Oh, yeah.

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Oh, down down and through the middle of the party's

and get.

Yeah, we're cool, we up my bed.

They were quiet. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, episode 87. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

And do me. So Jesse in your book you write that quote it is always a paranoid time in America what do you mean by that

i mean that it's not a recent phenomenon

that it's not something that only when you're not looking at it.

That's the voice of Jesse Walker, the author of The United States of Paranoia, a conspiracy theory, a book about the history

of conspiracy theories in the United States, but also an exploration of this thesis, is that paranoia, paranoid thinking, conspiratorial thinking,

that is the driving force behind our political system and it is the driving force behind a lot of our cultural identity.

And it's not something that happens in the fringes.

It's not something that happens in weird subcultures.

It happens all the way through every aspect of our society.

Now, of course, this can be said of any culture or any nation, but this book is specifically

about the United States, but there's a lot to be gained here no matter where you live.

If you go back to the beginning of recorded history in America, I mean the beginning of the European settlement,

immediately you see conspiracy theories and they really don't let up from

then till now.

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