You know, even beyond being in character, I think my real training was being that person talking to the birds aren't real guy when I was living in Arkansas.

When I was arguing with the homeschoolers around me, people in these churches, you know, when the Trump era comes around feeling like I'm just hitting a wall, like how are these people not hearing this?

And I felt crazy and I realized my approach was ineffective. Now I

look back and think okay where could I have found not even a middle ground but a bridge like where could I have found a way to I don't know something I say a lot is if someone is in a dark room it's really hard to tell them they're in a dark room

if they've been there for a long time,

and their eyes have adjusted.

That's just a room.

The way to do it, you have to turn on a light somewhere else.

I'm John Favreau. and I'm Max Fisher and you just heard from today's guest Peter Mackin do founder of the Birds Aren't Real Movement. It's about time we heard

from him on this show. If you haven't heard of the Birds Aren't Real Movement,

you're probably a bit confused right now.

And if you have, you know that from 2017 to 2021,

Peter was one of the nation's leading conspiracy theorists traveling the country with his followers,

spreading the message that all birds in the United States are not in fact real.

They're actually surveillance drones used by the federal government to spy on Americans.

And Peter's movement took off.

They got a ton of press coverage, even a Fox News documentary.

But of course it was all a prank.

In a 2021 interview at the New York Times,

Peter revealed that Birds Aren't Real

was a parody and that he and his followers were all in on the joke.

Wait, hold on.

...