As a writer on conspiracy theories, I get lots of emails from people who want to alert me to government conspiracies, but I never engage them.

I study these conspiracy theories. I don't want to be a part of them.

The way I did have one particularly tenacious informant who for years wanted to explain to me how the US government controls the weather.

I never responded, but he kept sending me updates.

After the terrible earthquake in tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004, which killed hundreds of thousands of people,

he sent me documents that alleged to prove that the US government had triggered the tsunami in order to take out its economic competition.

He often referred to a tsunami machine.

I had grown accustomed to his updates until one day he fell silent for years.

And then in 2011, there was another huge earthquake in tsunami, this time in Japan.

Here at UC Davis, the campus public relations staff put out a press release about a local angle on the Japanese tsunami.

It turns out that UC Davis houses an enormous centrifuge that helps scientists model and predict the course of tsunamis.

You could call it a tsunami machine.

My weather conspiracy correspondent sent me an email the day that press release was posted.

Unfortunately, I didn't keep a copy of it. I had long since abandoned my wacko file.

But though I didn't preserve his words, I remember his tone. He could not have been more pleased.

The tsunami machine was real, it was at my university, and I had written a book that he believed made fun of conspiracy theories about tsunami machines.

It all made sense. He had figured out the ultimate conspiracy, and I was a part of it.

I'm Catherine Olmsted, and this is state of conspiracy.

Today, I go down the conspiracy rabbit hole with journalist writer and documentarian John Ronson,

and explore Ronson's past ties with Alex Jones, his time in Bohemian Grove, and some of the most absurd theories he's encountered.

What attracted you to the study of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists?

Well, it came about a little securitously. I was tailing some extremist leaders in the mid-90s.

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