Listener supported, WNYC Studios.

It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC.

I'm producer Amina Serna, filling in for Brian today.

Welcome back, everyone.

Can you reason with a loved one who believes in conspiracy theories?

A few years ago, podcaster Zach Mack noticed his father went deep down into the rabbit hole.

Think chemtrails, a cabal of global

elites, that kind of stuff. So he challenged his dad with a literal year-long bet. It's a subject

of a new three-part series from NPR's embedded podcast called Alternate Realities. And he joins us now.

Hi, Zach. Hi. Thanks for having me. Before we get into your

bet, I want to ask you to describe your dad. You grew up in the Bay Area where you say your dad was

pretty much the lone Christian conservative, even within your own family. What was he like

growing up and when did you start noticing a change?

Yeah, so my dad is, you know, he's, he's very playful, he's very friendly, lots of dad jokes.

He's pretty active.

He loves to sort of, he loves to go sailing or hiking or skiing or, you know, he just kind of loves being outside.

He's very social.

He's from the Midwest and basically early on as after I was born,

shortly after I was born, he sort of, he was away from religion and then kind of came back to it.

And throughout my life, he has just gotten steadily more religious. And so he is the lone Christian conservative in our household. And, you know, we grew up in the very liberal California Bay Area. And I want to say around 2019 when he got an iPad and it's sort of,

my dad is not very tech savvy. He's not really someone who's on the internet a lot. He's not on

social media. So he started getting more access to the internet. And I think as that happened,

...