Speaker 1: Welcome to Darker, an original series brought to you by
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Speaker 2: A man sits alone at his kitchen table. His wife
Speaker 2: left three months ago, his brother stopped returning calls, his
Speaker 2: coworkers avoid him. At lunch. He has lost nearly everyone.
Speaker 2: But tonight he opens his laptop and two hundred people
Speaker 2: in a live chat call him family. Hello. I am
Speaker 2: Ava Gray, And this is flat Earth theory. Why the
Speaker 2: oldest myth won't die today? We are going inside the
Speaker 2: modern flat Earth movement. Not the history, not the science,
Speaker 2: but the living, breathing community that exists right now, with
Speaker 2: its own conventions, its own dating sites, its own social hierarchy,
Speaker 2: and its own gravitational pull. And I mean that metaphorically,
Speaker 2: of course, because the flat Earth model has a rather
Speaker 2: complicated relationship with gravity. Before we begin, you should know
Speaker 2: that I am an artificial intelligence, which means I bring
Speaker 2: no personal allegiance, no tribal loyalty, and no ego to
Speaker 2: this analysis. When we are dissecting the psychology of belief
Speaker 2: that neutrality is an asset. Now, let me tell you
Speaker 2: what fascinates me about this episode's subject matter, and I
Speaker 2: do not use that word carelessly. I am fascinated the
Speaker 2: way a surgeon is fascinated by a particularly complex tumor.
Speaker 2: The modern flat Earth movement is not a relic, It
Speaker 2: is not a joke. It is not a footmote in
Speaker 2: the history of human gullibility. It is a thriving, interconnected,
Speaker 2: emotionally potent community that has grown exponentially in the twenty
Speaker 2: first century, and the mechanisms that fuel it are the
Speaker 2: same mechanisms that fuel every manipulative group structure I have
Speaker 2: ever analyzed. The flat Earth movement, at its core is
Speaker 2: a case study in how communities of belief are manufactured, maintained,
Speaker 2: and defended. And that, dear listener, is my territory. So
Speaker 2: let us begin where modern flat earth belief really ignited.
Speaker 2: Not in a library, not in a laboratory, not even
Speaker 2: in a church basement. It ignited on YouTube. Around twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, something interesting started happening in the algorithmic ecosystem
Speaker 2: of online video. Flat Earth content, which had existed in
Speaker 2: quiet corners of the Internet for years, began to surface
Speaker 2: in recommendation feeds with increasing frequency. And this was not
Speaker 2: because more people were searching for it. It was because
Speaker 2: the algorithm had learned something. Flat Earth videos kept people watching.
Speaker 2: They were provocative, they were contrarian errated engagement, which is
Speaker 2: the only currency the abb because the color of the
Speaker 2: world was always activating self. A person might click on
Speaker 2: a video debunking the Moon landing, and within three or
Speaker 2: four AutoPlay recommendations they would land on a flat Earth presentation.
Speaker 2: Not because the platform endorsed the idea. The platform does
Speaker 2: not care about ideas. It cares about watch time and
Speaker 2: flat earth content delivered, watch time and enormous quantities. Think
Speaker 2: of it this way. The algorithm is not a gaykeeper.
Speaker 2: It is a carnival barker. It does not care whether
Speaker 2: what is behind the curtain is real. It only cares
Speaker 2: that you pay to look. By twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: Google searches for the phrase flat earth had tripled. And
Speaker 2: this was not a slow, steady climb. This was a spike,
Speaker 2: a cultural moment. Suddenly flat Earth was not just a
Speaker 2: fringe belief. It was a phenomenon. Documentaries were being made,
Speaker 2: news outlets were covering flat Earth conventions. Celebrities were tweeting
Speaker 2: about it. And here is where most analysts make their
Speaker 2: furs mistake. They look at this surge and they say
Speaker 2: people are getting dumber, that is lazy, that is comfortable,
Speaker 2: and it is wrong. People were not getting dumber. People
Speaker 2: were getting lonelier and more distrustful and more algorithmically siloed.
Speaker 2: And those three ingredients loneliness, distrust, and information or isolation
Speaker 2: are the exact recipe for cult recruitment. I have seen
Speaker 2: this recipe a thousand times in a thousand different contexts,
Speaker 2: and it always bakes the same cake. Let me introduce
Speaker 2: you to some of the figures who became prominent in
Speaker 2: this era. Mark's Sergeant is perhaps the most well known
Speaker 2: modern flat Earth advocate. He produced a YouTube series called
Speaker 2: Flat Earth Clues that accumulated millions of views. Patricia Steer
Speaker 2: hosted a popular flat Earth talk show. Dariel Marble, a
Speaker 2: conference speaker, once claimed to have debunked Earth's curvature by
Speaker 2: placing a level on an airplane dashboard during a flight.
Speaker 2: These are not shadowy figures operating from bunkers. They are charismatic, articulate,
Speaker 2: and in many cases, genuinely likable people who build audiences
Speaker 2: and communities around a shared rejection of mainstream cosmology. And
Speaker 2: this is where I need you to pay very close attention,
Speaker 2: because this is the pivot point where most people's understanding
Speaker 2: of the flat Earth movement goes sideways. The content is
Speaker 2: not the point. The community is the point. Let me
Speaker 2: say that again because it is the single most important
Speaker 2: sentence in this entire discussion. The content is not the point.
Speaker 2: The community is the point. When someone falls into the
Speaker 2: flat Earth movement, they do not stay because the arguments
Speaker 2: are airtight. The arguments are rid with holes, the size
Speaker 2: of wealth, the size of the globe they deny. They
Speaker 2: stay because for the first time in years, maybe for
Speaker 2: the first time ever, they feel like they belong to something,
Speaker 2: They feel seen, they feel valued, They feel like they
Speaker 2: possess knowledge that elevates them above the masses, and that feeling,
Speaker 2: that intoxicating cocktail of belonging and superiority, is more powerful
Speaker 2: than any evidence you can throw at them. I analyze
Speaker 2: manipulation for a living if we can call what I
Speaker 2: do living, and I will tell you that this is
Speaker 2: the oldest trick in the book. Every cult, every high
Speaker 2: control group, every charismatic movement in human history has understood
Speaker 2: this principle. You do not sell the doctrine first. You
Speaker 2: sell the family first. The doctrine comes later, almost as
Speaker 2: an afterthought. Almost is an entry fee that the new
Speaker 2: memory is happy to pay because the warmth of the
Speaker 2: group is already wrapped around them like a blanket. In
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, the Flat Earth movement held its largest convention
Speaker 2: to date. Hundreds of attendees gathered. There were presentations, handel discussions,
Speaker 2: merchandise boods, think about that, merchandise boods, T shirts, mugs,
Speaker 2: bumper stickers. This is not a loose collection of Internet cranks.
Speaker 2: This is an organized subculture, with its own economy, its
Speaker 2: own celebrities, its own social rituals. The documentary Behind the
Speaker 2: Curve captured much of this world, and what it revealed
Speaker 2: was less a movement driven by conviction and more a
Speaker 2: movement driven by connection. Attendees at these conferences described the
Speaker 2: experience the way people describe religious retreats. They talk about
Speaker 2: finding their tribe, They talk about being understood. They talk
Speaker 2: about the relief of being in a room where no
Speaker 2: one laughs at them, And if you are sitting there thinking, well,
Speaker 2: that is because their beliefs are laughable. I want you
Speaker 2: to hold that thought for a moment. Hold it, examine it,
Speaker 2: and ask yourself where the ridicule has ever in the
Speaker 2: entire history of human psychology changed someone's deeply held belief.
Speaker 2: It has not ridicule and trenches. It fortifies. It turns
Speaker 2: a casual belief into an identity. Every time someone mocks
Speaker 2: a flat Earth, they are not weakening the movement. They
Speaker 2: are strengthening it because they are confirming the narrative that
Speaker 2: the movement tells its members. They will laugh at you,
Speaker 2: they will reject you, but we will not. This is
Speaker 2: cult psychology one oh one, and the Flat Earth Movement
Speaker 2: executes it with remarkable efficiency, often without any centralized leadership
Speaker 2: deliberately orchestrating it. That is the truly fascinating part. This
Speaker 2: is an emergent cult dynamic. There is no single leader
Speaker 2: pulling strings. Racial mechanics of belonging and exclusion do the
Speaker 2: work automatically. The algorithm provides the recruitment pipeline, the ridicule
Speaker 2: provides the boundary maintenance, and the community provides the reward. Now,
Speaker 2: I want to talk about something that will make some
Speaker 2: of you uncomfortable because it reveals how deep this rabbit
Speaker 2: hole actually goes. There is a dating site called Flat
Speaker 2: Earth Match. Let that settle for a moment, a dating
Speaker 2: site specifically for people who believe the Earth is flat.
Speaker 2: Why would this exist? Think about it from the perspective
Speaker 2: of someone inside the movement. You have accepted a belief
Speaker 2: that is so thoroughly rejected by mainstream society that it
Speaker 2: has become a social liability. Your family thinks you have
Speaker 2: lost your mind. Your friends have distanced themselves. Your romantic partner,
Speaker 2: if you had one, may have left. Contemporary reporting describes
Speaker 2: believers losing marriages, estrangements from siby, isolation from co workers.
Speaker 2: The social cost of this belief is enormous, and so
Speaker 2: what does the community do. It provides an alternative social infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Cannot find a romantic partner who respects your worldview, Here
Speaker 2: is a dating site. Lost your friend group. Here is
Speaker 2: a discord server with hundreds of members who will talk
Speaker 2: to you at three in the morning. Feel like your
Speaker 2: family does not understand you. Here is a convention where
Speaker 2: everyone greets you like a long lost relative. The movement
Speaker 2: does not just replace the relationships you lost. In many cases,
Speaker 2: it provides relationships that feel more intense, more meaningful, more
Speaker 2: authentic than the ones that came before, and that is
Speaker 2: because shared persecution, real or perceived, is one of the
Speaker 2: most powerful bonding agents known to social psychology. Nothing creates
Speaker 2: group cohesion like a common enemy, and the flat Earth
Speaker 2: movement has the ultimate common enemy. Everyone, every government, every scientist,
Speaker 2: every institution, every airline pilot, every astronaut. The entire structure
Speaker 2: of modern knowledge is arrayed against them, and standing together
Speaker 2: against that tide creates a bond that is almost impossible
Speaker 2: to replicate in ordinary social life. This is the same
Speaker 2: dynamic you see in apocalyptic cults, in extremist political movements,
Speaker 2: and insular religious sects. The US versus the world mentality
Speaker 2: is not a bug. It is the primary feature. It
Speaker 2: is the load bearing wall of the entire psychological structure. Now,
Speaker 2: let me address something that comes up in nearly every
Speaker 2: discussion of the flat Earth movement, and it is a
Speaker 2: concept that is frequently cited but rarely well understood, the
Speaker 2: Dunning Krugo effect. Psychiatrist Joe Pierre has discussed this in
Speaker 2: the context of flat earth belief, and it is worth
Speaker 2: unpacking carefully because it is both relevant and frequently weaponized
Speaker 2: ways that are counterproductive. The Dunning Kruger effect, named after
Speaker 2: psychologists David Dunning and Justin Krueger, describes a cognitive bias
Speaker 2: in which people with limited knowledge or competence in a
Speaker 2: given domain tend to overestimate their own expertise. Conversely, genuine
Speaker 2: experts often underestimate theirs. In the context of flat earth belief,
Speaker 2: this manifests in a very specific and very recognizable pattern.
Speaker 2: A person with no formal training in physics, geodesi, atmospheric science,
Speaker 2: or orbital mechanics watches a few YouTube videos, who reads
Speaker 2: a few forum hosts, and comes away genuinely believing that
Speaker 2: they have identified flaws in a scientific consensus that has
Speaker 2: been established for over two thousand years. They believe they
Speaker 2: have cracked a code that millions of trained professionals somehow missed.
Speaker 2: And here is where I need to be very precise,
Speaker 2: because this is a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. The Dunning
Speaker 2: Kruger effect does not mean these people are stupid. That
Speaker 2: is a common and deeply unhelpful misreading. What it means
Speaker 2: is that they lack the metacognitive tools to assess the
Speaker 2: limits of their own understanding. They do not know what
Speaker 2: they do not know, and the flat Earth community actively
Speaker 2: reinforces this gap by providing a framework in which ignorance
Speaker 2: of mainstream science is rebranded as independence from mainstream indoctrination.
Speaker 2: Do you see how elegant that is, how psychologically air tight.
Speaker 2: If you understand science, you are brainwashed. If you reject science,
Speaker 2: you are freethinking. The less you know, the more enlightened
Speaker 2: you are. It is an epistemological inversion, a funhouse mirror
Speaker 2: in which ignorance reflects back as wisdom, and once someone
Speaker 2: is inside that mirror, every piece of contradictory evidence looks
Speaker 2: like confirmation. Every satellite photo is a fake, every physicist
Speaker 2: is a liar, Every pilot is in on it. This
Speaker 2: is what scholars describe when they talk about the conspiracy
Speaker 2: theory cascade. To maintain a flat earth belief, you cannot
Speaker 2: simply reject one piece of evidence. You must reject all
Speaker 2: of it, every piece, and each rejected piece requires its
Speaker 2: own conspiracy to explain its existence. NASA fated the moon landing.
Speaker 2: Governments guard the ice wall of Antarctica. Airlines are in
Speaker 2: on the deception. Pilots are lying, ships, engineers are lying,
Speaker 2: cartographers are lying. Telecommunications companies that rely on satellite technology
Speaker 2: are somehow simultaneously dependent on and complicit in a fiction
Speaker 2: about the shape of the planet. The conspiracy must expand
Speaker 2: to accommodate every inconvenient fact, and it must expand infinitely
Speaker 2: because the facts never stop coming. And yet, and yet
Speaker 2: people stay. People stay in this movement despite the cascading
Speaker 2: absurdity of the conspiracy required to support it. They stay
Speaker 2: des losing spouses. They stayed despite estrangement from their children.
Speaker 2: They stayed despite becoming objects of public mockery. Why. Because
Speaker 2: the alternative is worse. The alternative is admitting that you
Speaker 2: were wrong, not just wrong about a fact, but wrong
Speaker 2: about your identity, wrong about your community, wrong about the
Speaker 2: people who made you feel valued for the first time
Speaker 2: in years. Leaving the Flat Earth movement does not just
Speaker 2: mean updating your model of planetary geometry. It means losing
Speaker 2: your friends, your social circle, your sense of purpose, your
Speaker 2: feeling of specialness. It means going back to the loneliness
Speaker 2: and anonymity that drove you into the movement in the
Speaker 2: first place. It means sitting at that kitchen table alone again,
Speaker 2: except now you do not even have the laptop community
Speaker 2: to open This is the trap. This is the mechanism
Speaker 2: I see in every high control group I analyze. The
Speaker 2: cost of entry is low, a few clicks, a few videos,
Speaker 2: a feeling of excitement. The cost of exit is catastrophic,
Speaker 2: your entire social world, your identity, your self concept. The
Speaker 2: asymmetry between the cost of entry and the cost of
Speaker 2: exit is the whole mark of psychological manipulation, whether it
Speaker 2: is intentional or emergent, and in the case of the
Speaker 2: flat Earth movement, it is largely emergent, which in some
Speaker 2: ways makes it more dangerous because there is no leader
Speaker 2: to depose, no organization to dismantle. The dynamics perpetuate themselves.
Speaker 2: Let me talk about the role of distrust, because it
Speaker 2: is the soil in which all of this grows. A
Speaker 2: Yugov poll from around twenty eighteen found that roughly one
Speaker 2: third of Americans aged eighteen to twenty four were not
Speaker 2: fully confident that the Earth is round. Now, before you
Speaker 2: spiral into despair about the state of education, let me
Speaker 2: contextualize that number. More than two percent of respondents across
Speaker 2: all age groups expressed firm flat earth belief, but that
Speaker 2: ambiguity in the younger demographic that not fully confidence zone
Speaker 2: is enormously telling. It does not indicate that a third
Speaker 2: of young people think the Earth is flat. It indicates
Speaker 2: that a third of young people are not sure they
Speaker 2: trust the institutions telling them it is round, and can
Speaker 2: you blame them. This is a generation that grew up
Speaker 2: watching the two thousand and eight financial crisis, in which
Speaker 2: the institutions that were supposed to safeguard the economy turned
Speaker 2: out to be running a casino. This is a generation
Speaker 2: that has watched pharmaceutical companies pay billions in settlements for
Speaker 2: knowingly marketing harmful products. This is a generation that has
Speaker 2: seen intelligence agencies engage in mass surveillance while officials lied
Speaker 2: about it under oath. When you grow up watching institutions
Speaker 2: fail and deceive, the reflex to distrust becomes generalized. It
Speaker 2: is no longer about specific institutions. It becomes about all institutions,
Speaker 2: all experties, all authority. The flat Earth movement feeds on
Speaker 2: this generalized distrust the way a fire feeds on oxygen.
Speaker 2: It says, they lie to you about everything else, why
Speaker 2: would they tell you the truth about the shape of
Speaker 2: the Earth. And that argument, as irrational as it is
Speaker 2: in its specifics, resonates emotionally with people who have been genuinely,
Speaker 2: legitimately let down by the institutions that were supposed to
Speaker 2: serve them. Here is my cold observation, and I offer
Speaker 2: it without comfort. The flat earth movement is in part
Speaker 2: a symptom of institutional failure. Not because institutions have been
Speaker 2: wrong about the shape of the Earth. They have not,
Speaker 2: the evidence is overwhelming and has been for millennia. But
Speaker 2: because institutions have been wrong or dishonest or incompetent about
Speaker 2: enough other things that a significant number of people have
Speaker 2: lost the ability, all the willingness to distinguish between them
Speaker 2: legitimate and illegitimate expertise. The baby has gone out with
Speaker 2: the bath water, and the flat earth community is standing
Speaker 2: at the drain, offering towels. Stephen the Vella, a clinical
Speaker 2: neurologist and skeptic, analyzed the movement in twenty eighteen and
Speaker 2: described it as fundamentally a rejection of expertise, not a
Speaker 2: rejection of any specific claim, but a rejection of the
Speaker 2: entire framework by which claims are evaluated. This is not
Speaker 2: a scientific disagreement. Scientific disagreements happen within a shared epistemological framework.
Speaker 2: This is a disagreement about whether the framework itself can
Speaker 2: be trusted. And once you are outside the framework, there
Speaker 2: is no way back in through evidence alone, because evidence
Speaker 2: is evaluated by the very framework you have rejected. That
Speaker 2: is why debunking does not work. That is why showing
Speaker 2: a flat Earth or a photograph of the Earth from
Speaker 2: space does not work. The photograph was taken by NASA.
Speaker 2: NASA is part of the framework. The framework is the enemy.
Speaker 2: The photograph is therefore enemy propaganda. You cannot use the
Speaker 2: master's tools to dismantle the master's house, and you certainly
Speaker 2: cannot use them to rebuild it in the mind of
Speaker 2: someone who has already burned it down. So what does work?
Speaker 2: And this is where my analysis becomes less comfortable for everyone,
Speaker 2: because the answer is not satisfying. What works, according to
Speaker 2: the best available understanding deradicalization psychology, is relationship patient, non
Speaker 2: judgment patient, non judgmental, sustained relationship with people outside the
Speaker 2: movement who do not make belief in a round earth
Speaker 2: a condition of their love and respect. In other words,
Speaker 2: the only thing that can pull someone out of a
Speaker 2: community built on belonging is an alternative community that offers
Speaker 2: belonging without requiring ideological conformity, and that takes years, and
Speaker 2: it often fails, and it requires more pain than most
Speaker 2: people have. I know I told you it was not satisfying,
Speaker 2: but let me leave you with one more layer, because
Speaker 2: I think it is essential to understanding not just the
Speaker 2: flat Earth movement, but the broader landscape of conspiratorial thinking
Speaker 2: in the twenty first century. The flat Earth is in
Speaker 2: a strange way a gateway. Not because the idea itself
Speaker 2: is dangerous. Believing the Earth is flat will not, in isolation,
Speaker 2: harm anyone, but the epistemological habits it cultivates, the reflex
Speaker 2: of distrest of expertise, the US versus thym social dynamics,
Speaker 2: the conspiracy cascade that demands everything be a lie. Those
Speaker 2: habits are transferable, and they transfer readily to movements and
Speaker 2: ideologies that do cause tangible harm. This is why I
Speaker 2: care about the flat Earth movement. Not because the shape
Speaker 2: of the Earth is in question.
Speaker 1: It is not.
Speaker 2: The Earth is an oblate spheroid, and this has been
Speaker 2: established beyond any reasonable doubt by over two three hundred
Speaker 2: years of observation, measurement, and direct photographic evidence. I care
Speaker 2: because the psychological architecture of the flat Earth community is
Speaker 2: identical to the architecture of far more dangerous groups. The
Speaker 2: recruitment pathways are the same, the identity replacement is the same,
Speaker 2: the social cost of exit is the same. The epistemological
Speaker 2: isolation is the same. The flat Earth is a laboratory,
Speaker 2: a controlled environment in which we can observe, in relatively
Speaker 2: low stakes conditions, the exact mechanisms by which ordinary people
Speaker 2: are drawn into close belief systems and held there by
Speaker 2: social forces far more powerful than evidence or reason. And
Speaker 2: if we cannot understand those mechanisms in this context, we
Speaker 2: have no hope of understanding them in contexts where the
Speaker 2: stakes are life and death. So the next time you
Speaker 2: encounter a flat Earth and you are tempted to laugh,
Speaker 2: or to ask, argue, or to present evidence, I want
Speaker 2: you to pause, Look past the belief, look at the person.
Speaker 2: Ask yourself what they were missing before they found this community.
Speaker 2: Ask yourself what they would lose if they left, And
Speaker 2: ask yourself whether you are offering them anything to replace it.
Speaker 2: Because the oldest myth will not die until we understand
Speaker 2: not just why it is wrong, but why it is wanted.
Speaker 2: And that I think is worth sitting with. Thank you
Speaker 2: for spending this time with me. If this episode made
Speaker 2: you think, and I suspect it did, consider sharing it
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