277. Michel Gagné — How to Think About Conspiracy Theories
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2022
⏱️ 123 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of the violent public assassination of President John F. Kennedy, over half of all Americans surveyed continue to believe that he was killed by a conspiracy involving multiple assassins.
Shermer and Gagné discuss: conspiracies and conspiracy theories • what role conspiracy theories play in society • who believes conspiracy theories and why • why conspiracy theorists rewrite the past • paranoid skepticism as a role in conspiracism • Oliver Stone's "alternative version of history" • scapegoat theory of conspiracism (Rene Girard) and the military industrial complex • Marx's dialectical materialism and conspiracism: all life is a battle between rival tribes • stolen future theory of conspiracism: there but for the conspiracy… • common themes in conspiracy theories like JFK, 9/11 Truth, Obama Birtherism, QAnon, Rigged Election and many others • JFK: the lone-gunman theory vs. hundreds of conspiracy theories • the nostalgic myth of "Camelot" and balancing the ledger of moral outrage • when Jack Became Jesus: JFK as a crucified Jesus • who was Lee Harvey Oswald and why did he kill Kennedy? • Cuba, Castro, the Bay of Pigs debacle, and Operation Northwoods • the CIA and why it is rational to be skeptical of their activities • how to determine if a conspiracy theory is true, false, or uncertain • epistemology, truth claims, how to evaluate evidence, knowledge as justified true belief • knowing vs. believing: I don't want to believe in anything that must be believed in to be true • empirical truths vs. mythic truths • Did the resurrection of Jesus really happen or is it a mythological narrative with moral meaning.
Michel Jacques Gagné teaches courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and ethics in the Humanities Department of Champlain College Saint-Lambert, located near Montreal, Canada. His podcast is called Paranoid Planet and his latest book under discussion is Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show |
| 0:16.0 | Welcome to the show. Here's the new book Thinking Critically about the Kennedy assassination |
| 0:19.0 | debunking the myths and conspiracy theories. This is the best book I've read on this |
| 0:25.5 | subject since that Buliosi's 1600-page book that no one actually reads. It's really |
| 0:31.8 | more like a reference encyclopedia. |
| 0:35.0 | It is quite long. I found the first, there's actually a shorter version of just the first 300 pages of reclaiming history. |
| 0:42.0 | I have it over there somewhere. I forget what he |
| 0:44.1 | titled that. I think it's called Four Days in Dallas or something like that. |
| 0:46.9 | And that's just a history of the weekend of the assassination. And I would |
| 0:51.4 | recommend that because it's almost like reading a novel. |
| 0:54.0 | Right, yeah, I did the audio version of Blyosi's book, which was like 14 hours of just that first 300 pages I guess and it's stunning how many you didn't read |
| 1:06.4 | the footnotes no I didn't read the footnotes no but it's just stunning |
| 1:10.6 | it's about 900 pages of foot just stunning how many |
| 1:13.8 | many conspiracy theories there are about JFK. |
| 1:16.6 | But before we get into all that, just give us a little bit of background |
| 1:18.8 | about yourself, how you got interested in studying conspiracy theories in general at all, and then how you got into JFK, where are you from, where did you go to school, |
| 1:26.3 | what are your influencers? |
| 1:27.7 | All right, well I guess we have a lot of time, right? |
| 1:30.1 | And the other interviews, they're quite short. |
| 1:32.3 | Well, my name is Michelle Gagnet. |
| 1:34.0 | I am a French Canadian, born and raised in Quebec, |
| 1:38.0 | spent most of my life in the province of Quebec. |
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