Conspiracy Month: Mikey Biddlestone - What Makes Conspiracy Theorists Double Down

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, True Crime, Comedy

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lola and Meagan chat with Mikey Biddlestone, post-doc researcher at the Cambridge social decision making lab whose focus is on conspiracy beliefs, misinformation, and political psychology. They'll dig into what factors make someone more likely to believe in conspiracies, the values they do or DON'T bring to people's lives, how discrimination against conspiracy theorists can backfire, PRE-bunking vs DE-bunking, the connection between narcissism and conspiracy theories, and what we can do about the real world danger of conspiracies.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If you have your own story of being in a cult or a high control group or if you've had
0:04.1	experience with manipulation or abuse the power that you'd like to share, leave us a message
0:08.4	on our hotline number at 347-86 trust. That's 347-868-7878 or shoot us an e-mail at TrustMePod
0:18.2	at gmail.com. Trust me, do you trust me? Trust me, I'm like a smart person. Yeah, I've never
0:25.6	lied to you. I never have lied. If you think that one person has all the answers, don't!
0:32.5	Welcome to TrustMe. The podcast about cults extreme belief and manipulation from two
0:37.4	pre-bunkers who've actually experienced it. I'm Lola Blanc and you guys are going to find out
0:41.2	what that means soon. And I am Megan Elizabeth. Today our guest is Mikey Biddlestone, post-doc
0:46.7	researcher at the Cambridge social decision making lab whose focus is on conspiracy beliefs,
0:51.3	misinformation, and political psychology. And y'all, I've been pronouncing Cambridge wrong,
0:55.7	just so you know. He's going to tell us about what factors make a person more susceptible
0:59.6	to conspiratorial thinking, the value these kinds of beliefs bring, and then no longer bring,
1:04.8	to people's lives, and how making conspiracy theorists believe that they are being discriminated
1:08.4	against can actually backfire and make them double down. We'll also talk about the idea of
1:12.8	pre-bunking and why it's more effective than debunking. The connection between narcissism and
1:17.4	conspiracy theories, some of the real world dangers of conspiracy theories, and what we can do about
1:22.4	it. That's right. This is such a fascinating episode in continuation of conspiracy month.
1:28.3	But before we dive in with Mikey, Megan kindly tell me your cultiest thing of this week.
1:33.3	So the cultiest thing that happened to me this week is I've been seeing all this news about the
1:38.4	new avatar movie in Kate Winslet, holds her breath for seven minutes to shoot one of the scenes.
1:45.6	Okay, everybody's like, could you believe she learned how to hold her breath for so long
1:49.8	and then other actors are like, I did this, and then I read that Leonardo DiCaprio got inside
	...

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