Coronavirus and Conspiracy Theories, with Michael Shermer

Neil deGrasse Tyson, comic co-host Chuck Nice, and Michael Shermer, author and Founding Publisher of Skeptic Magazine, investigate the rise of conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, you're a personal astrophysicist. With me is my comedic co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck?

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  Hey, hey Neil, how are you?

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Still tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic?

• 0:27Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, sir. Yes, I am.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Having to remind people that you're a comic.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Well, I have to remind myself.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  I'm not worried about them. It's me that I'm concerned about.

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this is gonna be another in our multi-part series on different angles into the coronavirus. And

• 0:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this particular episode, we'll be addressing coronavirus conspiracy theories.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh my goodness, so we're gonna be here for a few days.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And more broadly skepticism and science literacy and how do you invoke that? Coronavirus is just one example how we can invoke skepticism, but there's no end in this list. And there's only one person who

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Only one.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the ideal candidate guest for this. And it's the one and only Michael Shermer. Michael, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 1:22Michael Shermer?

  That's right, I'm the returning champion.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine and a bestselling author. You've been our guest on StarTalk multiple times. And you have a recent book, you have several books. In fact, if I look carefully on your shelf, what a coincidence.

• 1:43Michael Shermer?

  It's always fun to see what people put on the shelves behind them in this pandemic era. Well, our most recent issue, as you could see right there, is on conspiracies. That was before the pandemic, so it was good timing. I've never seen the spread, like a virus, of conspiracy theories like this. This is really quite shocking.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crazy, and so in your latest book, Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist. Now, you have a book with the word devil in it. Why do you, do you expect to sell that book to Christians?

• 2:17Michael Shermer?

  There he is, yeah.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just cut the sails in half, at least, right there.

• 2:23Michael Shermer?

  Well, yeah.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what are your main arguments in there? And why is the devil in the title?

• 2:29Michael Shermer?

  Well, the devil is whoever disagrees with you, or whoever you disagree with, whose opinions you dislike, anybody whose viewpoint diverges from yours. And the reason those devils should be given their due is so that, for your own safety's sake, that is to say, if you sign off on censorship and silencing people for voicing their minority position, what happens when you're in the minority? When you're the lone voice pushing back against the mainstream? When you want to push against the dogma, and you've signed off on silencing people who disagree, then they'll come after you. So the title comes from a play called A Man for All Seasons about, this is Robert Bolt's

• 3:12Michael Shermer?

  play that was made into a film, about Sir Thomas More and his collision with King Henry VIII over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon in the church. And, you know, there's a bunch of different threads in there, but one of which is Thomas More arguing with his future son-in-law about tearing down the laws to get after the devil, metaphorically speaking. And More is arguing that we have to give the devil his due for our own safety's sake. That is, the laws are there to protect people, for example, the First Amendment. So if you say, well, we got to make an exception for this one person because he's really, really bad, then he, okay, well, what about this person? Because they're really bad also. And, you know, so you start with something like, you know, a conspiracy theorist extremist

• 3:56Michael Shermer?

  like Alex Jones, and you go, okay, well, we have to silence him and cancel him. Well, what about this person over here, David Icke? What about this guy? What about that guy? What about this coronavirus skeptic? Well, wait a minute, maybe the skeptic of the coronavirus theory, maybe he has a point. Maybe we can learn something from them. In other words, there's a kind of concept creep, or the bin of which we put stuff in that we think is dangerous gets larger and larger.

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is this, it seems to me, we've all heard the phrase "the devil's advocate", and if I remember correctly, this was, would be in Catholic Church trials,

• 4:32Michael Shermer?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  where someone, you know, you're accused of heresy, and someone would be appointed by the Church to defend you in the face of the heresy. And of course, you're on the side of the devil, so we need someone to defend the devil, and devil's advocate. So that was, seems like, even though the whole system was rigged against you regardless.

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, nice to see that this court isn't biased.

• 4:54Chuck Nice?

  I'm already on the side of the devil,

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  as you are prosecuting me for being on the side of the devil.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but that has an inkling of what you're saying, I think.

• 5:06Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, that's right. Actually, the position, the devil's advocate, the advocato diabli was the position by the Catholic Church, also to act as a skeptic against miracle claims. That is to say, everybody and their brother had somebody they thought should be canonized, and, and you have to be, you know, you have to, I forget, it was like two major miracles and three minor miracles to be canonized.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a checklist, it's a checklist.

• 5:28Michael Shermer?

  It's a checklist. And, and so, you know, and everybody had a story about weeping statues and bleeding pictures and miracle cures and things like this. So the Catholic Church realized that most of these are bogus. So they would appoint a skeptic, essentially, someone like yourself or me, to go out there and investigate and find the natural explanation. And then, once all those are eliminated, then if there's some left, and they could say, "Well, that one is a miracle." Now, you and I would not go that far, of course, but they did centuries ago. So the devil's advocate was actually a valuable position, a skeptical position.

• 5:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. So, I'm going with the blue oyster cult. I'm living, I'm living for giving the devil his due. That's, that's where I come from. And I'm burning, I'm burning, I'm burning for you.

• 6:11Michael Shermer?

  Hey, there's a song in there.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but you need free speech in order to combat conspiracy theories.

• 6:26Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, that's right. So, you know, here I kind of...

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's bring us back to coronavirus. So how does this play out? How does this work?

• 6:32Michael Shermer?

  So, the reason we need free speech is because most of us are wrong much of the time. And so the only way to find out is to listen to what other people have to say. So, the moment you think, "Well, we have the final truth." No, we don't have the final... We never have the final truths. There are no truths with a capital T in science. And the coronavirus is a perfect example of this. There's so many unknowns. And, you know, although I admire Dr. Fauci very much, he's not omniscient. Okay, he's not God. He may be wrong about some things. And the CDC, same thing, and so forth. So it's good to listen to the people that are, you know, kind of pull away from that. Or they're, you know, they disagree a little bit. Could be this, could be that. Is it a bioweapon, or is it a genetically engineered virus? Or is it a bat virus? Well, we have the answer to that now.

• 7:15Michael Shermer?

  But it's okay to talk about that, because, you know, maybe it is this or that. And the things with conspiracy theories, Neil, is that a lot of them, there's enough of them that are true, that it pays to be constructively conspiracy-minded. That is, a little paranoid, you know? And it's not that, you know, we think Bill Gates is gonna take over the world, or 5G is causing the coronavirus. But we do know that pharmaceutical companies have hacked the FDA's, you know, system of regulations to cheat the standards and make more money. We know Volkswagen hacked the emission standards to make money. We know government agents and politicians lie, and insider trading in Wall Street. There's enough of these kinds of things that go on,

• 7:59Michael Shermer?

  that when someone says, "You know, I'm a little skeptical about what the CDC said, or what the Chinese are telling us." That's not a crazy position to take, you know? In other words, enough of it happens that there's a kind of a logic... To listening to some of it at least. Now, you sort of go from like 10% away from the Fauci, you know, mainstream to 20% to David Icke thinks it's the 5G towers and Bill Gates. Okay, you know, yeah. But the problem of silencing him, let's say, like last week, he got kicked off YouTube because he appeared on this British TV show, a YouTube channel.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, who got kicked off?

• 8:34Michael Shermer?

  Uh, this guy named David Icke, who's, who's sort of the Alex Jones of England.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:39Michael Shermer?

  Yeah. I mean, he's way out there. He thinks, you know, the lizard aliens are secretly running the world and all this stuff. Okay. I mean, he is way out there. But, you know, he's not a-

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck thinks that, by the way. Chuck is totally behind that one.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  They're not, they're, they're more amphibians than that.

• 8:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I mean-

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, I got that wrong.

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Don't, don't lump, hey, don't lump me in with the crazies.

• 9:02Chuck Nice?

  I'm talking frog people.

• 9:05Michael Shermer?

  You know, there is a funny story about that, that the 9/11 truthers are, are kind of divided amongst themselves about, um, you know, whether there really were planes or not. There's, there's an extreme group of the truthers who think there were, they're called the no planers, that these were holographic images that people think they saw planes, but, but it was actually just explosive devices. And the regular 9/11 truthers who just think it was an inside job by the Bush administration, they say, oh, those no planers, they're crazy. So, it's kind of funny that they debunk each other. And, um, and there's splits like that in creationism and, and the flat-earthers are divided about their arguments. And so it's kind of fun to watch them go at each other, but that's part of the free speech.

• 9:49Michael Shermer?

  Let, let everybody have their voice. It'll be pretty obvious which ones are crazy and which ones are not.

• 9:55Chuck Nice?

  So may I ask this, Michael? Um, with respect to health concerns such as a pandemic?

• 10:03Chuck Nice?

  There are consequences to misinformation and there are consequences to uh uh for people who propagate conspiracy theories to the detriment of the greater society. How do you deal with that? So here's a person who says like, we shouldn't do A, B, and C. I don't care what it is, let's just say, but but A, B, and C actually contributes to the public good by keeping us all safe from one another and mitigating the spread of the disease. What do you do with somebody like that who is posing an imminent threat?

• 10:41Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, well, I agree with you on that. Um, and there's a distinction between that, which is actual action or behavior that people take versus the words that they speak. Less concerned about the words that they speak and and but but going out without a mask or mingling amongst other people when you're sick. Uh, and you know, a lot of Americans have this crazy idea that freedom means I can do anything I want. Like, there's that viral video last week of the woman in Target, might have been Costco, you know, purposely coughing into somebody's face and, you know, I'm an American and the Constitution says I can do anything I want. No, ma'am, it does not say that. You know, you are not free to drive on the left side of the road, right? You give up that freedom for the security of of a safer drive, right? And and just go right down the line from there.

• 11:25Michael Shermer?

  There's a thousand freedoms you give up every day in the national interests or security or safety of your community, whatever. And, you know, the kind of that libertarian notion uh can go too far. I mean, the freedom for you to swing your arm ends at my nose. And the freedom for your kid to cough in my kid's face when he's got, you know, a communicable disease, that that that ends at my kid's, you know, uh, health. So, you know, to the to the anti-vaxxers who say, well, I should be free not to vaccinate my kid. Well, okay, maybe, but then my kid should be free from your kid. So you can't send your kid to public schools, public libraries, public pools, you know, don't let him out of the house because, you know, that that's a risk. So, and we we make those kinds of sacrifices in the interest of health and safety all

• 12:10Michael Shermer?

  the time. So the coronavirus has kind of pushed people on this. Uh, you you see these people very confused about what freedom means.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so we'll take a break in a couple of minutes, but just before we do, my question is, what makes the coronavirus more susceptible to conspiracy theories than some other thing that might be in the news? Is it because we don't have a complete and total handle on it? And so that leaves open a room for people's imaginations?

• 12:41Michael Shermer?

  I think, I think that's it.

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that the cause and effect of this?

• 12:43Michael Shermer?

  Yeah. To quote one of your heroes, Aristotle, you know, the nature abhors a vacuum, the mind abhors a vacuum of explanation, and we'll fill it with anything we got. And so we didn't know for a while what was going on with coronavirus. And, you know, the novel coronavirus, that's why it was called that. It was novel, you know, we'd never seen it before, even though the thing you got there that looks like it, you know, there's a lot that kind of looked like it, but it was different. The origin was, you know, kind of obscure. China wasn't exactly the, you know, the most honest regime and trustworthy regime. And, and then the COVID-19 pandemic that comes from the coronavirus, then we weren't sure how fast it was going to spread. And, you know, in hindsight, it's like, yeah, we should have closed the economy a few weeks

• 13:28Michael Shermer?

  earlier like Germany did, because look, now they're coming out of it sooner than we are, so forth. But nobody knew that, that's with hindsight, right? We just didn't know. And, you know, I was there when, at that TED conference when Bill Gates gave that famous speech now, seen it gone viral on video, I think it was 2015, saying, this is coming, it's the next big thing. And we're all like, yeah, yeah, we've heard this before, you know, the H1N1 and the bird flu and the swine flu and Ebola and, and on and on. Every couple of years, there's one of these things and everybody says, this is it. And then it peters out. Okay, so it was not completely crazy to think this might just peter out. Right? And then, but now we go, oh, okay, it didn't. So that kind of opens the door. This is, so you have uncertainty, a threat, a serious threat, a real threat.

• 14:13Michael Shermer?

  And then couple that to a couple of other things that were going on. The rollout of 5G at the same time, right? So what is 5G? Well, it's an extension of 4G. It's this invisible force, the electromagnetic radiation. I can't see it, like nuclear energy. I can't see it, smell it, taste it, touch it. Oh, and it's dangerous. It's potentially threatening. And so the 5G thing, and then you throw in, there's always a fear.

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, wait, plus, 5G was pioneered by the Chinese. So that gave a double force operating on the fertility of the discussion.

• 14:46Michael Shermer?

  Parenthetically, we should note that the counterfactual cities that don't have 5G that have been hit by the coronavirus and so forth, that refutes that hypothesis. But nevertheless, also, another normal driving force behind conspiracy theories is power differentials. So conspiracy theories are usually targeted at rich and powerful people, corporations, big government agents and agencies and so forth. And so, you know, here's Bill Gates now involved in public health vaccinations, things like this, and the virus, and he's rich and powerful. And, you know, that kind of got lumped in there with the big companies rolling out 5G. And then Big Pharma is always in that formula, right?

• 15:30Michael Shermer?

  So here they're now being discussed, you know, oh, they're going to make a vaccine that everybody has to take, so they're going to make a fortune on it. And then Bill Gates is going to chip everybody so he can control the world population. And before you know it, you're, you know, you've got off the deep end.

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  By the way, Michael, it's not a chip, it's nanites. And just want to let.

• 15:50Michael Shermer?

  I was wondering how they're going to fit them inside the needle.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, nanobots, that's right, nanobots.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we'll take your questions that have been solicited. In the past 24 hours, we were overloaded with skeptics' questions about the coronavirus and skepticism in general. When we come back on StarTalk.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. This is actually a Cosmic Queries edition, exploring conspiracy theories in the Corona-verse. I got Chuck nice, as always.

• 16:43Chuck Nice?

  And I don't believe you, Neil.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't believe me?

• 16:46Chuck Nice?

  I don't believe this is an episode about exploring conspiracies.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got Michael Shermer, who is the patron saint of... Can I say that about you, Michael?

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  I have one more miracle before I'm sainted.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, with his new book out, give me the full name, The Devil...

• 17:09Chuck Nice?

  Giving the devil his due, yep.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, exploring free speech and arguments and the skeptics movement and how we can apply that wisely in our current... with our current challenges. So Chuck, you got a question for us?

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we have several questions from our Patreon patrons who support us.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they lead off this... There's not just Patreon for this, but we lead off with...

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  We lead off with our Patreon patrons and we invite you...

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They brought their way to the front of the list.

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  That's... But just like the Titanic.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except the Titanic sank, Chuck. I have to give you the...

• 17:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, that's not a... God, that's not a good analogy there. Yeah, okay. All right. So anyway, let's go with Robert Colonel, who says, "Who assists in the death of conspiracy theories? Is it better to confront them or ignore them? Has there been any research on whether confronting these theories makes it more likely people will believe them because of belief reinforcement? Or does confronting them give them credibility and help them spread?" Wow, Robert, I'm gonna say that's a damn good question!

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, Michael, what do you got?

• 18:22Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, it is kind of the question of the day. Well, they're gonna spread anyway, whether you ignore them or not. In the modern age, everybody is their own publisher with their own YouTube channel and so on. So, that's not a great strategy. On the other hand, you're not required to respond to everybody. Uh, I mean, we ignored the flat-earthers for a long time because, you know, the head of it died back in 96 or whatever, and that was the end of that. He was the last member. But then it kind of erupted, as you know, Neil, a couple of years ago, and kind of spread, went viral, so then we thought, alright, I guess we need to have an issue of skeptic on how we know the earth is not flat. And, you know, how does science work anyway? And we kind of used it as an excuse to talk about that. But, you know, if you ask the average person, how do you know the earth is round? How do you know it goes around the sun and so forth? A lot of people can't articulate that. So, we thought, well, we'll just use that as an excuse, something like that.

• 19:07Michael Shermer?

  It also kind of depends on the influence that the claim has. The conspiracy theory is, are people talking about it? Do they care about it? Do we need to provide some kind of response to the media and the public? And, uh, so that also depends. So, in terms of free speech, you know, uh, people should be free to say what they want, but I'm not required to enable their speech. So, you know, occasionally, creationists or Holocaust deniers have tried to place ads in skeptic, I don't take them. Uh, but that's not a, I'm not censoring them. They're free to publish their own newsletters and magazines and produce their own docs or whatever, but, so that's a different kind of thing there. Um, I, so maybe, I hope that answers the question.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you are censoring them in your own mouthpiece.

• 19:49Michael Shermer?

  Well, that's, that's right. Well, in a way, though, I, I have to be selective, we can't talk about everything. So, I, I pick the ones I think are most important. Just like college campuses, you know, they, they invite maybe 12 public speakers to come to campus, alright, but there's a thousand to choose from. So, in a way, there, that's a kind of a censorship, I suppose, uh, that you, you discriminate, but that, but they're free to do whatever they want.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I did you I don't know I don't think you answered the question should you directly engage a conspiracy theorist on the hope or expectation that you will change their mind?

• 20:25Michael Shermer?

  Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, so there was this idea a few years ago so called backfire effect that is by addressing a particular claim and explaining why it's wrong like climate denial denial you'll actually just double the people will double down on their beliefs that

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  digging their heels

• 20:42Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, digging their heels. Now, the studies on that have not been replicated. That is to say, it looks like people can change their mind if you present evidence in a particular way. One, in a very visual way, you know, pie charts, bar graphs, things that are easy to understand, not just piles of numbers in a in a table, but you know, something that's visual. And two, you present in a way that that doesn't challenge the person's deepest moral beliefs. Right? So the number the number one predictor of climate skepticism is political position. So but but climate skeptics who are tend to be conservative, they don't know anything more about climate science than than the climate believers, say Democrats or liberals. That is to say, knowledge about climate science does not predict who believes

• 21:27Michael Shermer?

  in it or accepts it. So the public expression of your skepticism or belief is more of a signal to your tribe. I'm so conservative, I doubt that climate science business, right? Even if you don't know anything about it. Same thing with evolution, you know, and if you give people if you give Christians a choice between Darwin and Jesus, they're not picking Darwin. Okay, Darwin is not going to be anybody's savior. Right? So you have to take that off the table. Keep keep your Savior, keep Jesus, keep your Christianity. Evolution was the way God created life or something like this. And then you take that off the table. So they don't feel threatened. So those are the two things you can do to get around the backfire effect.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're tactics. This is tactical. Yeah.

• 22:09Michael Shermer?

  Strategy. Yeah.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right. Chuck, what else you got?

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, this one is from who is this guy Chuck Nice, co host of StarTalk.

• 22:21Chuck Nice?

  Are you a Patreon member? Indeed, I am.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Has there ever been any studies done on the psychological makeup of people who are prone to believe in conspiracy theories?

• 22:33Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, there's a fair amount of research on that now. First of all, the meme we hear of, you know, the conspiracy theorist is some overweight guy in his parents' bedroom, you know, with a tinfoil hat and an internet connection. You know, that's not the case, really. Most conspiracy theorists are thoughtful, educated, and so on. It depends on the conspiracy theory, right? So, say, politically, those that are in power tend to be less conspiratorially minded than those out of power. So, the losing party usually goes conspiracy bonkers after they lose. Those in power drop the conspiracy theories. Now, the current administration, current president, seems to be an exception to that. He's still talking about the conspiracy against him in the election.

• 23:18Michael Shermer?

  It's like, dude, you won. Shut up.

• 23:23Michael Shermer?

  Oh, it was rigged. It's like, you know, you won, right?

• 23:30Michael Shermer?

  But there are some things, you know, like what's called global coherence. That is, the moment you tick the box for believing one conspiracy theory, that you think Princess Diana was assassinated, you're more likely to believe that JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy. Or in any number of the other popular, 9/11 was an inside job and so forth. That there's sort of a tendency to think somebody is behind the scenes pulling the strings, and the moment you sort of go down that pathway, you think it happens everywhere, even within a particular conspiracy theory. That is, people that are more likely to check the box that they think Princess Diana was murdered are also more likely to think she faked her death and is still alive somewhere.

• 24:14Michael Shermer?

  Well, that can't be, they can't both be true. She can't be dead and alive at the same time, right? So... And so, and also, there's a bias that some people are more inclined to, that is, the size of the cause should match the size of the effect. You know, so the Holocaust was the worst thing that ever happened to a group of people committed by the Nazis, the worst regime in history. So you sort of get this match, right? But JFK, leader of the free world and the most powerful man on earth, assassinated by who? Lee Harvey Oswald? Some lone nut? You know, it doesn't match. So you gotta add the FBI and the CIA and the KGB and the Cubans and the Mafia, you know, to kind of make it match. Same thing with princess die. You know, the cause of death, drunk driving, speeding, no seatbelt.

• 24:57Michael Shermer?

  You know, tens of thousands of people die of that every year, but princesses are not supposed to die like that, right? So you gotta have the MI5 and the MI6 and the royal family and the Arabs, and we're all in on it. And so, nineteen members, you know, nineteen guys with box cutters, you know, brought down the World Trade Center building? I mean, come on, that's just, you know, Bush had to be involved in this group and that group. So you get some of that, and some people are more inclined toward that kind of reasoning than others.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it because, deep in our minds, we, we want a full explanation for, there's, there's a need that's being served, a psychological need being served by the flesh that's on a conspiracy theory?

• 25:39Michael Shermer?

  Exactly right. And, and even scarier is the idea that nobody's in charge. You know, the idea that there's a cigarette-smoking man behind the curtain and he's making all these things happen, wars and economic revolutions and so on. But the idea that, actually, there's nobody that runs the economy. The economy is just this sort of chaotic, unpredictable thing, that's kind of scary in a way.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, wait, I got, wait, I got a question. Wait, Michael, okay, isn't God the ultimate conspiracy theorist? I mean, people who believe in God, that's the ultimate conspiracy. God is in charge of all things. So here's the question, are religious people, if they're satisfied that God is operating, do they have any more or less susceptibility to other understandings of the world with regard to conspiracy?

• 26:32Michael Shermer?

  I haven't seen any data on that, that religiosity is a predictor of conspiracy mindedness.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the, or not, or the opposite.

• 26:40Michael Shermer?

  Or the opposite.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Religious people are less, if I correct me if I'm wrong, are less represented among astrologers and other sort of

• 26:46Michael Shermer?

  Yes.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, um, new age.

• 26:50Michael Shermer?

  Yes, that would be good, uh, that, that may be a good study for our research, uh, team at.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, get to it, get to it.

• 26:57Michael Shermer?

  I'm gonna do this the moment we hang up here. But let's, actually, Neil, you got me thinking there. Uh, in a way, I mean, um, the, the common line that religious people use is everything happens for a reason. Reason. Uh, now, it's not just Christians. I mean, there's a lot of like Deepak Chopra following Buddhists, Western Buddhists that think, you know, there's some kind of cosmic force that balances things and if something bad happens over here, something good happens over there.

• 27:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the ultimate conspiracy theory.

• 27:25Michael Shermer?

  That, that is a kind of conspiracy theory, yeah. I hadn't really thought of it that way. Yeah, interesting.

• 27:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, give me, give me some more.

• 27:33Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Um, this is Alan Demoss, says, first of all, I love the show. My question is, where is the healthy line between believing in some grand conspiracy? And being a very cautious skeptic?

• 27:47Michael Shermer?

  Yeah.

• 27:48Chuck Nice?

  And, and is it, is it for some, not for you, of course, or, or Neil? But is it for some, perhaps, the beginning of the slippery slope? I start off as a skeptic and then before you know it, I don't believe anything. This is all BS.

• 28:03Michael Shermer?

  Yeah. Yeah, Carl Sagan had a great line that I, I quoted in my first book, Why People Believe Weird Things, on the, the kind of healthy skepticism, that finding the rub between being open minded enough to accept radical new ideas, but not so open minded that your brains fall out and you believe every wacky thing that comes down the pike. And it's hard to know where that line is, essentially the line of demarcation between science and pseudoscience, say. And it depends on the particular area. So, since we're talking about conspiracy theories, you know, the bigger it is, the grander it is, the less likely the theory is to be true. Again, uh, Conspiracies like Volkswagen cheating the emission standards, or pharmaceutical companies cheating the FDA regulations, you know, those are real conspiracies, but

• 28:47Michael Shermer?

  they're very narrow and targeted. Like, we know why they're doing it, to make money, you know, in this one little area, you know, but the moment you scale up, you know, world domination, it's like, okay, you know, probably not, all right?

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but you need, you need the Cubans and the Chinese and the North Koreans.

• 29:02Michael Shermer?

  Just keep adding him in there, right?

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got nothing.

• 29:05Michael Shermer?

  That's right. And the more people that have to be involved, right? Because people, most people are fairly incompetent, and they bumble and stumble their way through jobs, and, you know, the idea that, you know, you've, you've cracked the perfect team to go out there and pull this off. I mean, Nixon had a pretty good team of, you know, the, the Watergate burglars, right? I mean, these were G-men, you know, G. Gordon Liddy, I mean, come on. And, and they couldn't even burgle an office without getting caught, right? That's kind of how things normally go. The more elements-

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus now, now a billion photos are uplifted to the internet every day. You'd have pictures of stuff, even, even, you know, the stockpiled aliens in Area 51, somebody's sneaking a photo out on their Instagram, you'd know that.

• 29:47Michael Shermer?

  That's right. Actually, I, I use the WikiLeaks as an example of the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That is to say, you know, the ufologists, or, or the 9/11 truthers would always say, well, of course, we don't have direct evidence, Shermer, it's a secret. It's classified, you know, and, and it's like, okay, here we have 10 million documents that are classified, leaked by WikiLeaks. There's nothing in there about Roswell, alien bodies at Area 51, you know, some memo from Bush telling somebody to plant the explosive devices in the World Trade Center building. Makes sense.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is. We're gonna take another break, and when we come back, our third and final segment, conspiracy in the coronavirus.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  It's time to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons, Sammy Sukar and Caleb Salibi. Guys, thank you so much for your support. Without you, we could not make this show. And for those of you listening who would like your very own Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. Chuck Nice, Michael Shermer. Mike, I've known you for a really long time. I'm just pleased to have this friendship that goes back decades, that we're kind of fighting for the same causes, but differently. I mean, I'm not in your face, because I know you don't need me.

• 31:26Michael Shermer?

  But I like your face.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got this. I just want you to know that I'm a huge supporter of your work and your life's direction that you've taken it. So just want to put that out there.

• 31:40Michael Shermer?

  Thank you. I appreciate that. Operators are standing by to take your donation. I'm just kidding.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, give me some more questions.

• 31:49Michael Shermer?

  It takes, well, let me just, it takes all of us working on this together, right? Scientists from all fields pushing back in their areas. You know, as we are, is kind of a collective body that says, here's all the different claims, and here's the experts in that. So we're all working to the same, really, enlightenment idea that there is a truth to be known, truth with a small t, and that science is the best tool we have to get there.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, keep it going.

• 32:17Chuck Nice?

  All right. Let's go to Mad Delena Grupa. And Mad Delena says, "Thank you for sparking joy and curiosity of science. In my 40s, could you please tell me how to sell the idea of skepticism to people successfully, to get them excited about being skeptical? I find it immensely hard not to sound condescending or sarcastic when I try." Well, Mad Delena, maybe it's you.

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but Michael, you gotta admit, there are a lot of skeptics in the community that are just assholes. And it's like, I know more than you. I mean, as an educator, it hurts me to watch that exchange, because I care what someone knows and doesn't know, and I find, you know, ways that I can communicate, not just talk down to them. And you know such folks are in the skeptics community. What do you do about that?

• 33:20Michael Shermer?

  Yes, well, you tell them, "Don't be a dick."

• 33:26Michael Shermer?

  But even that.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that was the title of a of a speech given by our friend and colleague, the bad astronomer, Phil Plait.

• 33:35Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who gave a whole speech, "Don't Be a Dick", to skeptics.

• 33:39Michael Shermer?

  And I think that I think that was fairly well received, although I know he got some pushback. But Carl made that point back in the 90s. I think it was a passage, maybe from Demon Haunted World, where he he said something like, "It's easy to be condescending to people. I feel the urge myself bubble up and I have to kind of suppress it. We should all suppress it and just talk about, you know, the positive aspects of what we know. Acknowledge that the other person, you know, is intelligent and thoughtful, or else they're not going to listen to you. You know, be respectful. There's certain, it's kind of basic rules of engagement or conversation.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that point of view is deeply imbued within Andruyan, who was co-writer of all three Cosmoses. So that at every turn where we talk about some crazy idea that people have, the urge to just say, "This is just preposterous", that urge is so strong.

• 34:33Michael Shermer?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then you know you can't and shouldn't go there. Otherwise, you just lost your audience. So you've got to find a way that it sort of organically reaches them so that they feel like that you care about who they are and how they think and where they came from, and that you're going to take them to a new place.

• 34:51Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, that's right. I'm fine to say, no one in the history of the world has ever joined a cult. You know, they join a group that they think is good and they just get sucked down the rabbit hole. And that, you know, only outsiders can kind of assess that. But if you tell people, you know, "You're in a cult", you know, that's not what they think is going on. And analogously, I say, no one's ever in the history of the world, there's never been a pseudoscientist who goes down to his pseudo lab to collect pseudo facts to test the pseudo theory. Right? You know, they think they're doing something. And so you have to address it at that level. Like, you know, why is it you think that that's the case? I know you get these theories, what I call theories of everything. You know, Einstein was wrong and Newton was wrong and Hawking was wrong. And I've worked out this new theory of the universe in my garage.

• 35:33Michael Shermer?

  You know, okay, you can't just say, you know what, you're the 20th crazy person this week to send me one of these, uh, cause you know, that's just hurts their, they don't think that that's what they're doing. So you have to at least listen. I mean, if you're going to engage with them, you know, the rules of conversation, listen to what somebody has to say, let them finish their sentence. See if you can repeat back to them what they just said, you know, the, the kind of steel manning rather than straw manning, you know, say it in a way that they would go, yeah, yeah, that, that is what I'm arguing, or they're more likely to go, no, no, no, that, that's not quite what I mean. What I mean is, now, maybe they did mean that and they realized how nutty it sounds when you say it. So they corrected, but that's also good, right? Conversation is about adjusting our ideas and exchanging ideas and so on. So.

• 36:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I was honored, Michael, that you had invited me onto your podcast for my last book, which was Letters from an Astrophysicist. About a third of them are, I'm carefully communicating with, some of them were conspiracy theorists. There's a flat-earther in there and a Bigfoot person. And, and so I was, I was honored that you saw that in me enough to have me as a guest on your podcast.

• 36:41Michael Shermer?

  Oh, yeah, no, that's, uh, that kind of exchange, I think, is super fascinating. I, I love getting those kind of letters, cause it's, it's interesting to engage with them and, and, and just ask them, what, how did you come to this belief? Or what makes you think that's true? Or what would, what would it take to change your mind? You know, and it's just super interesting to think about the psychology of why people believe what they believe. And that's different from, say, refuting their arguments or whatever. Those are kind of two different levels.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 37:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, what else you got?

• 37:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, uh, back to our Corona, uh, our Corona verse that we live in. Josh V. says, "To mask or not to mask? That is the question. Why did the CDC change their advice about masks halfway through the pandemic? Does this type of flip-flop fuel conspiracy theories or at least increase distrust in authority?"

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice one.

• 37:36Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, yeah, it certainly can. I remember when that happened. Part of the reason they were saying no masks was at first they were worried about the supply chain. For healthcare workers to have enough masks and if everybody made a run on masks, there wouldn't be enough for the healthcare workers. I think that was the first reason.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As I remember it as well.

• 37:54Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, they kind of masked it by saying, well, maybe you don't need it. And then the science changed. I don't think the science ever really changed. I think it was more of a supply chain concern. And, you know, we're still, again, here we are, the day we're recording, we still don't know 100% about, you know, how many feet should you be apart from, you know, six feet? Where'd they come up with that number? Maybe it's seven, maybe it's three, who knows? You know, still a lot of that. So we're, you know, there's gonna be a lot of hindsight bias in the next, say, decade of, you know, pundits second guessing everything we did. You know, I saw some numbers today on Germany. It looks like they timed it just about right of when to shut down the economy and they're starting to reopen now. But they're all experiments, different nations trying different things, different states within the United States trying different things.

• 38:39Michael Shermer?

  This is good. You know, experimentation is how we get to the truth.

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but that's not the fluctuating frontier of what is experimentally true is not something that's taught in school. You think of science as a known thing, that if scientists say something different tomorrow than today, all of a sudden, people feel justified to discount the entire source of this information. The whole source gets canceled, right?

• 39:10Michael Shermer?

  That's right, yeah. Yeah, the problem with teaching just, science is just a body of facts is too delimiting. It's really a method. It's just a way of asking questions about the world and seeing what kind of answers you can get that are reliable. And...

• 39:25Chuck Nice?

  So if we were to perhaps just adjust the perspective behind what the way we're teaching science and the way it's received, more importantly...

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  Focus more on discovery.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:44Chuck Nice?

  See, if it's about, if it's all about discovery, then it's okay for things to change. We've discovered, like, for instance, we thought it was all about surfaces. We now discovered that it is not that, yeah, you still gotta be concerned about surfaces, but we also now must be equally concerned about our exchange with one another when it comes to speaking and being in our presence and distancing. So, but I think what happens is that this definitive and these declarative nature of, of arguments being made is what causes people to go, well, then you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Way out, I'm not listening, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck for Surgeon General. I, I vote Chuck for Surgeon General.

• 40:29Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, that's right. It's, it, it would be better if we thought of failures as actual successes. You know, we succeeded in finding out the cause of it is not this, this, this, and this, and this. Those are successes, actually.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is the, this is the famous mantra in, in space exploration. It's if a rocket explodes on the launch pad and you say it's a failure, no, it is an experiment rich in data.

• 41:00Chuck Nice?

  That's funny. I mean, not that the rocket blew up. That's not funny.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, but.

• 41:05Chuck Nice?

  The rich in data part is fun.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. Chuck, time for like maybe one or two more. What do you have?

• 41:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right, here we go. All right. Uh, this is Jessica Bennett, and she wants to know, who is controlling the massive amount of Twitter bots that are pushing for no mask and pushing to reopen America? Uh, that's something I didn't know about, but is that a?

• 41:28Michael Shermer?

  We, we should ask, uh, Jack about that, the guy that runs Twitter.

• 41:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah, Jack Dorsey. Yeah, Dorsey, yeah.

• 41:34Michael Shermer?

  Yeah. Cause what do I know? I mean, maybe they're Russian bots or Chinese bots or whatever. I'm encouraged by some recent research uh, by Hugo Mercier, the cognitive scientist, uh, about the influence of those kind of bots on, say, the 2016 election. He thinks that the influence was negligible, if at all, that people were pretty already, pretty much already made up their minds. You know, and, and you know, the, the funny story is, you know, that if, if you think Hillary is running a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria, and I correct you on that, you're not likely to vote for Hillary. You know, you're, you're probably inclined to kind of not be a big fan of hers anyway.

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, oh, she's not selling babies, I'll vote for her now.

• 42:15Michael Shermer?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Did we answer that question? What's the next one? What's the next one?

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah, here's the next one. Sven, um, Sven Bjorn, Sven Bjorn Bird wants to know this.

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've had that, we've had his questions before.

• 42:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we have. Sven Bjorn is back again. So how can you say theories are conspiracies if China is not being transparent? So, well, you know, and I think this is, this is really emblematic of a big problem. And that is, you have one fact that actually leads and supports a conspiracy, but then that mushrooms into like these thousands of things that are attached to it.

• 42:58Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, that's right. So this is the problem with authoritarian regimes not being upfront. Uh, they may be transparent and honest now, but how do we know? Because they've lied so many times. It's a little bit like the, that's why it's called the Chernobyl of China, you know, because we know the Soviets were, you know, took them like, I don't know, a week and a half, uh, until radiation started falling over Sweden and Norway that they've said, uh, well, I guess we, you know, should be more upfront about what actually happened at Chernobyl. Uh, that's the problem. So i- if you lie and then you say, well, this time I'm telling the truth, you know, how do we know? That fuels conspiracism, of course, because that's part of conspiracy theories is that somebody is behind the scenes doing something wrong, and of course, they're going to lie about it.

• 43:50Michael Shermer?

  That's true. So, uh, there's a good reason to be skeptical or conspiratorial.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but what it means is, in the case of China, then, even if, like you said, even if they are telling the truth, you don't know even if that is true because there's a room that it could be a lie.

• 44:09Michael Shermer?

  Or a false, yeah, it could be a false information, you know, disinformation campaign.

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disinformation, right.

• 44:13Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:15Chuck Nice?

  Well, in the words, in the words of Xi Jinping, "You can't handle this."

• 44:20Michael Shermer?

  Was that who said that?

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was wondering where that came from.

• 44:23Chuck Nice?

  I'm pretty sure it was, I'm pretty sure it was Xi.

• 44:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, Mike, I want to spend the last couple of minutes, could you give me some of the more outlandish, by your judgment, conspiracy theories regarding the coronavirus? I mean, like, top three?

• 44:39Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, top three, well, like, you know, 5G, Bill Gates, uh, bioweapon is, bioweapon is not quite as crazy, but, but we now know from the genetic analysis that it was not engineered, it's a bat virus. Um, you know, that, uh, you know, the, of course, the, the anti-vaxxers were all over this, very predictable, they jump on anything like this, uh, we've been tracking them for a quarter century, every time something like this happens, there's the anti-vaxxers. And, uh, so that, you know, that, that's not cra- just crazy, it's dangerous because, you know, vaccines are one of the best things we've ever invented for saving human lives. And, uh, uh, you know, so that, that's a disturbing one, not just crazy, but, but, but, but dangerous.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what do, what do, what would anti-vaxxers say?

• 45:24Michael Shermer?

  Oh, that, um, that the, either the government, you know, or the pharmaceutical companies, Big Pharma, uh, are using the coronavirus pandemic, uh, as a scare tactic to force people to vaccinate. And then, from there, you go to, they're, they're gonna chip us all so they can track us, uh, or nanobot us, and then track us, you know, even the tracking and tracing, you know, you know, uh, you know, this, this idea is, is part of that kind of new world order conspiracy theory that goes back to the 1980s. And in a way, if you think about it, uh, you know, we are all being tracked, we are already chipped, you have a smartphone in your pocket that has chips in it, and somebody

• 46:07Michael Shermer?

  knows where you are, and, uh, and maybe who you're talking to, and where you're shopping, and so on and so forth. In a way, this has kind of happened, but we voluntarily, uh, did it, and it's not Big Pharma, and it's not big government, it's, uh, you know, big tech.

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Walked right into it. And then, uh, what about the conspiracy that it was, maybe it's not a conspiracy or a cover-up, that it was a lab leaked?

• 46:30Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, so, uh, you know, uh, uh, nature, uh, nature medicine journal published, uh, the genome analysis of the, uh, novel coronavirus and that it is, you know, like 98.5% similar to a bat coronavirus. Remember coronaviruses are very common, you know, a third of all common colds are coronaviruses, the others are rhinoviruses and one other, you know, and it makes sense, bats live, bats are mammals, they're very, uh, susceptible to respiratory diseases, they live in giant populations, there's this cave in Texas with like 20 million members, like it's the city of Mexico. And, you know, they get these kind of pandemic spreads all the time. So it kind of makes sense, wet market in China, you know, bat-

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, so bats, bats don't social distance when they-

• 47:18Michael Shermer?

  They don't, they hang, they hang upside down right next to each other. That's what makes it kind of spooky.

• 47:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd make a, that'd make a cute comic, bats social distancing, right?

• 47:28Michael Shermer?

  Yeah, right.

• 47:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to get a human virus.

• 47:32Michael Shermer?

  That's right, yes. Wash your wings for 20 seconds.

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but it is true that the, uh, Wuhan is the site of a infectious disease research-

• 47:45Michael Shermer?

  That's right, and there are bioweapons labs around the world and, you know, tw- twice under, during the Cold War, the Russian bioweapons labs had a leak. One was, I think, a fire and the other one was an accidental leak. Uh, and so, you know, it's, again, it's not completely crazy to ask the question or to explore the idea, but I think that one's answered now.

• 48:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, Michael, we are out of time, but this has been highly illuminating. Michael, it's always great to talk to you and, uh, your new book, I think, just released, just in time for the coronavirus, because you knew you were planning this. In fact, you're the one who caused the coronavirus.

• 48:22Michael Shermer?

  I'm behind you. As soon as we hang up, I'm going back into my bioweapons lab.

• 48:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Giving the devil his due, reflections of a scientific humanist, which you are. So, Michael, always good to have you. Don't be a stranger. Chuck, love you, man.

• 48:41Michael Shermer?

  Love you too, man.

• 48:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. All right, guys.

• 48:44Michael Shermer?

  Thank you, gentlemen. Always good to see you again.

• 48:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. All right, Ed, this has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries. This one on conspiracy theories. As always, I bid you to keep looking.