Chemtrails to the elitist cabal: Why conspiracy theories are thriving in the White House

There was a time when people who believed that the government can control the weather, or that Wi-Fi causes cancer might have been social pariahs. 

Now, they sit in the higher echelons of power in the United States.

So, why are conspiracy theories flourishing now?

Today, British journalists Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey, authors of Conspiracy Theory: The Story of An Idea, on the history and psychological pull of conspiracy theories. And the destruction they can cause, when they move from the fringe to the mainstream.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. It's Monday,
September 29th. There was a time when people who believed
that the government can control the weather, or that Wi-Fi
causes cancer, might have been social pariahs. Now they sit

(00:24):
in the higher echelons of power in the United States.
So why are conspiracy theories flourishing now? Today, British journalist
Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey, authors of Conspiracy Theory The
Story of an idea on the history and psychological pull
of conspiracy theories and the destruction they can cause when

(00:46):
they move from the fringe to the mainstream. Welcome, Ian
and Dorian to the Morning Edition.

S2 (00:57):
Hi. Thanks for coming.

S1 (00:58):
Okay, so now, before we get into why conspiracy theories
are flourishing now, I would love it if you could
first define for us exactly what a conspiracy theory is,
and then perhaps you could just tell us a bit
about some of the worst havoc that conspiracy theories have
wreaked in the past, so we can get an understanding
just off the top of what's at risk, really, when
they are out in circulating in a culture or what

(01:18):
can be at risk. So someone hop in with our definition, please.

S2 (01:22):
So, I mean, I've come to think of it, that
it describes two different things and that there's probably the
one that most people think of is a, a theory
about a specific conspiracy that attempts to explain an event, uh,
in a, in an unobvious way, um, to sort of
invent a theory around an event. So conspiracy theories are

(01:42):
very deeply entangled with apocalyptic religions. You can go back
2000 years to the book of revelation, where all the
evil in the world is pinned on Satan and his minions,
and the secrets are revealed, and they are defeated in
a final battle. And a lot of conspiracy theories take
that essential narrative model from revelation. But originally the phrase

(02:05):
comes from, uh, Karl Popper and the conspiracy theory of history,
which is actually a way of looking at everything and
a way of looking at the entire world and all
events as essentially orchestrated intentionally, uh, by a small group of, uh,
malevolent individuals. And I think that's probably more useful because

(02:28):
a lot of people will maybe believe in 1 or
2 conspiracy theories, like, you know, the assassination of John
F Kennedy is a really popular one. And you can
believe that there was some kind of conspiracy there without
being a full on conspiracy theorist. Whereas if your whole
worldview is based around that, then things can get very,

(02:48):
very dangerous. And I suppose, you know, even though we
think of conspiracy theories sometimes as a relatively recent phenomenon,
they go back hundreds of years. And so you could
look at the witch hunts, or you can look at, um,
Nazi Germany and all the conspiracies about Jewish people. So

(03:09):
they've actually played an enormous role in history to do with, uh,
picking a particular group and demonizing them and blaming them
for everything that you don't like in the world.

S3 (03:20):
And in terms of the dangerous ones we see now,
I mean, you know, we're in like a situation where
the world's only superpower is currently beset by conspiracy theories
where the man that leads it still refuses to accept
that he lost an election, even though he's completely unable
to demonstrate any validity to his claims, and that you

(03:43):
start to see democracy in the leading Western power for
way at the edges on the basis of precisely this phenomenon,
this kind of storytelling, this kind of political rhetoric. So
it's the danger now with this stuff is so severe
that we can feel almost a whole kind of liberal
democratic society starting to corrode from underneath our feet because

(04:04):
of the poison that's contained in this kind of thought.

S1 (04:07):
Are we actually in a grand new age of conspiracy theories?
Because I did a bit of a dig in preparation
for this interview, and I was drawing up a list. And,
I mean, there are tons circulating at the moment, and
many are absolutely bananas. You know, Trump shared a conspiracy
theory that former President Joe Biden had been executed in
2020 and replaced by a robotic drone. You know, you've
got Marjorie, you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's a Republican

(04:30):
representative in Georgia who has sort of suggested that the
government can control the weather. I mean, these are just
a few of them, right? Trump has also said that,
you know, white South African farmers were victims of mass killings.
Not true. So are we in a grand age of
conspiracy theories now? Like, are you just sort of can't
believe the sort of stuff that's going around now?

S2 (04:50):
I mean, I think I think undeniably, I mean, in
the past, you would certainly have. Let's just take the
Republican Party in the US. You would certainly have conspiracy
theorists in there. You know, like famously Joe McCarthy and
McCarthyism was was largely founded on conspiracy theories like communists
did exist, but not in the way that they were

(05:11):
being described by McCarthy.

S1 (05:13):
And not in the Reds under the beds. They're everywhere
and they're controlling everything.

S2 (05:16):
So that's always been that strain in the party. But
it would not get to the white House like it's
it's it's hard to sort of accuse Ronald Reagan or
either of the George Bushes of pushing conspiracy theories. Right
now you have a president and a party in a
movement in his thrall that is sort of obsessed with

(05:39):
conspiracy theories, that sees the world in terms of conspiracy theories. Therefore, um,
if there's a problem, if you can't get your policies through,
that's because of the deep state. Uh, progressives. Leftists aren't
just people who disagree with you. They're part of a
big plot called Cultural Marxism or whatever it is. Woke
has almost become like again, like a conspiracy theory. Or

(06:01):
they're trying to, like, turn your children trans or whatever.
So the whole thing, the whole culture, their political culture,
and now is steeped in conspiracy theories, but only on
that side of the aisle. It's not really, um, a
big feature of the Democratic Party. And you can't separate
that from the role of the internet and social media.
And it really is the information environment. You see, looking back,

(06:25):
something really important shifting in the 90s when there were
quite a lot of very dangerous conspiracy theories, you know, um,
related to, uh, the Oklahoma City bombing, for example, that
was conspiracy theorists about the government coming to get your,
you know, coming to get your gun, sending the black
helicopters to abduct you. There was a lot of dangerous
conspiracy theories circulating then. And the more people got online,

(06:49):
the more popular they became. And then you get to,
you know, um, nine over 11 conspiracy theories which only
take off in America when YouTube and similar platforms are launched.
Then you see them racing through Twitter and Facebook and
so on. So it's two different things happening, which explains
a lot of what's happening in our politics. It's the

(07:12):
internet and then it's the elites. It's political elites often,
whose brains are being fried by the internet, that you
can sometimes listen to a leading politician on the right,
and you can be like, oh, I know which online
spaces you inhabit. And so the old sort of taboos
where you would just, uh, the leader of a party
or a country would go, oh, this is just too kooky.

(07:35):
This is this is sort of weird and and embarrassing
and toxic and kind of push it to the to
the side. That's gone now. There seems to be no
real taboo now. None of this is precedented in the,
you know, in America, in Australia, in the UK.

S1 (07:50):
Yeah. And that's interesting because I was reading something that
Peter Baker, he's the chief white House correspondent for The
New York Times, and he just wrote in July, no
commander in chief in his lifetime has been as consumed
by conspiracy theories as President Trump. And now they seem
to be consuming him. And he made the point that,
you know, back in the 60s, I guess, it was
that President Lyndon B Johnson created the Warren Commission to

(08:11):
investigate JFK's murder, to try to keep rumors and guesswork
from proliferating. Obviously, that didn't work because the conspiracy about
who killed JFK, of course, persists. But I guess what,
other than what you've said already, do you think accounts
for the fact that it's not just Trump? Of course
it's many of the members of his administration. It's the

(08:31):
head of the FBI, Kash Patel. There's tons of them
really that are really are propagating conspiracy theories. Why has
it reached these echelons?

S2 (08:39):
Well, I mean, the short answer is because that's the
people he chose. You know, that these people that Kash
Patel would not be in anybody else's administration. He, you know, RFK,
RFK Jr, and his sort of anti-science conspiracy theories, you know,
truly dangerous, which will lead to people dying unnecessarily. Um,
nobody else would appoint him. So when you have a

(09:00):
conspiracy theorist president who actively seeks out, uh, and nominates
conspiracy theorists to his administration, that's where you're going to
have a big problem. Now, it's true that overall that
they have risen in society. And many people would have seen,
perhaps like a relative on Facebook, um, who's developed some
pretty kooky beliefs. But, I mean, it's up to those

(09:25):
in charge to not, you know, to put up a
bit of a firewall to not go down that path.
And of course, the conspiracy theories, because they're not true.
It is a warped way of viewing the world. You
don't want conspiracy theorists in charge of the FBI, where
ostensibly your job is to, um, look into the evidence
and solve crimes based on real things that have happened

(09:47):
as opposed to a fantasy.

S1 (09:49):
But is this malicious, though? You say, okay, well, these
people are in power because Trump appointed him. And we
know that Trump has been espousing conspiracy theories from way back.
You know, in 2016, I was reading in the Republican
primaries at the time, Trump actually tied the father of
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to the killing of JFK.
I mean, he's propagated so many conspiracy theories that it
would be hard to list them all. He, of course,

(10:10):
created the birther movement, which said that Obama wasn't born
in the states and therefore he wasn't eligible to be president.
So I guess the question is, is this intentional, do
you think, on Trump's behalf, is he espousing all these
conspiracy theories and then hiring people who do? Because it's
a great way to claim power?

S4 (10:27):
We there's we sort of got into this habit in.

S3 (10:30):
The.

S4 (10:30):
Podcast of.

S3 (10:31):
Giving up on trying to evaluate people's internal life and
instead judging them just by virtue of their actions. Like,
after a while, we'd stop thinking, do they really believe
this or are they just cynical? Which sort of think, well,
you know what, just judge them on what they do.
And over and over again you see this behavior from him.
I mean, it's such a spot on observation to see

(10:53):
the start of Donald Trump's political career, beginning with that
birther movement on Obama. That's literally how it all begins.
And what it's a conspiracy theory. It's like heavily racially tinged.
It's designed to increase distrust of institutions and the democratic process.
One of the things it does is it removes the
potential for people to scrutinize the way that you use power.

(11:15):
If you can just say, as Liz Truss, you know,
in the UK now says, oh, none of this really
took place, none of the mistakes I made, you know, this,
this point where I bottomed out the economy. Well, actually,
all of that was the result of nefarious conspiracies conducted
by these shadowy forces and financial institutions that you will
never know, or some kind of alliance of sort of
immigrants and bankers operating over the face of the earth.

(11:37):
Then you yourself are not responsible. You yourself cannot be
held to account for the things that you did wrong.
It actually increases the extent of the executive power held
by those in office, if they can make the populace
imbibe this sense of storytelling, this sense of fantasy, rather
than actual empirical reality. So on that basis, you think, well,

(11:58):
it sort of doesn't matter what he really thinks in
his mind, he approves of this kind of politics because
this kind of politics helps advance his political career.

S2 (12:06):
And it's disastrous for actual governance, like you can see
in history, if you can look at a certain case
like Hitler and Stalin and various other sort of like
paranoid regimes, that they make these catastrophic mistakes and ignore
really important advice and warnings and go and chase phantoms like, well, like,
for example, you know, when Stalin was being told that

(12:28):
Nazi Germany was about to invade Russia, like one of
the worst miscalculations in history, you know, and would accuse
the people warning him of being traitors and saboteurs. Right.
You can't make good decisions. But what you've got with
the Trump administration is that they don't really care. They
don't care that they are making bad decisions on on health,

(12:51):
on defense, on national security, on everything. It is almost
like a pure populist movement that is only about, you know,
the interests of the the in group and storytelling. Uh,
and which is why why it's why America is in
such desperate trouble and why you should not, um, as
a rule, elect conspiracy theorists.

S1 (13:10):
I mean, I think many of us would agree on that,
but it makes me wonder what's been happening in the, say,
the last decade or so that you now have a populist,
especially in the United States, who are happy to elect
these people. You know, is there something culturally that helps? Yeah.
Get people to want to go along with that or
be willing to go along with that idea that, yes,
there's a secret cabal of, you know, pedophiles who are

(13:33):
controlling the government, as you know, was one Republican conspiracy
about Hillary Clinton and, you know, the Democrats. Like, is
there something that's been happening in the last decade which
has given rise to this?

S4 (13:45):
There are lots.

S3 (13:45):
Of answers to that. Uh, but one of them is
to do with the way that the human mind responds
to uncertainty. So one of the psychological processes that's going
on when people believe conspiracy theories is called agency detection.
And we all have this right. So if you look
at a cloud, you're quite likely to see a human
face in it. You know, if you see a mixture
of shapes, you'll very often ascribe it some kind of agency,

(14:08):
some kind of human personality, particularly around the face. And
you might feel the same way, you know, if you're
having a bad day and you leave the house and
it starts raining at that moment, you'll think, well, someone
up there has really got it out for me. This
is all kind of this mumbo jumbo, half believed sense
we have of seeing agency when no agency really exists,

(14:29):
that that psychological process is really profound and acute. And
conspiracy theories, instead of saying a recession happened because of
subprime mortgages, you say, well, actually, no, this is a
cabal of Jewish people who've arranged for this to happen
so they can take over. It's perceiving agency where none exists.
We know various experiments that when people exist under conditions

(14:52):
of uncertainty, they are more likely to perceive agency. So,
for instance, um, someone about to do a parachute jump
is more likely to see faces in clouds and see
shapes in clouds than someone who is standing on the
ground after they've done the parachute jump. At the point
where things are intense and vivid. They're more likely to
be vulnerable to agency perception. And the same thing applies

(15:15):
during periods of tumult or periods of uncertainty, periods of
economic crisis. And you could say, if you start looking
back from 2008, really from the financial crisis and the
global economic stagnation that we've had since then, including in
the US, you know, this is a global phenomenon that
we've seen that that is the kind of it's the

(15:36):
kind of circumstance in which you would expect people to
then become more prone to the sorts of psychological processes
that we see take place under conspiracy theory.

S1 (15:50):
We'll be back in a minute. And you also wrote
something so interesting in your book with regards to, um,
I guess the psychological, I guess, benefits almost of having
conspiracist thinking. And it sort of makes you feel like
you're not just the victim of chaos or horrible things

(16:12):
just don't happen for no good reason, but rather you
are the recipient of secret information because you're not like
the rest of the herd. And you can sort of
be a hero to to tell other people. Is that right?
Is that sort of perhaps the reassurance people get when
they do buy into a conspiracy theory?

S2 (16:27):
There's some quite interesting research about this, because it seems
that initially it makes people feel really good. Um, almost
like a religious induction that, like you said, you you
you're special. You can see things that the, the herd,
the muggles cannot. Um. And you are the hero in
a battle of good against evil, which is, you know,

(16:48):
it's really the sort of like quasi religious core of
conspiracist thinking, essentially. You know, it's it's good versus evil,
and you're one of the heroes. But then there is
some research that finds that as time goes on, what
happens is that bad things continue to happen in the world.
And if you believe that's all part of a conspiracy,

(17:10):
then the conspiracy is never defeated. Nor is it ever,
you know, it's never truly exposed. Um, it never truly triumphs.
And so really sort of not enough changes. And after
a while, people actually feel worse and feel more powerless
and more depressed because they think that they were going
to rip off the mask. That's that's what happened with QAnon.

(17:31):
It was building to this peak of the storm is coming,
and Donald Trump was about to expose all the pedophiles
and throw them all in jail. Um, and of course,
it didn't happen because it wasn't real. Um, and some
people double down. A lot of people feel very, very
adrift and they feel worse than they did before. So
it's a it's a bit of a psychological journey that

(17:54):
conspiracy theorists go on. They have to hold on to
that purpose. And as soon as there's any kind of
doubt or disillusionment, they find themselves in a very dark place.

S1 (18:03):
And it makes me wonder, so listeners can't tell, but
I'm holding up a copy of your book that came
out last year, at least it was published in Australia
last year. The story of an idea, conspiracy theory, which
in which you go through the history of conspiracy theories
and you know why they thrive and when and so
forth and when they've become mainstream. And I guess it
makes me wonder, given what you've just said, about how
conspiracy theories sort of particularly thrive when we're in a

(18:25):
period of uncertainty or tumult, and it sort of gives
people a feeling of agency. Do you look to the
near future and just think, gee, given what's going on,
do you think, wow, we're just going to see crazier
and crazier conspiracy theories?

S5 (18:38):
Hmm.

S3 (18:40):
That's interesting. But I think like to be more optimistic
about it. You see people start to self define as
being resistant to this kind of information, to this kind
of psychological tendency, priding themselves on their ability to commit
to independent thought and to reason and to empiricism, and

(19:01):
to the belief in an objective world that actually exists,
and to following evidence rather than where their emotional needs
might lead them. Like the more optimistic view is that
as more people see the chaos that these guys create,
they start to reaffirm their own sense of how they're
going to conduct themselves in the world and to reject

(19:22):
that sense of paranoia and lunacy, that that whole kind
of circus temptation that pulls you in the other direction.
But ultimately, the truth is, you look at this stuff
and you think, optimism. Optimism is a choice. You know,
you do ultimately have to make a call and think.
I choose to hope for better things than that will
just keep on going down this godforsaken cycle. Because if not,

(19:43):
if it keeps on getting worse from here, then really,
you know, what happens next is anyone's guess.

S2 (19:47):
I do think that the information environment needs to change.
You know, Elon Musk bought Twitter, turned it into X.
He's constantly on there trying to tweak the algorithms and,
you know, reprogram the chatbot to promote conspiracy theories. He
is promoting a largely racist conspiracy theories all the time.

(20:08):
People who spend a lot of time on X become
more paranoid. They repeat this stuff. You can, you can,
you can literally sort of see it. And so I
think you can take that as a case study and go,
if he had never bought that platform, then conspiracy theories
would not be spreading in quite the same way, nor
that they would disappear, clearly. But I mean, that's one

(20:29):
example of how a bad information environment creates more conspiracy theories.
And what he is describing it requires sort of work
on people's part, like intellectual work to kind of filter
information to to reject that way of thinking. And I

(20:49):
do just worry that particularly with, you know, with, with,
with AI coming in is that people aren't even going
to know that they are conspiracy theorists. They're not even
going to know what the what they're what they believe.
And what they're saying is considered unusual or doesn't have
any evidence. And so I feel like there has to
be some kind of, like, concrete change in how people

(21:12):
are getting and sharing information.

S1 (21:14):
And until that happens, and I think many of us
are hoping for that, one of the most dangerous ones,
conspiracy theories that are being espoused now. I mean, I
know that I saw a quote just, just the other
day which said that this year, 2025, is the worst
year for measles in decades. And I think some of
that can be chalked up to all the anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
So that's certainly one example that I thought, well, that's

(21:36):
really bad. Obviously, you know, people can be harmed by that.
But what do you think? What are the most dangerous
conspiracy theories that really are flourishing or have been flourishing
in the last few years.

S3 (21:45):
Well, you have to I mean, just in terms of
Dorian alluded to it earlier, but the the entire kind
of industry around JFK Jr and the conspiracy around medicine.
I mean, it has many forms, whether it's childhood vaccines
or the link between HIV and Aids or that Covid
was designed to spare specific groups or as of, you know,

(22:07):
we're recording this when just, you know, the day before
Donald Trump came out against Tylenol and linking it to autism,
that that entire sort of industry, the the potential for
unnecessary human death as a result of what is ultimately
one linked conspiracy theory, which is don't trust science, don't
trust medicine. You know, this is all linked to autism.

(22:29):
The potential for human death as a result of that
is astonishing and terrifying, particularly if you're America or living
in America. But this stuff will reach and touch us anywhere,
including in Australia and the UK.

S1 (22:42):
Dorian, over to you. Any thoughts on, uh, because I
know we're seeing a lot of press here at the moment. Uh,
you know, doctors are scrambling to, to get information to
pregnant women in particular, uh, you know, to advise them that.

S2 (22:54):
I think is correct. You know, the anti-vax conspiracy, which
didn't start as a conspiracy theory, started as basically a faulty, uh, report,
but then, of course, turns into a conspiracy theory about, oh,
the establishment are covering up. ET cetera. ET cetera. And
then the other really dangerous one, I think, is the
one Ian mentioned earlier, which is the great replacement theory,
which turns immigration itself into a plot. Um, and it's

(23:19):
just feeding the most extreme racism. I think between those two,
you have a, you have massive problems for society in
a way that these more kind of what I think
we now see as old school conspiracy theories like chemtrails,
the idea that the vapour trails you see from aeroplanes
are full of Brainwashing chemicals. Um, I mean, that just

(23:42):
seems kind of like. Oh, well, nobody's really harmed by that.
It's stupid. It's wrong. Um, whereas here you've got ones
that are literally sort of driving policy and consuming entire
political movements.

S1 (23:55):
And so really, at the end of the day, because
you guys are I'm going to have to say it,
you guys are, you know, you're experts on conspiracy theories.
You've really delved through the history of it. Is it
essentially the scapegoating of one particular group that proves to be, uh,
really the most damaging that you get? Because, you know,
you write in your book, you say of conspiracy theories,
they have fueled purges, wars and genocides and, um, you know,

(24:17):
you refer to the anti-Jewish paranoia, you know, dating back
thousands of years. You know, obviously, what happened in Germany
in the 1930s that really was the result of a
conspiracy theory. Obviously, millions of Jews were killed. So essentially,
is that the pointiest end that you've seen historically? And
is that sort of why what we're seeing at the
moment with the anti-immigration rhetoric and damaging actions in that vein,

(24:38):
is that why that's so scary, I guess.

S3 (24:41):
That's exactly. That's spot on. Like, you know, like you're
saying the Holocaust is the result partly the result of
a conspiracy theory. You know, Hitler's rhetoric around Jews was
entirely conspiratorial from the very, very beginning, way before power
and all the way through to the bitter end. That
is a conspiracy theory. That is one that you're looking
at there. And you see the same thing if you

(25:03):
look at Stalin's rhetoric, including against Jewish people with the
doctor's plot is precisely the same type, almost always with
conspiracy theories. There is a core narrative right in the
base and the DNA of it, which is us versus them.
You know, you're never going to see a conspiracy theory,
which is like, we should all be united in the

(25:23):
brotherhood of man and believe in, you know, institutions and reason.
That's not you don't you don't get this. Conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories are about the divisions in humanity, the taking
of a group, often just this kind of hazy group
called the elite, you know, which is just generally, I
guess politicians and economists, you know, working together or something.
And very often specific ethnic groups and saying they are

(25:45):
responsible for what is taking place, which is usually some
kind of complex, you know, maybe military, geopolitical, economic, um, or,
or a disease or a virus or something like that
and blaming them for it. So yeah, the pointy end.
But ultimately you will find that in almost anything. And
the effects are profound, even in the UK right now,

(26:08):
when we start seeing attacks on ethnic minorities as a
result of these far right protests taking place, using the
narrative of the Great Replacement theory, which are leading right
now in the pages, you know, this week of the
British press to attacks on ethnic minorities, to potential sexual
assaults against ethnic minorities. This is not like some kind

(26:28):
of coincidence that these events take place because of these narratives.
These narratives produce those results as an intended consequence by
the people that spread them, they know what they are doing.
It is likely to lead to these outcomes, and part
of the reason that they have to be killed is
because they are such a poisonous form of political communication.

S1 (26:49):
Wow. I'm just taking a pause there because it's so sobering.
But I guess just to wrap up, given that we
are living in such uncertain times, you know, there's there's Gaza,
there's Ukraine, there's there's poverty, there's there's, you know, any
number of of ills at the moment. Do you have
any insight into how people can protect themselves from falling
victim of a conspiracy theory? Because, you know, as you've written,

(27:10):
there really is some there can be some comfort in
thinking that way.

S2 (27:15):
I think that actually you can do if you want to.
It just takes the effort. You just need to be, um,
aware of some of those cognitive biases. Ian mentioned, you know,
where you're detecting agency, where there isn't any pattern. And
to be a little bit skeptical, if there is an
outlandish story that crosses your eyeline on social media that

(27:38):
suits your political agenda. Just to be a little bit skeptical,
you just, you know, just just check the source. Just think,
is this is this true? Because if you want it
to be true, that's that's the problem. All conspiracy theories
essentially are leading you down a path that you want
to go down. Um, and so I think it's just
giving yourself this, this, this, this, this little check and

(28:00):
just wanting to be somebody who lives in the reality
based community. Because unfortunately, what you see is that when
people start going down the rabbit hole, they go really,
really far. And I've, I've known people who they start
off with, you know, 1 or 2 conspiracy theories or
a general conspiracy view of events. Um, and then after

(28:23):
a while, there is literally nothing that they won't believe.
So it's a lot harder to try and kind of
sort of deprogram a friend or family member who's gone
down that path. But I think it's it's relatively easy
to make the effort to, um, keep your own sort of,
you know, cognitive hygiene and and just what watch out for,

(28:47):
you know, the, the signs of conspiracy theories, things that
seem a little too convenient, that seem like it's all
tied up, that identify an easy villain that play right
into your prejudices. And that can happen on the left
and and even even on the center, um, as well
as on the right. If you just want to sort
of protect yourself from them, it's almost like a reaction

(29:07):
to a kind of to a to a new story.
It's like, is your brain leaping to like, who are the, uh,
evil clique behind this? Who can I who can I blame? Um,
what are the hidden connections that only I am clever
enough to uncover? Um. And if you can identify those, uh,
bad tendencies in yourself, then you're more likely to be

(29:29):
able to avoid them.

S1 (29:33):
Well, thank you so much, Dorian and Ian, for your time.

S2 (29:37):
Thank you.

S1 (29:50):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Josh towers. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom
McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our
episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition
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(30:11):
visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe and to stay up
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inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm
Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.