What Are Conspiracy Theories? | Sam Kriss

What Is X?

In this live-recorded episode of What Is X?, Justin meets up with the writer Sam Kriss at a (sometimes noisy) pub in London to chat about conspiracy theories. What makes a conspiracy theory conspiratorial? What is the relationship between conspiracy theories and philosophical skepticism? Do we have a responsibility to correct misinformation, or should we try to embrace the right to be wrong? Over the course of this ninety-minute conversation, Justin and Sam amble through some conspiracy-theory greatest hits: the JFK assassination, 9/11 truthers’ interest in chemtrails, Jeffrey Epstein, COVID lab-leaks, "New Chronology," and the belief that all mountains were once trees—and even talk about some of their favorites. They wonder together about the relationship between the narratives spun by conspiracy theorists and those of novelists, poets and dreamers—might conspiracy theory be a kind of literature? Could the impulse behind conspiracy theories—like those of the "flat earthers" or those who believe the real sun has been replaced with an LED simulacrum—be understood not as madness or pure irrationality, but as something akin to a basic human desire for cosmological knowledge?