Duck: How are you doing? How are you feeling after a quick course in Flat Earth theory?
Dia: So I've already told you I've been ill for the last week, which is why I'm a little bit croaky, apologies to any listeners who are having to listen to the podcasting efforts of a dying frog. But I would say if you're going to watch and read a bunch of Flat Earth content back to back, don't do it while you have a fever.
Duck: Mm.
Dia: Because it started to make sense.
Duck: Mm, troublesome.
Dia: And I'm not sure I can remember which bits belong to which videos, because they all use the same backing music and I was operating on 1.7 brain cells compared to my usual three.
Duck: This is the thing that we have discovered about the Flat Earth movement, is that all Flat Earth videos are made using the same royalty free YouTube plinkity plink music.
Dia: Which is incredibly annoying, like. You warned me but I still like, I was like I used to, I once watched 200 Nostalgia Critic videos back to back, I can handle whatever you throw at me. And I could not…
Duck: it's not that it's bad. It's just by the 30th edition--
Dia: And it’s so by the numbers, as well…
B it is. So shall we start, we'll start off by laying some terms of reference, because Flat Earth is a thing that people make podcasts and videos about a lot.
Dia: It’s multifaceted, unlike the Earth, which is flat.
Duck: Right, and I specifically want to sort of lay out what I'm not doing. I am not trying to debunk or disprove any of this, I am not going to be engaging with this on a scientific level, if you want that, you can find it. I'm approaching this as a body of literature.
Dia: And also as a thing to dunk on occasionally.
Duck: Right, I am taking it as read that it's wrong. But I'm not going to go into why.
Dia: Yeah we're not treating this as a body of scientific literature, on its merits as science.
Duck: No.
Dia: We're taking this as a body of human endeavor in the field of producing content is what
Duck: t is an interesting set of texts when approached as a set of text. I think there's, there's…
Dia: I mean, I had more fun than when I watched 200 Nostalgia Critic videos back to back.
Duck: I unfortunately, I think that just means that Nostalgia Critic videos may not be good. I'm not sure it means that Flat Earth videos are good.
Dia: I think they-- I think Nostalgia Critic videos achieve what they want to achieve. And to be fair, were not designed to be watched back to back for three days straight.
Duck: Not actually supposed to engage with them in that way.
Dia: Yeah, like they were not written for the purpose of producing Master's coursework about
YouTube.
Duck: Very few things were.
Dia: Yeah, yeah, I discovered this when I was watching endless YouTube videos for a week of my life. While my at the time girlfriend was reading like Pride and Prejudice for her coursework, like a proper student.
Duck: You were deeply envious.
Dia: And I was sitting there just thinking this would probably be mildly entertaining if I hadn't just watched 100 videos exactly like it, which again, is very much the vibe with Flat Earth.
Duck: It is very much the vibe of Flat Earth.
Dia: You can really tell how the algorithm has sculpted it, if that makes sense.
Duck: Yes, yes, in the same way as when you start watching Minecraft videos, you realize that every single one of them is named I made the ultimate x.
Dia: Yeah. And sometimes they did!
Duck: Because, ultimately, is the word that the algorithm likes for Minecraft builds.
Dia: Yeah, I'm a huge, it's, I'm a huge fan of just watching internet culture shape itself, as you can tell from the fact that I did Master's coursework on the Nostalgia Critic. And I love it when you see these algorithm… methods coming and going and which creators are able to surf them like waves, and which creators are suddenly thrust aloft by one and then cling to it as the rest of the ocean recedes away. Until they are left on their little flagpole going, Why does nobody want to see this video? I put a number in the, in the title.
Duck: I made a video exactly like my last 50 videos. And the algorithm has moved on without me. I only had the one trick.
Dia: I mean, this sounds like we're, this is starting to sound like, like we’re pro-algorithm. I don't know how I feel about that.
Duck: No, I am pro ignore the algorithm entirely.
Dia: As you can tell from the fact that we're doing an analysis of Flat Earth in the year of our Lord 2023.
Duck: Right, about three to five years after that was cool.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Yeah. So I will start off by just kind of, there's not a single The Work of Flat Earth to refer to so I’m gonna just talk through kind of what I looked at for this in case the listener wants to know and/or wants to visit them either of these things is a reasonable choice. So I started off I thought, I'll go to the beginning because I didn't want to base any of this on debunks other people have done, as well as not doing a debunking, I didn't want to take this you know, second and third hand I wanted to see what Flat Earth believers are saying about unto themselves. So I went back to what seems to be approximately the beginning of Flat Earth Theory, which is a book, like an actual printed book called Zetetic Astronomy: Earth not a globe and experimental inquiry into the true figure of the earth proving it a plane without axial or orbital motion and the only material world in the universe by, quote marks, parallax.
Dia: It's a long title.
Duck: It is.
Dia: And it also originates way more of the popular phraseologies within Flat Earth than I would have expected from a single text.
Duck: Hmm, yeah.
Dia: Like the obsession with the word true. It just comes up, you start to notice that the word true comes up way more than is lexically natural in Flat Earth videos.
Duck: Zetetic Astronomy is a text from 1865.
Dia: [The theme is] ongoing
Duck: It is honestly it's about as old as I would have guessed.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: They made up the word Zetetic for themselves, which is why you've never heard of this word. The term Zetetic is derived from the Greek verb zeteo, which means to search or examine or to proceed only by inquiry. Amongst other things, this original book is a book going, I hated the experimental method, I hate the experimental method, it upsets me, I don't believe it can lead to real things. The only thing that can be real is when you think about things logically without doing experiments. And then it goes on to do some experiments.
Dia: Mhmm.
Duck: Which is philosophically a contradiction, or so I think, but perhaps I have merely not understood what a proper zetetic inquiry should be. It's possible. They don't like theories, they don't like experiments. And they don't like saying, what would we see if, if the wall was red? What would we observe in consequence, let's see if we can see those things. Ah, we can see those things, the wall must be red. The author of this book does not like that method, they find that method upsetting, they think you should just look at the wall.
Dia: That it is no stupider a school of analysis than some of the ones we have put on this list.
Duck: No, absolutely. It just, unfortunately, is not practically possible to implement in the case of sufficiently large, distant or complicated walls.
Dia: Like the moon, which is, as we all know, a big wall.
Duck: Like the moon, which as we know, is a big ball. It may be flat, it may just be a light in the sky that just looks like it has craters on it. I came across that one which is…
Dia: It blasts-- I'm told it blasts its own cold light.
Duck: Yes, the moonlight being cold thing I encountered in a couple of places, which.
Dia: I mean, it gives me interesting thoughts about speculative fiction that I would like to produce.
Duck: I encourage you to do so. It's one of the, it's honestly it's one of the pieces of evidence presented that I don't immediately know why it's wrong.
Dia: Okay…
Duck: A lot of the things that I said, I immediately know why they're wrong, because I understand. I've just I've studied enough science to know what refraction is. So the thing with the sunrise doesn't impress me, because I know what does that. I don't know why, why things in moonlight appear to be colder than things not in moonlight. I suspect something to do with, you know, those things being sheltered as well.
Dia: I mean, the last science I did was a GCSE physics exam a decade ago. So you're going to have to explain a lot to me.
Duck: Yes, um, I'm happy to do a quick fire round, like at the end if you want to know the various obvious falsities, but as I said, not a scientific debunking, we're just gonna take it as read that the Earth is round, nailing the flag to the mast there, the earth, a ball.
Dia: I understand that I am from the perspective of a Flat Earther, part of the problem, but to me, it seems a lot of the time like you're watching a Flat Earth video, and they go, but what if none of this was true? And you go, Oh, what if none of this was true?
Duck: And then they answer this with then anti semitism.
Dia: Yeah, that's the bit where they lose me like I don't have enough scientific literacy to understand reasons that they're wrong. It's just that all of their conclusions, on the basis that they're wrong, lead me to believe that they may be unreliable in other areas.
Duck: Mm.
Dia: Also, I find it impossible to ascertain from anyone other than the most hardcore of sort of… fundy weirdos, let's go with, what the rationale behind Flat Earth is. Not why they believe it, why they, what they believe we as non Flat Earthers believe.
Duck: Yes, what anyone is getting out of this is difficult to ascertain.
Dia: Like, surely if the Earth was flat, you would get more globally out of having a tourism market to look over the edge Discworld style, than whatever is gained by pretending it's round, which I think--
Duck: I'm not, I could be wrong my impression is…
Dia: I think it’s just atheism it’s for, atheism conspiracy globalism…
Duck: Atheism, Satan worship, magic with a K, I was listening to a podcast today that was very specific that this is magic with a K.
Dia: I love magic with a K
Duck: Magic with a K.
Dia: It's like fairies with like a dozen vowels in it. You just know you're in for a wild ride. I'm not anti fairies with an extra, with an extra E if people are just like, I just want to signify it's not Tinker Bell. I think it's the coward's route, but I accept it. It's when you start getting like ys in there you go okay. Okay.
Duck: I think that the thing about magic with a K is I believe it is specifically a thing Aleister Crowley dreamed up because he was being edgy.
Dia: Yeah. Which is great because it just reminds me that Aleister Crowley was not fundamentally different in any material way from the writers of Sonic X.
Duck: He absolutely was just a guy who really liked being edgy and was decent at climbing mountains.
Dia: He did indeed gotta go fast.
Duck: He would have been a YouTube personality
Dia: He would have and I would have subscribed.
Duck: I regret to say, same.
Dia: I am self-aware enough to know that I would absolutely have subscribed to Aleister Crowley's YouTube channel, and I would have awaited updates.
Duck: So having driven off every Flat Earther who might have believed us to be saveable from devil worship.
Dia: Yep!
Duck: Sorry, guys. It's just us. Now
Dia: I'm nailing, I'm nailing my colours to the mast today, I am actively pro devil worship. I really hope my old boss from the church doesn't hear that.
Duck: There goes your reference.
Dia: Sorry, Chris. I swear I didn't teach any of the children devil worship while I worked in your Sunday school.
Duck: So we have the book Zetetic Astronomy, which more or less founds the field of Flat Earth Theory. I don't propose to read it. It is 229 pages. The listener doesn't need that. But you can go and read this yourself. It is well out of copyright. It is available online as PDF. It gets boring after a while I recommend reading so the first chapter in the last chapter.
Dia: And if you're listening to this for reading recommendations, can I just state that that is not one. It is a fact that you can read it.
Duck: Oh, yes, absolutely. It's not good. It's, it's not. It sets the theme. It sets the trend for Flat Earth theory in several ways. And one of those is, it is neither persuasive nor winsome. It's an unfortunate fact about Flat Earth believers that they're just not fun people to hang out with.
Dia: But they know a lot of words.
Duck: And in that spirit, we did watch a couple of YouTube videos. We can link to them. I don't think they're any different from any couple of YouTube videos you can find.
Dia: Yeah, the impression I have from various debunking of Flat Earth is that while it's been around for a long time, I definitely remember seeing them in like jokey Facebook groups when I was like 12 ish. My feeling is that--
Duck: I feel like there were always people who believed in the Flat Earth.
Dia: Mainstream Flat Earth as, as a movement as opposed to individual pockets of fringe weirdos is generally credited to YouTube, specifically as a platform these days?
Duck: Yes, there was a Flat Earth Society in the later part of the last century that was then sort of revived around the turn of the century. Which is the current Flat Earth society.
Dia: I have a vague memory of in around like 2009, finding Flat Earth Facebook groups incredibly funny.
Duck: Flat Earth Facebook groups do sound like a phenomenon, not again, not a recommendation merely a thing that you can visit if you want,
Dia: They sure do exist.
Duck: So yeah, the current Flat Earth Society, they have a wiki, the wiki is less unpleasant to spend time in than YouTube. So there's that going for it. They lay out various arguments for their position, we read some of them. Again, we will not be covering them from a scientific perspective. I will put links to all of this sort of stuff we took as as our body of text into, like, into the episode notes, so you can see, see what we were drawing on if you want, and then the long video we watched, the full length documentary is called level 2021. Well, it's called level. It's called level and they made it in 2021 and they released it in 2022. And then it's unclearly named on YouTube. It's called level, level: the truth is hard to swallow. It's in some ways a response to I think Amazon, not Amazon sorry, Netflix did a semi biographical semi debunking the Flat Earthers documentary around the same time that I think this is essentially a response to, created and starred in by Flat Earth believers.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: I also listened to a couple of podcasts which I didn’t link Dia to just to kind of keep my eye in for what Flat Earth is all about, which we haven't actually summarized, let us very quickly summarize Flat Earth. Here is the Flat Earth theory: the Earth is not a ball, the Earth is a plane, it's flat, allowing for bumpiness like mountains and oceans. No one's denying those are there. But it's not --
Dia: I'm sure someone is.
Duck: Someone probably is. But the theory is, it's not round like a ball with bumpy bits. It is a flat like a piece of paper with bumpy bits, flat and round, in the sense of a circle. Antarctica, according to this theory is not a continent at the South Pole, it is an ice wall that goes around the circumference of the Earth. It keeps the seas in, and us in, depending on the version of the theory. Some people, the Flat Earth Society, I think specifically, believe that the Earth as a whole is accelerating upwards, which is why gravity appears to exist. Other people believe that this is a density thing. Other people believe that there is gravity, it just always points down.
Dia: I think there are also some who believe that the earth is just gravitationally exceptional. And that this is for divine reasons?
Duck: I think that's the Zetetic astronomers’ position is that gravity points down because that's the nature of Earth is that it has a downwards direction. And this doesn't tell you anything about anything else. Because everything else is lights in the sky in the firmament, which is just the bubble of impenetrable reality surrounding the earth in which the stars are-- also all Flat Earthers believe that the North Pole, so that, the north star has never, doesn't move? It does. Like I don't think this is them-- So there's there's things that Flat Earthers believed, in which they know they're disagreeing with establish fact, such as the Earth is flat. When they say the North Star doesn't move, I think they just are ignorant? I think they just don't know? That it does?
Dia: I mean, I definitely thought that was true for you know, a long time because that's what you are told.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: In non scientific circles. It's only if you go out of your way to learn about stars. At any stage that you're gonna go, oh, yeah, okay, they move over time.
Duck: And our current north, the current North Star is Polaris, it has been Polaris previously, it has also not been Polaris sometimes, because the North Star is just the word for the northernmost star. And it is not precisely over the axis of the Earth. It's just pretty close. But it's close enough for all purposes where you would need to navigate by the stars.
Dia: Yeah, like, especially in the modern era, where we've got--
Duck: Where we don't need to do that.
Dia: Smartphones.
Duck: We've got, we've got GPS, we--
Dia: if you're in a situation where you need to navigate by the stars, the history of cosmology is not your first problem.
Duck: No, and you might as well point at Polaris, it is pretty close to exactly north. It's not exactly exactly north. But in all ways that matter, um. But I'm not sure the Flat Earth people realize that it's not exactly north, or that it doesn't exactly line up with the rotational axis of the Earth, the Magnetic Pole of the Earth are not the same place.
Dia: It's also one of several elements where Flat Earthers as a group are really noticeably of the Northern Hemisphere, because I did-- because I'm quite into my stars, I did have a quick poke around a couple of the things they say about the nature of this firmament that the stars are glowy things stuck to or whatever variation on this they believe, and a shocking number of them do not know that there is a South pointing constellation. It’s like, why would there only be a North one, if it is a, if it is a globe? Why would that only be leading north? And you're like No, you just live…
Duck: The southern cross is right there, guys.
Dia: You just live in Wisconsin, it's fine.
Duck: Right. They also like to come back to this theory about all compasses point north.
Dia: Yeah, this is a great one.
Duck: Some compasses should point south and that is just a misunderstanding of what a compass is. They point north because we've painted them that way. They just point along.
Dia: I can't hold this against them because I did come back from China with a compass as a gift from my cousin. And despite us being on the south shore of the river Thames, when I gave it to him, it took us a solid three quarters of an hour to realize that it was a South pointing compass. As in the painted arm was the south arm.
Duck: I'm so proud of you.
Dia: We were sitting there with like five of us sitting in a circle going how can the river be north? We're on the south… before it occurred to us to Google--
Duck: You can paint a compass however you like.
Dia: Yeah. And like once that idea had been floated, we still weren't sure. So one of us had to Google. Are there, are south facing compasses normal in China.
Duck: Is this legal?
Dia: Yeah. So you know, I understand how a Flat Earther might be equally confused because I was standing next to an entire body of water which I knew to be north of me and still didn't consider the possibility of a South pointing compass
Duck: Because you live in the northern hemisphere.
Dia: Yeah, my brain is wired for--
Duck: London, a place that is north of many places.
Dia: Yeah, like, basically, it's hospitable living world where I live, cold places. That's the understanding I have. And I think it's very normal to have an understanding based on where you live, like, it's very reasonable.
Duck: But if you're going to build your whole identity over the non existence of south facing compasses, and the magnetic and rotational poles of the earth being the same place, and all of these, you perhaps might want to look them up,
Dia: Or I could just not do that and become a successful YouTuber.
Duck: That is an option you have. Yeah, although you’re maybe three to five years too late.
Dia: I think it's gonna make a comeback. That's my stance,
Duck: You're not looking for the next wave, you're pinning it all to Flat Earth.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: But that is broadly the Flat Earth theory, the Earth, which is generally agreed to be a ball. You know, roughly spherical with bumpy bits, is instead flat, like a piece of paper with bumpy bits.
Dia: However, what we are looking at today is a specific school of analysis, which is going to rely on the understanding that there is an underlying element to Flat Earth, which is not purely a matter of scientific debate about the nature of the planet.
Duck: Yes, we're going to do a what we're calling an ideological analysis, which says that underneath the surface level content, there is some worldview supporting it.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: So I will start at the beginning with Zetetic Astronomy, and I will direct you and the listener to page 182, by the internal labeling of the book, so not on whatever PDF you've got, but you know, the page that is labeled 182, on the bottom of the page, of Zetetic Astronomy, which makes the argument that the Bible says the earth is flat. And if the Bible says the earth is flat, and the earth is flat, then the Bible is literally true in everything else, it says as well.
Dia: Okay.
Duck: I would say this is pretty trivial as a logical fallacy, because I can be right about the location of Sweden, and wrong about everything else I say, about Sweden, like, let alone being right about Sweden, therefore also right about angels.
Dia: Can we do a spin off podcast, which is just Ben naming facts about Sweden,
Duck: I don’t... I probably do know some facts about Sweden, I do not have the majority, or not many. Bonus episode, facts about Sweden. So this is a logical fallacy that you know, if the earth is flat, then the Bible is real. And also, if the Earth is round, then the Bible is false, logical fallacy. We can accept this.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: It is, however, pretty much identical to contemporary evangelical rhetoric about evolution. So the reasoning goes, evolution, dinosaurs, are contrary to the book of Genesis, if you read Genesis in a particular way, where you assume it to be like biography more than poetry?
Dia: And also in English.
Duck: And also in English. And also you don't look too closely at how chapters one and two of Genesis retell the same story in a slightly different order. Don't look at it, don't worry about it. Just assume it's fine. But if evolution is contrary to the book of Genesis, then if evolution is true, God isn't real. And Jesus doesn't love you. It takes the whole thing, compresses it into a unit and says, If any single fact in our understanding of this is false, then the whole thing is untrue. God isn't real. Jesus doesn't love you. And therefore there's no such thing as dinosaurs. This is the same argument as Zetetic Astronomy is making: if the Earth is round, God isn't real.
Dia: Good to know.
Duck: So this is one of your ideological, the strains in the ideological braid of the Flat Earth is if the earth is flat, then God is real. And it often goes the other way as well. God is real, therefore the earth is flat. A lot of people in the Flat Earth community are starting from the point of there's a biblical description of the earth. I'm going to assume it to be a scientific paper. And anything in it is unquestionably true. And this leads me to a Flat Earth with a firmament dome over the top. And anyone who doesn't believe that is either brainwashed or lying, because they're denying God. So it's either because they're, they've been, you know, indoctrinated to hate God, or it's because they're in the Cabal.
Dia: Sure.
Duck: The couple of YouTube videos we watched, I should credit the gentleman Eric Dubay. He's entertaining enough for about 10 minutes and then you start to really notice his background music.
Dia: Yeah. I think I can still hear his background music.
Duck: We watched a couple, we watched a couple from him. And the primary thesis of the first one which was called Why is Flat Earth important, the two primary thesis of that one is that the lie is the point. It's about full control. It's about warping your brain by making you believe things that are not common sensical. So you'll believe anything else you're told as well. And it's a conspiracy of the elites and secret societies to control the masses. The Roman Catholic Church appears to be one of the secret societies, which I don't think is accurate. Like one, I think the Catholics are fairly well known. And two, they did torture Galileo for geocentric heresy. So I feel like the Roman Catholic Church as an organization has been historically ambivalent on the shape of the Earth.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: But they're in the video, so it must be true. Secret Society, Roman Catholicism.
Dia: I mean, if I were secret society, I would think it was an excellent double bluff to have an entire country.
Duck: I just think at that point, you're not secret.
Dia: If you're technically eligible to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest, you're not secret.
Duck: I wish they would.
Dia: I want them to more than anything in the world.
Duck: I want Vatican monks in the song contest.
Dia: There will not be peace in Europe until the Vatican competes in Eurovision.
Duck: I want them to win, because I crucially want them to host
Dia: Oh my god, it would be incredible. Do you think if Australia wins, you know how they're allowed to nominate anywhere? Are they allowed to nominate the Vatican?
Duck: I have no idea.
Dia: Are they allowed to nominate anywhere that competes or anywhere in Europe, because those are two different things.
Duck: Those are two very different things.
Dia: Because if it’s the latter, they can definitely nominate the Vatican,
Duck: Which would be amazing. Because you’d have a couple of Australian hosts presenting from Vatican City.
Dia: I would do anything to attend that Eurovision.
Duck: Anyone out there with billions of dollars make this happen for us,
Dia: Australia, Australia, I believe in you.
Duck: We need you to compete really well.
Dia: We need you to smash the Eurovision Song Contest like it has never been smashed before. We need you to select the Vatican.
Duck: We need you to somehow make them host it.
Dia: And we need you to make them cooperate. Anyway.
Duck: The second video we watched from Eric Dubay was The Secret Society Network which I did not finish, I didn't watch the whole thing and you don't need to because…
Dia: I made the decision to put them on while I was going to sleep and simply catch up in the morning. And I had interesting dreams.
Duck: The point of this second video is that it's the secret societies, stupid. Conceptually, this seems like it should be separable from Flat Earth, and the more you look into it, the more you find this underneath. Flat Earth barely exists on its own. It's, it's all conspiracy theory. It's a theory that there is a conspiracy and theories that start with there's a conspiracy against me are all the same theory. They're all the same thing.
Dia: They're all very much based on the assumption that you already believe that there are people out to get to you and just need to have it narrowed down who they are.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Like there's no part of this, which is, unless there was a bit at the end that I slept through, there was no part of it that was geared towards convincing you that the secret societies exist.
Duck: No, it was just a recitation of names of the same secret societies repeatedly and people who might be in them or who have had people who were in them in their cabinets.
Dia: Yeah, I mean, it. It is kind of interesting in that way, in that it's actually not in any way attempting to be an argument.
Duck: No, that's true of a lot of this stuff. A lot of this stuff is Flat Earthers talking to themselves. So you already believe what they believe, it's reinforcement. It's a Sunday evening sermon in ten. It's, the purpose of it is to remind you not to stray from the path.
Dia: Yeah. And like, it's very noticeable that occasionally when you're watching the videos, they will bring up oh, if you're talking to normies, like if you're if you're making arguments on Flat Earthers don't bother with any of this. And you're just like, then why? What, what is it?
Duck: Right, give me the Flat Earth intro process.
Dia: You're sculpting these like they are arguments, but you are telling me with your words that they are not arguments,
Duck: I shouldn’t use them as arguments or rely on them as arguments. The argument is that the debate is a shape we have pushed the internal bonding into.
Dia: Also the arguments that they say will convince normies are bad in completely different ways to the ones that they say not to even bother with.
Duck: Right, they do generally say don't start with the secret societies, but then they say start with the least plausible scientific theories.
Dia: Like the one I've seen them repeatedly say to start with is the, the, what do they call, ghost flights? No, that's the racism one. Missing flights? The one that I have seen multiple people go--
Duck: Oh, the one that says there's no flights going from--
Dia: That's the one yes, that's--
Duck: The southern hemisphere because it will be too far and all you have to do is look up--
Dia: Yeah!
Duck: A flight map and go: Oh, look, there's lots.
Dia: I saw like three different Flat Earthers say that was the best argument to open with. And I was just there like, is it? Because like, I feel like anyone who's ever been to Aotearoa could correct you on that.
Duck: I feel like most people who go to Aotearoa do it by plane from other places south of the equator.
Dia: Like, it just seems to me like this is not an argument that I would open with if I were making a spirited defense of Flat Earth.
Duck: No.
Dia: But to be fair, I can't think of any better ones.
Duck: I also want to touch on I just because I found it so interesting that all of Eric Dubay’s videos also have this thing about sacralization of the North Pole?
Dia: I know.
Duck: Which I don't think is widely incorporated outside of Eric Dubay. And he is prolific enough for running a fairly major Flat Earther forum. But you know, even there, I don't know if we should be worshiping the North Pole. And in fact, we would be worshipping the north pole as a natural outgrowth of human existence. If it were not for the secret societies. I don't think that's a popular take. That's a really interesting one.
Dia: It's definitely interesting. It's also, it's weird, I think, Oh, God, which of 8 million different YouTubers, I think it's maybe Hbomberguy that talks about them not being regressives, that that is like a progressive school of thought. It's not reverting to any previous thing. It's interesting. The North Pole thing does seem to have been invented wholecloth just out of a need to focus on something.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Like it's not connected to any of the other obvious parts of their beliefs.
Duck: No, I have a theory there.
Dia: Oh, excellent.
Duck: Because the first of the videos we watched from Eric Dubay is about why is this important. And a large part of the reason that they really want the earth to be flat is because it makes us important, because we are the center of the universe. Flat Earth is also opposed to heliocentrism. It's a geocentric world. The earth is the center of the universe. Everything revolves around us. So if the North Pole is the thing that everything, that the, if everything revolves around the Earth, the Earth revolves around the North Pole, and truly the North Pole is the most important place in the universe.
Dia: That does make sense.
Duck: I think that's the kind of at least the emotional thread there.
Dia: Yeah, I had, I had clocked that obviously, from the video, I had clocked that about the Earth, but I hadn't really connected it to the North Pole, being the center of the earth?
Duck: It is my theory. It was like scientifically tested it.
Dia: I mean, that does seem plausible, because a lot of them do seem to just be really upset by the idea that we are not on a planet, which is distinct.
Duck: Unique, yeah.
Dia: Which like, we are! We’re on the only planet Earth.
Duck: Right! Even if we're not the only inhabited planet, even if we're not the only intelligently inhabited planet working on spaceflight, we're the only one that we're from.
Dia: Yeah, like, it doesn't have to be cosmically significant to be significant. Because it's the one where we're here having this conversation.
Duck: My house is very important to me, because it's my house, got all my stuff in it, and I live there.
Dia: It feels almost like a form of magical thought to me where it's this idea that, well, nothing can be significant unless we are significant in this very literal, physical way within the universe. Otherwise, we might as well just give up on having a society and go back to caveman times.
Duck: Anarchism and libertarianism. Yeah.
Dia: Yeah. It's, it's, it's very Catholic, considering how much they don't like Catholics.
Duck: It is, it is actually.
Dia: It's weird. I was expecting it to be a lot more like, American. But it's actually very, it's I mean, it's very American, but religiously, it has big Catholic energy.
Duck: No, it does. It does. We also watched this this long. I mean, it's about an hour and a half, but it feels very long, Flat Earth documentary. Which, it starts off being quite fun to play spot the thing that is wrong, unfortunately, they get bored of audio editing about 20 minutes in.
Dia: Mhmm.
Duck: And there are long talking head sections with people on very bad microphones, which I've found personally distracting.
Dia: I can't throw any stones on that front.
Duck: Look, I'm not saying I would do better. I'm just saying I didn't enjoy it.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: It's a whole documentary that follows that same path and for 10, 20 minutes, it's quite carefully cut together to make an argument and then it devolves into talking head YouTube video ranting. What was striking to me about that was how unpersuasive it was, and how little effort they were putting into being persuasive because the experience of watching that documentary is of spending after the first little, here are our scientific theories bit it's it just devolves into just very smug men mocking the concept of disagreeing with them. Like, the, the primary tactic is simply to sneer at the concept that the world could be anything other than they think it is, and how stupid you are to think anything that they don't think and how ridiculous it is that anyone, in fact, could believe these lies because they are too smart to believe these lies. And this just proves that you are very stupid, which… it's not even being done as an invitation. There's a way to do that kind of rhetoric where you're inviting people to join you on the side of understanding so that they can join you on the smug side instead of the being laughed at side.
Dia: Yeah, it's, it's very Skeptic YouTube.
Duck: Yes, in exactly the same way as the internet atheism movement. What this documentary doesn't do is that Invitational step, it stops at, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm smart, you're dumb.
Dia: It's, it feels much more open to people who already agree with you about one thing, and you're going to convince to agree with you about another thing, as opposed to people who disagree with you about anything ever, because those people are clearly stupid and/or evil.
Duck: Yes, it is addressed to people who share your worldview, who share your underlying ideology, and who maybe disagree with you on a couple of facts that you are now going to browbeat them into changing their mind.
Dia: And I think those facts may be whether or not the earth is flat like there is actually, from what I can tell, quite a lot of debate within certain circles about the exact reason that the earth is cosmically unique and or significant, ranging from heliocentric arguments to Flat Earth arguments to ones I didn't even understand about the physical shape of the universe. But they all already don’t agree about the underlying ideology, which fortunately, is what we're here to talk about.
Duck: Yes, I think that's true. But I think it's, it's notable that in this sort of, this was the slickest and most carefully produced video that I found. And rhetorically, it is not oriented towards persuading anyone. It is oriented toward in group reinforcement, and maybe picking up some people on the margins of the in group. But it's not really intended to persuade, it's intended to reinforce. And then finally, I looked at various parts of the Flat Earth wiki, which is run by the Flat Earth Society. I do want to give a shout out to this page entitled to The Conspiracy, just because it's really adorable how it talks about NASA.
Dia: Oh, I love it when they talk about NASA.
Duck: Quote, The earth is portrayed as round in NASA media because, italics, NASA thinks it's round. They are not running a real space program, so they wouldn't know what shape the earth truly takes. I love that. That's so nice. That's just so much less, they're doing it because they're evil, and just, well, no, they're just stupid. They're just wrong. It's cute. Yeah.
Dia: I'm also I'm just I'm such a huge fan of the way they talk about NASA because they seem to genu-- it's not even like they're pretending is the only space agency on the planet. They seem to genuinely think that.
Duck: They do like No, no one out there. None of them are campaigning against, like Skynet.
Dia: Well, especially not Skynet,
Duck: Especially not Skynet, but none of them are-- They're the sort of people who think Musk is very clever. So they're not really opposed to SpaceX. But they don't talk about SpaceX, they just talk about NASA in the same way as they are sufficiently focused on I don't know his name, what's his Neil deGrasse Tyson that like, American TV science educator guy, the last 10 minutes of the documentary are fully dedicated to challenging specifically Neil deGrasse Tyson to debate them, because he is the Pope of the round earth.
Dia: It's like if you ever watch, if you have nothing better to do with your life, if you ever watch, like those sorts of Christian argument movies, like the God's Not Dead type movies, where there's almost always at least one scene where like someone's arguing with an atheist and like they're, the atheist will suddenly go, well, Stephen Hawking said this, and they'll, and they'll disprove Stephen Hawking's point, badly, usually, and the atheist will just go, Well, that was my only reason for atheism. So I guess I’m Christian now.
Duck: if the earth is flat, then God is real. If Neil deGrasse Tyson is wrong, then the earth is flat. It's the same logic.
Dia: Yeah, it's, it's this very figure-heady approach to science or atheism, or anyone who disagrees with them, which I find incredibly funny. It's like people who think that every one at a Pride march is sponsored by George Soros personally. And I’m just like…
Duck: Right! As opposed to just being some things that people organized collaboratively with some arguments along the way. And probably somebody got broken up with over it.
Dia: Yeah, like people just go outside and do things sometimes.
Duck: Not everything is organized. You have only to observe the world to know this to be true.
Dia: Yeah, but like a lot of people want to believe everything is organized and it's almost sweet. Like I've seen European Flat Earthers complaining about NASA and you're just there like we have our own space agency guys.
Duck: Our own space agency, I saw people insisting that Sweden winning the Eurovision was because it was a stitch up and I was like.,,
Dia: I mean, I was insisting that because I thought it was funny.
Duck: It is, it is funny.
Dia: I was adding fuel to that fire.
Duck: Also, the juries, the juries and the public vote always disagree. That's why there are still juries that keep it at least vaguely commercial because we will reliably vote for whatever was silliest and most sing-alongable to.
Dia: Yeah, and don't get me wrong. I also think that every silly act ever robbed by the juries should be able to seek financial compensation. But that isn’t evidence of a grand conspiracy.
Duck: That’s what the juries are for. That’s not a conspiracy. Like that's the point that's openly the, that's what they're for.
Dia: Justice for the Lithuanian guy who did the ballad about his shoes, forever in my heart, even if I can't remember your name, he should have won.
Duck: On the front page of the Flat Earth wiki. There is the following quote: the Flat Earth Society holds that there is a difference between believing and knowing. I would like to point out, everyone thinks that, like they're not special. But they are illustrating beautifully another major strand in Flat Earth thinking which is, we are special, we have special insight, we have special perceptivity, our common sense is more trustworthy than anything, anyone else can tell us, our judgment is the only judgment we can trust. Our reasoning is the only unmotivated reasoning. We are the true scientists, the true prophets, and the true voice of sanity in the world. We're special, we’re different and that's what makes us right. And if it's complicated, then it's scary. I would actually encourage people to go and read the page on three body problem on that wiki, I think it is one of the most illustrative bits of writing that I found. The three body problem in very simplified terms, says that it's easy to work out the orbits, or how something moves when you've got one moving thing. And harder, but still basically mathematically doable to work out the orbits for two moving things. But when you try to calculate for three moving things, such as a sun, a planet and a moon, then it becomes hard to do the sums. And when you can do the sums, it's hard to generalize. So you can't easily come up with a rule. A planet orbits a sun. A binary pair of suns, so things of roughly equal mass will end up going in a circle together, like each of them goes around the other. So they just, they form a circular orbit around an empty spot, like linking arms and spinning in the playground. And that reliably happens. Two planets and the sun might do a whole bunch of things. Like it's hard to say it depends on the details you start with, how big they are, and where they are, and how fast they're moving, when you start makes a big difference to the end result. So you can't come up with, or we haven't yet come up with a simple mathematical rule, like an equation that you can just plug your numbers into, and it'll spit out this is the orbit of easy things. And for the Flat Earth believers, this is a disproof of gravitational theory, like this fact that it's hard to calculate it to mathematically simulate a universe that works like this and come up with a simple rule, means it's false.
Dia: I mean, I personally don't understand how to calculate my taxes and my student loans, therefore, I should not have to pay them.
Duck: Right! This is another strand in the ideological tapestry, though, it's what is complex is false. And what is simple is true, if I find the universal intuitive, it is the universe that is wrong. Which, as an aside, you know, something else, we can't mathematically simulate or predict? The space that molecules take up.
Dia: Molecules aren't real, it's all a lie.
Duck: Obviously.
Dia: It’s the only answer.
Duck: Yeah. So chemistry is just a series of conceptual models, because actually describing the literal universe is for physicists, chemists are just, chemists are less esoteric, it's not we're not trying to do reality. We're just trying to do prediction. But almost all of those models include the clause: pretend like atoms don't take up space, which they do, they absolutely do take up space. And fairly often, you end up having to say, well, this doesn't work like you would think, because the molecule takes up space and gets in the way. But it's really, really hard to work out how much space a molecule takes up and what shape it is. And also the shape is a magnetic field that has positive and negative areas and the things interacting with it are also complicated magnets. So mostly, you just ignore the space because it's unintuitive, and it's hard to calculate, but that doesn't mean molecules don't take up space. Molecules take up space. That is a true thing, that is hard to do sums about.
Dia: I will say the page on the three body problem is where I definitely, I finally put my finger on what the tone of Flat Earth replied to me. And it is like someone on Reddit explaining to you why your opinions about Star Wars are mathematically incorrect.
Duck: Yes, the three body problem has exactly the tone of someone explaining to you how only certain kinds of transporter accidents are possible.
Dia: Yeah. When your initial statement was like, I think Chekhov is a fun character in Star Trek. And now somehow you're here.
Duck: Right? You started off with, I think Seven of Nine should get to hang out with the first generation crew.
Dia: And now someone is talking about gravitational orbits,
Duck: Right. And now the effect of gravitational field on transporter beams is being explained at you. It has.
Dia: Like I've said, this is my fun worldbuilding concept about life on Tatooine. And now someone is telling me how binary systems work and I'm in physical pain.
Duck: Yes. Like, I don't necessarily recommend trying to understand the three body problem but approached as a piece of literature. I think that page is very interesting.
Dia: It's, it doesn’t read like science communication is the thing that I find most interesting about it.
Duck: No.
Dia: It is making no pretense of being science communication.
Duck: No, it's it's more so trying to be a scientific paper, but unfortunately, not very well.
Dia: It's a scientific paper written by someone who has spent the last 10 years explaining on Reddit why it's scientifically impossible for there to be girls in video games.
Duck: Except for the jiggle physics.
Dia: Yeah. No, everybody knows--
Duck: Look evolutionary psychology says the jiggle physics is necessary for the game to be fun.
Dia: Yeah, but they can't be character players. Because if girls went on adventures in space, their boobs would actually fly up and suffocate them.
Duck: Right, no, no, no, they can't have adventures, it's just vitally important that they should be there, and that the boobs should jiggle.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: That's just science.
Dia: They are background jiggles.
Duck: Which is a great band name.
Dia: The dark version of the wiggles.
Duck: So steering wildly back onto topic, I would say we have identified here the zone of some ideological threads. So one, the world is divinely ordained to work in a particular way. And if it didn't work that way that would disprove God. Two, we are the chosen people, we are the true understanders of the world and its proper organization. Three, the truth is being hidden from you by malevolent powers, who are deceiving you as a first step in controlling you completely. Four, what is simple is true, and what is difficult is false. Five, if you can say it in a funny voice that proves it's fake.
Dia: [in a funny voice] If you can say in a funny voice…
Duck: Thank you for the demonstration. Less explicitly, but absolutely present in all of this material: everyone is out to get me. Everyone is out to get you. The world is hostile, it's full of people who are plotting against you, they are doing so deliberately and with full knowledge of what they're doing to you, you can't trust anyone. You can't even trust people who agree that the earth is flat, but disagree on whether the firmament is there or whether the earth is accelerating. You can't trust those people. Those people are the enemy, everyone is out to get you. Paranoia is actually I would say ideologically fundamental, to this whole worldview. Because I think the ideology of Flat Earth it isn't, you know, anarchism or libertarianism or conservatism. It certainly isn't scientific. It's you know, you're never gonna get a technocratic, you're never gonna get from Flat Earth think theory? How should we run the world, then? What should society be like? It doesn’t, it isn't a tool for understanding that because the ideology of Flat Earth is conspiratorial, the conspiracy is the point. The content is entirely secondary. The point is, the world is being run by groups of people who are deliberately excluding me and lying to me, and who know I'm right. And it isn't really important for me to be able to recruit you, because what matters is that I need to be able, I need for my own emotional release, to get up on my soapbox and say it. There isn't substance in this. This is about the conspiracy. This is about the Catholic Church lying to you that the Earth is round. Which is why it's the same as all the other conspiracy theories, which is why there's no point arguing with the surface content. There is no point arguing over whether refraction makes the sunrays look like that, when the real core of the thinking is: the world is out to get me by lying to me. The facts are decoration on this. This is the same set of ideological threads you would get if you went through what terfs think. Because it's the same thing.
Dia: And feels equally agonizing.
Duck: Give it five years there will, there will be some kind of hybrid crossover and as you say, it's the same thing. The experience of watching the videos is exactly the same because it's never about recruitment. It's about retention. It's-- they’re talking to themselves.
Dia: And it is very much, watching both terf videos and Flat Earth videos, frankly, the experience is of bouncing off so many curbs one after another that you feel like you have a concussion.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: And yet, they have not paused for breath.
Duck: Yes, they have rattled through 20 different, inaccurate things in five minutes. And if you stop and debunk all 20 things, then one, this will take you three months, during which time they've made 16 more videos. And two, it won't matter because all that will prove to them is that you are working for the enemy.
Dia: So they have succeeded in wasting your time, which is a win for them.
Duck: They have succeeded in wasting your time and that is a win for them.
Dia: You could have been doing anything with the time you spent proving that the Earth is round, or that you are not personally a sex offender. Like, you could have done anything with that time. And you're here talking to them.
Duck: You could have baked a pie, you could have eaten a pie, both of which are very good activities that I recommend. You could have learned to knit. You could have I don't know, done some anarchist graffiti, which would be more productive than watching Flat Earth videos.
Dia: Also, functionally, responding to Flat Earthers and debunking them and disagreeing with them in general, only really proves to them that there is a global conspiracy that is out to get them personally.
Duck: Yes. When you go on YouTube and you look up Flat Earth, first off, all the results you get are debunks.
Dia: Because they’re more fun than Flat Earth videos.
Duck: So you say to yourself, you go okay, so YouTube is doing this to us, YouTube is suppressing Flat Earth videos and giving me various debunk things. So I will go through the forums and I will find links that way. And you go and look at those and on all of the videos that you find that are Flat Earth, pro Flat Earth instead of anti, There's a little informational box under the video saying this is unscientific and disproven.
Dia: Yeah. Which is also on a lot of the debunkings, which is, which is very funny.
Duck: But it's also from the perspective of a believer, absolute proof that YouTube is part of the conspiracy against them, it proves that there is a conspiracy against them, and that it encompasses the world, which… I don't think debunking Flat Earth is productive. Because the conspiracy is the point, the ideological-- the ideology here is that of conspiracy. In the same way that I think what you do with terfs is you just block them on sight because arguing with them is their win condition. And you will never deradicalize them by arguing with them. I don't know how you deradicalize terfs, and I don't know how you persuade a Flat Earth believer of you know, modern and-- not even modern because the whole point is actually what where you traditionally start from for the debunkings is: we have known the earth was round since forever.
Dia: The thing is that there are conspiracy theory believers who are available to be convinced, you know, there are people who consider themselves feminists and have heard some scary things that are open to be told, actually, it's okay, the world isn't what you've been told it is, and it's fine. I'm sure there are Flat Earth believers, who are in a similar place of, I've heard all of this stuff. It's all very scary. I think I believe it. What you will not do is convince out and out conspiracists that they are wrong.
Duck: No.
Dia: Because they're not open to debate, the existence of debate is to them, not just heresy, but like an overt attack on them personally as a human being,
Duck: Which is exactly why they will be the people who are constantly trying to summon you to debate with them. Because when they say debate, what they mean is a ritual fight where they get to kill you. It's not-- It's come and fight me. But when you go and fight them, it's going to be them and 10 of their mates.
Dia: Yeah. And it's like, it's like those posts you see a lot online about like, why you should be nice to Jehovah's Witnesses and people like that which is: sending them out into the world to be disagreed with and dunked on is a way of--
Duck: It’s how you reinforce them further into the in group.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: And that is absolutely true of 18 year old missionaries who have never not been amongst their church.
Dia: Exactly, like by all means, tell the guy who was trying to force you to go to the Scientology video screening in the street to get lost. But it is very much a ritual act of cultish groups to say--
Duck: Yes, and almost all street preaching.
Dia: Go out into the world, get yelled at, get abused, get disagreed with, and then come back to us the safe place. And I think there is a degree to which there's an mirrored function performed by these… I dunked on him with my smart rational brains YouTube videos, which is like look, look at what-- Look at them. Look how much better than them we are.
Duck: I noted already the resemblance of a lot of these videos in tone to the internet atheist approach. I think a lot of people doing the debunking straight up are the internet atheists. The debunking is also an in-group reinforcement process. Like, you don't you don't watch a long form debunking of Flat Earth because you are starting to question your belief in geocentrism. You watch it because you enjoy the, the rhetorical work of these particular YouTubers. And it's a fun topic to watch them dunking on. Neither side of these, this sort of video war is trying to persuade people who are anything further than right on the margins. The other side is not being addressed in this, this is we're all talking to ourselves. And it's just not ever going to be persuasive to start from a position of talking to ourselves. This is also true of other ideological clashes. I am straightforwardly opposed to conservatism, which makes me a very bad candidate for persuading conservative voters not to do that.
Dia: Yeah. Like I think we can both agree I am an extremely non threatening figure.
Duck: You are indeed, I have never felt physically threatened by you. Yes.
Dia: I've still found because as I said, I have had these conversations with a few people who don't know that I'm trans. Where it is very, very palpable that there are people who are open to being persuaded, and then there are people to whom the existence of disagreement is threatening, regardless of the vehicle by which that disagreement is expressed.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Because even the sort of politest of I don't personally think that's true, from the least threatening of human beings, in the most social and open and non dangerous settings, is a threat in this world for you.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Because the world is out to get you and this isn't the world.
Duck: Yeah, this this sort of, I think, sort of one of the… not, not everyone who does A does B obviously, but I think one of the things that is always a warning sign or an early symptom of this kind of thinking, if someone disagrees with you on a matter of taste, and you feel the need to argue you are doing the, the kind of paranoid thinking that evolves into this.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: You know, if I say that I quite like pineapple on pizza. And you feel that you need to get in the comments and tell me how wrong I am about pineapple on pizza.
Dia: I mean, I'm a pineapple pizza enjoyer. And… people have so many emotions…
Duck: The true ideology of this podcast is revealed. We made you sit through an hour of not debunking the Flat Earth to reveal our pro pineapple agenda.
Dia: I mean, I have only can confirm, I don't know about you, I have had more shit for liking pineapple on pizza than I have any of my actual political opinions in my life.
Duck: To be fair, this is partly because I will need to keep hanging out with people who were wrong about pineapple. In a way I'm not willing to keep hanging out with Tories.
Dia: This is true.
Duck: When you feel yourself that urge to say, you know, the impressionist actually are bad and realism in painting is better. And to then have an actual argument, like, to get emotionally invested in, in, in bludgeoning the other person into seeing things your way. I don't think the slope is slippery, but there is a staircase and you're on the first step of it.
Dia: I mean, even within that example, I have been called a fascist for liking impressionism, like people will go so hard so fast in arguments about taste.
Duck: I personally am not moved by the expressionists. But I think fascist is going a little far.
Dia: Well, everyone knows that fascists like landscapes and impressionism is kind of like landscapes, so
Duck: Do we?
Dia: Functionally…
Duck: We don't really, I don't think they are very much like landscapes. So is that a thing we know?
Dia: Well, it's a, it's sort of a thing, like within the very specific context of modern art movements in the 20th century that someone maybe read a Tumblr post about once. It's kind of true. But you know, what Impressionism isn't? It's not not modern art, like it is.
Duck: It's quite recent.
Dia: Yeah, like, there's a whole thing of like, fascists, fascist groups having a dislike for modern art because it represents a type of thinking, which is modern, and they don't love that. But it's not like, one to one: the world is divided into people who like Damien Hirst, and people who like Hitler. Those are the two genders.
Duck: Those are the two genders! The two genders actually are geocentric and heliocentric.
Dia: The thing is right, there’s-- I think it's, it's, it's hard to like, express this as a format of ideology because like, I think it's a human need to have stupid arguments, like I really believe that it is actually good for you and healthy for you to engage passionately with things that do not matter. I think it's good for your brain.
Duck: Sometimes you do have to pick a molehill and die on it and arguing about pineapple and pizza can be quite fun.
Dia: Yeah, like if everybody is a consenting adult, argue about what you want. Drop that 12 paragraph rant about Disney's Descendants in the group chat.
Duck: Right? Go on Reddit, and have really in depth discussions about tractor beam accidents.
Dia: Like, if you aren't having enough enriching arguments in your life, can I recommend getting Twitter? Like it's very easy to engage in arguments that don't matter, And I think it's good for you. I just think you have to maintain a sense of scale. Like if you're ending friendships, because they have the bad opinions about the Great Mouse Detective, you should maybe reconsider your opinions about your Great Mouse Detective and how important they are to you as a person.
Duck: Right, right. Absolutely, I will die on the hill that a wooden garden gate is better than a wrought iron one. But I am not going to lie to myself that this is actually important.
Dia: It'll become important when your house gets invaded by the Fae.
Duck: Well, that's why I've gone and buried nails
Dia: Mm, suspicious.
Duck: This is why my theory is actually that camping is very safe.
Dia: That tracks, yeah.
Duck: Because yeah, you hammer in a double ring of iron tent pegs that you sleep inside it. And I think that's a very good anti the other folk precaution.
Dia: I think the plastic tent pegs that are--
Duck: That don’t work.
Dia: That come with new tents, even though they don't work, are a conspiracy by the fairies.
Duck: No, I mean, when I say they don't work. I mean, they don't work to keep out the fairies. They also don't work as tent pegs.
Dia: Yeah, they don't work for any purpose.
Duck: This concludes our discussion. Yeah, I don't, I don't have a neat bow to put on this because I don't you know, there is an inclination to say so what's the solution? How do you deradicalize a Flat Earther? If arguing with them is not the way and buddy I have no idea.
Dia: I think, most listeners of this podcast, think about why you want to debunk a Flat Earther. Why do you want to deradicalize a Flat Earther? What else could you be doing with your time that isn't arguing with these guys on the internet?
Duck: Right. And if your point, which is a very accurate point, is that the real problem is the anti semitism and the material consequences from acting on a belief in these shadowy cabals of mainly Jewish people? Sure, but what's the material action that we can take to counter the material harm? Because persuading them, I don't think is step one. I think rendering them harmless has to come first. And I don't think we're fighting them.
Dia: Yeah, and I mean, I'm not saying I could talk someone out of being an antisemite, I think that would be thinking very highly of myself. But if I were going to try, I don't think I'd start with debunking Flat Earth.
Duck: No.
Dia: I think we can agree that debunking Flat Earth is actually pretty immaterial to the ongoing plight of Jewish people being exposed to constant anti semitic rhetoric.
Duck: Yeah. This is just not the starting place and not the sharp end.
Dia: And that's a really, really depressing ending to that bit of conversation. So can we go with, do you have I'm not asking for a solution. But do you have a thesis statement for us?
Duck: Not so much a thesis statement, I have an example of something I overheard recently, which I think really sets off the absurdity of this whole conversation and emphasizes that maybe the content isn't the point. So I overheard this, this was a conversation being had behind me. This is a conspiracy theory. And the theory is Flat Earthers are a psyop by the government to make conspiracy theorists look ridiculous. I did not choose to argue with that person.
Dia: Were they pro or anti conspiracy theory in general?
Duck: Oh, no, pro, this was a Flat Earthers are a psyop to make the rest of us look bad.
Dia: Good to know.
Duck: This is why I did not argue with them.
Dia: Yeah, I think that was a good call.
Duck: Should we pull some things out of some hats for potentially less heavy material next time?
Dia: Okay, let me get some lists up one sec. Yeah, I feel like we did not actually do an ideological reading of Flat Earth as much as we try. I feel like we did many ideological readings of Flat Earth.
Duck: I tried really hard I could not find anything that looked like an ideology that lined up with, apart from conspiracy itself. Yeah, it's it's hard to it doesn't have content. It just has form. Like a lot of them are libertarians, but it's not. The thing itself isn't.
Dia: Oh, I think we did Some interesting analysis, I just don't think we completed an analysis.
Duck: Right. We looked at it as if it was a big ol rock we've turned over.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Okay, I've got the thing open. Do you do you want to just quickly go from there?
Dia: Okay, so I am doing now. I’m just quickly deleting ideological, uh, what are we on? 22
Duck: 22? Marxist.
Dia: Oh, sweet.
Duck: This could go really well. Oh, good.
Dia: Oh, God, don't be 101
Duck: Please be 101
Dia: 35.
Duck: Hang on, I've got the full length one in front of me.
Dia: Oh, bollocks. I got dragons of Pern.
Duck: Oh, amazing. Those two things,
Dia: Oh, god, I’m going to have to read it.
Duck: Those two things are on pretty close to a tangent to each other. You're gonna have to read it. That's the deal we made.
Dia: Oh, fuck my life.
Duck: I watched Shazam for you.
Dia: Shazam is one movie, there is so much Pern!
Duck: You don't have to read the whole--
Dia: You're going to have to send me a list.
Duck: I will, I will narrow it down to like, a little bit of Pern.
Dia: I know that. And I know that's what you're going to do. But I still know that I'm kind of a completionist. I'm going to at least read the Wikipedia pages on the rest of it.
Duck: Well, I think what I'm going to do is send you one, send you like one from real near the beginning and one from like, halfway through? That it's possible, you might feel the need to fill in the gaps.
Dia: Yeah, I will probably read the one you send me near the beginning, read the Wikipedia summaries of the rest of them. And then read the last one and hope I get some kind of ability to do Marxist analysis. Oh, this is gonna go…
Duck: Well, this is interesting.
Dia: Yeah, this is our first time with someone presenting on something they know absolutely sod all about. So that's exciting.
Duck: It's true. I am excited to hear your Marxist analysis of dragons of Pern. I'm gonna have such a good time.
Dia: The thing is everything I know about dragons of Pern comes from friends of mine who read it telling me the worst parts of it. Like it's, it's one of those experiences
Duck: Let me assure you, it’s also quite fun.
Dia: I'm under this impression. It's just that the only bits of it that people have ever told me about other stupid bits. So the only bits I'm familiar with all the bad worldbuilding choices.
Duck: But you have to remember, you get to ride dragons.
Dia: You do get to ride dragons, but I came into being a fantasy nerd in a post-pern world where---
Duck: Ah, where dragon-riding was commonplace.
Dia: There was a dragon-riding section in my local children's library. Like there was a shelf that was just books about having a pet dragon. And it was great. More children's libraries should be organized according to this principle, which is, oh, this month you are fixated on dragons and don't care about anything else in the world. This is the shelf for you.
Duck: No, I think I agree. I want dragon shelf. A unicorn shelf, a minotaur shelf.
Dia: We’ve got Eragon, we’ve got How to Train your Dragon, exactly! This is how we should organize children's libraries. There was just a little shelf and it had like Eragon it had How to Train Your Dragon. I think it did have Pern, but I was too young for it. It had Dragon Rider which was great. It had Dragon Tamer, I think it was called?
Duck: It had Dragonology.
Dia: it had all of them on one shelf, and I flipping loved it.
Duck: That is a good system.
Dia: That was a good way to run a children's library. No real respect for age limits, but nor-- you know, you work it out pretty quickly, if the book is completely incomprehensible to you aged six.
Duck: Yeah, yeah.
Dia: Okay, cool. Final question, then: is Flat Earth going back in the hat?
Duck: I think there's more to say, I think we are unsatisfied with, with, we failed to reach a conclusion.
Dia: Okay, so that is staying in the hat.
Duck: Yeah, I think there's more to be said about Flat Earth as a field of human endeavor.
Dia: I think that is true.
Duck: And a lot of endeavor goes into it.
Dia: Yeah, I mean, there is so much to say about Flat Earth. And it's so hard to materially say anything about Flat Earth.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: It's a weird combination.
Duck: Yeah. There's so much content for something that isn't about what it's about.
Dia: It's just, you have to do quite a lot of explaining to get to the thing you could potentially analyze.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: And then you know, you've been an hour long podcast and you don't know what to do next.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: But what we're going to do next is go read dragons of Pern.
Duck: I yeah, I'm excited for this. I'm delighted.
Dia: This is gonna take up so much time.
Duck: Okay. See you next time listener.
Dia: See you next time listener at which point I will have read some more books.