#1626 America’s Fascination with Conspiracy Theories

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Clay talks with guest host David Horton about America’s obsession with conspiracy theories, from the notion that the moon landing in 1969 was faked on a Hollywood sound stage to the view that 9-11 was an inside job designed to secure more oil for the United States and justify a war against Islam. What is the psychology of this strange phenomenon? Do the perpetrators believe their assertions, or are they merely seeking fame and profit? What should we make of obviously false claims, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene’s insistence that Jewish lasers touched off the forest fires in California or Alex Jones’ appalling claim that the Sandy Hook school shooting was an inside job perpetrated to lock up America’s guns? Because Clay recently spent a couple of days in Dallas, Texas, exploring the landscape of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, a considerable portion of the program explores the conspiracy theories around that horrific event. Are Americans more susceptible to conspiracy theories than other people around the world? If so, what does this signify?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good day and welcome to listening to America with Clay Jenkinson. I'm David Horton
0:11.5	at Radford University in Radford, Virginia, serving as guest co-host this week. And joining me
0:17.5	as noted humanities scholar and all about fabulous guy, Clay Jenkinson.
0:22.8	Hey, Clay, how are you?
0:24.0	I aspire to be fabulous.
0:26.2	I'm great.
0:26.7	I'm in Chicago.
0:27.8	Just taking a little tiny professional break from my third phase of the Travels
0:32.3	of Charlie National Tour.
0:34.2	Just an interesting, fun fact.
0:35.6	I just had a wonderful hour-long conversation with one of my
0:38.7	favorite people, Professor Edward Watts of UC San Diego. He's a classicist. And we were talking about
0:45.1	whether Rome has anything to teach us as we descend into American paralysis. And at the end of the
0:51.9	conversation, I mentioned Steinbeck. And he said, oh, I don't know how
0:55.1	much you know about Steinbeck, but didn't he write that great book travel to Charlie?
0:58.5	And I said, Ed, I'm living it.
1:01.8	And so it was just a great moment because he loves the book.
1:05.0	I'm sending him some gifts now, but also I said, go to the website.
1:08.8	It's like Steinbeck on steroids.
1:11.7	Utopia. Absolutely. Well, you know, it's funny to talk about that and to talk about some of the
1:17.9	challenges of great nations, great states of the past. One of the challenges I think we face
1:24.1	nowadays is the rise of the ease of sharing information. It's both good and bad.
	...

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