50. The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t It?

There’s a nasty secret about hot-button topics like global warming: knowledge is not always power.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern New Hampshire University. The best investments are the ones you make in yourself, and no one knows that better than Southern New Hampshire University. With more than 200 online degree programs, no set class times, and low online tuition, Southern New Hampshire University is built to fit your life today and set you up for success tomorrow. Education is an investment. Why not make it a smart one? Apply for free at SNHU.edu/freakonomics. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds because switching your home and auto insurance is better than

• 0:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  cutting down on the things you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Mint Mobile. With Mint Mobile's summer sale, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. Free yourself from big wireless and switch to Mint for high-speed data and coverage on the T-Mobile 5G network. To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com/freak. That's mintmobile.com/freak.

• 1:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Upfront payment, $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20GB hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.

• 1:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by ChatGPT. ChatGPT Work is a new way to work in ChatGPT. ChatGPT Work can pull info from across your apps and connect to your tools to help you create finished work. You can even automate work in ChatGPT with the Scheduled Tasks feature, and the whole time, you stay in control. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yes, life was pretty good until I got a phone call from my broker.

• 2:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Stephen Greenspan. He's an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Hi, Catherine.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 2:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  And this is Catherine Wells. She's one of the producers on our show. Hi, Catherine.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Hi, Stephen.

• 2:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you are here today with a story for us, yes?

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Right, a story about Stephen Greenspan. He has an interesting specialty. He's an expert in what he calls social incompetence, which, you know, we all feel. What he means is he studies why people do dumb things.

• 3:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ah, presumably that means why smart people do dumb things?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Right, that included.

• 3:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  And when he told you there that life was pretty good, what did he mean? What was so good exactly about his life?

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Well, it was December 2008, and he had a book coming out called Annals of Gullibility. The other thing that seemed pretty good was his financial situation. About a year earlier, he had invested in a hedge fund that was doing pretty well. So he was getting nicely set up for retirement, too. So one day in December, he gets this first pre-release copy of the book, the Gullibility book, and two days later, his broker calls.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  I said, how are you? He said, terrible. It's the worst day of my life. Now, this is a man who'd lost a son, so when he said, it's the worst day of my life, that got my attention. And I said, why? He said, well Bernard Madoff just admitted he was running a Ponzi scheme.

• 3:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh oh.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  And I responded, who is Bernard Madoff? And what's it have to do with me?

• 4:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  So Catherine, I think we can kind of smell where this is headed.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Right. This fantastic hedge fund that Greenspan had invested in turned out to be a feeder for Madoff's Ponzi scheme. And Greenspan had no idea. He didn't even remember having heard Madoff's name.

• 4:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, man. So the gullibility expert has been galled.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Right. Gold in a big ironic way. He lost $400,000. Now, this was just about a third of his savings, so it wasn't the total end of the world. And he should get some money back eventually from settlements. But he's 70 now. He has two college aged kids and he'd really hope to be retired by now. And, you know, he certainly didn't want to be remembered in this way.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  There was a columnist, a financial columnist in Canada, who in his blog wrote, "The first Greenspan, Alan, will be remembered as the economist who didn't see it coming, while the other Greenspan, Stephen, will be remembered as the psychologist who forgot to read his own book on gullibility."

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Ouch, right?

• 5:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Poor guy, yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  I mean, it's ironic because Greenspan's own research shows that even the smartest people can be duped.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I mean, a good example of that would be Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist of all time, who lost over a million dollars in modern dollars in the South Sea Bubble. And so he wrote, "I can calculate the orbit of heavenly bodies, but I cannot fathom the madness of men."

• 5:25Speaker 02

  In reference to losing this money?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  In reference to his own foolishness in putting all of his fortune at risk in something that he wasn't really, in spite of his incredible brilliance, able to really understand or adequately calculate the risk of.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  So in a way, you join kind of an elite club of brilliant, informed, educated people who can be fooled.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  I join the human race, basically.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Like Sir Isaac Newton and the South Sea Bubble, I knew nothing about Madoff and just basically went along with the crowd. And that's powerful. We tend to take our cues from other people, especially in situations where we don't quite know what to do.

• 6:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  So it may no longer surprise us to learn that smart people sometimes make dumb decisions.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Right, it's like Greenspan says. It's the instinct to go along with the crowd and to take our cues from other people. And that's really what today's show is about.

• 6:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right, and I want to talk about something else Greenspan said, an even more elemental issue, which is how we make decisions about a risk that we just aren't equipped to calculate. But here's the thing. If it can't be calculated, then maybe it's not exactly a risk. About 100 years ago, the economist Frank Knight argued that risk and uncertainty are nearly identical, but for one key difference. Risk can be measured. Uncertainty, by its nature, cannot. But what happens when you can't tell the two of them apart?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  From WNYC and ATM, American Public Media, this is Freakonomics Radio. Today, the truth is out there, isn't it? Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 7:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  So Stephen Greenspan, the gullibility expert, loses a third of his life savings in what turns out to be a Ponzi scheme. Now, even if you feel sympathetic toward him, you might say, hey, you know, he's just one person. Bad things happen to people every day. At least the world didn't end. But what if we were worried about something that might end the world?

• 7:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  No, I'm not talking about an attack by alien nations. Not yet, at least. That'll come later in the program. I'm talking about climate change. How are people like you and me supposed to calculate the threats from something like climate change? There's so much complexity, so much uncertainty. So, most of us do what Stephen Greenspan did when he was looking to invest. We take our cues from other people.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  It's not a question of debate. It's like gravity. It exists.

• 8:32Speaker 05

  The reason that you know you're right is that you know things they don't know. And because they don't even have that baseline of knowledge to chat with you, they can't even understand where you're coming from. And that's exactly what, how I feel talking to people who believe this global warming crap.

• 8:46Speaker 06

  The science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof. When the University of Madison, Wisconsin, comes out with their definitive study, do I believe that? No. Do I believe scientists? No. They lied to us about global warming. Who do you believe?

• 9:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Who do you believe? That was Glenn Beck, by the way. Before him, from the top, you heard Al Gore, and then Rush Limbaugh, and an ABC World News report. When it comes to something like climate change, as fraught as it is with risk and uncertainty and emotion, who do you believe? And, more important, why?

• 9:32Speaker 07

  You know, my personal perception is that I don't know enough about it, believe it or not. This is an issue that I think-

• 9:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wait, could you just say that again, so everyone in the world can hear an honest response? It's so rare for, for some version of, "I'm not quite sure, I don't know." So, sorry. Say it again, and then proceed.

• 9:50Speaker 07

  What I was saying, I'm not sure exactly what I believe on it in terms of the risk perceptions of climate change. It's something that I don't think I am personally educated on enough to have a really firm opinion about that.

• 10:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  That was Ellen Peters. She teaches in the psychology department at Ohio State University. She is part of a research group called the Cultural Cognition Project. They look at how the public feels about certain hot-button issues like nuclear power and gun control, and then they try to figure out how much those views are shaped by people's cultural values. That is, not empirical evidence, but people's, what they call, cultural cognition. So, they recently did a study on climate change. How was it, they wanted to know, that the vast majority of scientists think the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, but only about half the general public thinks the same?

• 10:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Could it be perhaps that people just don't trust scientists? Here's Dan Kahane. He's another cultural cognition researcher and a professor at Yale Law School.

• 10:55Speaker 08

  Well, in fact, scientists are the most trusted people in our society. The Pew Foundation does research on this. This has been a consistent finding over time.

• 11:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so there goes that theory. That explanation won't work for us, then?

• 11:09Speaker 08

  Correct.

• 11:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so maybe people just don't understand the science. Surveys have found that fewer than 30% of Americans are scientifically literate. Ellen Peters again.

• 11:22Speaker 07

  People have the belief that the reason that people don't believe the risks of climate change are high enough is because they're not smart enough. They're not educated enough. They don't understand the facts like the scientists do. And we're really interested in that idea and whether that is, that's really what was going on, or whether something else might matter.

• 11:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  So Peters and Kahane started out their climate change study by testing people on their scientific literacy and numeracy, how well they knew math.

• 11:49Speaker 07

  And the items are things like, it is the father's gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl. True or false?

• 11:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  True.

• 11:57Speaker 07

  So a fairly simple...

• 11:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is it true?

• 11:59Speaker 07

  Uh, you know, actually, I'm not even positive on that one. I think it's the com-- oh, no, it has to be the father's gene.

• 12:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm putting my money on father true.

• 12:05Speaker 07

  Father is true there, absolutely.

• 12:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 12:07Speaker 07

  Second question, antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria.

• 12:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Negative.

• 12:11Speaker 07

  True or false?

• 12:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Negative.

• 12:13Speaker 07

  That one is absolutely false.

• 12:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  You can see why they wanted to know how people did on these kind of questions before asking them about climate change.

• 12:21Speaker 07

  Numeracy in general, what it should do is it should help you to better understand information, first of all, and that kind of comprehension is sort of a basic building block of good decisions across a variety of domains.

• 12:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right, right.

• 12:32Speaker 07

  But numeracy should also do other things. It should also help you just simply process the information more systematically. It should, in general, help you to get to better decisions that are more in line with the facts.

• 12:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, that makes perfect sense, but you have found something that kind of flies in the face of that, haven't you?

• 12:52Speaker 07

  We have. It's the idea that people who are highly numerate and highly scientifically literate, they seem to actually rely on pre-existing beliefs, on these sort of underlying cultural cognitions they have about how the world should be structured, more than people who are less scientifically literate or less numerate.

• 13:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  So if I wanted to be wildly reductive, I might say that the more education a culture gets, the more likely we are to have intense polarization, at least among the educated classes. Is that right?

• 13:27Speaker 07

  Based on our data, that's what it looks like. It's so interesting and so disturbing at the same time.

• 13:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is interesting, isn't it? I mean, Peters and Cohan found that high scientific literacy and numeracy were not correlated with a greater fear of climate change. Instead, the more you knew, the more likely you were to hold an extreme view in one direction or the other. That is, to be either very, very worried about the risks of climate change, or be almost not worried at all. In this case, more knowledge led to more extremism. Now, why on earth would that be? Dan Cahan has a theory. He thinks that our individual beliefs on hot-button issues like this have less to

• 14:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  do with what we know than with who we know.

• 14:26Speaker 08

  My activities as a consumer, my activities as a voter, they're just not consequential enough to count. But my views on climate change will have an impact on me in my life. If I go out of the studio here over to campus at Yale and I start telling people that climate change is a hoax, and these are colleagues of mine, the people in my community, that's going to have an impact on me. They're going to form a certain kind of view of me because of the significance of climate change in our society, probably a negative one. Now, if I live, I don't know, in Sarah Palin's Alaska or something, and I take the position that climate change is real, and I start saying that, I could have the same problem.

• 15:10Speaker 08

  My life won't go as well. People who are science literate are even better at figuring that out, even better at finding information that's going to help them form, maintain a view that's consistent with the one that's dominant within their cultural group.

• 15:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you're saying that if I believe that climate change is a very serious issue, and I want to align my life with that belief, that it's actually more important that I align my life with that belief, not because of anything I can do, but because it helps me fit in better in my circle? There's more currency to my belief there. What about you? You're in New Haven, Connecticut, at Yale. I gather you haven't walked into a classroom and publicly declared that you believe climate change or global warming is a hoax, have you?

• 16:04Speaker 08

  No, I haven't done that.

• 16:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  This makes sense, doesn't it? But it's also humbling. We like to think that we make up our minds about important issues based on our rational, unbiased assessment of the available facts. But the evidence assembled by Cahan and Peters shows that our beliefs, even about something as scientifically oriented as climate change, are driven by a psychological need to fit in. And so, we create strategies for doing this. Here's my Freakonomics friend and co-author, Steve Levitt.

• 16:44Speaker 09

  I think one of the issues with information gathering is that when people go to the trouble to learn about a topic, they tend not to learn about a topic in an open-minded way. They tend to seek out exactly those sources which will confirm what they'd like to believe in the first place. And so the more you learn about a topic, you tend to learn in a very particular way that tends to reinforce what you believed before you ever started.

• 17:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Aha. So if you're already scared of something, you tend to read more about how scary it is. And if you're not worried, then you don't worry, right?

• 17:19Speaker 09

  So if there's one thing that human beings are terrible at, it's assessing risk and knowing what to really fear versus the things we actually do fear. And the kind of things that tend to scare us are things that evolution has bred into us. So my wife is terrified of snakes, mice, flies, you know, butterflies, everything small that flies or that runs, she's terrified of. What are the chances that any of those are going to do her any harm in the modern world? Virtually nothing. I mean, the thing that you should be afraid of are french fries and double cheeseburgers and getting too much sun for skin cancer. Those are the kind of things that that really end up killing us in the modern world.

• 18:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up, since we're so bad at figuring out what's really dangerous, let's bring in the professionals, shall we?

• 18:15Speaker 10

  I'm Mr. Skeptic. Anything that can be analyzed critically and skeptically, that's what we do.

• 18:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  And a cautionary tale about siding with the conspiracy theorists.

• 18:28Speaker 11

  I think somebody actually thought I was an alien myself.

• 18:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio, sponsored by Granola. You know that moment when a meeting ends and someone says, let's circle back on this next week, and everyone nods, but no one writes it down? Then next week rolls around and it's radio silence? That's why Granola exists. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. You take rough notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part? Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use. No setup, no awkward bots. It's just your normal meeting with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free.

• 19:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Just head to granola.ai/freakonomics. That's granola.ai/freakonomics to get your time back. Try it for free at granola.ai/freakonomics.

• 19:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern New Hampshire University. There's no hiding how convenient Southern New Hampshire University makes college. They offer over 80 career-focused graduate programs online. Classes have no set meeting time, so you can balance life and learning, and online tuition rates are some of the lowest in the country, making it all a little more manageable. A school this willing to work with you is worth the investment. Visit snhu.edu/freakonomics to learn more.

• 20:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Progressive. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds, because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  From WNYC and APM, American Public Media, this is Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 21:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, as Steve Levitt sees it, we seek out information that confirms our pre-existing biases, and we're congenitally bad at assessing risk. So, how are people supposed to figure out what to be afraid of? Here's Levitt again.

• 21:21Speaker 09

  To know what to be afraid of, you need to go through an in-depth data collection process. You need to be properly informed. And people too busy, rightfully too busy, leading their lives instead of dwelling on what the exact, almost infinitesimal probability is that any particular thing will kill them. And so, it's sensible for people to be uninformed, and it's sensible to rely on the media. It just turns out that the media is not a very good source of information.

• 21:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  If you really wanted to make sure that every one of your beliefs was worth holding, you'd have to spend so much time gathering primary data that you'd have no time for anything else in life. You'd practically have to become a professional skeptic. And that's not a job, is it?

• 22:12Speaker 10

  Yeah, I'm Mr. Skeptic. Anything that can be analyzed critically and skeptically, that's what we do. So, anything from UFOs and alien abductions to Bigfoot and conspiracy theories, all the way up to things like global warming, and climate change, and autism, and vaccinations, and we cover it all.

• 22:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Michael Shermer, a professor at Claremont University, has a master's degree in experimental psychology and a PhD in the history of science. He's also the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and he writes books. His latest is called The Believing Brain. Now, as a professional skeptic, I'm guessing a lot of people look at you, or hear about a guy like you, or read a book by you, and think, "Oh, man, that's like, the dream job." You know, people think, "Well, I'm a skeptic. I don't believe anything." So, what do you have to do to be you, Michael?

• 23:07Speaker 10

  Well, we actually do believe all sorts of things and you have to have all sorts of beliefs just to get out of bed in the morning. And so the question then becomes, well, which of your host of beliefs are the ones that are really supported by evidence or questionable or probably not true? And which are those that we base on instinct and intuition and which are we basing on, you know, solid evidence? And so that's where the rubber meets the road is not, do you believe something or not? Of course, we all believe all sorts of things. Question is, are they true? And what's the evidence? And what's the quality of the evidence?

• 23:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Talk to me about how we end up believing what we believe in. I was gonna say how we choose to believe what we believe in, but it sounds like it's not really a choice, right?

• 23:49Speaker 10

  It isn't really a choice, no. Our brains are designed by evolution to constantly be forming connections, patterns, learning things about the environment. And all animals do it. You think A is connected to B, and sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but we just assume it is. So my thought experiment is, imagine you're a hominid on the plains of Africa, three and a half million years ago. Your name is Lucy. And you hear a rustle in the grass. Is it a dangerous predator? Or is it just the wind? Well, if you think that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator, and it turns out it's just the wind, you've made a type one error in cognition, a false positive. You thought A was connected to B, but it wasn't. But no big deal. That's a low cost error to make. You just become a little more cautious and vigilant, but that's it. On the other hand, if you think

• 24:31Speaker 10

  the rustle in the grass is just the wind, and it turns out it's a dangerous predator, you're lunch. Congratulations, you've just been given a Darwin Award for taking yourself out of the gene pool before reproducing. So we are the descendants of those who were most likely to find patterns that are real. And we tend to just believe all rustles in the grass are dangerous predators, just in case they are. And so that's the basis of superstition and magical thinking.

• 24:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  But then we get to something like climate change, which is theoretically an arena bounded entirely by science, right?

• 25:04Speaker 10

  You would think so.

• 25:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, you would think so. So what do we find?

• 25:07Speaker 10

  Either the earth is getting warmer or it's not, right? I mean, it's just a data question. Well, because it also has ideological baggage connected to it, you know, left wing versus right wing politics. And so the data goes out the window. It's like, I don't know, whatever the date is, I don't know, but I'm going to be against it. Now, I can't just say I'm against it because my party is, or I just do what other people tell me. Nobody says that. What you do is you make the decision, I'm skeptical of that, or I don't believe it. And then you have to have arguments. So then you go in search of the argument.

• 25:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  It doesn't sound like it surprises you at all, then, that education, level of education, doesn't necessarily have a big impact on whether you're pro or con something, correct?

• 25:45Speaker 10

  That's right, it doesn't. And giving smart people more information doesn't help. It actually just confuses things. It just gives them more opportunity to pick out the ones that support what they already believe. So being educated and intelligent, you're even better at picking out the confirming data to support your beliefs after the fact.

• 26:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's talk now for a bit about conspiracy theories, which we're nibbling around the edges of. How would you describe, if you can generalize, the type of person who's most likely to engage in a conspiracy theory?

• 26:15Speaker 10

  Their pattern-seeking module is just wide open. The net is indiscriminatory. They think everything's a pattern. If you think everything's a pattern, then you're kind of a nut.

• 26:29Speaker 11

  I suppose I'm best known for having had a job at the government where my duties were investigating UFOs.

• 26:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Nick Pope. Until 2006, he worked for the British Ministry of Defence. And in the early 90s, he headed up the office that handled reports of UFO sightings.

• 26:51Speaker 11

  Flying saucer sightings, as they were called then.

• 26:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  His job was to figure out if any of these sightings had merit, and if, perhaps, there were extraterrestrial visitors.

• 27:03Speaker 11

  To satisfy ourselves that there was no threat to the defence of the UK.

• 27:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Pope came into the job as a skeptic. But some UFO reports, especially from pilots and police officers, got him wondering if perhaps we were being visited by aliens. Now, mind you, there was no hardcore confirmatory evidence, but Pope started talking in the media about the possibilities.

• 27:28Speaker 12

  You say that you believe with 99% certainty that we're not alone. So tell us what you've discovered.

• 27:35Speaker 11

  Well, I think it's inconceivable in this infinite universe that we're alone. And then that begs the question, if we're not alone, are we being visited? It's a related question. When I started speaking out on this issue, I think some people in the UFO community thought that I might be some sort of standard bearer for them.

• 27:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Meaning one of them.

• 27:57Speaker 11

  Yes, absolutely, that I could be a spokesperson for the movement. Of course, I had the huge advantage that whilst everyone else had done this as a hobby, I'd done it as a job.

• 28:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did that make you a bit of a hero in the UFO community?

• 28:10Speaker 11

  It did, and a lot of people still hold that view. They want me to come out and say, yes, it's all real, and yes, I was part of a cover-up. Their fantasy is what they call disclosure with a capital D, as if there's going to be some magical parting of the curtains and a moment where a crashed spaceship is revealed for all the world to see. Because I say, you know what, I don't think that spaceship exists. So in a sense, I managed to upset everyone. I go too far for a lot of the skeptics by being open to the possibility. But I don't go far enough for the believers, particularly the conspiracy theorists. And I get called things like "shill", and that's one of the more polite things I've been called.

• 28:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, I've looked at some of the comments on YouTube from a speech you gave. I'll read you a bit of it. We'll have to employ our bleeping technician later. Nick Pope, what a [bleep] spastic. He works, he quote, "works" for the government. Why else is he constantly on every bloody UFO program on every [bleep] channel? He talks enough bull [bleep] to keep the UFO nutters happy while never actually saying anything of importance. Let's unpack that one a little bit.

• 29:18Speaker 11

  Yes.

• 29:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  It says you quote, "work for the government." Do you still work for the government?

• 29:25Speaker 11

  No, I don't. This is in itself one of the great conspiracy theories that in 2006, I didn't really leave. I just went under deep cover and that they're passing me wads of banknotes in a brown paper bag or something.

• 29:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  But here's my favorite. There's one claim on a UFO blog that you, Nick Pope, have been abducted by aliens yourself and now lie about it.

• 29:47Speaker 11

  Well, yes, I've heard that one. I've even seen one, which I think you might have missed. I think somebody actually thought I was an alien myself.

• 29:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ah, that would explain a lot, wouldn't it?

• 30:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Nick Pope discovered a sad truth. The more transparent he tried to be, the more information he released about himself and his work, the more worked up his attackers became. They took facts that would plainly seem to work in his favor and they somehow made these facts fit their conspiracies instead. But before we judge, consider how good we all are at deciding first what we want to believe and then finding evidence for it. So what's the solution? What can we do to keep ourselves headed down the road,

• 30:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  albeit slowly and clumsily, toward a more rational, reasoned civilization? Here's Ellen Peters again, from the Cultural Cognition Project.

• 31:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I guess the depressing conclusion one might reach from hearing you speak is that ideology trumps rationalism?

• 31:09Speaker 07

  I think that we are seeing some evidence for that in this study, but I don't think that that has to be the final answer. I think that policymakers, communicators, need to start paying attention to some of these cues that deepen cultural polarization. So for example, telling the other side that they're scientifically inept, probably a bad idea. Probably not the best way to continue people coming together on what the basic science really does say. Or coming up only with solutions that are antagonistic to one side. And you know it if you were listening to them, that those are just antagonistic solutions. Again, probably not the best idea. It's a sign or a signal that we're not listening maybe as well to beliefs on the other side.

• 31:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Dan Kahane agrees that whatever the solution, none of us are able to go it alone.

• 31:54Speaker 08

  What's clear is that our ability to acquire knowledge is linked up with our ability to figure out whom to trust about what. And ordinary people have to do that in making sense of the kinds of challenges that they face. But the amount that we know far exceeds the amount that any one of us is able to establish through our own efforts. Maybe you know that the motto for the Royal Society is nullia in verba, which means don't take anybody's word for it. And it's kind of admirable and charming, but obviously false.

• 32:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Not very practical, is it?

• 32:32Speaker 08

  Can't be right. I mean, what would I do? I would say, you know, don't tell me what Newton said in the Principia. I'm going to try to figure out how gravity works on my own.

• 32:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  And speaking of Isaac Newton, you remember what Stephen Greenspan told us earlier, how Newton was suckered into this terrible investment? Well, it's heartening to learn that even Newton, the scientific sage, was able to acknowledge the flaws in his own thinking, the shortcomings in his own thinking. And he left behind some advice that might be helpful for us all. He wrote, "To explain all nature is too difficult to task for any one man, or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty and leave the rest for others that come after you than to explain all things by conjecture

• 33:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  without making sure of anything."

• 33:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  In other words, don't get too cocky.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC, APM, American Public Media, and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Catherine Wells. Our staff includes Susie Lechtenberg, Diana Nguyen, Borey Lam, Colin Campbell, and Chris Bannon. Our interns are Ian Chan and Jacob Bastian. David Herman is our engineer. Special thanks to John Delore. If you want more Freakonomics Radio, you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or go to Freakonomics.com, where you'll find lots of radio, a blog, the books, and more.

• 34:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Ozempic. Innovation happens through rethinking what's possible, and when it comes to GLP-1s, Ozempic pill does just that. Learn more about Ozempic semaglutide tablets, 4 in 9mg, by calling 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and ask your doctor what's possible with FDA-approved Ozempic pill.

• 35:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by US Bank Smartly Checking and Savings. You know, US Bank Smartly Checking and Savings are bank accounts that work harder for you. You get better savings rates, fee waivers, and rewards from day one, so you spend less time worrying about money and more on what matters. Sign up for US Bank Smartly Checking and Savings today at usbank.com/smartly. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026 US Bank.

• 35:46Speaker 13

  Football season is here and the Fantasy Footballers are back to help you dominate your league. And this season, we're bringing you five episodes every week. That's more starts, more sits, more waiver wire wins, and more trades. From draft day all the way to your fantasy championship, we've got the rankings, the matchups, the news, and the advice you need to win. The Fantasy Footballers podcast, five episodes a week all season long. Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:16Speaker 14

  This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Is there a right time to sell a stock? Are you taking the right risks with your portfolio? Financial decisions can be tricky, and often your own cognitive and emotional biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Join host Mark Reapy as he offers practical solutions to help overcome the cognitive and emotional biases that may affect your investing decisions. Listen at schwab.com/financialdecoder.