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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George

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Speaker 1: nor with you. Doctor Michael Schermer with US, publisher of

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Speaker 1: The Skeptic magazine, a presidential fellow of Chatman University, host

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Speaker 1: of the popular podcast The Michael Schermer Show, and the

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Speaker 1: Skeptic sub stock weekly columnist. For eighteen plus years, he

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Speaker 1: has been a monthly columnist for the Scientific American. He

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Speaker 1: is an author of many New York Times bestselling books.

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Speaker 1: His most recent is called Conspiracy, Why the Rationale Believe

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Speaker 1: the Irrational. Michael, Great to have you back on the program. Hi, George,

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Speaker 1: nice to see you again. Well I should say talk

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Speaker 1: to you again. I'll see you. And let's say lest

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Speaker 1: I'm telepathic. That's right, transport myself through through through telepathy.

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Speaker 1: How's my favorite Skeptic doing. I'm doing well, thank you.

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Speaker 1: I've just out a book tour this week for Conspiracy,

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Speaker 1: and it turns out there's a lot of conspiracies out there,

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Speaker 1: many many, and you know I don't leaving coincidences. And

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Speaker 1: that's right on the back of your cover. Yeah that's right, Yes,

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Speaker 1: well that's right. You can spell a lot of things

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Speaker 1: with the word the letters in the word conspiracy on

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Speaker 1: the govern you can spell cia and sorrows and all

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Speaker 1: sorts of things. Yeah, it's crazy. Now, some conspiracy theories

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Speaker 1: are real, Michael. But let's get your take on what

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Speaker 1: your definition is of a conspiracy theory. Yeah, okay, So

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Speaker 1: conspiracy is two or more people plotting in secret to

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Speaker 1: do something illegal or immoral, or to gain an advantage

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Speaker 1: over somebody else without their knowledge. And so that happens

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Speaker 1: all the time. I mean, government agencies do this, corporations

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Speaker 1: do it. And a conspiracy theory is a theory that

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Speaker 1: a conspiracy is actually happening. And so the question is

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Speaker 1: is the conspiracy theory true or false? That's what we

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Speaker 1: want to know. Lots and lots of conspiracy theory. Some

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Speaker 1: of them are true, some of them are not. Some

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Speaker 1: of them we don't know. And so it's kind of

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Speaker 1: what I call a signal detection problem, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: picking out the signal from the noise. Does it constitute

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Speaker 1: a hit or a miss um? And and so the

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Speaker 1: problem what we want to solve here that I try

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Speaker 1: to solve in the book is you know, what kind

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Speaker 1: of criteria would you use when you hear a conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theory to assess whether it's likely true, likely faults, or indeterminate. Right,

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Speaker 1: So if it's something narrow and and and focused on

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Speaker 1: a particular goal, like Volkswagen cheating the emission standards in

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Speaker 1: the EU, you know that turned out to be a

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Speaker 1: true conspiracy theory. They did do that, you know, for

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Speaker 1: very obvious reasons to gettin you know, a profit quote

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Speaker 1: is there or Watergate you know that, you know, to

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Speaker 1: kind of try to rig the election and cheat, cheat

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Speaker 1: a little bit and get the secrets from the Democrats,

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Speaker 1: or rand contract, you know, to support um certain dictators

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Speaker 1: that are more favorable to American interests than third world

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Speaker 1: countries over communist dictators. The CIA used to do those

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Speaker 1: kinds of things. So you know, those those theories turn

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Speaker 1: out to be true. And and again, one of the

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Speaker 1: thesis of my book is that it's rational. There's actually

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Speaker 1: a kind of rationality to believing in conspiracy theories because

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Speaker 1: so many of them do turn out to be true

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Speaker 1: that it pays to err on the side of assuming

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Speaker 1: the worst they are true, even if you're wrong. So

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Speaker 1: that's a type one error. You assume something is real

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Speaker 1: when it's not. But that's a low cost error to

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Speaker 1: make as opposed to missing the real conspiracy theory, and

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Speaker 1: then you know that that could be costly for you.

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Speaker 1: Some of them are true, You're absolutely right about that, Michael,

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Speaker 1: and some of them are not. What is it about

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Speaker 1: the human mindset that believes in conspiracy theories? Well, there's

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Speaker 1: several factors at work. First, it's a kind of a

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Speaker 1: causal theory. You know, the world is pretty chaotic, there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of noise and the mind tries to put

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Speaker 1: together patterns to see if there's some something that you

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Speaker 1: can grasp to explain it. You know, we'll howk them

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Speaker 1: get prices are going up? Why is there a war

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Speaker 1: in Ukraine? You know? Why do these things happen? And

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Speaker 1: you know we want to know and you know, so

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Speaker 1: there's different theories about this that we hear, and so

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Speaker 1: we kind of try to filter through them, and conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theories sort through the noise and tend to simplify things.

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Speaker 1: You know that that the economy is doing what it's

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Speaker 1: doing not because of all these complex forces at work,

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Speaker 1: but because there's these twelve guys in London called the Illuminati,

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Speaker 1: and they're running the world, or the Rockefellers or the

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Speaker 1: Rothschilds or the Jews. You know that that's a simpler explanation,

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Speaker 1: it's easier to kind of grasp, and it's it's quick,

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Speaker 1: and so it's satisfying in that sense. Then there's also

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Speaker 1: a sense that of secret knowledge like you know what

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Speaker 1: other people don't know, kind of a hero's journey, like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I am in on the secret combat this thing like QAnon. Right,

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Speaker 1: there's people, a lot of people that we've taught interview

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Speaker 1: that got out of qan on you know it said

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Speaker 1: that they felt like it was like the most important

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Speaker 1: thing they ever did, Like I'm gonna I'm gonna back

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Speaker 1: this conspiracy. I'm going to back this group that's going

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Speaker 1: to combat this conspiracy of secret Satanic pedophiles that are

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Speaker 1: operating out of a pizzeria. And you know, somebody like

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Speaker 1: Edgar Welch who went there with his gun to shoot

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Speaker 1: up the place, you know, he really felt like, I'm

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Speaker 1: doing something grand, moral, you know, superb. This is going

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Speaker 1: to be uh, you know, heroic to do this. So

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theories kind of give you a sense of empowerment.

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Speaker 1: And then there's finally the third one is a proportionality.

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Speaker 1: What we call proportionality, heroistic or bias. That is big cause.

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Speaker 1: Big effects need big causes. So, you know, the Holocaust

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Speaker 1: one of the worst things that ever happened in human history,

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Speaker 1: and what's the cause of that? The Nazi regime one

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Speaker 1: of the worst political regimes in human history. There's a

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Speaker 1: balance there, a proportionality to it. But if you say

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Speaker 1: something like, well JFK was assassinated by a loan, that

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Speaker 1: doesn't feel right. It's like, how can how can that be?

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Speaker 1: Or nine to eleven, you know, you're telling me nineteen

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Speaker 1: guys with box cutters brought down the World Trade Center billities,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that just doesn't seem right. Or Princess Diana,

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Speaker 1: what was the cause of her death? Drunk driving, speeding,

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Speaker 1: no seatbelt that you know, that's how regular people die,

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Speaker 1: not princesses, you know, So there's a sense of disproportionality there.

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Speaker 1: So we add elements. JFK oh, it was a CIA

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Speaker 1: and the FBI and the KGB and the Russians and

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Speaker 1: the mafia and the Cubans and you know, President Johnson

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Speaker 1: and so on. Before you know what, you know, everybody's

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Speaker 1: in on it, and that that's what we do to

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Speaker 1: kind of make it feel more balanced. Whereas somebody like

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Speaker 1: John Hinckley who shot Reagan, there's no conspiracy theories about

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Speaker 1: him or next to them, because you know he didn't

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Speaker 1: kill him and you know he was mentally ill, and

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Speaker 1: it's like, okay, well that's what crazy people do. Well,

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Speaker 1: so Oswald was a little nutty. But but because he

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Speaker 1: succeeded in assassinating Kennedy, then that was a base thing

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Speaker 1: and he is a cause does not doesn't feel proportional

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Speaker 1: to that. Now, getting back to the Kennedy situation, I'm

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Speaker 1: still convinced that whether Oswald was part of it or not,

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Speaker 1: that the mob was involved in this to shut him down,

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Speaker 1: and I think j Edgar Hoover shut it down quickly.

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Speaker 1: Does that make me a conspiracist? Well, okay, so again

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Speaker 1: just by definition. One thing is I'm trying to do

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Speaker 1: in this book is take away the pejorative nature of

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Speaker 1: calling somebody a conspiracy theorist, like you know, you're just

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Speaker 1: one of those tinfoil at wagon doo weirdos. No, that's

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Speaker 1: that's not the case. You should believe a conspiracy theory

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Speaker 1: if it's true, if the evidence is there, that's not

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Speaker 1: wacky at all. So there's it's rational to do that.

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Speaker 1: And so you said two things there. One of them

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Speaker 1: is true that Jedier who did try to shut it.

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Speaker 1: Dads did Johnson, President Johnson, because they were worried that

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Speaker 1: if it was if the conspiracy theory, see if the

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Speaker 1: conspiracy seemed like the Russians of the Cubans were involved

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Speaker 1: in the assassination, then that then the American public would

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Speaker 1: push Johnson to strike back against Russia, and he was

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Speaker 1: worried that could escalate into a nuclear exchange, which almost

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Speaker 1: did with the previous Cuban miss Cuban Mission sixty two. Yea, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: So it is that a conspiracy theory. It is kind

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Speaker 1: of you know, they're you know, they but they didn't

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Speaker 1: cover anything up so much as they just pushed for

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Speaker 1: the Loan assassin. Uh conspiracy theory to be the likeliest

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Speaker 1: one to be true. I think the war report was

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Speaker 1: pretty accurate, and I think Oswald did act alone, and

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Speaker 1: there's no evidence that anybody else that was involved. That

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Speaker 1: is the convergence of evidence for Oswald as the Loan

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Speaker 1: assassin is massive, but there's no convergence of evidence to

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Speaker 1: anybody else, like you know, like like Oliver Stone thinks

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Speaker 1: the CIA was involved, Well, who who in the CIA?

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Speaker 1: Well Alan Dullas well, really Alan dullas I mean what

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Speaker 1: evidence he had that he did it? You know, if

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Speaker 1: you if you hauled him, if he was still a line,

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Speaker 1: you hauled him before a grand jury and say we

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Speaker 1: want to put this guy on trial. Then the grand

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Speaker 1: jury says, all right, show me the evidence, and there

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Speaker 1: is none, right, other than well, he could have had

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Speaker 1: motive or the industrial military industrial complex wanted to take

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Speaker 1: him out because he was gonna pull us out of

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Speaker 1: Vietnamal Nixon took us out of Vietnam. Why didn't they

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Speaker 1: assassinate him? Right? And you know, so again it's this

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Speaker 1: kind of sense that you know, somebody big like that

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Speaker 1: can't it can't have just been this loan method that

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Speaker 1: just doesn't feel right. And that's kind of what leads

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Speaker 1: us to those believes. Is it also a distrust that

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Speaker 1: people have in society, government, whatever you want to call it.

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Speaker 1: The people just don't believe it. Yeah, so that has

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Speaker 1: certainly been the case in the last half century. The

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Speaker 1: levels of trust in government and actually most institutions, even

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Speaker 1: in the last twenty years or so, trust in science,

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Speaker 1: scientific institutions, and scientists has has collapsed. People are very

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Speaker 1: suspicious and distrustful, and I argue in the book for

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Speaker 1: good reason. You know, if you look at what the

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Speaker 1: CIA has done over the since the nineteen fifties, you know,

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Speaker 1: you'll know about all these projects MK Ultra, you know,

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Speaker 1: those seeing mind control brainwashing experiments on US citizens without

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Speaker 1: their knowledge or consent. We're given LSD and other mind

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Speaker 1: altering drusts, right or co intel pro where the FBI

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Speaker 1: put secret agents into the social justice organizations and movements

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Speaker 1: like the American Indian Movement and feminist groups and the

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Speaker 1: Black Panthers, even even blackmailing Martin Luther King Jr. And

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Speaker 1: secretly taping his trips in hotel rooms. I mean they've

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Speaker 1: recorded as sex and then brainwalked and tried to start

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Speaker 1: tread to blackmail him. Right, I mean wait, our our

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Speaker 1: government did this. Yeah, well maybe I should. Maybe when

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Speaker 1: my everyman tells me something, the next thing they tell me,

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to be so gullible to believe them, right,

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Speaker 1: And the Pentagon Papers and Wiki leagues, you know, all

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Speaker 1: the leagues that have come out of things that our

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Speaker 1: government was doing and you know the Operation paper Clip,

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Speaker 1: where we were getting Nazi scientists to come to America

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Speaker 1: and work on our scientific projects. These are the same

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Speaker 1: kind of guys that we put on trial and executed

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Speaker 1: the nurburg for war crimes. So we were doing this

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Speaker 1: because we were afraid the Russians were going to do

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Speaker 1: it before we got them. And so there's enough of that.

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Speaker 1: You know, all the stuff about like rigging elections in

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Speaker 1: South American countries, the favorite fascist dictators o our communist dictators. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the CIA did that. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more