[Music] [Music] hi there welcome to the show still taking place in what is the saddest man cave ever assembled look it's been a busy week from prominent Twitter accounts getting targeted in a Bitcoin scam to federal agents shoving Portland protesters into unmarked cars to the trumps becoming the first family of lagum but we're going to begin tonight with the Corona virus the disease that's wreaking havoc on the entire wait a minute is that cake godamn it you cake everything can't be you look sadly here in the United States covid cases have continued to climb and
a debate over what to do about schools has been dominating the news after kicking into gear a little over a week ago president Trump tonight once again at odds with his own medical experts as he continues to relentlessly push America's schools to reopen our schools we want them open in the fall he's also threatening to defund schools that don't open though he has little power to do so and criticizing the cdc's school safety guidelines calling them very tough and expensive we don't want uh the guidance from CDC to be a reason why schools don't open
Mike Pence doesn't think CDC guidelines should impede school's opening then what exactly are they for these are public health guidelines they shouldn't be skimmed through and ultimately deemed inconsequential to our current situation they're not Mary Trump's book and the Trump administration's insistence that schools should reopen full-time for in-person learning regardless of local virus spread has prompted questions like what how the and the again but with more question marks although some in the Administration claim it really shouldn't be an issue just go back to school we can do that and you know you can social distance
you can get your temperature taken you can be tested you can have distancing come on it's not that hard okay real quick you Larry cudow you human cufflink you can't tell people to just go back to school without answering questions around how that can happen safely in fact the only questions that Cudo is answering effectively there is what would it look like if someone made Rudy Giuliani exactly 0.001% hotter because safely reopening schools is going to be incredibly hard they are not designed for social distancing and years of budget cut and the economic downturn are
going to make it very difficult for them to upgrade their facilities and while this Administration has repeatedly implied that kids are at low risk of severe illness a we absolutely do not know that and B you know schools don't just contain children right lots of adults work in schools many of whom are vulnerable in fact nearly a third of K through2 teachers may be at higher risk from the virus because they're over 50 some of whom are painfully aware of the risk they're about to take Mary Strickland has been teaching Middle School 22 years and
she loves it but the sign outside her Fort Worth home describes how the 53-year-old feels about going back terrified fearing the worst she's making end of life plans I'm very concerned about my health about my life and that's why my husband and I decided to write our Wills that's awful teachers should not go to work scared they might die they should be scared of the usual teacher things like not making enough money to eat or being made into a Tik Tok meme by one of their students I bent over in front of the skeleton to
pick up my pencil and now 10 million people are watching a video of me getting drilled doggy style by a bone man to Oldtown Road I hate my life so look this is a tough complicated situation that requires nuanced thinking which is why it's so maddening to see it reduced to talking points like this I can promise you for many of our kids keeping these schools closed is going to hurt them far worse than the Corona virus can France Germany go ahead sir Denmark Austria um uh Vietnam even Vietnam has opened their schools and we
and they've done it safely and we can too and we should too well first of all the senator is rocking a look there that can only be described as open casket realness but second he can sneer all he wants about how other countries have done this even Vietnam but the fact is they've reopened under very different circumstances gradually and when daily case rates were low and dropping when Vietnam reopened their schools it had seen no Community infections for nearly a month whereas our new daily cases have reached 77,000 and are rising but I will give
him this there is real harm in not being able to reopen schools at home learning is a poor substitute especially for those with limited internet access or who require specialized support and some kids rely on schools for important resources like meals plus parents are burdened especially those who can't work remotely and do have few options when it comes to child care a stress that falls disproportionately on women especially women of color even those lucky enough to be able to work from home are finding this stressful and badly want their kids back in school trust me
I love my kids more than anything but I'd send them to go study in Jake Paul's house if it meant I could have my mornings back but we haven't made the issue of schools reopening a priority something actually best summed up by Florida Governor Ronda santis whose state is pumping out cases faster than just about anywhere right now listen to him explaining why reopening schools has to be done for the sake of consistency we spent uh months saying that there were certain things that were essential and that included fast food restaurants it included Walmart it
included Home Depot if all that is essential then educating our kids is absolutely essential and they have been put to the back of the line in some respects he's actually right there we have prioritized things like opening restaurants and bars ahead of our children and many advice that we go a lot slower while unfortunately the Ronda santti of the world ignored that advice saying things like go enjoy have a drink it's fine and it's almost impressive to watch a sitting Governor try and make the argument we were really dumb then so the only fair thing
is to also be really dumb now because schools clearly don't exist in in a vacuum and the best way to reopen schools safely is if I may quote Ashish Jah the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute live in a community that doesn't have a big disease outbreak that's how you open up schools safely so many of the decisions that could make schools safe involve what we all do outside of them and the frustrating thing is the government could be really helping there with things like consistent messaging on the importance of wearing masks and possibly
reclosing some non-essential businesses while importantly making sure people are paid a living wage to stay at home because our response here is only going to be as strong as our weakest link and other countries France Germany Denmark Austria even Vietnam know this why well because understanding it is if I may quote Larry cudow not that hard and now this and now parents on television just want one thing I'm going to out myself as Pro School Pro if it is open I will send her I'm just trying to get people to take my children take my
kids back I was one of those surveys that they sent out and I sent it I said take my kids take them I said please take my children we got to get our daughter out of the house my gosh who drives us crazy please send my kids back please send my kids back to school you're having a day there aren't you in the camera or household oh man yeah you heard that earlier yeah I heard that [Music] moving on our main story tonight concerns conspiracy theories voted definitely True by Uncle quarterly now you're probably familiar
with at least some conspiracy theories like the claim that the moon landing was faked or the argument that the Earth is flat and that scientists are covering it up and that is a theory that led to this absolutely stunning YouTube video oper there never was a sound po we're surrounded by walls of vice and we clearly live in s of a GL St magnificent I'm putting aside the factual inaccuracy slant Rhymes shoehorned lyrics and the bad Adele or solid Bor impression my favorite part of that is the comment holy crap this this is amazing I'm
going to share this around the world which is quite simply perfect but if you probably guessed the reason that we need to talk about this is that the Corona virus has created a perfect storm for conspiracy theorists because their theories are now everywhere over the last few weeks some people have been saying online that the virus is harmless or even that it doesn't exist numerous sites and groups online have been falsely claiming that this virus is a result of some sort of biological warfare some sort of bioweapon or even created by the pharmaceutical industry to
try to sell more vaccines one particularly persistent falsehood 5G mobile networks transmit covid-19 you know when they turn this on it's going to kill everyone and that's a woman in Britain called workers Killers for laying 5G Fiber Optic Cables when they turn that switch on byebye Mama okay there is so much wrong there but most of all the only time an English person should be saying bye-bye mama is when they're physically leaving the womb bye-bye Mama thank you for an excellent delivery and after that it's yes Mom no Mom and thank you kindly for wiping
off my shameful buttocks much obliged and those theories are just the tip of the iceberg here you might have seen this video of two doctors making a now debunked claim that covid death rates were exaggerated because it was all over Facebook a couple of months ago or maybe came across plandemic a pseudo documentary filled with a hodg podge of conspiracy theories in just one week it was viewed over 8 million times which is a shockingly high number because because that means it's been seen more times than this Tik Tok of a cat matching a piano's
[Music] pitch good cat you deserve more views and the problem is some online theories have already prompted some worrying real world actions take the hash filmou Hospital which spread after some claimed that the severity of the pandemic was being exaggerated and urged people to expose the truth that unfortunately led to videos like this one where I man angrily demands Hospital staff show him their coronavirus patients and then shouts at them as he drives away maybe you can call the governor and tell him about the hoax sir yeah it's a hoax where's all the patience where's
the lines of sick people they don't sit in our Rob yeah she's right and can you imagine how confused that man is whenever he tries to check into a hotel No Vacancy where are all the guests were the depressed salesman attempting autoerotic asfixiation in your lobby maybe you should call the governor of this Best Western and tell him your sign is a hoax and the harms of conspiracy theories during a pandemic go far beyond confused Hospital workers as one study pointed out given the transmissibility of covid-19 these beliefs are dangerous even if only a fraction
of Americans succumbing to them ignore best practices such as social distancing so tonight let's talk about conspiracy theories particularly why they're so appealing how to spot them and what you might be able to do about it and let's start with the fact that these theories are a lot more popular than you might think polls over the years have shown that over half of Americans consistently endorse at least one sort of conspiratorial narrative and look I'm not immune here embarrassingly there is a part of me that thinks the royal family had Princess Diana killed I know
that they didn't because there's absolutely no evidence that they did but the idea still lingers because it felt too big an event to be accidental there had to be some intent there and experts will say that that is actually a huge draw of conspiracy theories they help explain a chaotic uncertain world and appeal to the human impulse to what's called proportionality bias which is the tendency to assume that big events must have big causes take the JFK assassination that event shook the world and the Very idea that a lone gunman could cause such chaos was
inherently unsatisfying so people perhaps understandably reached for a much bigger answer although it is revealing that conversely less impactful events have attracted significantly less speculation the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan was a similar event in all regards except that the president survived it was a smaller event in terms of its outcome and therefore we're satisfied with smaller explanations and so there have been almost no conspiracy theories about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan either at the time or subsequently exactly and that kind of makes sense doesn't it cuz one man suddenly changing the world is
inconceivable one man failing miserably isn't remotely surprising something which is incidentally also the tagline for feminism so these theories have undeniable appeal and they've actually been particularly seductive during Global Health crisis in the 14th century conspiracy theorists claimed that Jewish people were responsible for the Bubonic plague in 1890 a newspaper claims the electric light was responsible for a global influenza outbreak and in 1918 rumors spread that the German pharmaceutical company Bayer had tainted its us sold aspirin tablets with the so-called Spanish Flu the only difference now is that our current pandemic is coming in the
age of the internet when it's not only easier for people to do bad research and spread their results it's also possible for them to make material look startlingly authoritative in fact take planemic at first view it looks like a high budget True Crime documentary with fancy graphics and Drone footage and it deploys those techniques to tell the story of Judy movitz a former scientist at the National Cancer Institute who's depicted as a whistleblower on the scientific establishment here is how the film presents a key moment in mavi's narrative where she claims that her enemies had
her arrested without cause and so what did they charge you with nothing but you were in jail I was held in jail with no charges I was called a fugitive from Justice no warrant literally drugg me out of the house our neighbors are looking at what's going on here you know they search my house without a warrant now that looks pretty compelling there the police surrounding her house using violent force and eventually throwing her in jail without cause but a few things you should know first she was absolutely criminally charged as stated in a lawsuit
that she herself later filed over the arrest movitz was arrested on criminal charges and when a reporter pointed this out to her she said she meant the charges were later dropped adding I've been confused for a decade and that I'll try to learn to say it differently second while that arrest footage looks dramatic it is not actually from her arrest at all it's from an unrelated SWAT raid and is literally the first result you get when you search house raid on a stock footage website which is just ridiculous cuz if they simply worked a little
harder and searched house raid on other stock footage sites they could have found this video of a mask robber spanking himself then flipping the bird and dancing around like a maniac and that's not just objectively better than the clip they chose it's also exactly as relevant and the issue isn't just that the film misrepresents M Victor's backstory it's that in doing so they lend her an Air of credibility when they allow her to make unchallenged bat medical claims like these wearing the mask literally activates your own virus you're getting sick from your own reactivated Corona
virus expressions and if it happens to be SARS Cove 2 then you've got a big problem why would you close the beach you've got sequences in the soil in the sand you've got healing microbes in the ocean in the saltwater that's Insanity yes it is everything that you just said is insane the idea that wearing a mask activates your own virus is absurd in debunking it PolitiFact said there is no evidence to support this and then threw in which not sure what a Corona virus expression even is as for the idea that there are healing
microbes at the beach look I don't want to be the depressing guy that tells you going to the beach won't cure Corona virus but I will say the beach is exactly three things none of which are medicine it's sand that goes down your ass crack salt water that gets up your nose and Sun that burns your skin the beach doesn't cure anything except you being comfortable and incidentally when we reached out to the director of plandemic to cite our many issues with the film he wrote back not only saying that he stands behind it but
asking in a country that marches to the chant of believe all women why is it that people are so quick to disbelieve Dr mikovich to which the answer is obviously a because she's telling people good Corona virus prevention involves not wearing a mask and going Boogie boarding B the phrase is believe women not believe all women and see that's not what that phrase is about because the point of that movement is not well I guess we all have to take Rachel doas at a word now and look I am well aware that for some even
these criticisms of plandemic will somehow be further proof that what it's saying is true that is actually a common trait of conspiracy theories that they're inherently self-sealing with any criticism just becoming evidence that the whole thing is bigger than anyone could have imagined although I will simply say this if I am in on this conspiracy that means my Puppet Master is AT&T and what makes you think that they can pull off a global conspiracy when they can barely pull off a complete phone call how would they even be sending me orders Sprint the point is
these theories can be innately appealing and thanks to the internet can spread with ease and all of this would be dangerous enough before you take into account that one of the most prominent spreaders of conspiracies on Earth is the current president of the United States cuz he's been spreading them around for years often with the excuse that people are saying them and he's just asking questions something he's done on claims like Obama was born in Kenya anonin Scalia was murdered and that millions of fake votes were cast for Hillary Clinton conspiracies are sort of like
ugly buildings and deeply tragic adult children in that Donald Trump loves to unleash them into the world and then refus to take responsibility for them ever again and he's been doing this throughout the pandemic including just this week when he retweeted a theory that the CDC and the media are lying about the virus to hurt his re-election chances Trump has passed on so many conspiracies the news outlets have repeatedly called him the conspiracy theorist in Chief although I would argue he's not invested in any of these things that he's spreading he's only interested in amplifying
whatever he thinks he might personally benefit from and I cannot believe I'm saying this but the person with the clearest sense of just How Deeply cynical Trump's use of conspiracy theories is is this guy when you get to Trump and his conspiracy theories he does it in a really clever way Trump never says that he believes these conspiracy theories that he tells he's simply passing him on and it's it it it's his way of jamming them up it's his way of uh teasing him it's his way of getting these conspiracy theories out there so Trump
is just throwing gasoline on a fire here and he's having fun watching the Flames yeah Rush Limar gets it and that's a sentence I never thought I'd say unless I was talking about toilet transmitted chlamidia but the thing is right now in particular there is real harm in throwing gasoline on the fire because people are going to get burned making those Flames not quite as fun to watch because make no mistake here people who have been convinced that Co was overblown have sometimes paid a steep price around this time last month Jupiter ride share driver
Brian Hitchens was a self-proclaimed covid-19 skeptic I I thought it was maybe the government was trying something that and it was kind of like a kind of like a they threw it out there to kind of distract us fast forward to this week and Hitchens has a whole new outlook from his hospital bed this is a real virus that you've got to take Serious my wife's on the ventilator she's been like that for three weeks and it's tough It's it it's sad yeah it is sad and unfortunately I don't think he's going to be the
last person in this country to learn that a lot of what's on the Internet is the hard way so what can we do here well social media companies are finally doing more to label conspiracy theories or limit their spread but the truth is they can only do so much they don't always have the expertise to litigate what is and isn't true and the sheer volume of material flying around makes it almost impossible for them to catch everything and and that's actually been a challenge for us in this story too we are clearly only scratching the
surface of what is out there and I'm sure if you look down at the comments section when this is on YouTube you will find people saying how about the fact the virus was created as a bioweapon or what about Bill Gates's plan to microchip me and it would take days to go through why each one of those is and it still won't address the ones that come up in the weeks and the months ahead the fact is it's going to be incumbent upon us as individuals to try and spot these theories and treat them with
a skeptical eye before we believe them or indeed spread them around and there are actually three basic questions that you can ask yourself that could help in that regard first is there a rational non-c conspiracy explanation cuz remember the theory 5G towers are spreading Corona virus or as that one woman so memorably phrased it when they turn that switch on bye-bye Mama exactly it made the rounds helped by images like these showing maps of coronavirus cases alongside maps of the 5G rollout and initially the similarity there does seem striking Until you realize those Maps also
look like the ones of population density which makes a lot more sense because that's correlation not causation Wi-Fi rooll outs and virus cases will both be where there are a lot of people in fact lots of maps look like those Maps this one of Domino's Pizza locations looks like a map of coronavirus outbreaks and I'm pretty sure Domino's Pizza isn't causing it yes their Wisconsin 6GS will give you a dry cough fever diarrhea and covid toe but not in the exact same way as the Corona virus and knowing the difference is called science now the
second question you could ask is has this been held up to scrutiny by experts and if so what what did those experts say because it's not uncommon for theories to site a single Source a doctor or scientist like severely Midwestern Diane Keaton here making an outlandish claim but it's worth checking if most credible doctors or scientists agree with them and if you're thinking well what if all of them are in on the cover up too that actually brings us to our final question here how plausible is this conspiracy as a practical matter because not every
conspiracy theory is fictional obviously some have absolutely turned out to be true but the very fact that we know about the real ones actually teaches us something important one study looked at real government secrets like Edward snowden's Revelations about government surveillance and found the reason they unraveled was because of the sheer number of people who had to keep them secret they actually created an equation to predict how quickly other science-based conspiracy theories would have unraveled had they been true finding that faking the moonlanding for instance would have required an estimated 411,000 people to keep quiet
and would have broken down in just over 3 and A2 years which does make sense doesn't it cuz think for a second just how many people would have to be sworn to secrecy to keep a Corona virus hoax Under Wraps I don't know if you've ever tried to organize say a midsize surprise party for your cousin but it's borderline impossible to keep it quiet CU someone is telling rockan no matter how many emails you've sent saying no one tell roxan roxan is finding out and I know you may not find conspiracy theories plausible but you
also may know people who do and while you can't reach everyone you can reach some and and now more than ever it might be important for you to try which clearly is not easy it is completely natural to Simply want to scream at them why do you believe this nonsense you Titanic idiot and I would say just show them this piece but obviously I'm not the best messenger within the first 20 seconds of this story I called your uncle a and tend not to like that now what experts say is that the most effective way
to approach someone is not by shaming them for believing something or overwhelming them with counter evidence but to try and be empathetic meet them where they are and nudge them to think a bit more critically So to that end we've asked some people that they might be more willing to listen to to help you start a conversation for instance let's say your confused grandparents are passing around dangerous misinformation about not wearing a mask they may not listen to me but they might listen to the man that they've been letting into their home every week night
to calmly tell them what is and isn't correct hi everyone the answer is Alex tbec the correct question of course who is that handsome man I'm looking at right now yeah we got Alex tbec to make a 90-second video gently urging anyone who watches it to be careful with what they encounter and share online so you could show your grandparents that and then talk to them about it but let's say you've got a cousin who's not a Jeopardy fan maybe they like wrestling or Fast and Furious movies well the good news is John Cena has
got something to say to them too there's a lot of official looking stuff on the internet not all of it's true and there's some stuff that seems false but isn't like this one John Oliver and I are the exact same age yep born on the same year on the exact same day it seems impossible that two human bodies can age so differently but it's true I checked and it's important you do that so before you go believe any theory about the pandemic or share any information about the pandemic it's good to know where that information
is coming from yeah both of those things he said are true you should check information you see online and we are the exact same age it's a thing that I think about every birthday and it's not just Alex tbec and John Cena we have an assortment of truly beloved figures from Paul rud to Katherine O'Hara to Billy Porter each of whom made messages to urge people to think more critically here is just a taste what's going on my people it's me Billy Porter hello there I'm Katherine O'Hara I'm Paul Rd Alex TRC John Cena here
WWE Superstar actor Internet meme dessert lover and number three on your partner's free P list I'm literally a superhero the smallest one but it still counts I know that we are living in scary times given the current state of things you're searching for answers about the global Health crisis I think that's awesome that Curiosity that's good I'm curious too if nobody ever ask questions Jeopardy would be a very very weird show wouldn't it but you have to be careful cuz there's a lot of convincing looking on the internet and most of it ain't true you
know I once thought I was dead because # rip Paul Rudd was trending so before you go off and share something with your friends and family it's good to know where that information is coming is it a trusted news source if you're not sure look to see if other trusted news sources and experts are saying the same thing a good way to know if an idea or story that you've read about holds water is if a majority of trusted sources agree on it and finally think critically you're smart you're smart you're a smart cookie I
know I know you are you have the look of a scholar and the taste of a macaron y'all got brains use them use it like it's the first roll of toilet paper in a brand new pack unsparingly and with gusto you have common sense trust that part of your brain to guide you as you educate yourself during this difficult time and trust that I'm doing what I can to hop to number one on your partner's free past list and number three on yours hey be safe out there that's all good advice and to increase the
chance that conspiracy theorists stumble on them we put their full videos online at the trtr truth.com and if you're looking to start a conversation with someone picking one of these videos is honestly a pretty good entry point that is our show thank you so much for watching we'll see you next week good night get comfortable take off your shoes I want to talk to you one onone e
