It's Monday, January 28th, 2019, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

You can find us online at Enquiring. Show, on Twitter, at Inquiring Show, and on Facebook.

And you can get an ad-free version of the show by supporting us at patreon.com slash Inquiring

and you can subscribe to the show on iTunes or any other podcasting. So this past weekend, I was at a kid's birthday party, and I was hanging out with the parents,

and as we were watching our kids navigate this strange social world of being five, we were

navigating our own social interactions.

And one of the parents told me about a Netflix documentary he had recently seen on the Fire Festival.

Now, you've probably heard about this. It's this disastrous luxury music festival in the Bahamas

that turned out to be absolutely nothing what the promoters had promised it to be.

I have to say, I watched the Netflix documentary, and it was really interesting.

And in particular, it made me think about the role of influencers, people who have a huge

social media following, who post endorsements of certain things, and get paid for it, or get

remunerated in some other way.

Now, this might be the first time in which

the influencers themselves also found themselves in hot water when things went down. And it got me

thinking about why is it that when we're looking for something fun to do or some decision to make,

we often are swayed by certain individuals. Is it just because we want to enter into their

lifestyle? Is there something else about them? And that reminded me of the very way in which we think

about con people. So people who con us, we often think are in some ways, you know, cunning and evil and cold.

And of course, they can be all of those things.

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