Hey everyone, it's Anne, so maybe you notice my voice sounds a little ridiculous. It's because I just got back from my 20 year college reunion and I didn't stop talking for a three-day straight. So thank you for tolerating the entire episode is not going to sound like this. Just a couple parts where we insert some extra stuff in, but thank you so much for listening and for tolerating my going back to my glory days in college. Also, today's full episode
is free for everyone. There are no ads and you'll get the whole ask in anything part of the show. The question we answer in that part legitimately almost stumped me, so I can't wait to hear what your answer is in the comments. And as always, we're so grateful to all of our paid subscribers. You make this show possible. We divide all the money that we make equally between me and Melody and right now we've made enough to pay Melody all the way through
December, but if we don't get more subscribers, we can't continue making the show. So if you want the show to continue, go to culturestudypod.substex.com and subscribe today. Okay, on with the show. This is a quirk board of a lot of Post-it notes I made that are connected by, I didn't have any red string on hand, so it's connected by, like, washi tape. That's what it looks like. Yes. And thumbtacks. And let's see if I can start from the top. We've got Gloria Steinem is a
CIA operative to the FBI sabotage the women's lib movement. And of course, the women's lib movement takes us to TERFs. And then TERFs takes us to Joan Rivers being murdered by the deep state. And Joan Rivers connects to the Obama's because, of course, it was the Obama deep state that, I'll just say, did not kill Joan Rivers, but according to the conspiracy theory did. And the Obama's take us to Berthers. I mean, it goes on and on from there. We've
got to post it for Beyoncé faking her pregnancy. Chrissy Teigen eats babies, elite child petto rings, a Jirina Chrome. Oh, lull dolls. I don't even know if those are still around, but these, those L.O.L. dolls, if you drop them in cold water, they, like, did something sexual allegedly cabbage patch dolls being satanic going back to some classic 1980s satanic panic, which intersects with my own childhood. So yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a fun time.
This is the Culture Study podcast and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. And I'm Kristen Conger, the host of the podcast on Ladylike. And most recently, Conspiracy, she wrote. Okay, so that was a great visual description of your corkboard, but why did you make it? So I
am, maybe ironically for a podcaster, I'm a very visual learner. And Conspiracy, she wrote as a concept, kind of started on this corkboard because I was trying to map out the red strings of women and gender in kind of contemporary conspiracy theory culture. How do all of these relate to one another? Yes, yes. I was also trying to understand, at the time, this was still kind of peak QAnon. And I was trying to understand its basics
of like, okay, so we've got deep state stuff over here. And then all of this, Adrina Chrome, child trafficking blood sacrifice, oh, turns out that's old school anti-Semitic blood libel mythology. There's a lot of nativism that then connects back to American histories of like white people coming up with all these conspiratorial tales about how Native Americans were going to steal away their girls and women. Yeah, just kind of trying to connect past
and present, but again through like just absurdity, which are conspiracy theories. Melody says that we have to go, we can't chitchat much because we have a lot of really good questions. But I do want to ask you before we start like, what is your favorite conspiracy theory? And this isn't to trivialize like the various people who are harmed by conspiracy theories,
like all of the different prejudices and that sort of things. But like, there has to be one that you're like, yeah, that kind of hits me in my pleasure centers of like where I like to think conspiratorially. Oh, well, okay. So my favorite is one that I do not subscribe to it whatsoever. But it's the one that kind of blew my mind the most in terms of its intensity. And that is Meghan Markle pregnancy truthers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh,
you're familiar. It's very similar to my favorite conspiracy theory, which is that Katie Holmes was pregnant with a Scientology alien. I haven't heard that one. Well, that's from that old school, like Perez Hilton style gossip from the 2000s, where like part of the way that it perpetuated itself was through people who found it like so ridiculous that it was entertaining. Exactly. But then there are people who are like, no, but really what
if and maybe it's not an alien, right? But maybe there is like a larger conspiracy to like give Tom Cruise a biological child like blah, blah, blah. But yes, similar. So like anything that's truth or about like fake pregnancies. I'm like, why would someone do that? Why would they go through that? That is just a lot. Yeah, having watched too many YouTube videos of it's usually women, you know, alleging that Meghan Markle's children are actually dolls.
Like it was just such an unexpected world to find myself in. But I will, I will quickly mention in terms of one that I like to just mentally engage with because it's kind of fun and way more low stakes and like truly people coming for Meghan Markle give her a break. Yeah. I love a lookalike conspiracy theory. Yeah. So you have, you know, Katie Perry is
grown up, Jean-Bene Ramsey. Yes. Yes. But my favorite I think is Taylor Swift is some kind of clone of Anton Le Vais daughter, Anton Le Vais the founder of the Church of Satan, his daughter who was also recently on the Jordan Petersen podcast. So sorry to hear that clone because back in the day when she was, I guess Taylor Swift's age, she was blonde, fair skinned, wore a red lip and it was kind of it's kind of enough for people to say, oh my god,
twins. Amazing. Okay. So for definitional purposes, what makes something in conspiracy theory and not just like gossip? Great question. The way that I think about conspiracy theories is kind of breaking it down more into conspiratorial thinking and it's three key ingredients. Everything
is connected. Accidents don't happen and nothing is as it seems. And through that pathway, you get to the conspiracy theory itself, which is usually something along the lines of some kind of powerful figure or group is doing something sinister behind the scenes to orchestrate real world chaos and tragedy. Okay. I think this is going to be very useful as we go into our questions because we have a lot of questions about why certain people are often more susceptible
to conspiracy theories and I think that that's going to be a useful framework. So we have three buckets of questions today and we're going to start with the first bucket, which is about women in conspiracy theories, which is your specialty and then we'll get into
some of the why behind conspiracy theories and then we'll do a couple explainers on a few choice theories and today's to ask in anything will be answering a question about how to respond when people in your life start earnestly talking to you about conspiracy theories, but let's get into it. So first we're going to start with a very recent conspiracy theory that went mainstream. The person who submitted this question wants to stay anonymous,
so Melody's going to read it. The Kate Middleton conspiracy theories from earlier this year took off amongst my friend group like nothing I've ever seen before. People that have never engaged with these sorts of things were sending me non-stop conspiracy memes even when I made it pretty clear that I found them weird and distasteful. The intersection of conspiracy and real life domestic thriller, a law-gong girl or girl on the train, etc. seems to have
really ignited something in women. Is this the logical next step from our cultural obsession with true crime slash domestic crime? Wow, so much there. Lots to talk about. But I think before we get into this broader theory, which I think is really, really interesting and I've never heard someone exactly connect those dots, but why do we think that the Kate Middleton saga got so many people latch on to it? What are your thoughts?
Well, anytime we're talking about the royal family, things get pretty conspiratorial pretty quickly. Just given the stakes, given the way that each individual palace has its own PR team and media operation, so they're not really working in concert. There's a lot of competition even between the palaces for how they deal with the press and how they get covered in the press. The UK media system and tabloid system is also just very conspiratorial
in a way. There's more room in its libel laws for not outright conspiracy theorizing, but lots of read between the lines. Lots of loaded ellipses. The thing about Kate Middleton is I experienced the exact same thing Alexander did and it was perfectly timed because I was actually reporting out a Meghan Markle episode as hashtag where is Kate was bubbling up. So I got to interview Royals reporter Ellie Hall, who's fantastic to get her actual like
inside scoop and perspective on it. So my friends were coming to me to explain things. And in a way, I don't so much blame the gone girl true crime women obsessed with true crime culture so much for like pushing it mainstream as what Kensington palis did. Because it was Kensington palace telling the media that an update on Kate's whereabouts were forthcoming and kind of holding them at bay for as long as they could. And then
we get the photoshopped Instagram post. Oh my God. Yes. And that's what's responsible for it. I think yes, because as soon as you had wire services having to print retractions, that was when it burst way beyond anyone even interested in Royals or William Kate. Like my father, my boomer white boomer dad, you know, could touch down on that. Like that's
he's got a baseline for me. Like that's when it really became mainstream news. And then of course, you also have a generation of women at this age who grew up like I remember where I was when I watched like legit. I remember sitting and watching Diana's funeral. I still have my commemorative people magazine with young Prince William on the cover who I was convinced I would marry because he and I are both left handed and that was really
I thought what it would take. I also lived in it. Wow. Yeah. Great. I did well. I did well. I get married together. So it was kind of a perfect storm for this thing to go as viral as it did. I also think the kind of cultural conditions of your true crime, domestic kind of a gone girl dramas that have really captivated a lot of people just energizing it even more. Yeah. Well, and I think the backdrop of the success of the crown and the idea
that women within the monarchy are held do not have control of their own destinies. Yeah. Made it easy to map some of these theories onto what was happening. So in my mind, you have the information vacuum. Yes. That is then filled by all of this knowledge that we have about how the firm as it's called has operated historically. Right. And so it makes total sense. Like this would not you would not have similar conspiracy theories happening
around a different, I don't know, say like a president or something. Although there are similar conspiracy theories around the monarchy and monaco. I don't know where that is right now, but historically there was a lot of like she was very unhappy. Not that she was like
disappearing, but just that like she had been wet off outside of her control. But I think that you have that that perfect mix of not enough information to satisfy people and then a whole lot of information that people can like plug in to come up with various theories
of what is actually happening. And also the other thing I will say is that I think that the reason you had so many people who were not usually conspiratorial minded, participating in this is that we have we are in a nature of celebrity gossip and celebrity information and there are very few celebrities who feel like global or even national touchdowns. Right. And so instead like she what was happening felt like something to talk about. This was
also we have to remember this is like the death of winner. Right. Nothing else is going on. And I don't think that you can discount the ways that conspiracy theories explode when there is not. We are doing moments of anxieties certainly, but also moments of like TDM and boredom. Okay, correction. Not the depth of winter. The worst part of winter. The
AIDS of March was when a lot of this went on. Okay. Another piece of this too that also jives with just kind of conspiracy templates because a lot of conspiracy theories as kind of wild as the details are they're often you know, huge to particular kinds of formats and genres. And on the other side now of the Kate Middleton, you know, PR fiasco where now we know where she was and we know that she was a way taking care of her health. Yeah.
The celebrity is kind of disappearing from public eye. And you know, and there's a ton more that we could say just about like female public celebrities disappearing from public eye. That's often a space to when you know, just random celebrities will constantly get
death hoaxed if they just aren't see. Right. Regularly enough. So Avril Lavigne. I think you know, the the fandom conspiracy theory about her that she has had to live down now for since the early 2000s is that she died and was replaced while she was recording her second album. And it kept recirculating every few years. And kind of the worst time that it really spiraled out of control was when she had taken off a significant amount of time
because come to find out she was treating like chronic Lyme disease. Right. And like had to be away. But imagine you were taking some time for yourself. You are seeking medical treatment, taking care of your health. And at the same time, your most committed die hard stands have started a change.org petition to get a proof of life from you to prove that you Avril Lavigne are not actually a look like named Melissa Vandela. Like that's where
it starts to get so so wild. Yeah. That's like these narratives fill that vacuum. Exactly. Because she wasn't giving information about what was happening. Right. And there is this expectation now for celebrity transparency. And we still haven't gotten a ton of information. But I do think it's notable that once she published the video Kate Middleton, it really shut things down. I mean, of course, there's still people like the top comment last time
I looked at that video on X. The very first comment is, is this AI? It's both new and not new. Okay. Next question is about your sweet spot. And it comes from Anna. Why do conspiracy
theories seem to flourish more among communities of women than among men? I've personally wondered if it begins when women first become mothers and fear drives them to buy not just every safety lock, but to obsessively read product labels and then from there into the world of conspiracy theories by way of non toxic anti-vax and high-big, far-mass social accounts, businesses and the like. Is it more than that? Or is it less? Because factor
mains, men can be conspiracy theorists too. Take for example, professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who is profited off of women and men with his hyper masculine marketing of very sketchy supplements and survival case. All right. I have a theory, but I want to hear yours first. So I want to clarify that it's not that conspiracy theories flourish more among women. They flourish differently. And I think up until quite recently have
gone very much overlooked. Whereas, yes, in the conspiracy space, the people who have been monetizing it for, you know, since the 90s really are your Alex Jones's, your David Ix. I think it's how he pronounces last name. Like it is a very Joe Rogan, you know, yeah, these are very can be very male dominated spaces, but there's also kind of the whole
wellness, conspiratuality, space where there are, you tend to find a lot more women. And yes, anything that is attached to motherhood and parenting is understandably appealing to plenty of women. I mean, and I think that that's something that pastel Q and on just really laid there. Yeah. What's your theory? So my theory is two part. Well, one is that
like you take the like, and we're going to talk a lot more about this. I'm sure over the course of the episode, but like no longer having trust in public institutions, right, including public health and like parenting institutions and not necessarily having the sort of like trusted wisdom from your community group or your parents or whatever it is means that you are more susceptible to conspiracy conspiratorial thinking when it comes to things
that are happening to your kids. I think like there's just a big fear. So that's part of it. But my bigger thing with women and conspiracy theories is patriarchy, right? You're like, what are all the forces at work that make it so that like the wage gap persists? Like all of these different things, right? And how do you explain it? How do you explain the endurance of the patriarchy? You have to come up with big wild theories. Otherwise,
it's just like, men think that they're better than us. Like I just, you know what I mean? I think that that is like a larger kind of like exploding brain theory of it. But that's what I think makes us more women in general more susceptible to this sort of thinking. Like how else do you explain it? Yeah. I mean, and they're like relatively early on as I started researching, you know, I was back in my court board days. Yeah. I definitely
had to pause for a minute and think like, wait a second, patriarchy feminism hang on. Am I am I conspiracy theorists? And it's not a coincidence in right wing political conspiracy theories that feminists are often like the go to target of conspiracy theories. Like we
are, of course, like handmaids of the new world order. Right. Right. Well, and this is interesting right too, because I think that if you are really engaged in feminist politics, then you can look at the world and think ideologically, oh, the reason things are the way that they are. They're, they feel so intractable is because of systems like white supremacy or patriarchy. But if you're not used to thinking sociologically like that, then you have to
have a different paradigm for why the world is the way that it is. And a theme that I will probably reiterate in our conversation is that conspiracy theories are all about emotions. Like the reason we get so invested in them is because yes, there is a pleasure aspect of it. And it's also, you know, they are kind of inherently emotional spaces. We're talking about binary good versus evil, right versus wrong. Like it's a very stark kind of worldview.
And just to go back to Anna's question and the motherhood piece, this is something that Annie Kelly, who is a long time like anti feminism and online extremism researcher has uncovered especially around pastel QAnon and anti-vax moms. She was talking to me about spending time inside of an anti-vax mom Facebook group. And she was surprised to find herself,
you know, not empathizing with their, you know, anti-vax stances. But the kinds of stories that women would start sharing about kind of what led them to the spaces often had to do with how they were treated during the pregnancy and childbirth experience and also feeling like, okay, and as soon as I delivered that baby, no one cared about me anymore. You know, and medical gaslighting, I mean, that's an un-lady like that is a constant theme.
And that was a light bulb moment for her of saying, okay, we, you can't just write everyone off as tinfoil hat nuts. Like we have to go back to what the actual kernels of truth that are then leading people down these rabbit holes.
Yeah. And when people don't believe what you are telling them about your own pain, your own body, your kids pain, like, there has to, you have to come up with another framework to explain what's going on there because otherwise it's just like, like you said, medical gaslighting, I was just reading this great book about the history of the Caesarian and there's just all of this trauma amongst women who have like felt their Caesarians and that doctors
like either don't believe them or discount their pain and all those sort of thing. And like, I can see how if you're dealing with the aftermath of like this traumatic medical event that you'd be like, oh, maybe they want me to feel this pain or maybe there's a larger like organization at work that is trying to get women to have Caesarians, right? Like there's just so many different directions you can go when you're trying to grapple with that sort
of thing and people aren't taking you seriously. Okay, so we should transition to our next question, which comes from Claire. My mother has gotten into conspiracy theories just for fun. I think it's a slippery slope, but she insists it's just fun to think about aliens building the pyramids. Is there a
healthy way to indulge in conspiracy thinking? Hmm. Kristen, what do you think? I mean, honestly, Claire, I want to know more about your mom and when she says just for fun, is this because she's been talking, you know, about aliens building pyramids for two straight hours and, you know, like what kind of what is the degree of this just for fun? Well, and I think of something like the pleasure in reading the DaVinci code, right?
It's like, wow, what other secret is there? Right? Like it's that that's fun. It's an adventure story. The first thing that comes to mind for me personally and like my own media consumption habits is I consume way too much bravo content. Too many housewives. I know I know too much and then it's melodrama. It's just gossip. Yeah, it's just a story. It's yeah, there's nothing right or wrong about it. I also have kind of boundaries with
it where I'm not in comments engaging when scandal all happened. Like I let my, you know, my podcast friends tell me about it in my ears, you know, but I'm not spending a lot of time going down Reddit rabbit holes and things like that. Like it's it's not the conspiracy theory itself or finding entertainment in that that is unhealthy. It's kind of what
purpose it's serving for you. And then what you choose to do with that information. Like if if Claire's mom is just enjoying watching, you know, binging ancient aliens on the weekends, okay. But if your mom suddenly is like, posting on Facebook, because you know it's going to be Facebook. Oh, man, those alien pyramids. It's like, that's when when it starts to
kind of like take over more than maybe there's cause for concern. The more people that I talk to have who have been studying conspiracy theories and their kind of media ecosystems and the beliefs and how they work. Something that I've heard over and over and over again is basically like, we don't need to be just like afraid of all of this stuff. Like are we living in a very conspiracy-pilled moment? Yes. Yes. Is that great? No. But it didn't
come out of nowhere. It's not this all of a sudden kind of thing. And for me at least, like really once you start to contextualize some of this, it at least takes like the immediate panic level down a smidge. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think like seeing, okay, so what are they like, is this entertainment value? Like is it actually something that they're like, this is funny? Like this is interesting for me to think about. Or is it something that is affecting
the way that I view the world and the way that I trust public institutions? Like how does the, how does it believe in that like the, I don't know, the moon landing was staged transform into the election was stolen? Like those are the ways that you have to think about like, have we reached that point? Or is it still like, I kind of don't trust the government? Which it's, it's healthy to have a moderate distrust of the government. I think. Yes. But
I, that those words came out of my mouth and I was like, I do believe that. I was like, I, you know, is that controversial? I was like, but I do believe that. I believe that like, it's, we should be questioning and interrogating the way that the government works. All right. So, next question is about again, about the appropriate ways to engage in conspiracy theories. This is another question from Anna who submitted two really good questions. This is very rare.
But, you know, when you do a really good question, they can do it. In today's climate, calling somebody a conspiracy theorist is a top tier takedown, especially when in reference to a public figure. With it being such a loaded label, how can we balance questioning status quo and being curious or open-minded with reason? In other words, can we be curious or fringe without being a conspiracy
theorist? And is there a chance that openness to hearing out people's theories might make conspiracy theorists tribes less powerful because there might be less social rejection driving people into their arms? Great question, Anna. And also, I teed that up really well without even realizing it. So, Chris, and what do you think of this question? Okay. So, how can we balance questioning status quo and being curious? I mean, this kind of goes back to what I'm saying about, like, we don't,
we don't have to be afraid of these things necessarily. Being called a conspiracy theorist is, you know, absolutely a pejorative. But the fact of the matter is, we can still operate and ask questions from, like, a grounded, connected to reality kind of place. Right. So, give me an
example of, like, what that looks like. Okay, let's go to where is Kate? Yeah. I think that it's acceptable and not at all, fringe, to look at an institution, like the monarchy, the firm, understanding its, you know, kind of general machinations in terms of the image that it needs to present versus, like, whatever might be happening behind the scenes, it's, it's perfectly rational to look at that and say, hmm, maybe what Ken's eaten palace or Buckingham Palace, whatever palace
it might be. Maybe the palace is not exactly saying what's going on. And I don't think that that's a fringe space to go. I think once you start questioning everything, going back to those three key ingredients of, you know, accidents don't happen. Nothing is as it seems. Everything is connected when it's the entire world view is starting to look, you know, uncanny valley. I think that's
when it starts getting into the fringe. A moment that I experienced recently where I caught myself in that, you know, three ingredient conspiracy thinking soup was the day that the attempted Trump assassination happened. Oh, right. Right. I was out to dinner with my husband and a couple folks and we got back in our cars after dinner and like, checked our phones and like, oh, and I just saw the photo first, the fist up photo. And my immediate thought was, oh, will this
look staged? I went there. Like, that was my immediate place of like, oh, because Trump is a liar who lies about everything. Yes. Yes. So that is not like an unsubstantiated theory. Yes. And the optics of it, like, it just seemed in the timing, the timing is too perfect. It's all too too good to be true for him. And I realized I was doing the thing that I've been researching, you know, for four years now. And that's when I remembered, okay, wait, Ockham's razor, very helpful
to shave with. And those kinds of moments because it's like, all right. So either there was some kind of setup where this random kid was on a roof at a rally and managed to just shave, you know, just nicked an ear. Trump was willing to get shot, but, but not too shot. You know, like,
is it either not too shot? Yes. Either this whole scenario with all these individual players and parts like everything had to work out exactly as planned or what is far likely and a country where we have way too many guns and young white men committing way too
many mass shootings. Like, what the news is telling me happened probably happened. At the same time, I also want to legitimize our immediate reaction to thinking maybe this was in part staged because of what we know about him and his campaign and everyone that he surrounds himself with, right?
But when then many journalistic sources are reporting that this is not the case, then I think that that's where you can be like, oh, okay, I understand why my mind went the way it did, but I will say that one thing that I find really interesting about my own reaction to things is because I've studied the history of stardom for so long, anytime I see things happening around a public figure or celebrity, I immediately interrogate and I'm like, okay, so what was going
on with their publicist? How do they think about this? You know, what images are they releasing? And how did they think about the staging of these images? What paparazzi did they tip off? Like, what we see of a celebrity or a politician is always the tip of the iceberg. And so sometimes it's interesting to approach public events from that viewpoint of being like, well, there was a whole lot else going on that we didn't see or even like bite and dropping out of the race.
We can all understand that there was a lot of things happening behind closed doors that we may or may not ever know and not think that it's a conspiracy. Like, there's a fine line right between like understanding that there is organizational scheming, yes, and that that's different than everything. We can't trust anything. Right. And that it's some kind of nefarious plot. Right. And with like, when I think about what stars, like, yes, a lot of it is manufactured and
a lot of gossip is placed and a lot of paparazzi is staged. But then you still have the authentic star who is at the core of it. So even if like, some of their hobbies might be made up. Or like, you know, they were told what to say in an interview where they're faking a romance, all things that have happened in the past and continue into the present, they're still ultimately a person. And like, you can't totally fake a personality. And I think too that, you know, with the with the
Trump example, yes, my mind was spinning for a hot minute. But I wasn't, I wasn't hopping on and like I did not then broadcast all of my, you know, hot tastes in that in that moment. Because I knew it was unnecessary. Okay. So our next two questions are about the forces at work and conspiracy theories. And this first question comes from Aaron. I work for a 178 year old educational and research institution. There are some really yucky conspiracy theories about what we're supposedly hiding
in our vaults. People like to yell at us on social media to finally reveal the truth. And it seems to flare up worse around election time. Is there some entity intentionally pushing harder on these conspiracies ahead of election day? How and why? Is it the conspiracists anxiety flaring up? I, this is like a conspiracy theory around conspiracy theories. What do you think is going on here?
I think that I'm not surprised to hear that it intensifies around elections, conspiracy theories, and any kind of conflicted event, which I think a very intense presidential election like this one counts. Any kind of major event like that is going to gin up conspiracy theories. So that's a baseline as far as unentity. No, I don't think that there is like one entity. It's a bunch of them because there is a whole kind of MAGA right wing media ecosystem that
has made partly like a business out of perpetuating this kind of stuff. And it also makes me curious about like what kinds of platforms you're talking about specifically because now it's like if you're on X, like if we're talking about a conspiracy theory on X, it's so like dark web, MAGA conspiracy piled over there that it's kind of another world. And I think that there might be
concerted efforts in the sense of like trolls maybe coming more on moss. But I just think that if you are, if you are an institution like this that is constantly like four years and years decades has been the subject of conspiracy theories, like these things just get recycled over and over again. So unfortunately, like if you're there, the conspiracy theories will inevitably come.
Well, and this is why I also think that more and more institutions are either like significantly moderating or turning off comments on places like Facebook because they want to publicize like, oh, here's what we have in our archive. Like, you know, like publicizing the archive is something that is like a really important and cool thing to do. But at the same time, you are also creating
a venue for those conspiracy theories to be publicized, right? Like maybe someone never heard that that was even something that you could think about what was in the vault until they read it in a comment on a random Facebook page that surfaced on their page because like they follow some other local historical organization. So it's worth thinking about how these theories are disseminated to like just like the visibility. Whereas before it was like, you know, like pamphlets that would
circulate, right? We're like talk radio, things that were not part of the record in how we think about like, oh, here's a Facebook page where I see this theory, it's surface every single time we post something. And that's why, you know, concern about, oh my god, are we all conspiracy theorists now?
Like what has happened to our society? That kind of fear also makes a lot of sense because the basis of a lot of it is not new at all, but the speed at which things spread and can be created and can be ingested is just that's kind of what's out of control and makes it feel as if it's overtaken everything. Yeah. Okay, our next question is about the forces behind conspiracy theories and it comes from Leslie. Could you discuss a bit of the history of the connection between
conspiracy theories and anti-semitism? For example, 1930s Germany through Marjorie Taylor Green and Jewish space lasers. Yes, yes. Women are essential to that particular history. And this is something that I unpack in the first episode of conspiracy she wrote. And it is specifically, it focuses in on this woman named Nesta Webster who was a trailblazer in a way who deserves no celebrating because this is almost exactly a hundred years ago after World War One and the lead up to World War
Two. This woman Nesta Webster is a British aristocrat who is mildly interested in women's suffrage, but she's also smart enough to know that women only getting the vote is not going to do all that much to really level the playing field. She didn't want to get married initially so she went on an eat-pre-love trip around the world. In some ways, she almost could have been like taking another path and become a gender studies professor. Not that those existed back then, but what then ends up
happening is she gets married to a rich dude. She has some kids and she begins a writing career as a historian focused in really around the French Revolution. And she publishes a couple of books and they're very well received. She has, I mean the books are like reprinted. It's all fine, well and good. Nesta though, long story short, gets her hands on some old school illuminati conspiracy theory literature.
And the whole illuminati lore began post-French Revolution when the aristocracy is like looking at the ruins and saying like how could this happen? All of these nobody's rising up and taking over. There must have been someone helping a secret cabal if you will. And that is where secret societies and the illuminati specifically first become conspiracy theorized. Nesta gets her hands on this because she's obsessed with a French Revolution from an historical perspective.
But then things take a turn and she starts to believe that she's a reincarnation of a a French aristocrat who lived through the Revolution really strongly identifies with this. And her next book is basically about that. She starts to to write about how she has discovered that everything written in history books is false and come to find out there has been this whole illuminati plot
that has been puppet mastering the history as we know it. And what's fascinating is, well one, what she brings into the illuminati mix at that point is protocols of the elders of Zion and anti-Semitism. So she shifts it from you know the secret society that's really just kind of interested in more enlightenment intellectualism and adds to that. Oh and also the Jews. Right. Which was rampant in that section of society at that time. Absolutely.
And some of it also was spread through like women's salons and you know these groups you know kind of word of mouth. And the book that she publishes about this ends her reputation. She loses all public credibility. And this is something that we've seen before. It reminds me of Naomi Wolf. Yeah. And her pivot because Nesta Webster becomes so outraged that people don't respect her like anti-Semitic illuminati mongering that she just digs in further. And she's just a full blown
fascist. And the book that she writes ends up you know infiltrating right wing American politics, evangelical Christian fundamentalism like all of this stuff that would then bubble up in the wake of the Cold War in the US. So we have like I mean it's really the anti-Semitic stuff is baked in from the jump. And I was just fascinated to learn that oh my god. And it was this woman cooking up some of this this stuff with help from some other women who were just you know
connecting all kinds of dots because they didn't have jobs they had the time. But it took them years to do this. Whereas you know if they were just online today like they'd probably have honestly like a sub-stack empire let's be honest. Within a couple of weeks they just out they'd be right to do. But I mean but what I wonder though too like why why is it that if you scratch any conspiracy theory like if you just go a little bit deeper than the anti-Semitism emerges like why is that
like the epidermal layer of all of these. Do you know what I mean? Yes I think I think because it is baked in to illuminati conspiracy theories because illuminati is really just like one term for this idea of you know new world order or elite cabals the Hollywood cabal like it's all roads eventually lead back to the same same stuff these same dots that people have been attempting to connect for a century plus. Which is rooted in all of like the old tropes of anti-Semitism about
like money and it's baked into all of it. Yeah. And that's where and that is where it starts to get slippery slope of like I think it is helpful for people eyes wide open to understand you know even if we're talking about like illuminati you know celebrity rumors that seem very trivial. Yeah
we still got to know where that stuff is eventually going to take you. Right. Okay to wrap it up we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit about a conspiracy theory that has swept through as you said like pastel QAnon like a lot of different Facebook groups said I know people are part of like it's just everywhere. So this specific theory comes from a different listener named Anna and Melanie's gonna read it. What is the deal with the fixation on sex trafficking by conservatives
and suburban dwellers? As a white woman in the suburbs of a red state I am flabbergasted by how often I am fed stories of child abductions and parking lots or bigger sex trafficking networks. I see it covered often by my conservative friends. I am in no way minimizing the horrific nature of sex trafficking but it seems disproportionately reported and focused on by the ultra conservative
and evangelical groups. Well and there's also all of this like symbolism like oh if you see one of my favorite tic-tocs is like this woman who walks out of her house and like points out a car with a bumper sticker for like I don't know Taylor Swift or like a school baseball team and it's like sex trafficking right like so you somehow you see the signs everywhere once you start to look for it and okay I think that there's that Jeffrey Epstein of it all combined with QAnon combined with like
incredible fears about the future of children that probably have a lot more to do with climate change and public health and mass shootings and anything to do with child sex trafficking but like they consolidate onto the idea of like what if my kid gets abducted and in sex traffic that's my
that's my constellation. I also think you know in the context of Epstein and QAnon I think that there's also a piece two of the me two movement kind of being warped and weaponized to feed it as well but the thing with the sex trafficking and pedopanic like I honestly could do a whole separate
season just on that because it runs so deep and has been relied on for ages now by like reactionary right wingers and more like evangelical groups to essentially like make people afraid yes and it's just it is an age old way of getting people scared about the other who different is waiting yes
you are in danger and there is still like the animating force of white women's purity and like sexual safety all of that is still extremely potent and if we look back in history going back all the way you know to the 1830s there was massive like anti Catholic conspiracism in the United States
because you had a lot of immigration from Ireland at the time a lot of Catholicism coming into the US and Protestants were working overtime to spin that into some kind of plot that basically the pope was you know trying to take over and one example of this that to me resonates a lot with you know
the same kind of sex trafficking conspiracism today is a book called the awful disclosures of Maria Monk that came out in 1836 don't read it it's a total fabrication but this book was kind of the the alleged story of this woman who a real woman who was as they put it back in the day and on
wet mother and she was pregnant because according to this book she had been sent away to a convent and all of the priests it turns out it was like you know kind of like a QAnon hellscape of all of these priests and sexual abuse and awful things happening at Nunneries there was in fact
like a convent like girl school outside of Boston that was burned down around then because people were convinced almost pizza gate style that like that that Nunneries were you know defiling all of these young women and that book obscures it is today was I think best seller on the level
of Uncle Tom's cabin and fast forwarding to like the progressive era we get the passage of the man act and this whole obsession with so called white slavery and anytime you have these moments of like mass immigration you know and these like nativist fears coming up you often have with that
some version of white women focused sex trafficking because also I'm not exactly sure oh yes in the annus question she does specify oh no she's specified she's a white woman but I feel like a lot of this kind of sex trafficking panic she's talking about is very targeted yes I wait
wait targeted white women yeah which isn't new at all and often I think is in service of reinforcing patriarchal masculinity whether that is through laws or through men needing to be men to protect their tradwives right and yeah you have to like you need the safety of a man in order to survive
so you need to be within the family unit and you need to submit to your husband who will protect you and all of those different things we could do like 17 episodes just unpacking everything that is happening here I just made your description of that book makes me think of GoAscalus which was also
like a manufactured narrative to like scared kids straight because women had more like sexual freedom and latitude than any other point in American history so it's like oh what should we do we should publish this book that like I so read it I devoured it years after it came out like everyone I
knew had read it and is also spot on with the ultra conservative and evangelical groups because I think it also it ties in so perfectly with the purity culture and just like straight up like fear of female sexuality and the the power that it has over cisgender men just like all of those
kinds of toxic messages yeah and it's also another potent space too where you can also get these kinds of uncanny alliances between you know an ultra conservative evangelical group and you know more like a mainstream feminist group because who doesn't want to protect women and girls
you know it's kind of that I always say that like because there's the overlap between isn't it there's an organization that is very legitimate called save the children yes yeah that like Jennifer Garner is very involved in right and then there's another one that's like
an anti-sextrarchy and a Q&N situation that had marches and that sort of thing that is not that and but that that that speaks to the overlap that you get right between someone who just likes Jennifer Garner and someone who is suddenly like looking for signs of sex traffickers and
there's a permanent malparking lot and I think if anything what it what it reflects again is that there is something from my observations I just think that there is a lot of like just gendered stuff baked into these kinds of conspiratorial spaces today where it's really playing into whether
it is like motherhood role or you know protecting women or men be mom bear the mama bears yes um so that's that's got got to me making a podcast because I just I want to understand it I'm like making the inverse of unlady like no and that's that's a fantastic place for us to actually segue into our
asking anything part of the show so for this asking anything part we're going to actually try to be helpful to people I think we've been helpful in contextualizing but this is going to be a specific advice question and this is from Michelle I'm often struck by my lack of ability to respond to
conspiracy theories whether it's about medical issues or political misinformation there's something inside me that was taught to be polite and not challenge when people say things that are completely out of pocket I find myself doing the same thing when confronted by any dogma including
religious beliefs I'm wondering if this is a common experience that has allowed conspiracy theories to flourish what's an approach that would be appropriate for someone who comes at me with their research oh I don't have the answer to this one but I would love to hear your thoughts
I very much relate to this because truth be told conspiracy she wrote started because uh not super close friend but someone who I've like known long enough presented me with a conspiracy theory and I was a dog and like I think I truly just I asked her if
she was a Q and honor like I tried to kind of play it off as a joke hmm she wasn't joking and I like found an exit I didn't know what to say because it wasn't a space of like I had so many questions I had no idea what she was talking about either and I think that it is okay to not engage it
if you don't need to I mean I think it depends on the the closeness of the friend yes yes or the family member and and the someone that's like yeah if it's like a mom that you know from preschool you know it's like trying to talk to them about politics they're like convincing them to change
their political persuade like that's not you need intimacy in order to like have a real talk about that and I think that one one thing that's really really helpful to remember is that attempting to debunk conspiracy theories is a wasted effort not because facts are meaningless but because
conspiracy theories by their nature resist any kind of resolution yeah so any kind of counter evidence or you know anything to the contrary of what someone is presenting you can then just be twisted into either proof of a cover-up or you know what I mean like it's it's you're setting yourself
up kind of to fail it's the brilliance of conspiracy theories is that they kind of accommodate anyone's counter argument they're like yeah of course you would say that right right right or like of course you believe that because this is what they want you to believe there's space
for that argument that counter argument and I think that like listening to what it is and then having conversations that aren't like well let me send you these five rebuttals or like let me send you this Washington Post article about like five truths about vaccines that sort of thing that's not
going to work it's more have like I think thinking about okay what maybe made this person think in a conspiratorial way yes and getting to that truth and then working out from there and that requires a lot more work than like sending a link to like look at this debunker right it requires
a lot more work and it is probably not your responsibility to do that work because just again by the nature of conspiracy theories it's often something that people kind of have to like work out for themselves um well and a lot of things have had to happen in their lives and in their
experience of the world to make them susceptible to this world belief right so having one conversation with you is not going to change that world belief right so it has to be a long if if it's something that feels very dangerous to you then it has to be a much like it's like any sort of affliction
or any sort of dangerous thinking like if it matters if it has consequences for you and your loved ones like you can't just ignore that right but also if it's something like you know the person who asks us about their mom being interested in the aliens building the pyramids like that is not
a clear and present danger to you and your loved ones right yeah alien mom I'm not worried about if you know if we're talking about say you know your your child's classmates parent who is going off about you know getting trans kids kicked off the school sports team
because yes like TERFs and transphobia that stuff is so baked in conspiracy theories of trans agenda and brainwashing and all of this and I think that is probably a space where there is kind of a direct harm happening yes so some intervention is is warranted but if it's something that's just
a bit more out there if you know them well enough and have the the interest and desire to find out like okay what are the first two kind of facts that don't fit in your mind that kind of made this conspiracy theory necessary that's where you can start unwinding things or at the very least
understand why they are thinking that yeah this is a great place to end I'm so grateful for this conversation I really like I feel like we have to have you on again especially if the like as you get to more and more conspiracies on the podcast so where can people find you on the internet and
what episode of the podcast do you recommend starting with I mean the first one but like what other ones are your favorites well thank you so much for having me I have been so excited to come and talk to you about all of this I hope it made sense yes good yes especially it bagged my
cork board days I was like I don't know if I'm losing it um people can find conspiracy she wrote everywhere they find podcasts please go listen um you can also find all of the episode sources I cite my sources I feel it's essential especially for this podcast you can find all of that
information if you want to go deeper at conspiracy she wrote dot com and you can also listen to the podcast on lady like if you don't want to hear about conspiracy theories they've listened all the way through the app and they're like no no conspiracy theories for me but I'll take on ladyway
and as far as an episode to start with episode three Taylor Swift's siops is a pretty rich text because we go into Taylor Swift's like weaponizing her into like a Nazi meme all the way into and yes I will say it out loud gailer we talk about it all go listen that one's a lot of fun
amazing thank you so much this has been great thank you thank you so much for listening to the culture study podcast be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts because we have so many great episodes in the works and I promise that you
don't want to miss any of them some of the shows we're working on include what happened to the summer blockbuster a story image analysis of Nicole Kidman trends on book talk and a continuation of our series on romance novels with a deep dive into queer romance if you want to suggest a topic
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and keep the conversation going for today I would love to hear what your theory is about why certain groups of people are attracted to conspiracy theories and also what do you think about my theory that women are more likely to believe conspiracy theories because of patriarchy I just I
just want to like see if I'm full of shit there so discuss away the culture study podcast is produced by me and Helen Peterson and Melody Raoul our music is by pottington bear you can find me on instagram at and Helen Peterson Melody and Melody is 47 and the show at culture study pod
wait are you sorry you think the Kate Middleton conspiracy was winter in my head it's winter because the photoshop picture was for mother's day oh my god sorry no but it was british mother's day which is still like march or April hold on let me look because I was I was not in the
last team after Christmas and then they were gonna promise that she was gonna resume like royal duties after Easter okay they're released it no I wrote the piece about it on March 13th you think that's the depth of winter I hear it okay this is play live all in at the stop but you will hear it in the comments