The Conspiracy Files

9/11 was an inside job. Aliens have already made contact. COVID-19 was created in a lab.

Maybe you rolled your eyes at some point while reading that list. Or maybe you paused on one and thought... well... it could be true.

Since the first Americans started chatting online, conspiracy theories have become mainstream — and profitable. It's gotten harder to separate fact and fiction. But if we don't know who we can trust, how does a democracy survive?

On today's episode, we travel the internet from UFOs, through 9/11, to COVID, to trace how we ended up in a world that can't be believed.

Guests:

Garrett Graff, journalist, historian, and author of UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here―and Out There

Walter Scheirer, Dennis O'Dowdy Collegiate Professor of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, and author of A History of Fake Things On The Internet

Korey Rowe, Creative Director, Otsego Media

Dylan Avery, independent filmmaker

Wendy Welch, author of Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories and Masks, Misinformation, and Making Do

Alina Chan, molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering

To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.