. I'm like, okay, so I can offload the work that I [73:53] would. I don't have time to do. But, you know, I don't really want to do it. And it's good that, you [73:58] know, so we do a lot of our thinking about how the world works based on other people or institutions [74:04] that we trust. We've all trafficked in this world of conspiracy debunking, and I think we've all [74:10] been accused of now being part of the conspiracy, which is, you know, the ultimate end of it is that [74:16] we're all, you know, being paid off by the Zionist occupational government or whatever. Um, [74:23] how do you talk to somebody? Is it is it even worth it to, to try to [74:30] like, because somebody here is listening and has family members who believe this 9/11 conspiracy [74:36] stuff and and is going to end up, you know, during the holidays at a table with somebody. Um, how [74:43] do you how do you, how do you talk to the this conspiracy without sounding [74:50] condescending and with any, you know, hope of changing a mind? I sometimes struggle with not [74:55] being condescending. I have. To admit, is. I mean, so when. So one thing that surprised us, and it was a [75:02] real learning experience for me when our first report came out, was how quickly all the people [75:08] who said we're just asking questions were outraged that we answered their questions. Uh, [75:14] and and immediately, immediately overnight, you know, we were part of Mossad. We were this there [75:20] was a time that if you Google my name, the first thing that came up was it might have been a [75:25] Christopher Bollyn article. Uh, James B. Meigs is a member of Mossad and. And the same firm. That [75:31] represented the Illuminati, you know, and. Yeah. You got it big time. Um, and, you [75:38] know, so it was it was a little scary. The death threats were scary, but it was also kind of [75:44] comical. But one thing I always was, I always wanted to sit down and just say, okay, you know, [75:49] have you ever met anybody who works on a magazine or works in any kind of job? Imagine I come in as [75:55] editor of a magazine. I hire a bunch of people that I've never met before, but for the most part, [75:59] you know, they're only a handful were, you know, were were were former colleagues of mine. And then [76:05] what do I get them all in a room? And I say, hey, guys, I've got a project. We're all going to work [76:10] together to cover up one of the greatest crime in American history. And we all have to keep the [76:15] secret for the rest of our lives. Like, is that how you think the world works? I mean, this isn't a Dan [76:21] Brown novel, and, you know, and I kind of, you know, and I would sometimes say that to people when I [76:26] gave talks to small groups and stuff, it's like, look at me. Imagine how I like. If you think the [76:32] explanation, you think you can reject our our months and months of research into this by just [76:38] saying, well, they're part of the conspiracy, then how would I do it? You know. And you know how like, [76:43] oh, well, you're part of the Hearst Corporation. They made you. Yeah, but how would I make these [76:46] young magazine editors and fact checkers and photo editors all go along with this? Why wouldn't [76:51] somebody go running in terror from the building and turn us in? Um, so. And, you know, [76:58] that's not really an answer, but but I think a lot of these things really become absurd if you take [77:04] them down to that level of, you know. And, Michael, as you've often referenced, you know, many of these [77:10] conspiracy models, even the let it happen on purpose would involve thousands of people. Like, [77:15] how is it that no one's ever spilled the beans on any of this? Wouldn't you want to tell the truth [77:21] if you were involved or you knew about it? And there aren't any good answers to that. And I think [77:27] that maybe gets through to some people. But as we said, I don't think you maybe it's the it's a [77:32] persuadable middle that, you know, but I think we have to aim for and, and you know, and not get too [77:39] deep into endless arguments with the, the diehards. Yeah. We ended our film, You Can't Handle the [77:45] Truther, with, uh, with one of the agents asking, well, what if people talk? I mean, how are we going [77:50] to. And then our guy pulls out this, this little folder and we're like, oh my God, is this what I [77:55] think it is? Yes, it's an NDA. Oh, well, that settles it, because no one in the history of the world has [78:01] ever violated an NDA. Well, we're in the clear then. I did a back of [78:08] the envelope calculation earlier because I had always wanted to figure this out. How much would [78:14] it cost if you're paying somebody off? And so first you have to figure out how much, you know, it [78:19] would take to pay somebody off for a lifetime. And then, you know, and then just it just grows and [78:26] grows because the amount of people who would have to be involved is astronomical. Then you got to [78:31] pay off the people who are paying off the people because. And so like it was something like $100 [78:37] billion in like the conservative estimate to do this. And it's like. And imagine the records. I mean, [78:44] you know, I, you know, I mean banks track deposits and you have to pay taxes, you know, if somebody's [78:50] getting, you know, 5000 a week, you know, in secret, that's not something you can hide. Um, [78:57] many of these things fall on these kind of practical things, but I feel like a lot of times [79:02] people in the conspiracy world, they have one foot in the practical. When they want a piece of [79:06] evidence, they think it's, you know, they think they can, they can, they can claim it. But they also want [79:11] to live in this world of where anything's possible, where, you know, where we just know [79:16] there's bad people in the world and they're evil and they have enormous resources. And so, you know, [79:23] we don't have to know, as you say, Michael, we don't have to explain exactly how they did it. We just [79:27] know they do these kinds of things. That's right. Yes. Well, it's good to remember that, you know, [79:31] Harvey Weinstein had quite a few of those women sign NDAs and paid them off, and they still talked. [79:37] So, you know, come on, people do not keep their mouth shut. It's just not how the world works. And, [79:42] uh, yeah, I mean, last week, uh, Trump lifted the non-, uh, [79:49] disclosure agreements that people had signed in the government. And he made it clear that you. [79:56] Now, it's not only okay to tell us where the alien spaceships are. If we ask you, you have to tell us. [80:03] We need to know. And if you don't tell us, you're in trouble. And you would thought that the UAP [80:08] community would be excited about this. Okay, finally. Yeah. Now we can have true disclosure. Oh, [80:13] no no, no, they're they're they're just insistent like. No, that's not what that means or. No, no, it's [80:18] still classified or no, no. It's like so you don't really want the answers. You really like the the [80:25] pursuit, right? Not the. We're going to go there and end this once and for all. No, no. It almost it [80:30] almost sounds like the, the, the, the apocalyptic cults where it's just like, oh, actually it's going [80:37] to happen next year. That's right. We calculate the date wrong. Yeah. But there's, you know, there's a [80:42] David Robert Grimes, uh, physicist published, uh, like ten years ago, I think. But a theory that [80:50] it takes he has a whole he has a he has a whole equation. For how long it'll take a conspiracy to [80:56] come out based on how big it is. And I think, like, ten years is the longest you could possibly do it [81:02] if you have, uh, what if you have fewer than a thousand people than, you [81:09] know, it's the maximum is ten years that it could possibly be held. So, you know, the the number of [81:16] people having involved in 9/11 would be astronomical, so that it hasn't come out as almost, [81:21] you know, right there, prima facie. When people started making fun in the arts, when people [81:27] started making fun of the truthers. And on TV, sometimes that was a breath of fresh air. You [81:33] know, it wasn't enough in itself because a lot of that stuff has circled back around. But I do think [81:38] it it like, I think I don't personally want to be demeaning somebody who holds these ideas. I think [81:44] a lot of people hold these ideas in good faith, but it is. But it is kind of helpful to break that, [81:48] that societal taboo that, yes, you know, it's it's okay to laugh at ideas that are [81:55] patently ridiculous. I was just thinking, Jim, you you had a I think it was in your essay, you had a [82:02] line about, you know, World Trade Center seven was was brought down the, the, you know, the the motive [82:09] was to destroy evidence of the attacks that was hidden in World Trade Center [82:16] seven and then it's just like, well, why didn't they just take it out and shred it like, yeah. [82:21] There was a. I mean there's easier ways to do this. There were, you know, there were some government [82:25] offices there, including a branch of the CIA. So, you know, on the one level, wow, that looks [82:31] incredibly suspicious. You know, and so often these things like, wow, what are the odds of that [82:36] coincidence? Well, pretty good actually. Yeah. You know, but but, you know, every, every if you look at [82:42] every, uh, every conspiracy theory, there's always weird coincidences as, as you said, [82:49] Michael, you know, about a lot of the JFK stuff. But I think if you took a different day, if JFK had [82:56] stopped on a different town where he didn't get shot, you'd also see weird coincidences of a lot [83:01] of, why is this guy in town? Why is this guy related to the Mafia in town on that particular [83:06] day? What are the odds? Um, but he's got everybody's got to be somewhere on a particular day. And, um, [83:11] and so, you know, some of these times, these points are going to intersect in surprising ways that we [83:15] don't we don't notice. So, you know, I My sense is, is that people are, [83:23] you know, they gravitate to the the argument that that emotionally resonates for them. And, [83:30] and I think we're, you know, when it comes to the, the these arguments, if [83:37] it's emotionally resonant, they don't resonate, they don't even stop to ask themselves like, well, [83:41] why would they have to knock the whole building down? And what if they knocked the building down? [83:44] But the files weren't destroyed, you know? Well, then we send a special team in special suits to [83:50] burn. You know, it's like. Yeah, or just nobody's going to notice if you load up a couple of file [83:55] cabinets on a dolly and take them out to a truck and drive away. Exactly. Yeah. It's like if [84:01] JFK, JFK had not been shot but had just been wounded, or if it was the mayor of Dallas that was [84:07] assassinated by Oswald, would anybody still be talking about this? No, this would have been a case [84:12] closed. You know, Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr., but he didn't die. And Hinckley, turned out he [84:18] was crazy, right? Michael, in your book, I think you I think it was Justice [84:24] Warren, you quote saying that had had the JFK assassination been anybody else, any normal person [84:31] with the exact same amount of evidence? It would have been an open and shut case. Yeah, it was [84:35] Bugliosi. He actually made the point. Vincent Bugliosi, his book on this. Yeah, it was so good. But I think [84:40] he might have been quoting, um, Justice Warren. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, the evidence is overwhelming. It's [84:46] just, I mean, you just pile it up. It's just obviously happened. But again, because it's JFK, you [84:52] know, it must be something else. Even Trump, you know, releasing, you know, to his credit, releasing [84:57] all these files. There's still no smoking gun. We have everything now on JFK. Still nothing there. [85:02] And and they haven't gone away the 9/11 or the JFK conspiracies. They're still contending [85:08] that Oswald had help. Okay. We've seen everything. They've been hanging on to those files. Right. So [85:13] that's why I think disclosure is really more of a pursuit. Like we don't really want [85:20] disclosure because then the game's over, right? And that's why disclosure is so important. You know, [85:26] that's why transparency and honesty at the highest levels of our government is so crucial. [85:30] Because when you you know, and again, I'm a little obsessed with this, um, this Fauci stuff because I [85:36] started with the assumption that he and others were just well-intentioned public servants, [85:41] servants, maybe just struggling in good faith to handle an unprecedented situation. And I think [85:47] that's true for most. But but there was a group at the top who looks pretty bad. It is. Genuinely bad. [85:53] And part of what makes it bad is, you know, their attempts to to to denigrate anybody who, who [85:59] raised the lab leak problem to, to freeze out scientists who were looking into it, to bamboozle [86:06] the press, to lean on social media companies to to censor this stuff is misinformation and [86:13] and it has a blowback effect that's so much worse than if you just came clean at the outset, you [86:20] know, including saying things like, we don't know yet. We don't know. We, you know, we're, um, we're not [86:27] sure where it came from. We're looking at everything. Let's get, let's get let's ask everyone [86:31] who's worked with Wuhan to, you know, come in and tell us what exactly happened. They didn't do that. [86:35] They did the opposite. And it's going to reverberate for years. And there's situations [86:40] where like CIA is not forthcoming or the, you know, the intelligence services, uh, or if there's [86:47] ever a sense of, of deception or hiding things, it's it it only serves to promote these [86:53] conspiracy theories and, and, and feed people's legitimate sense that, that they're not being told [86:59] the full truth. Yeah. Okay. We have I have kept you guys forever. Now, [87:06] um, I want to ask you both one final question. Um, What is one thing you [87:12] understand now that you didn't before you started digging into these conspiracy theories, [87:17] specifically the 9/11 stuff? We'll start with Jim. That's a good question. It wasn't real. As [87:22] I said, it was a real education for me. And and I think what I didn't understand is the powerful [87:29] psychological motivations that people have for holding these, these views in, in my foreword or [87:36] afterward to the, to the first book we did. I quoted the famous historian Richard Hofstadter, [87:42] who was examining some sort of far right kind of John Birch conspiracy theories back in the 1950s. [87:49] But he said he described the kind of person who likes to, to believe these things. And he said, you [87:56] know, he always lives at a hinge point in history. He's this is a person who's on the barricades of, [88:02] of, you know, of, of history. And it's so exciting and thrilling to feel like you're the [88:09] wised up person who sees through the illusions that bamboozle everybody else. You know, now we [88:15] have the metaphor of, like, the Matrix movie. Like you want to be the person who, you know, takes the [88:18] red pill and, and really sees through this fantasy that they've woven for us. It's a very personally [88:24] compelling worldview, and it pushes people into places where it's [88:31] hard to reach with rational arguments. Not entirely impossible, because I think sometimes [88:35] people kind of grow out of this stuff. Um, but unless they just spin in deeper. So I'm not [88:40] completely without hope. But but you do have to understand the powerful social psychological [88:45] dynamic going on here. It's not just about, you know, getting all your facts in order. Yeah. I have [88:52] a quote, my conspiracy book about, um, the fear that people have. Not that it's the, you know, lizard [88:59] aliens running the world or the Illuminati. It's that nobody's in charge. Gentlemen, [89:05] thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you. Ben. [89:13] I asked both of them one final question. What do you understand now that you didn't before you [89:18] started digging into all this? Jim reached back to the historian Richard Hofstadter, who described [89:24] the conspiracy minded believer as someone who always lives at a hinge point in history. The [89:30] wised up one who sees through the illusion that's fooled everyone else. And Michael said that the [89:36] real fear underneath it all isn't that some shadowy group is running the world. It's the fear [89:42] that nobody is. Put those two ideas together and you understand why this stuff never dies. A [89:49] conspiracy theory isn't really an explanation. It's a story, one that makes the world feel [89:55] ordered, one that makes the believer feel chosen. So here's what I want to leave you with. If you've [90:02] watched a friend or a family member get pulled into this or felt the pull yourself. The answer [90:07] isn't to shout and it isn't to look away either. It's what these two men have spent decades doing. [90:14] Lay out the evidence, all of it in the open, because the facts are on our side. This is no [90:20] conspiracy. You're not crazy. Everything we talked about is linked in the show notes, the newly [90:25] updated edition of Debunking 9/11 Myths. Jim's columns at the Wall Street Journal's Free [90:30] Expression newsletter and City Journal and Michael's books, plus Skeptic magazine at skeptic. [90:35] com. If this conversation was useful to you, do three things for me. Subscribe wherever you're [90:42] watching or listening to. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's genuinely how new [90:48] people find the show, and three follow HonestReporting on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. I'm [90:55] Ben Chertoff. This is The Honest Take and we'll see you next time.
