1
00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:07,080
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain Stuff,

2
00:00:07,120 --> 00:00:10,000
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is another classic episode from

3
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:14,440
Speaker 1: our archives. We've all seen lately how fringe theories can

4
00:00:14,520 --> 00:00:18,800
Speaker 1: spread and get out of hand. One pervasive anti science

5
00:00:18,840 --> 00:00:22,840
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory is that the moon landing was faked. Here's

6
00:00:22,880 --> 00:00:25,640
Speaker 1: how it got started. At what the astronauts who were

7
00:00:25,640 --> 00:00:30,920
Speaker 1: there think about it? Hi, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here

8
00:00:31,560 --> 00:00:35,240
Speaker 1: about the lunar landing. Astronaut Neil Armstrong once said, it

9
00:00:35,280 --> 00:00:37,279
Speaker 1: would have been harder to fake it than to do it.

10
00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:42,640
Speaker 1: On July nineteen sixty nine, Armstrong and Edwin buzz Aldrin Jr.

11
00:00:42,680 --> 00:00:45,080
Speaker 1: Became the first human beings to ever walk on the

12
00:00:45,120 --> 00:00:48,879
Speaker 1: Moon during NASA's Apollo eleven mission. Orbiting above them at

13
00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:51,440
Speaker 1: the time was the third member of their crew, aviator

14
00:00:51,479 --> 00:00:55,680
Speaker 1: Michael Collins, who was piloting their command module. Together, these

15
00:00:55,720 --> 00:00:58,360
Speaker 1: three entered the history books. The lunar landing was a

16
00:00:58,400 --> 00:01:01,560
Speaker 1: defining moment, a technical che evement made possible by centuries

17
00:01:01,600 --> 00:01:04,280
Speaker 1: of scientific progress and the hard work of more than

18
00:01:04,319 --> 00:01:08,520
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand people. But according to a thirteen pole,

19
00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:11,959
Speaker 1: seven million Americans think that the entire thing never happened.

20
00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:14,720
Speaker 1: In a sixteen British poll found that more than half

21
00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:17,600
Speaker 1: fifty two percent of Brits think that the Apollo eleven

22
00:01:17,600 --> 00:01:21,440
Speaker 1: moon landing was faked, including an astonishing seventy percent of

23
00:01:21,440 --> 00:01:25,640
Speaker 1: Brits aged twenty five to thirty four. On December eighteenth,

24
00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:29,840
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, four months and twenty five days after Armstrong, Aldrin,

25
00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:33,000
Speaker 1: and Collins returned to Earth, John Noble Wilford of The

26
00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:35,679
Speaker 1: New York Times ran a story about a few stool

27
00:01:35,720 --> 00:01:38,640
Speaker 1: warmers in Chicago bars who had gone on record to

28
00:01:38,680 --> 00:01:41,760
Speaker 1: claim that all the Apollo eleven moonwalk footage was fake

29
00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:44,480
Speaker 1: and must have been secretly filmed somewhere out in the

30
00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:48,640
Speaker 1: Nevada desert. The popularity of this misguided belief mushroomed during

31
00:01:48,680 --> 00:01:52,040
Speaker 1: the Watergate scandal, an actual government conspiracy that seems to

32
00:01:52,040 --> 00:01:54,800
Speaker 1: have left people more susceptible to believing other big government

33
00:01:54,800 --> 00:01:58,720
Speaker 1: cover ups were plausible. In nineteen seventy four, writer Bill

34
00:01:58,800 --> 00:02:01,640
Speaker 1: Casing self published a hamphlet called We Never Went to

35
00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:04,920
Speaker 1: the Moon. Casing's writings alleged that any sort of lunar

36
00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:07,320
Speaker 1: landing would have been impossible to carry out. In nineteen

37
00:02:07,440 --> 00:02:10,960
Speaker 1: sixty nine. NASA, he concluded, staged the moonwalk in a

38
00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:15,200
Speaker 1: makeshift studio and then swore the astronauts secrecy. Later, he

39
00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:18,799
Speaker 1: added that the Challenger explosion wasn't an accident either. Casing

40
00:02:18,800 --> 00:02:21,760
Speaker 1: accused NASA of sabotaging the spacecraft before the crew of

41
00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:25,000
Speaker 1: seven got the chance to expose the Apollo eleven cover up.

42
00:02:25,400 --> 00:02:28,040
Speaker 1: His pamphlet gave the so called lunar truther Or movement

43
00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:32,200
Speaker 1: its first manifesto. Deniers like Casing saw their cause enjoy

44
00:02:32,200 --> 00:02:34,760
Speaker 1: a modern renaissance in two thousand one, when the Fox

45
00:02:34,800 --> 00:02:38,280
Speaker 1: Network aired a documentary called Conspiracy Theory Did We Land

46
00:02:38,280 --> 00:02:41,160
Speaker 1: on the Moon? A forty seven minutes special. The program

47
00:02:41,200 --> 00:02:45,000
Speaker 1: featured interviews with Casing and other Apollo eleven skeptics. One

48
00:02:45,040 --> 00:02:48,040
Speaker 1: of them was Bart Sabrell, a filmmaker who has released

49
00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:51,000
Speaker 1: two documentaries of his own on the subject. The Fox

50
00:02:51,040 --> 00:02:54,040
Speaker 1: program enjoyed great ratings, as did a rebroadcast of the

51
00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:57,880
Speaker 1: show that aired a month later. However, scientists overwhelmingly denounced

52
00:02:57,919 --> 00:03:01,040
Speaker 1: the one sided special. The turn of the millennium also

53
00:03:01,080 --> 00:03:04,359
Speaker 1: saw an explosion of Internet conspiracy sites, which further the

54
00:03:04,400 --> 00:03:08,200
Speaker 1: spread of lunar trutherism. All that negative attention was bound

55
00:03:08,280 --> 00:03:11,080
Speaker 1: to generate some uncomfortable moments for the Apollo eleven crew.

56
00:03:11,919 --> 00:03:14,400
Speaker 1: In the year two thousand, Neil Armstrong was celebrating his

57
00:03:14,480 --> 00:03:17,520
Speaker 1: seventieth birthday. One of the cards he received came from

58
00:03:17,520 --> 00:03:20,480
Speaker 1: a school teacher who wrote, dear Mr Armstrong, I would

59
00:03:20,480 --> 00:03:22,720
Speaker 1: like to point out that you and the other astronauts

60
00:03:22,760 --> 00:03:26,160
Speaker 1: are making yourselves a worldwide laughing stock thanks to the Internet.

61
00:03:26,840 --> 00:03:29,639
Speaker 1: From there, the author encouraged Armstrong to visit a favorite

62
00:03:29,639 --> 00:03:34,040
Speaker 1: conspiracy website. Armstrong forwarded the card to NASA, asking if

63
00:03:34,040 --> 00:03:38,360
Speaker 1: the agency had ever publicly refuted these allegations. He said,

64
00:03:38,560 --> 00:03:41,600
Speaker 1: I occasionally am asked questions in public forums and feel

65
00:03:41,640 --> 00:03:43,080
Speaker 1: I don't do as good a job as I might

66
00:03:43,120 --> 00:03:47,000
Speaker 1: with more complete information. NASA had, in fact rebuffed the

67
00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:50,240
Speaker 1: claims way back in nine seven. That June, a press

68
00:03:50,280 --> 00:03:53,960
Speaker 1: release from the organization dismantled casing's major arguments. After the

69
00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:58,080
Speaker 1: two thousand one Fox Special, the Space Agency reissued the document, Still,

70
00:03:58,280 --> 00:04:01,839
Speaker 1: the daters were not satisfied. While making one of his documentaries,

71
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:04,680
Speaker 1: Bart Sabrell and a cameraman ambushed Armstrong at a two

72
00:04:04,720 --> 00:04:07,880
Speaker 1: thousand one aerospace event in New York City. James Smith,

73
00:04:08,040 --> 00:04:11,080
Speaker 1: then the president of the event's sponsoring corporation, recalls a

74
00:04:11,160 --> 00:04:14,200
Speaker 1: Sabrell held up a Bible and demanded that Armstrong place

75
00:04:14,240 --> 00:04:15,960
Speaker 1: a hand on it and swear that he had really

76
00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:19,320
Speaker 1: gone to the Moon. The conspiracy theorist was swiftly ejected.

77
00:04:19,680 --> 00:04:22,440
Speaker 1: This wasn't the only time Sabrell filmed himself accosting an

78
00:04:22,440 --> 00:04:26,000
Speaker 1: Apollo veteran. He issued the same spontaneous bible challenge too

79
00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:30,360
Speaker 1: many other space travelers, including Apollo fourteen's Edgar Mitchell, and,

80
00:04:30,440 --> 00:04:33,720
Speaker 1: as Michael Collins told Airran Space Magazine in twenty sixteen,

81
00:04:33,960 --> 00:04:36,640
Speaker 1: the fringe theorist once tried to corner him in a supermarket.

82
00:04:37,240 --> 00:04:39,480
Speaker 1: For the record, Collins says that he finds lunar hoax

83
00:04:39,640 --> 00:04:43,279
Speaker 1: theories laughable. Buzz Aldrin, on the other hand, sure wasn't

84
00:04:43,279 --> 00:04:45,440
Speaker 1: amused when Sabrill and a cameraman ran up to him

85
00:04:45,480 --> 00:04:48,799
Speaker 1: outside of Beverly Hills Hotel in two thousand two. Sabrill

86
00:04:48,920 --> 00:04:52,040
Speaker 1: had lured Aldren there under the false pretenses of an interview.

87
00:04:52,320 --> 00:04:55,320
Speaker 1: Once Aldren arrived with his step daughter in tow, Sabrill

88
00:04:55,400 --> 00:04:58,120
Speaker 1: started poking him with a Bible and unleashed a torrent

89
00:04:58,200 --> 00:05:01,640
Speaker 1: of insults. Finally, the seventy two year old had had enough.

90
00:05:01,920 --> 00:05:05,680
Speaker 1: With a swift left hook, Aldrin punched Sabrill in the jaw. Sabrill,

91
00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:08,240
Speaker 1: who quickly fled the scene, tried to sue Aldrin for

92
00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:10,920
Speaker 1: a salt, but the charges were dropped. The filmmaker has

93
00:05:10,960 --> 00:05:15,440
Speaker 1: since apologized for his behavior. In Armstrong gave what was

94
00:05:15,480 --> 00:05:18,520
Speaker 1: to be his last interview before his death at age two.

95
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:22,640
Speaker 1: During a taped exchange with Australian CEO Alex Malley, the

96
00:05:22,720 --> 00:05:25,200
Speaker 1: First Man on the Moon talked about everything from his

97
00:05:25,240 --> 00:05:30,119
Speaker 1: Ohio childhood to NASA's future. Perhaps inevitably, Armstrong was asked

98
00:05:30,200 --> 00:05:32,440
Speaker 1: point blank if the moon landing had been a hoax.

99
00:05:32,960 --> 00:05:36,320
Speaker 1: He replied, people love conspiracy theories. I mean, they are

100
00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:38,760
Speaker 1: very attractive, but it was never a concern to me

101
00:05:38,800 --> 00:05:41,000
Speaker 1: because I know that one day somebody is going to

102
00:05:41,040 --> 00:05:43,320
Speaker 1: fly back up there and pick up that camera I left.

103
00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:50,440
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by

104
00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:53,520
Speaker 1: Tristan Neil and Tyler Klang. For more on this lots

105
00:05:53,520 --> 00:05:56,640
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff

106
00:05:56,680 --> 00:05:59,080
Speaker 1: is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my

107
00:05:59,120 --> 00:06:01,920
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit Day I Heart radio, app, Apple podcasts,

108
00:06:01,960 --> 00:06:15,160
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H