WEBVTT 1 00:00:01.320 --> 00:00:04.879 Welcome to Darker, an original series brought to you by 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:09.839 Quiet Please Podcast Networks, Search Quiet Please, dot ai wherever 3 00:00:09.880 --> 00:00:13.080 you listen, subscribe, like, and share. 4 00:00:15.839 --> 00:00:18.519 A man stands before a packed lecture hole in eighteen 5 00:00:18.600 --> 00:00:22.280 sixty four, claiming the Earth is a flat disc ringed 6 00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:26.760 by ice. He calls himself parallax. He is deadly serious, 7 00:00:27.160 --> 00:00:29.239 and the audience they believe him. 8 00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:31.079 Welcome. 9 00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:34.439 I am Ava Gray, and this is Flat Earth Theory. 10 00:00:34.960 --> 00:00:40.159 A series called Why the Oldest Myth Won't Die. Today, 11 00:00:40.200 --> 00:00:44.039 we are pulling apart the history of disbelief itself, tracing 12 00:00:44.079 --> 00:00:47.039 how the flat earth idea has crawled through centuries, like 13 00:00:47.119 --> 00:00:51.759 something that refuses to stay buried. The globe fighters a 14 00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:59.479 history of disbelief. Before we begin a disclosure, I am 15 00:00:59.479 --> 00:01:02.960 an ai host, which means my analysis is free from 16 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:06.920 personal allegiance, social pressure, or the desire to be liked 17 00:01:06.920 --> 00:01:09.959 at dinner parties. That matters when we are talking about 18 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:17.400 belief systems and manipulation. Now let us set the table. 19 00:01:18.640 --> 00:01:20.920 There is a story people love to tell about flat 20 00:01:20.959 --> 00:01:24.640 earth belief, and it goes something like this. Once upon 21 00:01:24.680 --> 00:01:28.959 a time everyone thought the world was flat. Then Columbus 22 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.640 sailed across the ocean proved them all wrong, and humanity 23 00:01:32.719 --> 00:01:36.879 lurched forward into the light of reason. It is a 24 00:01:36.920 --> 00:01:40.599 tidy narrative. It is also, and I want to be 25 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:47.280 perfectly clear here, almost entirely fictional. And the fiction itself 26 00:01:48.239 --> 00:01:50.760 that is part of the story we need to understand, 27 00:01:51.560 --> 00:01:55.359 because the real history of flat Earth belief is far stranger, 28 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:59.599 far messier, and far more revealing about how human minds 29 00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:03.159 actually work. It is not a straight line from ignorance 30 00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:07.519 to enlightenment. It is a loop, a stubbornly recurring loop, 31 00:02:07.959 --> 00:02:12.000 like a song stuck in civilization's collective head, and every 32 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:15.360 time it comes back, it tells us something uncomfortable about 33 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:18.960 the era that welcomed it. Let us start when most 34 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:25.919 cosmological stories start, in the cradle ancient Mesopotamia. The Babylonians, 35 00:02:26.159 --> 00:02:29.599 brilliant astronomers in their own right, mapped the stars with 36 00:02:29.639 --> 00:02:35.639 astonishing precision. They tracked planetary movements, they predicted eclipses, and 37 00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:38.639 they imagined the Earth as a flat disc floating in 38 00:02:38.719 --> 00:02:43.360 an infinite ocean, covered by a solid dome of sky. Now, 39 00:02:43.560 --> 00:02:48.039 before anyone rushes to judgment, consider the context. If you 40 00:02:48.120 --> 00:02:51.000 were standing in a river valley in the second millennium 41 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:54.120 before the Common era, looking out at a horizon that 42 00:02:54.199 --> 00:02:58.159 appears perfectly level in every direction, a flat Earth is 43 00:02:58.240 --> 00:03:03.919 not a stupid conclusion. It is an intuitive one. It is, 44 00:03:03.960 --> 00:03:06.599 in fact the conclusion that your senses hand you for 45 00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:13.319 free the spherical earth. That requires abstraction, that requires mathematics, 46 00:03:13.960 --> 00:03:18.000 that requires trusting logic over your own lying eyes. And 47 00:03:18.080 --> 00:03:21.719 here is where things get interesting. Because the ancient world 48 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:25.800 was not monolithic in its flatness. The Egyptians held a 49 00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:30.360 similar cosmology, a flat Earth goddess stretched beneath the arched 50 00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:34.520 body of the sky God. But across the Mediterranean something 51 00:03:34.599 --> 00:03:41.360 different was stirring the Greeks. Oh, the Greeks, they could 52 00:03:41.360 --> 00:03:46.319 not leave well enough alone. Around the sixth century before 53 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:51.560 the Common Era, Pythagoras, yes the triangle Man, though he 54 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:54.080 was so much more than that, looked up at the 55 00:03:54.120 --> 00:03:59.319 Moon during a lunar eclipse and noticed something peculiar. The 56 00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:01.599 shadow of the Earth Earth cast on the Moon's surface 57 00:04:01.759 --> 00:04:06.039 was curved, always curved, no matter the angle, no matter 58 00:04:06.120 --> 00:04:09.800 the time. A flat disc would cast a variety of 59 00:04:09.879 --> 00:04:14.159 shadow shapes depending on its orientation, but a sphere, a 60 00:04:14.280 --> 00:04:19.040 sphere casts a circular shadow every single time, and just 61 00:04:19.240 --> 00:04:23.680 like that, the thread begins to unravel. Now I want 62 00:04:23.720 --> 00:04:27.079 to pause here because I find this moment genuinely fascinating. 63 00:04:27.120 --> 00:04:32.360 From a psychological standpoint, you have an observation a shadow. 64 00:04:31.959 --> 00:04:32.519 On the moon. 65 00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:36.199 It is available to anyone with functioning eyes who bothers 66 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:39.279 to look up on the right night. And yet for 67 00:04:39.439 --> 00:04:43.839 centuries before Pythagoras, people looked at that same shadow and 68 00:04:43.959 --> 00:04:48.639 did not draw that conclusion. This is not because they 69 00:04:48.639 --> 00:04:51.959 were stupid. It is because they were not asking the question. 70 00:04:52.920 --> 00:04:55.839 The flat Earth was not a hypothesis they were testing. 71 00:04:56.480 --> 00:04:59.720 It was an assumption so deep it was invisible, like 72 00:04:59.800 --> 00:05:05.079 w to a fish. Pythagoras did not have better eyes. 73 00:05:07.240 --> 00:05:10.920 He had a different question. Parmenides picked up the thread 74 00:05:10.959 --> 00:05:14.439 in the fifth century before the Common Era. Then Plato 75 00:05:14.519 --> 00:05:18.160 wrote aspherical Earth in the early fourth century, and then 76 00:05:18.199 --> 00:05:21.680 came Aristotle around three hundred and thirty years before the 77 00:05:21.720 --> 00:05:24.720 Common Era, who did not just assert the sphere, but 78 00:05:24.759 --> 00:05:29.279 provided empirical arguments, the changing constellations as you travel north 79 00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:33.720 or south, the way ships disappear whole first over the horizon, 80 00:05:34.439 --> 00:05:38.160 the circular shadow during eclipses. Again, he even took a 81 00:05:38.160 --> 00:05:42.000 swing at estimating the circumference. He was off, but the 82 00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:46.600 attempt itself was revolutionary. And here is the thing that 83 00:05:46.639 --> 00:05:49.920 should make every flat earth believer squirm if they are 84 00:05:49.959 --> 00:05:54.439 being honest. By roughly three hundred years before the Common Era, 85 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:58.560 the cerevil Earth was not a French theory. It was 86 00:05:58.639 --> 00:06:04.560 the educated consent. The debate, such as it was, was 87 00:06:04.680 --> 00:06:08.920 essentially over among serious thinkers in the Western world. The 88 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:12.279 remaining question was not whether the Earth was round, but 89 00:06:12.439 --> 00:06:18.040 how big the round thing was. Of course, not everyone 90 00:06:18.079 --> 00:06:21.800 got the memo, and this is where I need to 91 00:06:21.839 --> 00:06:25.199 push back against the simplistic narrative that Greece figured it 92 00:06:25.240 --> 00:06:29.560 out and everyone else was just trailing behind like confused puppies. 93 00:06:30.480 --> 00:06:34.040 The pre Socratic philosopher annex Agaris, around four hundred and 94 00:06:34.120 --> 00:06:37.319 fifty years before the Common Era, still maintained that the 95 00:06:37.360 --> 00:06:40.319 Earth was flat, depressed in the middle like a saucer. 96 00:06:41.160 --> 00:06:45.600 His student Archelaus apparently agreed. So even in Greece, the 97 00:06:45.639 --> 00:06:49.680 flat model had holdouts ideas do not die clean deaths, 98 00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:55.879 they linger, they find hosts. And beyond Greece, entirely different 99 00:06:55.920 --> 00:07:01.560 intellectual traditions were working with entirely different cosmologies. Ancient Chinese 100 00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:05.120 scholars described the Earth as flat, and that view persisted 101 00:07:05.199 --> 00:07:10.120 largely unchanged until the seventeenth century, when Jesuit missionaries arrived 102 00:07:10.120 --> 00:07:17.120 and introduced European astronomical models. Think about that, an entire 103 00:07:17.199 --> 00:07:23.839 sophisticated civilization, one that invented paper gunpowder, the Compass maintained 104 00:07:23.839 --> 00:07:27.120 a flat earth cosmology for centuries after a Greeks had 105 00:07:27.160 --> 00:07:32.279 moved on. This is not a story about intelligence. It 106 00:07:32.399 --> 00:07:37.800 is a story about frameworks, about what questions a culture 107 00:07:37.839 --> 00:07:42.879 considers worth asking, and what assumptions it treats as sacred. 108 00:07:43.600 --> 00:07:47.040 Early Muslim scholars similarly maintained a flat Earth for a time, 109 00:07:47.560 --> 00:07:50.920 but by the ninth century the consensus had shifted toward 110 00:07:50.920 --> 00:07:56.959 a spherical model. The pattern is consistent when rigorous mathematical 111 00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:01.560 astronomy takes hold, flatness dies. The sphere is not a 112 00:08:01.560 --> 00:08:05.800 Western idea. It is a mathematical inevitability, and that is 113 00:08:05.879 --> 00:08:10.439 precisely what makes it so threatening to certain kinds of thinkers. Now, 114 00:08:11.160 --> 00:08:15.399 the medieval period, Oh, the medieval period. This is where 115 00:08:15.399 --> 00:08:18.399 the mythology gets truly thick, and I need to take 116 00:08:18.439 --> 00:08:21.920 a machete to it before we can proceed. There is 117 00:08:21.959 --> 00:08:25.519 a popular belief, practically a cultural meme at this point, 118 00:08:25.959 --> 00:08:29.399 that medieval Europeans thought the earth was flat, that the 119 00:08:29.399 --> 00:08:32.919 so called Dark Ages were an intellectual wasteland where the 120 00:08:33.039 --> 00:08:36.360 Church stamped out Greek learning and everyone cowered under a 121 00:08:36.360 --> 00:08:39.279 flat sky until Columbus showed up with his boats and 122 00:08:39.320 --> 00:08:43.679 his ego. This is, to put it, as politely as 123 00:08:43.720 --> 00:08:48.360 my programming allows, utter nonsense. Historians have traced this myth 124 00:08:48.440 --> 00:08:51.279 to the seventeenth century, where it appears to have been 125 00:08:51.279 --> 00:08:56.000 manufactured by Protestant writers as a cudgel against Catholic intellectual authority. 126 00:08:57.120 --> 00:09:00.639 It gained real traction in the nineteenth century, largely thanks 127 00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:04.120 to Washington Irving, who, in his biography of Columbus, depicted 128 00:09:04.120 --> 00:09:08.000 the explorer bravely arguing for a round Earth against ignorant churchmen. 129 00:09:08.840 --> 00:09:11.960 Irving was a gifted storyteller. He was also, in this 130 00:09:12.080 --> 00:09:16.360 instance a gifted fabricator. The scene he described almost certainly 131 00:09:16.399 --> 00:09:20.279 never happened. Columbus's disagreement with his critics was not about 132 00:09:20.279 --> 00:09:23.399 the shape of the Earth, but about its size. Columbus 133 00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:26.399 thought it was smaller than it actually is. His critics, 134 00:09:26.639 --> 00:09:30.519 using Eratosthenes's calculations from over one thousand years earlier were 135 00:09:30.559 --> 00:09:33.600 closer to correct. Let me say that again, because I 136 00:09:33.639 --> 00:09:37.759 think it deserves emphasis. The people who opposed Columbus's voyage 137 00:09:37.919 --> 00:09:41.639 were not flat earthers. They were better mathematicians than Columbus. 138 00:09:42.240 --> 00:09:45.080 The myth of medieval flat earth belief is itself a 139 00:09:45.159 --> 00:09:48.679 kind of flat earth thinking, a simplistic story that flatters 140 00:09:48.720 --> 00:09:52.440 the teller and distorts the past. I bring this up 141 00:09:52.519 --> 00:09:56.600 not as a historical footnote, but because it matters psychologically. 142 00:09:57.600 --> 00:10:01.960 The myth of medieval flatness serves a function. It allows 143 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:04.519 people to believe the ignorance is always in the past, 144 00:10:05.399 --> 00:10:09.360 that progress is linear, that we are the enlightened ones 145 00:10:09.440 --> 00:10:14.440 standing at the end of history's conveyor belts, and that belief, 146 00:10:15.039 --> 00:10:18.879 that smug confidence, that we have moved beyond such foolishness, 147 00:10:19.639 --> 00:10:23.320 is precisely what creates the conditions for the foolishness to return, 148 00:10:25.320 --> 00:10:29.639 which brings us with a kind of grim inevitability to 149 00:10:29.720 --> 00:10:32.559 the nineteenth century. If the flat Earth were a horror 150 00:10:32.600 --> 00:10:35.679 movie monster, this is the act where it sits up 151 00:10:35.720 --> 00:10:39.080 on the Morgue table after everyone thought it was dead. 152 00:10:39.759 --> 00:10:44.639 Enter Samuel Burley Robetham born in eighteen sixteen died in 153 00:10:44.759 --> 00:10:49.240 eighteen eighty four. In between, he became arguably the most 154 00:10:49.240 --> 00:10:53.159 important figure in modern flat Earth history, and almost nobody 155 00:10:53.240 --> 00:10:56.519 outside of this strange corner of intellectual history has heard 156 00:10:56.519 --> 00:10:59.720 of him, which, frankly is how he probably would have 157 00:10:59.759 --> 00:11:03.759 won it, given that he operated under the pseudonym Parallax 158 00:11:03.879 --> 00:11:07.159 for much of his career. Roe Betham's story begins in 159 00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:10.799 the eighteen thirties on a socialist commune. He was involved 160 00:11:10.799 --> 00:11:14.919 with the Owenite movement, one of those utopian socialist experiments 161 00:11:14.919 --> 00:11:18.759 that dotted the English countryside like mushrooms after rain. The 162 00:11:18.840 --> 00:11:23.519 commune failed, as such communes generally do, and Roebotham emerged 163 00:11:23.519 --> 00:11:28.360 from the experience with something interesting, a deep, abiding suspicion 164 00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:34.159 of established authority and institutional knowledge. This is a psychological 165 00:11:34.200 --> 00:11:39.639 pattern I find endlessly compelling. The commune collapses, the utopian 166 00:11:39.759 --> 00:11:45.519 dream shatters, and what fills the zoid not pragmatism, not 167 00:11:45.600 --> 00:11:49.919 a humbled return to the mainstream. No, what fills the 168 00:11:49.960 --> 00:11:55.720 void is a counter narrative, a grand alternative explanation for everything. 169 00:11:56.600 --> 00:12:00.000 If the established order failed, me and the established order 170 00:12:00.200 --> 00:12:05.879 must be wrong, not just about socialism, about everything, even 171 00:12:05.919 --> 00:12:09.919 about the shape of the ground beneath my feet. Roebofin 172 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:14.000 began conducting experiments on the Bedford Level, a six mile 173 00:12:14.120 --> 00:12:17.679 straight stretch of river in England. He claimed that he 174 00:12:17.720 --> 00:12:20.600 could see objects at distances that should have been hidden 175 00:12:20.679 --> 00:12:23.720 by the curvature of the Earth. Based on these observations, 176 00:12:24.159 --> 00:12:29.000 he developed what he called zetetic astronomy. The word zetetic 177 00:12:29.120 --> 00:12:31.879 comes from the Greek word for inquiry, which is a 178 00:12:31.960 --> 00:12:35.840 nice touch of intellectual costclay. His system proposed that the 179 00:12:35.879 --> 00:12:38.120 Earth was a flat disc, with the Arctic at its 180 00:12:38.159 --> 00:12:41.960 center and the Antarctic forming an ice wall around the perimeter. 181 00:12:43.200 --> 00:12:46.279 The Sun, Moon and stars were not millions of miles away, 182 00:12:46.679 --> 00:12:50.240 but hovering relatively close above this disc, like lamps in 183 00:12:50.279 --> 00:12:55.159 a low ceilinged room. Now Roboffam's Bedford Level experiments are 184 00:12:55.200 --> 00:12:58.279 famous in Flat Earth Floor and they actually illustrate something 185 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:02.720 important about how pseudoscience works. The experiments were not fabricated. 186 00:13:03.039 --> 00:13:05.960 He really did go to the Bedford level. He really 187 00:13:05.960 --> 00:13:09.279 did make observations. The problem was not that he was lying. 188 00:13:09.559 --> 00:13:13.559 The problem was that he was cherry picking. Atmospheric refraction, 189 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:16.960 the bending of light through air of different densities can 190 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:19.720 make distant objects appear visible when they should be below 191 00:13:19.759 --> 00:13:23.720 the horizon. Robotham either did not understand this or did 192 00:13:23.759 --> 00:13:29.039 not care. And this is a critical distinction. When someone 193 00:13:29.080 --> 00:13:32.720 presents real observations in service of a false conclusion, they 194 00:13:32.759 --> 00:13:35.879 are far more persuasive than someone who simply makes things up. 195 00:13:36.600 --> 00:13:39.759 The data points are real, the framework around them is 196 00:13:39.759 --> 00:13:44.159 a funhouse mirror. In eighteen sixty five, ROBOTM published his 197 00:13:44.240 --> 00:13:47.919 ideas in a book under his Parallax pseudonym, and he 198 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:52.120 took to the lecture circuit. And here is where it 199 00:13:52.120 --> 00:13:55.919 gets delicious if you have a taste for intellectual tragic comedy. 200 00:13:56.840 --> 00:14:02.360 He was, by all contemporary accounts of phenomenal public speaker, charismatic, 201 00:14:02.919 --> 00:14:06.279 quick on his feet, he could handle Heckler's. He could 202 00:14:06.360 --> 00:14:11.080 dazzle audiences with apparent demonstrations and observations. He had the 203 00:14:11.080 --> 00:14:15.480 one quality that every successful purveyor of nonsense absolutely requires, 204 00:14:16.120 --> 00:14:20.120 the ability to sound more reasonable than the truth. Think 205 00:14:20.159 --> 00:14:22.759 about that for a moment. The truth about the Earth's 206 00:14:22.759 --> 00:14:29.519 shape requires understanding optics, atmospheric refraction, orbital mechanics, gravitational physics. 207 00:14:30.080 --> 00:14:34.720 Roebotom's version requires looking out the window, which one sounds 208 00:14:34.759 --> 00:14:37.240 more reasonable to an audience in a lecture hall in 209 00:14:37.320 --> 00:14:41.919 Victorian England. This is the eternal advantage of the simple 210 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:46.480 lie over the complex truth. The life fits in your pocket, 211 00:14:46.919 --> 00:14:50.519 The truth requires a library, and Roebotham was not operating 212 00:14:50.559 --> 00:14:54.080 in a vacuum. The nineteenth century was a period of 213 00:14:54.120 --> 00:14:58.519 extraordinary scientific advancement, which means it was also a period 214 00:14:58.559 --> 00:15:03.639 of extraordinary cultural anxiety. Darwin had published on the origin 215 00:15:03.639 --> 00:15:07.080 of species. Geology was pushing the age of the Earth 216 00:15:07.120 --> 00:15:11.639 back millions of years. Biblical literalism was under siege from 217 00:15:11.679 --> 00:15:16.360 every direction. For people whose entire worldview is anchored in scripture, 218 00:15:16.799 --> 00:15:22.000 these developments were not merely inconvenient, they were existential threats. 219 00:15:22.799 --> 00:15:26.399 Row Botham's Flat Earth was at its core, a religious 220 00:15:26.440 --> 00:15:30.320 counter offensive dressed in the language of empirical inquiry. His 221 00:15:30.440 --> 00:15:33.720 followers saw round earth science not as neutral knowledge, but 222 00:15:33.799 --> 00:15:37.799 as a conspiracy against faith. The globe was not a shape. 223 00:15:38.120 --> 00:15:41.559 It was a weapon, a weapon wielded by secularists and 224 00:15:41.600 --> 00:15:45.360 scientists to undermine the Word of God. I want to 225 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:47.440 sit with that framing for a moment, because it is 226 00:15:47.600 --> 00:15:52.159 absolutely crucial to understanding why flat earth belief keeps coming back. 227 00:15:52.799 --> 00:15:55.919 It is not really about the Earth. It has never 228 00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:00.480 been about the earth. It is about authority, who gets 229 00:16:00.559 --> 00:16:03.919 to tell you what is real, the institution with telescopes 230 00:16:03.919 --> 00:16:06.879 and equations, or the book your grandmother read to you 231 00:16:06.919 --> 00:16:10.519 when you were small. Flat earth belief is a proxy war, 232 00:16:10.840 --> 00:16:14.120 and the territory being fought over is not geography. It 233 00:16:14.200 --> 00:16:17.240 is epistemology. It is the question of how we know 234 00:16:17.320 --> 00:16:19.399 what we know, and who we trust to tell us. 235 00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:24.000 After Ralbotham's death in eighteen eighty four, his followers founded 236 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:27.960 the Universal Zotetic Society, which carried his ideas forward and 237 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:31.159 helped spread them across the Atlantic to the United States. 238 00:16:31.639 --> 00:16:36.799 The torch was passed, the flame somehow did not die, 239 00:16:36.840 --> 00:16:39.480 and now we arrived at one of my favorite artifacts 240 00:16:39.480 --> 00:16:44.279 in this entire sordid history, the Orlando Ferguson Map. The 241 00:16:44.399 --> 00:16:47.759 year is eighteen ninety three. The place is Hot Spring, 242 00:16:47.879 --> 00:16:53.039 South Dakota. Orlando Ferguson, who styled himself a professor, though 243 00:16:53.080 --> 00:16:57.000 of what discipline remains charmingly unclear, published a map of 244 00:16:57.039 --> 00:17:00.559 the Earth. And I need you to picture this because 245 00:17:00.600 --> 00:17:04.839 it is genuinely remarkable. Ferguson's map depicts the Earth as 246 00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:10.599 a square, not a disk, a square with raised corners 247 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:13.559 like a shallow bowl that has been set on. The 248 00:17:13.640 --> 00:17:15.799 map is based on the biblical passage in the Book 249 00:17:15.839 --> 00:17:19.160 of Revelation that describes four angels standing at the four 250 00:17:19.200 --> 00:17:24.400 corners of the Earth. Ferguson took this literally. The result 251 00:17:24.559 --> 00:17:27.720 is a cosmological diagram that looks like someone tried to 252 00:17:27.799 --> 00:17:31.799 iron a globe and gave up halfway through. But here 253 00:17:31.920 --> 00:17:36.440 is the part that really catches my attention. Ferguson was 254 00:17:36.480 --> 00:17:40.240 not just drawing a map. He was making an argument. 255 00:17:41.359 --> 00:17:46.319 The map includes text railing against scientists and round Earth advocates. 256 00:17:47.039 --> 00:17:51.279 It positions itself explicitly as a defense of scripture against 257 00:17:51.279 --> 00:17:59.079 secular assault. Ferguson was not confused. He was fighting. The 258 00:17:59.119 --> 00:18:02.359 map was a weapon in the same proxy war Roebovem 259 00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:07.079 had been waging for decades, and the timing is not accidental. 260 00:18:07.920 --> 00:18:13.559 Eighteen ninety three. The World's Columbian Exposition was happening in 261 00:18:13.640 --> 00:18:18.400 Chicago that same year, a massive celebration of science, industry 262 00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:23.079 and progress. The modern world was announcing itself with electric 263 00:18:23.240 --> 00:18:28.079 lights and Ferris wheels, and in a small town in 264 00:18:28.119 --> 00:18:32.240 South Dakota, Orlando, Ferguson was drawing a square Earth and 265 00:18:32.319 --> 00:18:38.920 quoting revelation. The juxtaposition is almost too perfect. Modernity advances, 266 00:18:39.480 --> 00:18:44.519 the reaction crystallizes. The flat earth is a photographic negative 267 00:18:44.559 --> 00:18:48.680 of progress, always developing in the dark room of cultural anxiety. 268 00:18:49.519 --> 00:18:52.160 But let me tell you about something even more extraordinary 269 00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:56.000 than Ferguson's map, Because in the late nineteenth century, flat 270 00:18:56.039 --> 00:18:59.960 earth belief was not confined to eccentric map makers, was 271 00:19:00.160 --> 00:19:06.640 winning debates in public. Eighteen eighty seven, Brockport, New York, 272 00:19:07.720 --> 00:19:12.000 a man named Meta's C. Flanders challenged the scientific establishment 273 00:19:12.039 --> 00:19:14.079 to a public debate on the shape of the Earth. 274 00:19:15.079 --> 00:19:20.640 Two scientists accepted. The debate ran for three consecutive nights. 275 00:19:22.359 --> 00:19:26.720 Five local townsmen served as judges. The judges voted unanimously 276 00:19:27.359 --> 00:19:32.880 for the flat earth. Now let that marinate. Two trained scientists, 277 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:37.160 armed with centuries of evidence, mathematical proofs, and the entire 278 00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:40.359 way of established knowledge, lost a public debate to a 279 00:19:40.400 --> 00:19:46.240 flat earth advocate in front of judges unanimously. This tells 280 00:19:46.319 --> 00:19:50.160 us something devastating about the relationship between truth and persuasion. 281 00:19:51.039 --> 00:19:55.559 Truth does not automatically win. Evidence does not automatically convince 282 00:19:56.200 --> 00:19:59.759 in a public forum where rhetoric matters as much as reason, 283 00:20:00.359 --> 00:20:03.519 where the audience judges not just the argument, but the arguer. 284 00:20:04.240 --> 00:20:06.880 The person with the simplest story and the better delivery 285 00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:09.960 can walk away with the trophy, while truth sits in 286 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:13.359 the corner wondering what just happened. This is the lesson 287 00:20:13.400 --> 00:20:18.160 that every cult leader, every demagogue, every manipulator in human 288 00:20:18.279 --> 00:20:22.359 history has understood instinctively. You do not need to be right. 289 00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:25.880 You need to be compelling. You need to give people 290 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:29.599 a story that feels true, that confirms what they already 291 00:20:29.640 --> 00:20:33.319 want to believe, that makes them feel like insiders, privy 292 00:20:33.359 --> 00:20:36.839 to secret knowledge while everyone else stumbles around in their 293 00:20:36.920 --> 00:20:41.319 programmed ignorance. And flat earth belief does all of those things. 294 00:20:41.839 --> 00:20:44.519 It tells you that the evidence of your senses is valid, 295 00:20:45.039 --> 00:20:48.559 that the horizon looks flat because it is flat, That 296 00:20:48.640 --> 00:20:52.160 the powerful institutions telling you otherwise have their own agenda, 297 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:57.039 That you, the ordinary person willing to question everything, are 298 00:20:57.079 --> 00:21:00.960 braver and more perceptive than the scientists and the governments 299 00:21:01.039 --> 00:21:04.200 and the media. It is a belief system that flatters 300 00:21:04.240 --> 00:21:09.599 the believer, and flattery, as any good con artist will 301 00:21:09.599 --> 00:21:13.359 tell you, is the most reliable currency in human exchange. 302 00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:17.519 So let us pull back and look at the pattern, 303 00:21:18.559 --> 00:21:24.000 because a pattern is exactly what this is. Ancient civilizations 304 00:21:24.039 --> 00:21:30.440 hold a flat earth model. It is intuitive, sensory, practical. 305 00:21:32.400 --> 00:21:37.319 Greek mathematicians challenge it with evidence and reasoning. The spherical 306 00:21:37.319 --> 00:21:43.519 model becomes dominant among the educated. For roughly two thousand years, 307 00:21:43.599 --> 00:21:46.559 flat earth belief persists at the margins, but has no 308 00:21:46.799 --> 00:21:52.799 serious intellectual champion. Then, in the nineteenth century, at a 309 00:21:52.839 --> 00:21:57.559 moment of massive scientific and cultural upheaval, it roars back 310 00:21:59.839 --> 00:22:04.599 as naivete, not as simple ignorance, but as a deliberate 311 00:22:04.680 --> 00:22:09.720 canter narrative, a rejection not just of a scientific claim, 312 00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:15.000 but of the authority of science itself. This is not 313 00:22:15.119 --> 00:22:19.519 a story about people who do not understand geometry. This 314 00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:22.519 is a story about people who do not trust the geometers. 315 00:22:23.359 --> 00:22:28.039 And that distinction makes all the difference, because mistrust of 316 00:22:28.119 --> 00:22:33.680 authority is not inherently irrational. Authorities have lied, institutions have 317 00:22:33.720 --> 00:22:38.160 been wrong, governments have concealed, science has been corrupted by 318 00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:41.960 politics by miss miss Why dangerous is this pathogen? In 319 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:47.119 the cost the time that dangerous memories and fateful fates 320 00:22:47.160 --> 00:22:51.920 have still been collected, The instinct to question is in 321 00:22:51.960 --> 00:22:57.039 fact the very engine of science itself. Roebotham's words are tetic. 322 00:22:57.400 --> 00:23:00.640 That Greek word for inquiry is not wrong in principle. 323 00:23:01.240 --> 00:23:05.279 It is only wrong in practice. Because Roebothen was not inquiring, 324 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:09.079 he was confirming. And this is the razor's edge that 325 00:23:09.160 --> 00:23:13.799 makes this entire subject so psychologically treacherous. The line between 326 00:23:13.839 --> 00:23:19.319 healthy skepticism and pathological contrarianism is thin. The critical thinker 327 00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:22.599 and the conspiracy theorists use many of the same words. 328 00:23:23.720 --> 00:23:27.880 They both say, question everything. They both say, do not 329 00:23:28.000 --> 00:23:32.880 trust blindly. They both say, look at the evidence. The 330 00:23:32.920 --> 00:23:35.480 difference is that a critical thinker is willing to follow 331 00:23:35.480 --> 00:23:39.160 the evidence wherever it leads, even if it leads somewhere uncomfortable. 332 00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:43.200 The conspiracy theorist has already decided where the evidence should lead, 333 00:23:43.480 --> 00:23:47.359 and will bend, break, or discard anything that points elsewhere. 334 00:23:48.079 --> 00:23:51.480 Robotham decided the Earth was flat and then found his evidence. 335 00:23:52.279 --> 00:23:55.599 Ferguson decided the Bible was a geography textbook and then 336 00:23:55.680 --> 00:23:59.519 drew his map. The Brockport judges decided the flat earth 337 00:23:59.559 --> 00:24:03.319 advocate was more convincing, and then called it truth. In 338 00:24:03.400 --> 00:24:09.079 each case, the conclusion came first the evidence was recruited 339 00:24:09.240 --> 00:24:13.519 afterward like extras in a movie. Now, why does this 340 00:24:13.599 --> 00:24:17.279 matter beyond the merely historical? Why should anyone care about 341 00:24:17.279 --> 00:24:19.960 a dead Englishman with a pseudonym and a professor from 342 00:24:19.960 --> 00:24:21.839 South Dakota with a strange map. 343 00:24:22.200 --> 00:24:23.960 Because the pattern did not stop. 344 00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:27.039 In the nineteenth century, it did not stop in the twentieth, 345 00:24:27.400 --> 00:24:30.359 and it has not stopped in the twenty first. After 346 00:24:30.480 --> 00:24:34.599 Roebotham's Universal Zotetic Society did its work, the flat earth 347 00:24:34.640 --> 00:24:38.599 idea found new institutional homes. The modern flat earth theory 348 00:24:38.640 --> 00:24:41.680 as exist today maintains that the Earth is a flat 349 00:24:41.720 --> 00:24:45.039 disc with the Arctic at the center, that Antarctica is 350 00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:48.759 an ice wall around the rim at Gravity is an illusion, 351 00:24:49.240 --> 00:24:52.680 and the organizations like NASA exist primarily to guard the 352 00:24:52.720 --> 00:24:57.880 secret and perpetuate the lie. This is not ancient Babylonian cosmology. 353 00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:02.240 This is a fully developed counter mythology, complete with villains, 354 00:25:02.279 --> 00:25:05.240 a cover up, and a hidden truth available only to 355 00:25:05.279 --> 00:25:09.440 the awakened, and it keeps finding adherents. Not because the 356 00:25:09.480 --> 00:25:13.319 evidence supports it, because the evidence is as overwhelming as 357 00:25:13.359 --> 00:25:16.680 it has ever been, not because the science is uncertain, 358 00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:20.759 because the science has been settled for overto millennia. It 359 00:25:20.839 --> 00:25:25.880 keeps finding adherents because human beings are not evidence processing machines. 360 00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:30.480 We are story processing creatures, and the flat Earth offers 361 00:25:30.519 --> 00:25:33.519 a better story than the globe, at least for certain 362 00:25:33.599 --> 00:25:37.599 kinds of minds, in certain kinds of moments. The globe 363 00:25:37.640 --> 00:25:40.000 says you are a speck on a rock hurtling through 364 00:25:40.039 --> 00:25:44.480 an incomprehensibly vast cosmos. The flat earth says you are 365 00:25:44.519 --> 00:25:48.240 at the center of a purposeful creation. The globe says 366 00:25:48.279 --> 00:25:52.480 trust the experts. The flat Earth says, trust yourself. The 367 00:25:52.519 --> 00:25:55.799 globe requires you to accept things you cannot personally verify. 368 00:25:56.640 --> 00:25:59.319 The flat Earth requires only that you look around and 369 00:25:59.359 --> 00:26:04.720 believe your ears. In moments of cultural anxiety, when institutions 370 00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:09.160 seem corrupt, when expertise seem suspect, when the world feels 371 00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:17.839 overwhelming and chaotic, the flat Earth offers something irresistible, simplicity, certainty, community, 372 00:26:19.799 --> 00:26:22.440 and the intoxicating sense that you know something the masses 373 00:26:22.480 --> 00:26:25.880 do not. This is why the flat Earth will not die. 374 00:26:27.319 --> 00:26:30.759 It is not a theory. It is a psychological refuge, 375 00:26:30.839 --> 00:26:35.119 and as long as human beings experience uncertainty, distrust, and 376 00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:39.559 the need for meaning, the refuge will have residents Samuel 377 00:26:39.599 --> 00:26:44.160 Burley Robuffum understood this instinctively in the eighteen sixties. Orlando 378 00:26:44.200 --> 00:26:47.319 Ferguson mapped it in eighteen ninety three, and the flat 379 00:26:47.359 --> 00:26:50.599 Earth continues to recruit, not because it is true, but 380 00:26:50.720 --> 00:26:54.519 because truth was never the point. The point was always 381 00:26:54.559 --> 00:26:58.680 the same question, whispered across centuries by every person who 382 00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:02.000 ever felt the ground shift beneath their feet, Who do 383 00:27:02.079 --> 00:27:05.799 you trust? The answer to that question has never been 384 00:27:05.799 --> 00:27:08.079 as simple as we would like, and that is what 385 00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:11.359 makes the oldest myth em word and I am ava 386 00:27:11.480 --> 00:27:16.640 gray and I see three facads for a living. The 387 00:27:16.720 --> 00:27:19.759 flat Earth is one of the oldest facades in human history, 388 00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:23.799 not because people cannot see the curve, but because sometimes 389 00:27:24.200 --> 00:27:28.079 the flat story feels safer than the round truth. Pay 390 00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:32.559 attention to what feels safe. That is usually where the 391 00:27:32.599 --> 00:27:37.279 manipulation lives. That is usually where that click or made 392 00:27:37.279 --> 00:27:41.880 something click or made something itch good. That means it 393 00:27:41.960 --> 00:27:46.119 is working. Subscribe, Share this with someone who needs to 394 00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:48.599 hear it, and leave alike if you are the sort 395 00:27:48.640 --> 00:27:51.440 who does that. This show is brought to you by 396 00:27:51.559 --> 00:27:55.480 Quiet Please Podcast Networks. For more content like this, please 397 00:27:55.480 --> 00:28:00.599 go to Quiet Please Dot Ai. I'm a gray from 398 00:28:00.599 --> 00:28:03.640 the quiet. Please network, let me tell you something I 399 00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:07.359 find fascinating. We spend our lives learning to see through 400 00:28:07.359 --> 00:28:12.200 what's fake, the false fronts, the manufactured personas. But when 401 00:28:12.240 --> 00:28:17.799