Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…WooHoo! We are back after our little break over the holidays and we’re kicking off with a doozy of a topic that I’ve had on my list for a while to talk about, and that’s How to Think About Conspiracy Theories. And if you have never heard of that phrase before, just know you’ll definitely hear more & more about it as you go through life because the chatter around Conspiracy Theories is alive & well. But, before I get into that, I wanted to start this episode off by sharing a review that a listener named Leia sent to me via email. She said this:
“I just found you through Heidi St. John's podcast. I started listening to your episodes yesterday and absolutely love the format and --most of all-- the length of the podcasts. Your podcast has allowed me to listen to an episode or two on my commute between the many other stimulating podcasts I follow. I'm already learning so much and can't wait to begin teaching the principles to my boys. This morning, I was reading through the news and spotted this (screenshot of a heading). I've always had a certain emotional reaction to headlines like these, especially since it’s about a person who attends my church, but this time I was more excited that I could articulate what was WRONG with the headline! Thank you!” Leia, thank you so much for writing in - it makes me so happy to hear from my listeners and it especially makes me so happy to hear that this podcast is helping you recognize fallacies & propaganda when you see them in real life - that is the whole goal! Well done!
Can I just ask y’all this: If you enjoy this podcast, would you take just a few seconds and give it a 5-star review or better yet, write a quick review on whatever app you’re listening on? It really encourages me and helps other people find it as well.
It’s the beginning of a new semester so I wanted to let you guys know about a resource that I’ve recently created for homeschoolers. I have had a lot of requests for some sort of resource that can be used in a homeschool co-op to teach Logical Fallacies using this podcast. First of all, how cool is that?? I’m ecstatic for this podcast to be used that way! And I thought it was a great idea. So, I created something! It’s a 10-week plan to use the podcast in a co-op setting, it includes activities, recommended episodes to focus on, etc. So, if you’ve been looking for something like that for your co-op, you can check it out, just go to Filteritthroughabraincell.com > Resources.
Ok, back to Conspiracy Theories. I know this can be a hot topic, with strong emotions on all sides, so I wanted to talk about it in a way that can hopefully help calm the emotions down and give us all a clear-headed way to think about them. So, if you’re a full-fledged Conspiracy Theory believer, if you’re just Conspiracy Curious, or if you think anything labeled a Conspiracy Theory is clearly false and you can’t imagine how someone could fall for them, these two episodes are for you. I think a great place to start is by looking for some truth to get a solid footing on, and ask whether there have ever been any Conspiracy Theories that have actually been proven to be true, not just speculated about. Throughout our homeschooling journey, we’ve used & read lots of different books from different sources. One of the book series we’ve enjoyed is called The Tuttle Twins. The author, Connor Boyack writes books for kids on a number of different topics and he’s more recently expanded to writing for older readers, namely middle & high schoolers. He’s got a great book on Logical Fallacies, one on Cognitive Biases, so you know I’m paying attention to that. Well, he just came out with a book called True Conspiracies, which is all about Conspiracy Theories that turned out to be true. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to dip our toes into this topic here on the podcast and was able to get an interview with him on this topic. Now, I do have thoughts that I want to share with y’all about Conspiracy Theories, but this interview is already going to be fairly long, so I’m going to do a part 2 where I share my thoughts on how to think about Conspiracy Theories and just let you listen to this interview in its entirety here today. I hope you enjoy.
Alright, that’s it for today. Join me in the next episode for Part 2 of How to Think About Conspiracy Theories, and
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
