WEBVTT - Remote Control 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:23.636 Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the dubious 0:00:23.676 --> 0:00:29.756 things end up, a morgue of fakes, hoaxes, frauds, and 0:00:29.876 --> 0:00:35.596 conspiracy theories. I've got a wall of televisions in here. 0:00:37.556 --> 0:00:39.716 I think it's a hoax. I think it's a hoax 0:00:39.796 --> 0:00:42.596 by the newspapers and the Democrats are based on based 0:00:42.596 --> 0:00:45.116 on what you've been with a lot of this stuff. 0:00:45.236 --> 0:00:48.436 No matter what it's supposedly about, the pandemic, the election, 0:00:49.236 --> 0:00:52.356 it sounds like a broken record. It's a hoax. It's 0:00:52.356 --> 0:00:55.876 a hoax. Everybody knows that it's a it's a complete hoax. 0:00:57.396 --> 0:01:00.556 Or it's like a Russian doll. Crack open one hoax 0:01:00.636 --> 0:01:05.116 an inside there's just another hoos hoax after hoaxing. But 0:01:05.276 --> 0:01:09.036 a hoax. It's a hoax because as soon as Teach 0:01:09.476 --> 0:01:11.916 was over, they needed something else to bring down shrump 0:01:12.396 --> 0:01:14.596 and they had to bring the economy down. And this 0:01:14.716 --> 0:01:18.596 is it and I'll tell you why. So wait, wait, James, 0:01:18.716 --> 0:01:22.076 you think that somebody conspired to have a virus to 0:01:22.476 --> 0:01:26.636 bring down the president? Yea a deep state? The deep state. 0:01:27.196 --> 0:01:32.316 Conspiracy theorists look for patterns, they connect the dots. But 0:01:32.436 --> 0:01:36.676 that's also how historians work even here in a place 0:01:36.716 --> 0:01:40.676 that lies half hidden, in the shadow of doubt, where 0:01:40.716 --> 0:01:44.956 the sign on the door reads the last Archive. That's 0:01:44.996 --> 0:01:47.516 where I'm digging through my files to find the hook 0:01:47.636 --> 0:01:52.076 story that started it all. Two minus one minute, thirty 0:01:52.076 --> 0:01:55.796 five seconds on the Apollo mission, The flight to land 0:01:55.956 --> 0:01:59.236 of the first men on the Moon, nineteen sixty nine, 0:01:59.636 --> 0:02:02.396 The dawn of the Age of Aquarius, the dawn of 0:02:02.476 --> 0:02:08.956 the age of the hoax, step through an airlock to 0:02:09.196 --> 0:02:17.956 Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Kennedy Space Center Launch time follow eleven. 0:02:18.796 --> 0:02:22.116 When NASA launched Apollo eleven in July nineteen sixty nine, 0:02:22.556 --> 0:02:27.156 that rocket fractured time and space. People who watched on 0:02:27.196 --> 0:02:29.876 television live remember it. I was too little. But for 0:02:29.956 --> 0:02:33.276 most people this was a television event, not a big 0:02:33.316 --> 0:02:37.196 bang of an idea like Copernicanism or Darwinism. It was 0:02:37.236 --> 0:02:40.196 something you watched on a screen as if it were 0:02:40.236 --> 0:02:44.676 a TV show like Gunsmoke or Bonanza, a television episode. 0:02:45.916 --> 0:02:48.156 But it also was a dream, and it was a 0:02:48.196 --> 0:02:51.676 big idea. Since the dawn of humanity, people had lain 0:02:51.716 --> 0:02:53.916 awake in the chill and dark of night and looked 0:02:53.956 --> 0:02:57.076 up at the stars in the Moon and wondered what's 0:02:57.156 --> 0:03:01.836 up there or who. Then at the start of the 0:03:01.916 --> 0:03:05.196 Kennedy administration, the President said it was time to find 0:03:05.196 --> 0:03:10.516 the answers. We set sail on this new sea because 0:03:10.556 --> 0:03:13.956 there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights 0:03:14.076 --> 0:03:17.716 to be won, and they must be won and used 0:03:18.436 --> 0:03:21.756 or the progress of all people. The audacity of it 0:03:21.876 --> 0:03:24.796 staggers me. In the middle of the twentieth century, in 0:03:24.836 --> 0:03:27.116 the middle of an arms race, at the height of 0:03:27.116 --> 0:03:30.796 the techno swagger of the Cold War, the United States 0:03:30.796 --> 0:03:36.916 decided to conquer the Moon. We choose to go to 0:03:36.956 --> 0:03:40.276 the Moon and districate and do the other thing, not 0:03:40.396 --> 0:03:44.596 because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because 0:03:44.676 --> 0:03:48.796 that gold we'll serve to organize and measure the best 0:03:49.396 --> 0:03:53.356 of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one 0:03:53.436 --> 0:03:57.636 that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, 0:03:58.196 --> 0:04:02.156 and one we intend to win. We will win the moon. 0:04:02.556 --> 0:04:05.556 We will win the race to the Moon. It began 0:04:05.636 --> 0:04:08.556 with a big idea in nineteen sixty one, but when 0:04:08.596 --> 0:04:11.436 it finally came off, when it happened it was broadcast 0:04:11.476 --> 0:04:14.556 live in nineteen sixty nine, it became a big idea 0:04:14.756 --> 0:04:19.396 disguised as a TV event, A miniseries beginning with the 0:04:19.476 --> 0:04:23.036 rockets launch on July sixteenth, at nine thirty two am 0:04:23.076 --> 0:04:31.276 Eastern five four three two one zero, all engine running, 0:04:32.076 --> 0:04:35.196 lipped off. We have a lipped off thirty two minutes 0:04:35.316 --> 0:04:41.596 past the hour, ripped off on Apollo eleven. The United 0:04:41.636 --> 0:04:44.676 States had been launching people into orbit and beyond for 0:04:44.796 --> 0:04:47.756 nearly a decade at this point, but this launch it 0:04:47.836 --> 0:04:50.596 was hard to believe it was really happening, probably because 0:04:50.636 --> 0:04:53.676 of where it was going. Norman Mailer, the bad boy 0:04:53.676 --> 0:04:56.236 of mid century American letters, wrote a series of essays 0:04:56.276 --> 0:05:00.316 about it for Life Magazine. The event was so removed, 0:05:00.596 --> 0:05:03.476 so unreal, that no objective choral would have existed to 0:05:03.596 --> 0:05:05.436 prove it had not been an event stage in the 0:05:05.556 --> 0:05:09.916 television studio, like the greatest connoist century. Here's what made 0:05:09.916 --> 0:05:12.756 mail are sure the Moon mission wasn't a con. Going 0:05:12.796 --> 0:05:15.596 to the Moon was hard, but faking it and the 0:05:15.716 --> 0:05:18.716 conspiracy required to cover up the fake would have been 0:05:18.756 --> 0:05:22.036 even harder. It would have been impossible if it were bogus, 0:05:22.036 --> 0:05:24.596 Mailer said, it would have been as incredible an accomplishment 0:05:24.596 --> 0:05:28.636 and mass hoodwinking as the actual mission was in technology. 0:05:29.356 --> 0:05:33.156 It would take criminals and confidence been mightier, more trustworthy, 0:05:33.156 --> 0:05:35.596 and more resourceful than anything in a century of the 0:05:35.636 --> 0:05:40.316 ones before. So that makes sense to me. It'd be 0:05:40.356 --> 0:05:42.876 way too complicated to fake this. Why not just go 0:05:42.956 --> 0:05:46.556 to the Moon? All the same? A not small number 0:05:46.556 --> 0:05:49.956 of Americans began to think the Moon mission was a hoax, 0:05:50.316 --> 0:05:54.596 that there had really been a mass hoodwinking. But believe 0:05:54.636 --> 0:05:58.276 it or not, some people say it never happened. This 0:05:58.516 --> 0:06:04.836 whole thing was a fake. Decide for yourself, as he explore, 0:06:04.916 --> 0:06:11.676 the vice or mid have orchestrated the deception of the 0:06:11.756 --> 0:06:15.276 century massa cop have pulled off the greatest coats of 0:06:15.316 --> 0:06:21.396 all time. Welcome to the Last Archive, the show about 0:06:21.436 --> 0:06:23.396 how we know what we know, how we used to 0:06:23.436 --> 0:06:25.836 know things, and why it seems lately as if we 0:06:25.836 --> 0:06:29.876 don't know anything at all. I'm Jillipour and this is 0:06:29.876 --> 0:06:32.836 our season of doubt. What about going to the Moon 0:06:32.956 --> 0:06:34.636 led to the rise of the modern age of the 0:06:34.636 --> 0:06:38.836 hoax and to the idea that history itself couldn't be trusted. 0:06:42.516 --> 0:06:44.916 It had taken seven years from the day Kennedy said 0:06:44.996 --> 0:06:47.156 we choose to go to the Moon, to the launch 0:06:47.196 --> 0:06:51.516 itself the effort costs nearly two hundred billion dollars in 0:06:51.556 --> 0:06:55.396 twenty twenty one. Money, no bucks, no buck, rogers, NASA 0:06:55.436 --> 0:06:59.556 guys told Congress. But Congress kept ponying up all that money, 0:06:59.876 --> 0:07:01.956 not so much because members of Congress were looking to 0:07:01.996 --> 0:07:05.276 the future, but because they were looking to the past, 0:07:06.596 --> 0:07:10.596 specifically to something that had happened in nineteen fifty seven. 0:07:11.116 --> 0:07:13.996 Until two days ago, that sound had never been heard 0:07:14.076 --> 0:07:16.716 on this earth. Suddenly it has become as much a 0:07:16.716 --> 0:07:19.156 part of twentieth century life as the horror of your 0:07:19.276 --> 0:07:23.236 vacuum cleaner. It's a report from man's farthest frontier. The 0:07:23.356 --> 0:07:27.316 radio signal transmitted by the Soviet Sputnik, the first man 0:07:27.316 --> 0:07:30.196 made satellite, as it passed over New York earlier today. 0:07:31.996 --> 0:07:34.916 In nineteen fifty seven, the Soviet Union had launched the 0:07:34.956 --> 0:07:39.636 world's first satellite, Sputnik. At the time, Kennedy was a 0:07:39.676 --> 0:07:43.876 Massachusetts Senator. He publicly blamed President Eisenhower for what had 0:07:43.916 --> 0:07:47.076 been dubbed a missile gap, for falling behind the Soviets 0:07:47.076 --> 0:07:51.916 in the space race. Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson warned 0:07:51.956 --> 0:07:54.276 that soon the Russians will be dropping bombs on us 0:07:54.316 --> 0:07:58.036 from space like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses. 0:07:58.676 --> 0:08:01.476 Historians have come to cease since there really was no 0:08:01.556 --> 0:08:06.156 missile gap, which is what Eisenhower had always insisted. Still, 0:08:06.556 --> 0:08:10.756 with some reluctance, Eisenhower agreed to establish NASA, the National 0:08:10.836 --> 0:08:15.636 Aeronautics and Space Administration. It's easy to think American voters 0:08:15.636 --> 0:08:18.116 were super gung ho about NASA and about going to 0:08:18.156 --> 0:08:21.236 the Moon, but Americans were not gung ho about the 0:08:21.236 --> 0:08:24.516 Moon mission. At hardly any point between the day Kennedy 0:08:24.516 --> 0:08:27.476 announced the mission and the day American astronauts landed on 0:08:27.516 --> 0:08:31.676 the Moon did a majority of Americans support the moonshot. Instead, 0:08:31.996 --> 0:08:37.636 critics called it a moondoggle for one thing, A lot 0:08:37.636 --> 0:08:40.716 of people thought, not unreasonably, that there are other better 0:08:40.756 --> 0:08:43.476 things to spend taxpayer money on the head of the 0:08:43.556 --> 0:08:46.956 National Urban League said it will cost thirty five billion 0:08:46.996 --> 0:08:49.916 dollars to put two men on the Moon. It would 0:08:49.956 --> 0:08:52.556 take ten billion dollars to lift every poor person in 0:08:52.556 --> 0:08:56.316 this country above the official poverty standard this year. Something 0:08:56.396 --> 0:09:00.436 is wrong somewhere. The day before the launch, civil rights 0:09:00.516 --> 0:09:03.916 activists staged a protest at the Kennedy Space Center. Ralph 0:09:03.916 --> 0:09:09.556 Abernathy gave a speech that even now unsettles me from 0:09:09.596 --> 0:09:18.156 this day to the heavens beyond. But as long as racism, poverty, hunger, 0:09:18.756 --> 0:09:24.516 and won't prevail on the head, we as a civilized 0:09:24.796 --> 0:09:31.316 nation have failed. Among the skeptics of the Moonshot were 0:09:31.356 --> 0:09:33.836 some of the astronaut's own wives. The wife of a 0:09:33.876 --> 0:09:36.476 member of the crew of Apollo ten said, if you 0:09:36.556 --> 0:09:38.916 think going to the moon is hard, try staying at home. 0:09:40.076 --> 0:09:42.676 This is strange sexual politics to the Cold War race 0:09:42.716 --> 0:09:45.916 to conquer space. A few people said this more squarely 0:09:46.036 --> 0:09:48.996 than the writer and scientist Rachel Carson, who, when the 0:09:49.036 --> 0:09:51.716 Soviets launched their first satellite, had been writing a book 0:09:51.756 --> 0:09:57.276 she'd been calling men against the Earth. In pre spotnic days, 0:09:57.676 --> 0:10:01.516 it was easy to dismiss so much as science fiction fantasies. 0:10:02.116 --> 0:10:06.876 Now the most far fetched schemes seem entirely possible of achievement, 0:10:07.316 --> 0:10:11.156 and man seems actually likely to take into his hands, 0:10:11.556 --> 0:10:15.836 ill prepared as he is psychologically many of the functions 0:10:15.876 --> 0:10:22.356 of God. So yes, even before the Moonshot there were 0:10:22.356 --> 0:10:24.836 people who are skeptical about it, about men trying to 0:10:24.876 --> 0:10:28.916 become gods by flying to the skies. There were misgivings. 0:10:29.556 --> 0:10:31.956 But how did we get from doubts and misgivings to 0:10:31.996 --> 0:10:35.556 a full on conspiracy theory. One answer to that question 0:10:36.196 --> 0:10:39.516 lies in the history of hoaxes. I started to have 0:10:39.556 --> 0:10:43.876 a hunch that hoaxes weren't about what certainly what the 0:10:43.876 --> 0:10:46.676 hoaxes said they were, but even what people sometimes wrote 0:10:46.676 --> 0:10:50.276 about that they were. Kevin Young is the poetry editor 0:10:50.436 --> 0:10:53.796 of The New Yorker and director of the Smithsonian Museum 0:10:53.796 --> 0:10:57.236 of African American History and Culture. He's also the author 0:10:57.436 --> 0:11:00.036 of a very on the noose book, Oh, and my 0:11:00.156 --> 0:11:04.196 book is Bunk. The Rise of Hoaxes, humbug play, dress phonies, 0:11:04.316 --> 0:11:07.996 post facts, and fake News. I called Young because it 0:11:08.036 --> 0:11:09.916 was in his book that I'd first read of the 0:11:09.956 --> 0:11:13.436 Moon hoax. Not the theory that American astronauts never went 0:11:13.476 --> 0:11:16.356 to the Moon in nineteen sixty nine, but a completely 0:11:16.356 --> 0:11:21.036 different hoax perpetrated in the nineteenth century by an American 0:11:21.116 --> 0:11:25.276 penny newspaper, The New York Sun. In eighteen thirty five, 0:11:25.556 --> 0:11:29.836 The Sun ran a series about some astounding new astronomical discoveries. 0:11:31.276 --> 0:11:36.236 Recent discoveries in astronomy will build an imperishable monument to 0:11:36.276 --> 0:11:39.036 the age in which we live and confer upon the 0:11:39.116 --> 0:11:42.596 present generation of the human race, a proud distinction through 0:11:42.636 --> 0:11:47.636 all future time. In the eighteen thirties, astronomers had been 0:11:47.636 --> 0:11:50.916 debating whether life could exist on the Moon. The scientific 0:11:50.956 --> 0:11:55.196 consensus tended towards no, because astronomers had been able to 0:11:55.196 --> 0:11:58.876 determine that there is no atmosphere on the Moon. No atmosphere, 0:11:59.076 --> 0:12:02.876 no life. Still, they weren't certain. There was room for doubt. 0:12:03.236 --> 0:12:06.876 So playing on this doubt, the Sun perpetrated a hoax 0:12:09.156 --> 0:12:12.516 on Herschel. The famous Scottish astronomer had just built an 0:12:12.636 --> 0:12:16.356 enormous telescope in South Africa. That was true, But then 0:12:16.396 --> 0:12:18.956 the Sun published what it claimed was a reprint of 0:12:18.956 --> 0:12:22.436 a journal article reporting to an eager public what Herschel 0:12:22.476 --> 0:12:25.876 had seen through that telescope. This was the hoax. No 0:12:25.956 --> 0:12:29.036 such journal article ever existed. The Sun made it up, 0:12:29.196 --> 0:12:32.116 but in their coverage they reported that when Herschel put 0:12:32.196 --> 0:12:35.876 his eye to the eyepiece he saw life on the 0:12:35.916 --> 0:12:38.436 surface of the Moon. He was about to become the 0:12:38.476 --> 0:12:41.716 sole depository of wondrous secrets which had been hid from 0:12:41.756 --> 0:12:43.636 the eyes of all men that had lived since the 0:12:43.676 --> 0:12:47.756 birth of time. The eighteen thirty five moon hoax was brilliant. 0:12:48.196 --> 0:12:51.076 Readers were duped. It became the talk of the nation, 0:12:51.476 --> 0:12:55.396 was picked up all over the country, reprinted everywhere. Kevin 0:12:55.476 --> 0:13:01.076 Young found it all fascinating. It has this beautiful casing, 0:13:01.196 --> 0:13:02.916 you know, and it starts with sort of, oh, I'm 0:13:02.916 --> 0:13:05.596 observing the moon, and oh. He reports that the first 0:13:05.676 --> 0:13:07.556 day he sees the moon, and then he gets better 0:13:07.596 --> 0:13:10.556 and better, closer and closer. It's almost sort of like 0:13:10.956 --> 0:13:14.956 the heavens parting each day. According to the fake report, 0:13:15.476 --> 0:13:18.356 Herschel was able to see more and more and more 0:13:18.436 --> 0:13:24.356 on the Moon as he focused his lens lakes, oceans, mountains, valleys, plants, 0:13:24.916 --> 0:13:29.516 and then he spies animals. The first observed was a 0:13:29.596 --> 0:13:34.076 quadruped with an amazingly long neck, head like a sheep, 0:13:34.316 --> 0:13:40.276 bearing two long spiral horns. White is polished ivory, almost 0:13:40.356 --> 0:13:43.996 like a sheep, but not a sheep. Everything on the 0:13:44.036 --> 0:13:46.876 Moon was like that, a lot like things on Earth, 0:13:47.196 --> 0:13:50.716 but then not quite like things on Earth, somehow exotic. 0:13:51.676 --> 0:13:54.396 It resembles the beaver of the Earth in every other 0:13:54.436 --> 0:13:57.436 respect than in its destitution of a tail and its 0:13:57.476 --> 0:14:01.716 invariable habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries 0:14:01.756 --> 0:14:05.396 its young in its arms like a human being man 0:14:05.516 --> 0:14:09.236 on the moon a beaver man. Then Herschel saw a 0:14:09.356 --> 0:14:15.876 higher order of human being. We scientifically denominated them as vespaculio, homo, 0:14:16.076 --> 0:14:22.196 oh man, bat man bat on the moon. Finally, the 0:14:22.356 --> 0:14:28.996 fake Herschel sees creatures even more amazing, whiter angelic. Certainly, 0:14:29.036 --> 0:14:32.036 they were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared, 0:14:32.276 --> 0:14:35.876 and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified. 0:14:37.756 --> 0:14:40.436 Readers ate it up. They talked about it at dinner, 0:14:40.476 --> 0:14:42.516 they gabbed about it on the way to church where 0:14:42.516 --> 0:14:45.236 they really met on the moon. What was this all about? 0:14:48.156 --> 0:14:51.156 But I also think there was something lurking beneath all 0:14:51.196 --> 0:14:54.876 of these hoaxes. But that was slavery, and the questions 0:14:54.876 --> 0:14:59.276 and schisms of slavery, I think were often made allegorical 0:14:59.636 --> 0:15:03.956 through hoaxes. So how does that work exactly? Then? Like, 0:15:04.076 --> 0:15:06.596 what is it the people are seeing that they want 0:15:06.596 --> 0:15:09.476 to see on the moon that tells us what they 0:15:09.476 --> 0:15:12.956 believe about slavery and race? I think of the moon 0:15:12.956 --> 0:15:15.956 hoax specifically, and the thing that I noticed is there's 0:15:15.996 --> 0:15:18.916 a hierarchy of being there, and it makes a lot 0:15:18.956 --> 0:15:22.676 of sense. So you know, these people are below these people, 0:15:22.716 --> 0:15:25.756 the biped beavers are this kind of person. You know, 0:15:25.796 --> 0:15:31.036 there's a real transplanting of racial hierarchies onto the moon, 0:15:31.236 --> 0:15:34.476 onto these fictional creatures. And you see that in science 0:15:34.476 --> 0:15:37.196 fiction still, you know, there's usually a good set of 0:15:37.236 --> 0:15:40.196 aliens or a good set of people found under the earth, 0:15:40.196 --> 0:15:43.676 and then a bad set. Eventually, the Sun came clean 0:15:44.116 --> 0:15:46.196 and admitted that the whole thing had been a stunt. 0:15:46.396 --> 0:15:50.556 The newspaper printed a half hearted apology, weirdly suggesting that 0:15:50.636 --> 0:15:54.436 the whole stunt had had a useful effect in diverting 0:15:54.436 --> 0:15:57.556 the public mind from the bitter apple of discord the 0:15:57.676 --> 0:16:01.116 abolition of slavery. One of the great things about a 0:16:01.116 --> 0:16:05.036 hoax is once it's revealed, you can tell what people 0:16:05.076 --> 0:16:07.996 really believe, because they wanted to believe this so badly, 0:16:08.676 --> 0:16:11.956 even it's so clearly fake. I mean, biped beavers on 0:16:11.956 --> 0:16:15.916 a moon. It's pretty hard in retrospect to see as credible. 0:16:16.516 --> 0:16:19.236 But I also think there was this real wish to 0:16:19.756 --> 0:16:23.716 find another place somewhere far away in which you could 0:16:23.756 --> 0:16:26.916 put your hopes in dreams. So it's like the cats 0:16:26.916 --> 0:16:30.116 out of the bag. This hoax was about race. Young 0:16:30.196 --> 0:16:32.876 isn't surprised by that cat, though, because he found that 0:16:32.956 --> 0:16:36.396 same cat hidden inside quite a few bags of hoaxes. 0:16:37.116 --> 0:16:39.756 Many of the hoaxes that I turned up or that 0:16:39.836 --> 0:16:43.396 I vaguely knew about but learned more about. We're deeply 0:16:43.436 --> 0:16:46.996 invested in these kind of ideas and deep divisions in 0:16:47.076 --> 0:16:49.116 our country, and there were ways of sort of working 0:16:49.156 --> 0:16:53.876 that out, however, terribly in the hoax. One of the 0:16:53.916 --> 0:16:56.916 things that's so striking to me about the eighteen thirties 0:16:57.156 --> 0:17:00.516 Moon hoax is that they're kind of on the side 0:17:00.596 --> 0:17:05.796 of scientific inquiry somehow, that they're celebrations of empiricism, even 0:17:05.796 --> 0:17:09.596 though he's completely bogus bunk. Is there some pivot point 0:17:09.636 --> 0:17:12.916 there where like earlier hoaxes are like, look, science is real, 0:17:13.676 --> 0:17:17.076 and now hoaxes they're like, look, science is a bogus. 0:17:17.236 --> 0:17:21.876 I mean, I think there's a with the hoax questions 0:17:21.916 --> 0:17:26.436 of science and questions of religion or questions of truth 0:17:26.556 --> 0:17:31.196 get worked out. And it's almost in times when these 0:17:31.196 --> 0:17:34.276 things are uneasy that it might go one way or 0:17:34.316 --> 0:17:36.716 the other. And I do think you're absolutely right that's 0:17:36.716 --> 0:17:40.316 starting in the twentieth century. Early part it flips from 0:17:40.716 --> 0:17:42.676 you know, I'm going to tell you how things are, 0:17:42.756 --> 0:17:45.756 and part of the hoaxes it's authority. And then I 0:17:45.796 --> 0:17:49.356 think starting in the twentieth century, it really erodes, and 0:17:49.436 --> 0:17:52.556 I think that fear and pain become the topics of 0:17:52.596 --> 0:17:57.116 the hoax. So jump ahead to the moonshot in nineteen 0:17:57.236 --> 0:18:02.036 sixty nine. Okay, plainly it's a story inseparable from racial 0:18:02.036 --> 0:18:05.356 injustice and the question of whether we're all in this 0:18:05.436 --> 0:18:09.996 together or not. You have a poem here, it's called 0:18:09.996 --> 0:18:13.476 Whitey on the Moon. That's the poet in musician Gil 0:18:13.516 --> 0:18:17.316 Scott Heron with his indictment of the Moon mission killing it. 0:18:18.756 --> 0:18:21.436 I can't pay no doctor bills, but white He's on 0:18:21.476 --> 0:18:24.876 the moon. Ten years from now, I'll be paying still 0:18:24.956 --> 0:18:27.516 while white He's on the moon. You know, the man 0:18:27.636 --> 0:18:30.436 just up my red last night because Whitey's on the moon. 0:18:31.356 --> 0:18:34.116 No hot water, no toilets, no lights, But Whitey's on 0:18:34.156 --> 0:18:40.276 the moon. White He headed to the Moon on July sixteenth, 0:18:40.396 --> 0:18:43.276 nineteen sixty nine, the day after civil rights leader Ralph 0:18:43.276 --> 0:18:46.876 Abernathy let a protest at the Kennedy launch site. I 0:18:46.956 --> 0:18:49.556 can't say this moment in time isn't about whether all 0:18:49.636 --> 0:18:53.036 humans are one here together, on Earth because it is 0:18:53.956 --> 0:18:55.876 leaving the Earth for the Moon. Brought all sorts of 0:18:55.916 --> 0:18:59.996 matters into the blinding, flashing light of Apollo eleven's launch 0:19:00.956 --> 0:19:06.716 thirty seconds san conning past NAT's report, it feels good. Team. 0:19:06.796 --> 0:19:12.836 On twenty five seconds that day, three men gained escape 0:19:12.876 --> 0:19:17.876 velocity and left the Earth behind. Soon out among the gods. 0:19:18.276 --> 0:19:21.836 The men in that spaceship looked back at Earth. Are 0:19:21.956 --> 0:19:34.316 you going to a rap rate right now? And it 0:19:34.316 --> 0:19:36.276 took four days to get there, all the way to 0:19:36.356 --> 0:19:39.476 the Moon. And then everyone back on Earth turned their 0:19:39.476 --> 0:19:43.956 televisions on to watch in just fifty minutes from now, 0:19:44.236 --> 0:19:46.836 well within the hour, the Moon is due to have 0:19:47.036 --> 0:19:50.996 visitors from another planet. On the afternoon of July twentieth, 0:19:51.276 --> 0:19:55.916 CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite narrated the greatest single scientific 0:19:55.916 --> 0:20:00.596 expedition in the history of humanity. Apollo eleven's lunar module 0:20:00.836 --> 0:20:04.836 Eagle and two of the mission's three astronauts, Neil Armstrong 0:20:04.916 --> 0:20:08.196 and Buzz Aldron. We were about to land on the Moon. 0:20:09.676 --> 0:20:13.476 Landed rocket quin crank Quility. We caught the on the ground. 0:20:13.716 --> 0:20:15.676 He got a bunch of guys about the turn blue. 0:20:15.716 --> 0:20:19.556 We're breathing again. Thank a lot. Man on the moon. 0:20:21.196 --> 0:20:27.236 We're cutting it down, eagle, Oh boy, thank you, you're 0:20:27.276 --> 0:20:31.556 looking good here. You hardly ever see Cronkite get excited. 0:20:31.916 --> 0:20:34.156 The man holds it all in, but here he's like 0:20:34.156 --> 0:20:38.036 a little boy, so tickled, so thrilled. The astronauts get 0:20:38.036 --> 0:20:40.956 ready to go outside. It took hours, but you wouldn't 0:20:40.956 --> 0:20:45.476 want to miss it, would you. Nine Armstrong opens the hatch. 0:20:45.836 --> 0:20:50.036 He starts climbing down the ladder rung by rung ten 0:20:50.116 --> 0:20:54.676 fifty six pm. He plants his foot on the surface 0:20:54.676 --> 0:21:02.796 of the Moon. Find the fall fast for land, buy 0:21:02.876 --> 0:21:09.996 a plat. In the studio, Cronkite gathered himself up for 0:21:10.076 --> 0:21:14.756 his historic reaction. Malan's dream and a nation's pledge have 0:21:14.876 --> 0:21:24.276 now been fulfilled. The lunar Age has begun. The lunar 0:21:24.316 --> 0:21:28.956 Age had begun, but another age began that day. Something 0:21:28.996 --> 0:21:32.756 else was launched. The lunar Age would undermine the very 0:21:32.836 --> 0:21:37.556 institution and values at Cronkite so iconically stood for the 0:21:37.636 --> 0:21:42.436 integrity and credibility of the news in the lunar Age. 0:21:42.676 --> 0:21:46.596 The more extraordinary scientific research and technology got, the more 0:21:46.636 --> 0:21:49.716 difficult it became to keep sight of the line between 0:21:49.756 --> 0:22:10.596 fact and fiction, between the believable and the unbelievable. On 0:22:10.676 --> 0:22:13.196 the first season of The Last Archive, I talked a 0:22:13.196 --> 0:22:16.036 lot about the era of mystery in the Middle Ages 0:22:16.316 --> 0:22:18.236 and how it gave rise to the age of the 0:22:18.276 --> 0:22:21.316 fact and then the age of the number, but also 0:22:21.436 --> 0:22:24.316 how with the development of the main frame computer in 0:22:24.316 --> 0:22:28.756 the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, mystery returned in the 0:22:28.796 --> 0:22:32.556 form of data, because data is a kind of knowledge 0:22:32.556 --> 0:22:35.516 that can only be really reckoned with by computers, not 0:22:35.596 --> 0:22:39.636 by people on their own. But consider other forces of history. 0:22:39.756 --> 0:22:42.956 In the middle decades of the twentieth century, beginning with 0:22:43.036 --> 0:22:46.156 Sputnik in nineteen fifty seven, or even really beginning with 0:22:46.156 --> 0:22:48.996 the dropping of the atom bombs in nineteen forty five, 0:22:50.036 --> 0:22:52.916 science got so powerful that it could do things well 0:22:52.956 --> 0:22:56.716 beyond what nearly everyone except a handful of scientists could know, 0:22:57.436 --> 0:23:02.756 or experience or understand. The more extraordinary the scientific accomplishments, 0:23:03.036 --> 0:23:06.396 the harder it became to believe. The news missiles that 0:23:06.396 --> 0:23:09.756 could annihilate the population of the entire planet in an instant, 0:23:10.156 --> 0:23:14.596 men going to the moon. Eventually it became kind of commonplace, 0:23:14.796 --> 0:23:18.076 a little sheek, a little George Orwell meets Marshall mcluin 0:23:18.516 --> 0:23:23.316 to wonder whether all the news was fake. In nineteen 0:23:23.356 --> 0:23:27.516 sixty eight, the BBC broadcast a play called The News Benders. 0:23:28.036 --> 0:23:30.236 We'd like you to help Plan the News for nineteen 0:23:30.316 --> 0:23:34.236 seventy three. In the play, an acclaimed director goes to 0:23:34.276 --> 0:23:36.876 meet with a corporate bigwig. The big wig wants to 0:23:36.956 --> 0:23:39.716 hire him to fake a bunch of film footage that 0:23:39.836 --> 0:23:44.796 will air in the future as news come again. Plan 0:23:44.956 --> 0:23:48.956 the news by nineteen seventy three. You didn't really believe 0:23:48.996 --> 0:23:51.076 there were all these things whizzing about up there? Did 0:23:51.116 --> 0:23:56.836 you spot nicks on rockets? Astronauts crossing their legs? For 0:23:56.916 --> 0:24:01.396 eighty day? How long has this been going on since Hiroshima? 0:24:03.316 --> 0:24:05.476 In the studio, there's a toy sized model of a 0:24:05.556 --> 0:24:09.676 lunar lander sitting on a table covered with sand. Remember 0:24:09.716 --> 0:24:12.356 this play was produced in nineteen sixty eight, a year 0:24:12.396 --> 0:24:16.516 before the Apollo eleven Moon mission. The filmmaker picks up 0:24:16.516 --> 0:24:18.876 the model as he listens to an early cut of 0:24:18.876 --> 0:24:22.836 the news. They've created Fake news for a day five 0:24:22.916 --> 0:24:26.796 years in the future today. April fourteen, nineteen seventy three. 0:24:27.316 --> 0:24:30.676 First Historic Pictures by rad Star of the combined US 0:24:30.756 --> 0:24:34.236 Russian landing on the move. Shown here are Major's Webb 0:24:34.356 --> 0:24:38.316 and Mikhailovitch taking their first steps into the unknown. The 0:24:38.476 --> 0:24:44.716 Nine Way Hotline finally triage it off. But this is 0:24:46.156 --> 0:24:50.636 going to happen in nineteen seventy three. You're going to 0:24:50.716 --> 0:24:55.156 make this happen. No, we are going to make models 0:24:55.236 --> 0:24:59.796 much cheaper than we photographed the models. Fake newsrooms, a 0:24:59.996 --> 0:25:05.196 fake newsmends, whoa dude? The news beenders was mind bending, 0:25:05.556 --> 0:25:08.236 a thought experiment, but it also got to the heart 0:25:08.396 --> 0:25:12.356 of a real problem. The actual news had gotten very 0:25:12.356 --> 0:25:18.916 difficult to believe. Adam bombs rockets to the Moon news 0:25:18.916 --> 0:25:21.116 in the actual year in nineteen seventy three was way 0:25:21.116 --> 0:25:23.676 more dreary than the newsbender's plan for a fake landing 0:25:23.676 --> 0:25:26.396 on the Moon. There weren't even any more Apollo missions 0:25:26.436 --> 0:25:30.356 to report. Those ended in nineteen seventy two. Instead, TV 0:25:30.476 --> 0:25:33.636 viewers flocked to something else on the dial, something different, 0:25:34.076 --> 0:25:37.476 the Watergate hearings, which revealed that Richard Nixon had lied 0:25:37.596 --> 0:25:40.236 and lied, and so had a whole lot of his advisers. 0:25:41.596 --> 0:25:44.836 You couldn't believe anything anymore. But if you didn't want 0:25:44.836 --> 0:25:50.956 to watch Watergate, you could still speculate about space space 0:25:52.876 --> 0:25:57.916 an endless tapestry of stars reaching to its infinity, scattered 0:25:57.916 --> 0:26:00.876 through its fastness, or one hundred billion planets on which 0:26:00.916 --> 0:26:06.396 life theoretically could exist. Yes, that is the sultry voice 0:26:06.516 --> 0:26:09.676 of Rod Serling. He probably knew him from twice Zone 0:26:09.836 --> 0:26:13.476 show he started in nineteen fifty nine. The Twilight Zone 0:26:13.516 --> 0:26:17.156 is where fact turns to fiction, history turns to mystery, 0:26:17.556 --> 0:26:22.836 and mystery becomes conspiracy. In nineteen seventy three, Stirling hosted 0:26:22.836 --> 0:26:28.436 a documentary called In Search of Ancient Astronauts. If only 0:26:28.476 --> 0:26:31.436 one percent of that life is intelligent, there could be 0:26:31.516 --> 0:26:36.436 one million civilizations out there. Listen carefully to that voice, 0:26:36.716 --> 0:26:39.116 not even so much what he's saying, but how he's 0:26:39.156 --> 0:26:43.356 saying it. It's the voice of the news anchor, the authority. 0:26:43.876 --> 0:26:47.116 It's as if he's hypnotizing you into trusting him, and 0:26:47.236 --> 0:26:50.636 of that million, it is conceivable at one discover the 0:26:50.676 --> 0:26:55.356 secrets of space travel. It is possible that ancient astronauts 0:26:55.436 --> 0:26:58.356