This is a HeadGum Podcast. I don't know what to think

I don't know what to say

and that's all right

yeah that's all right

and that's okay

I don't know anything.

Hello, welcome to factually, I'm Adam Conover.

And, you know, as a kid kid I was fascinated with conspiracy theories not that I believed

them I just enjoyed thinking about them as a kind of speculative fiction you know I

liked sci-fi novels about the aluminati. I love thinking about,

what if there really was a men in black who'd come take you away in the black helicopters?

And most importantly, I was always fascinated by the idea that there were people out there

who really believed in these things. I've always been attracted to strange belief systems,

to understanding why people go down those weird roads in their mind,

whether it's understanding Anne Ran's cult of personality that she built up around

her philosophy objectivism or

Scientology for instance these things have always been

Velcro to my mind I love learning about them and you know every so often I'd meet a

meet a new friend who was also into conspiracy theories and it was

really fun getting into it and chatting about them but sometimes after a little while

the conversation would take a turn a turn from wow isn't this so bizarre and cool to think about how weird it is that people believe this to

Wow isn't this bizarre and cool and maybe true and that moment was always a little uncomfortable to me because, see, one of my goals in life,

...