Hi, we're here from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about whether conspiracy theories are really on the rise, why there may be tens of thousands of black holes in the center of the Milky Way,

and the three versions of teen popularity, according to research.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

Our conspiracy theories on the rise, has social media really created a place where Americans believe anything is possible?

Well, as reported by the conversation, you can probably relax because the answer in short is no unless that's a conspiracy

that's what they want you to think oh oh no but really according to a study, the rise of the internet has not actually increased the number of Americans who believe in conspiracies.

Although obviously it is helping conspiracy theorists communicate a lot better.

Polling shows that right now at least 50% of Americans believe in at least one

conspiracy theory.

We've only been measuring how much people believe in conspiracy theories

for the last 10 or 20 years though, so in order to understand if this phenomenon has changed

over time, researchers had to get creative.

And by that I mean, they looked at more than 100 years

of letters to the editor, which readers had written

into the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Political scientists Joseph E. E. Shinsky and Joseph M. Parent reviewed more than 100,000 letters, written

between 1890 and 2010.

And the review showed absolutely no change in the amount of conspiracy theory belief over time.

In fact, the percent of letters about conspiracy theories actually declined from the late 1800s to the 1960s,

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