The Infinite Monkey Cage - Conspiracy Theories

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined on stage by comedian Shazia Mirza, science writer and cancer researcher Dr David Robert Grimes and psychologist Prof Karen Douglas to look at the weird world of conspiracy theories. From Flat Earth believers to people who refuse to accept that humans have ever been to the moon, why is fiction often so much easier to believe than fact - and does it matter? They discuss the psychology and profile of people who are more likely to believe in conspiracies and the devastating effect some, like the anti-vaccine movement, have had on public health. They ask whether being irrational is our default setting and how to convince the most hard-core believers with the power of evidence and critical thinking. Although they would say that wouldnt' they? Producer: Alexandra Feachem

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Welcome to the Infinite Monkey Cage. And to be fair, it's time to come clean, because for the last ten years now, we have actually been a vehicle for a shady group of evidence-based scientists and thinkers who, without people really noticing,

have laid the foundations of our civilisation, increased life expectancy beyond our ancestors' wildest dreams, and also paved the ways to the stars. So, sorry. What's wrong with that? That's exactly the kind of thing that I respect to come from a so-called scientist. And I call you a so-called

scientist because you are a scientist. Anyway, look, it doesn't matter. But I think one of the sad things is that in our hurry as human beings not to die in agony covered in pustules, sometimes we've forgotten some of the other truths, by which I mean lies.

Such as the moon's a spaceship, the queen is a lizard, and Richard Madeley is actually a CIA spy plane operated by Roy Orbison and the Duchess of Kent. There he goes. I'm not even sure if you're the original Brian Cox. Because a real Brian Cox would have aged, wouldn't he? Today we are looking at conspiracy theories. In an age in which we have access to unprecedented amounts of information,

in a society which rests firmly on the foundations of science, why are there apparently increasing numbers of people who believe that the moon landings were faked, the vaccines do not work, that the earth is flat and that climate science is a hoax? Should we simply dismiss conspiracy theorists as harmless idiots or do we have to take the rise in conspiracy theories more seriously? To enlighten us on this subject we are joined by three people who claim to be a psychologist a physicist and a comedian and they are hi i'm dr david robert grimes i'm a cancer researcher physicist and science writer i spend a lot of my time debunking conspiracy theories i've

just written a book on critical thinking called the irrational ape and my favorite conspiracy theories are the idea there's chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay, that Finland is a myth, and the other one is that I'm part of an Illuminati conspiracy to make conspiracy theorists look silly, for A, they don't need help doing that, and B, I'm so incompetent I once stuck a drum cymbal into my own skull by mistake, so if they are using me as their point man, they're really scraping the barrel. Hi, everyone. I'm Karen Douglas, and I'm a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent. I've been studying conspiracy theories for about 10 years or so. And my favourite conspiracy theory is the flat earth conspiracy theory, only because if you're from Australia,

which I am, the country is not supposed to exist. Hello, my name is Shazia Mirza and I am a comedian. And my utterly preposterous conspiracy theory is that I am Malala. Yeah, it's true, I got shot in the head and I'm now telling jokes. It's going, I got shot in the head and I'm now telling jokes scarily well

and sometimes I even bake cakes on Channel 4 People approach me in airports and congratulate me on what I've done for girls' education Also, there's other conspiracy theories that I like that Jay-Z is a time-travelling vampire. But, you know, being Radio 4, you've probably never heard of Jay-Z. He's a rapper. For the Radio 4 audience, that's Jay-Z.

And this is our panel. Can I just say, I loved your... The gay frog thing is great. I read a book all about the different theories about what pop music could do from different kind of religious fundamentalist groups, and apparently there was a group of Christian fundamentalists who found out that disco music made mice gay and that heavy metal music made pigs deaf.

So you can add that to your list. How many animals did they have to do these experiments on just one pig imagine there was no control pig listening to james last or mantabani karen the royal society's motto is a nullius in verba which is on nobody's word so which means skepticism is obviously a fundamental part of science but what is the difference between a conspiracy theory and just sort of a reasonable skepticism well a conspiracy theory is usually defined as a secret plot by powerful people who are working in secret to achieve some kind of sinister goal so you've already got quite a lot of things going on there. And typically, with a conspiracy theory, there is not

a lot of evidence. It's okay to be sceptical. It's okay to question. You can't accept all the information that you get all of the time. But with conspiracy theories, it tends to be information, layers and layers added on all the time, little bits peeled away, but constantly more layers being added added so that it's very very difficult to kind of ever prove or disprove a conspiracy theory so it's it's gone beyond healthy skepticism and it's become something a little less rational um david you you're a physicist but you now have spent a lot of time looking at conspiracy theories why did you move from physics into the world of conspiracy theories what started happening to me was i started writing

about things like vaccination policy and things like climate change and i started off on the the ignorant assumption this is an information deficit problem that you would go to people and say oh if people people would be really happy if you just give them the information and then you get your first screed of hate mail and people are really angry at you. And you suddenly realize that this is a much more deeper, fascinating problem. And it really derails scientific discussion. If you're doing something on vaccination and someone keeps insisting that, no, no, no, it's all a cover-up, it is very hard to get them back on board. And that kind of fascinated me because with scientific conspiracy theories, if you can call them that, it's an oxymoron, I know. But if you can take something

that is about science, it's an idea that scientists would have to be complicit. Getting scientists to agree is like herding cats. Like this idea that we could do this en masse is brilliant. So I got really interested in trying to play devil's advocate and show that this was a terrible idea. And that just made them hate me a lot more. I got an angry email from david eichhorn so i mean it's very very hurtful but you came in from a quite a serious angle because it was public health policy that you've been involved in yeah yeah i mean but it really has a massive effect i mean i don't to to make everyone miserable but this year the who said vaccine hesitancy was a top 10 threat to public health. We are looking at outbreaks of once nigh unconquered diseases. And this dark renaissance

is largely driven by the fact that anti-vaccine disinformation and conspiracy theories are now propagated across social media. And we like to think that we're really savvy and that we can tell falsehoods from facts, we are useless at it. All the studies done on it show that even informed audiences are really bad at it, and we're on the back foot. And I think this is why probably we're doing the show tonight, because we are on the back foot and it's really starting to bite us.

And in terms of vaccines, I mean, for a lot of people listening to this, they probably think, you know, MMR will be the one that had the most kind of rumours and then conspiracy theories around it it but is it true that around the world it's different vaccines it kind of often depends on kind of culture and certain kind of different ideologies 100% one of the bigger of the MMR is infamous here due to the Wakefield debacle but in other countries it can be things like the HPV vaccine. In Japan, conspiracy theories about the HPV vaccine, which, by the way, prevents about 5% of all cancers worldwide, if properly administered,

led uptake to fall from 70% to less than 1% within a year. In Denmark, it went from 79% to 17% within a year. And in Ireland, it went from 87% to 50% within a year. And thanks to a sustained effort from patient advocates and scientists and physicians, we've gone back up to the high 70s. But again, it turns on the culture and the society. The myths, however, are the exact same. That's fascinating. The vaccine might be different, but the claims made about them are unimaginative.

They are recycled zombie myths that stagger on even though they should have died years ago. Cameron, what's the motivation? Because we're going to discuss lots of conspiracy theories tonight and some are kind of light-hearted, but this is an extremely serious problem. What's the motivation or what do we know of the motivation behind such a conspiracy that vaccination is is bad what is what are people

seeing there that they think the problem is well in in terms of the psychology of conspiracy theories you find that people who are lower in critical and analytic thinking tend to be more attracted to conspiracy theories people don't feel very powerful they want to kind of regain a sense of power conspiracy theories might make them feel that this is possible. And in terms of social kind of motives, people who are more narcissistic, you know, that kind of thing, they need to feel unique. They need to feel that they have possession of powerful knowledge

that other people don't have, tend to be more driven toward conspiracy explanations than mainstream explanations as well. Shazia, thinking of critical thinking, you studied biochemistry. Did that give you... Studying science, do you feel that you have a... When you sometimes do see certain kind of conspiracy theories

or ideas that do seem to have a hint of the strange about them, do you feel more armed? Do you think you have a better way of dealing with them? Well, my degree was in biochemistry, but I couldn't tell you anything about it. You know, if I was in the lab and I blew something up, I thought I was doing really well, because I

thought at least there's a reaction, you know? But it's biochemistry, so that means you were blowing living things up. She was the one who made the frogs gay. I mean, I shouldn't say that i blow things up because it doesn't go well with me um so stop accusing me please brian um but i have to say on behalf of all my people because i am the leader of them. You know, I did a degree in biochemistry, but it wasn't for bad things.

I was, honestly, I became a science... I was a science teacher afterwards, so I put it to good use. And I never harmed anybody. And I don't know who did 9-11. But they're looking at me like, I bet you do. I bet you do. No, honestly, we don't have one big brown WhatsApp group where we all know what's going on.

But... It's gone all awkward in Radio 4 tonight, hasn't it? But yes, it's true, I did biochemistry. But the thing is, I also believe in God. And people say to me, you know, you're so intelligent and you did biochemistry, how can I also believe in God. And people say to me, you know, you're so intelligent and you did biochemistry. How can you also believe in God? But, you know, the thing with science is that, yeah, I know about the facts.

And I've studied biochemistry and I've done experiments and stuff. But sometimes when you also believe in God, sometimes faith is greater than the things that you see or you know or that you have been taught. Because that's have been taught. Because that's what faith is. It's believing in the unseen, believing in the unknown, something greater than yourself. So sometimes you think, oh, you know what, I know what I know, but I also have faith and my conscience, my instinct, coincidence,

things like that make more sense to me than what I know. And so sometimes, although we have these conspiracy theories and some are based on fact and some are not sometimes people just believe what they believe and what they believe inside is far greater than what you present them with is that a a valid or a well a comparison that bears scrutiny that it's is there an element of belief in conspiracy theories in the same way that we believe in many things? For example, as you said, a religious belief. Is there any correlation between those things? Are they similar? Are they different?

Yeah, there is, actually. A lot of studies have shown not a really large correlation, but a reasonably, I guess, small to medium correlation between religious belief and belief in conspiracy theories as measured just, I guess, on scales of agreement. How much do you agree with this conspiracy, that conspiracy, another conspiracy theory? And also superstitious belief as well.

So belief in luck chance you know all those sorts of things astrology yes astrology those kinds of beliefs um are also associated with belief in conspiracy theories as well i mean you wrote the irrational ape um so it raises the question i suppose that whether humans are predisposed to believe things. I suppose that's one of the most basic questions that we're discussing tonight. I think, to pick up on what Karen was saying, the philosopher W.V. Quine talked about our web of belief.

And this is the idea that we don't hold our beliefs in isolation. They're all interconnected. So if I can accept one thing, let's say I assume that climate change is a hoax, well, then I have to alter my beliefs on scientists and are they telling us the truth and governments and everything else. So everything affects that. And if you create a hole in that web big enough to drive a truck through, it's not surprising that you tend to take other things on board. We see, for example, that if people who

accept one conspiracy theory are incredibly likely to accept multiple ones. So I think that you can't look at your beliefs in isolation. We are not inherently rational beings. We like to pride ourselves that we are, but it's not intuitive to us. And we do have this thing, and I'm a huge fan of Karen's work. In fact, the academic high five that we've actually cited each other, but now I'm finally getting to meet her. So I'm going to butcher some of her work right now. And she can now correct me. But one of the things that i think is fascinating about this is that we all have this propensity towards motivated reasoning like we hold a belief and we want it to be true and when we're presented with conflicting information we have two options

we either adjust our belief or we deny it and one of your papers which is absolutely brilliant was the one on conspiracy theorists who were given contradictory conspiracy theories. One, which Princess Diana had faked her own death. Another one, that she had been killed by the Queen. And people that believed in conspiracy theories could actually hold both of these things simultaneously. But it shows you that people want to believe.

And I think there's a little bit of narcissism in it too, because I'm sure you get the emails that I do. If you don't know anything, a conspiracy theory makes you feel powerful. it makes you feel like you know stuff you can sit there and not believe in climate change and argue with people that know their stuff and have done phds and higher research degrees and you still think you know more than them and that must be a social factor that makes you feel good about yourself but you know with conspiracy theories like they are they often start off really big like like 9-11, Brexit, bake-off.

You know, they start off really big, so people believe there must be a big explanation for this. There can't be something simple. So that's why people believe in these conspiracy theories, because they think there must be a big answer to something that was so big. True? Yeah, that's definitely true.

People just don't seem to be satisfied with a mundane, everyday kind of explanation, like a car crash or, you know, someone just died or whatever. It's just boring, right? So a large event requires a large explanation. And, yeah, there's studies that support that particular hypothesis. Because it helps people make sense of what happened. Well, it means it's also just one thing,

as opposed to all the random, as you were saying, as opposed to all the random things, you go, oh, we're being controlled. It's like when Neil Armstrong died, and I was just tweeting about the fact that I wondered how long it would be before someone was kind of going, oh, they've killed him now

because he was just about to reveal the truth. It's weird, isn't it? Why would an old man die? I can't... And someone immediately went, you're late. Two minutes after that, they started saying, oh, that's why they've killed him. That's why they've killed the old man who's been ill for a while.

They've killed him because he was about to say, we didn't actually go there. Do you think that will happen to Prince Andrew? Do you know what? It's going to be so fun to see what makes the edit after it's gone to the radio. Ombudsman. I'm very excited by this. Because we don't know, this doesn't go out for a month, we don't after it's gone to the radio ombudsman i'm very excited by this because we don't know this doesn't go out for a month we don't know what's going to happen in

between let's see how your powers of prescience have but i i think that there's an interesting we've been talking about um this this word belief right and then in this context i suppose conspiracy theories we're we're saying it is a bad thing, it's a negative thing, you just believe stuff. But there's also, of course, belief. As you mentioned, belief is a part of our society and a part of what it means to be human. So how do we separate those two versions of belief? Or can we separate those two versions of belief? I think that the real problem with conspiracy theorists is that when you show them information that undermines their hypothesis, they refuse to take that on

board. In fact, they will bend reality around it, like some kind of a warping effect on reality space-time. And one of the things, that's a real problem, because we can't live in a world where we can't agree on basic facts. So we can all hold our beliefs and, I mean, you can talk about Stephen Jay Gould and his non-overlapping magisteria and these things that you can have religious belief and it doesn't really impact, apart from your own faith, your day-to-day interpretation of the world for the most part. But if you believe

that, say, 9-11 was an inside job, that entirely shapes how you're going to interpret everything else. And if someone gives you evidence that undermines that and you refuse to accept that evidence, I think the old Paul Simon line, all lies in jest till the man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, that's a serious problem.

And the more we curate our own news sources, the more that we go online and we decide we don't have to read the whole newspaper, we just cherry-pick the articles that tell us what we want to hear, the bigger problem that's going to become and the more polarised we become. Beliefs can be contagious, you know, because one person believes something

and then they can talk to other people about it. And because of social media, somebody can just put something out there on Twitter and it can be another way of thinking for other people. And they'll go, oh, I never thought of that. Yeah, maybe 9-11 was an inside job. Nobody's put that theory forward before. And so a belief can be

contagious it can help other people think another way even when even if it's right or wrong but isn't that part of the problem is because there is now so much information that the idea like you know i i believe in things you've told me i've never actually seen you do the double slit experiment this whole thing of behaving as a wave and a particle really what's he really trying to get out of me 999 harper collins but it's kind of that thing where i do but that's the thing is it which is nearly everything because we have such a huge body of information such an enormous amount of communication with such a large number of people that you do have it's about whittling down why would i trust that opinion and why do i not trust that opinion but then a I not trust that opinion?

But then a lot of people will go online and they'll be looking for a specific type of information as well. So if you're inclined toward a particular conspiracy theory, if you've read it before and you think, well, that's interesting, then you'll go and search for that information, but you won't look for information

that refutes that conspiracy theory. So then you'll end up in a little information bubble, echo chamber, whatever it is, where you only consume information that confirms your conspiracy theory and you won't be able to reach outside. I'm not saying that that doesn't happen for people who don't believe the conspiracy theory either.

I think we all live in our echo chambers on various issues. But I think that because there is so much information out there people who are inclined toward a conspiracy theory can very very easily find it and then reinforce it and attitudes become more stronger more polarized small communities of people become large communities of people and then then you have a movement yeah i was gonna ask what makes a good one why that's the one that i wanted to know is with both of us when we were traveling around on tour at one point that was when flat earth seemed to suddenly become and because we're traveling around as well you suddenly go flat

earth how has that become in the 21st century something which is not just discussed which seems like it must have started as a prank that's all you can believe yeah but it's now a successful one yeah so what makes a successful and persistent conspiracy theory yeah the internet yeah um flat earth i i don't know i don't really know the answer to that quick question to be honest this is something i would really really like to do i think that there are there must be some features of conspiracy theories that mean that they stand the test of time while others

kind of just die away. I don't know what the answer to that is. And I don't know why the flat earth conspiracy theory is suddenly a thing again. I was looking at the website today and I still just cannot get my head around this. I've seen pictures

of the Earth and they're round. But you see, that's the thing. This is a bit like David was saying. Because when you do start the argument, it turns out you have to then decide a lot of other things aren't true. No one's been into space because all of those images are also

not true. Shadows are somehow a lie. Somehow, you know, all of these... And it has to be... I mean, I know, in fact, David, you wrote about this in your book. Going back a long time, there was a... I don't think it was a boom of flat-earth belief, but Alfred Russell Wallace, the great scientist

and, you know, co-founder of the idea of natural selection, he got caught up in a flat-earth debate, didn't he? He did, and he made the classic Domere, never pick choose your battles it's a very important thing when you're going to argue with something be it uh be it flat earth or brexit choose your battles because some people aren't going to listen to you and alfred wilson wallace did this the really bad way he answered an ad that said a flat earther wanted to basically um you know he proved me proved to me that the world is is rounded and he went and did this, and he did it the same way you do it now. He showed deflection, curvature, and all that kind of stuff. He never

got his money. In fact, he got death threats, and he had to eventually get this guy put in jail, who went after him. He learned a very important lesson. There's a level of delusion underneath some of these beliefs as well. And one of the really tragic examples, I guess, that we have now is the targeted individuals community. And this is a self-reforcing echo chambers. Targeted individuals believe that they are being stalked by the government. They're being gang stalked.

And years ago, if you said that in public, people would think you had a delusional disorder because you probably did. Now they find communities of similar minded people and they all get together, and they say, don't speak to anyone else, just speak with us. And in doing so, they reinforce their belief.

And that has led to tragic consequences. The Navy Yard shooting in Washington was a guy who thought he was a targeted individual trying to communicate with other people. When we're in echo chambers, we reinforce really bad beliefs as well. It's also not logical, because why would all the people who think the government's time

get together at a conference and advertise? But it's the phenomenon of illusory truth as well. And we are all susceptible to this, by the way. If you hear repeated falsehoods, you might think that you're very discerning, but there's research that indicates that affects your belief itself you start affording it more weight because you've heard it from repeated sources napoleon famously said that there is only one figure in all of

rhetoric worth a damn and that was repetition and there's a degree of truth in that if you repeat something often enough even if you know it's false you start describing it more truth value so youtube yes is the problem and that's what's happened with trump he just keeps repeating lies and people big lie theory yeah in in psychological terms so you mentioned already that there are particular character types that that can be identified that make a person more susceptible to a conspiracy theory. In that case, is there a way we can, is there a way that education, for example, can make people less susceptible to conspiracy theories?

Or is it actually just a character type that finds it rather more difficult to, I suppose, as David said, difficult to change their mind when confronted with evidence. Is that inherent or is it about education? Well, I think there's a bit of both going on there, to be honest. I think a lot of psychological research would suggest that there are certain personality characteristics and certain demographic factors as well

which attract people toward conspiracy theories. But education is actually one of the most consistent predictors of belief in conspiracy theories more educated people are much less likely to take on new conspiracy theories believe old conspiracy theories anything and what's the measure there that you're using just qualifications degree usually just level of education from no formal education to you know phd you do have huge uh exemptions from that though for example anti-vaccine beliefs tend to correlate strongly with being middle class because only a middle class person would be arrogant enough to think more than they know that all doctors are lying to them and they know more

because they went to their chakra person two weeks ago uh but like i mean that that is yeah that's that's absolutely a huge factor but that's what you meant by demographic so so yeah so that's this is interesting isn't it because i'm aware that you know the discussions such as this can sound rather smug for example because it's people saying well those people are silly and they believe silly things but no am very smug in my defense, Brian. But in fact, as you say, it is interesting that the so-called middle class, I suppose you mean professional, relatively well educated demographic... I'm including myself in that, by the way, just for the Radio 4 audience. In a sense, the Radio 4 audience, what you're saying is statistically more people that are into Radio 4

may well be anti-vaxxers because they fall into that particular demographic. If you look at The outbreak in America, you have its upper-class communities having measles outbreaks because they decided to get exemptions from vaccine systems and they could afford to go to the doctors to get these certificates. They are the ones that perpetuate

the most anti-vaccine misinformation online. So, I mean, I don't want to... Obviously, education is a massive factor, but there's also arrogance as well that has to be factored into that too. I was just going to say that the correlation between education and conspiracy belief is stable, but it's relatively small. And so there are loads of other factors, including demographic factors like age and income, which of course is correlated with education. But there's a lot of things going on there

in terms of age by the way so age what's the problem oh sorry robin he's actually he's younger than me robin welcome to this remake of steptoe and son by the open universe is there a portrait of him aginging somewhere? Older people tend to believe conspiracy theories less. There are some very small pockets of research that have attempted to intervene on conspiracy beliefs. We've done some research ourselves where we've tried to give people the kind of correct information

about the anti-vax movement, actually, and find that if you give people this information after they've already learned about the conspiracy theory, then their attitudes don't change and they still believe the conspiracy theory. But if you, I guess, inoculate them beforehand with the correct information and then give them the conspiracy theory,

it's much less powerful. But practically, that's not very easy to do because as we know, when something bad happens, a conspiracy theory is often just there on Twitter within two minutes. And there have been another couple of strategies as well, like using humour and ridicule. Work. Yeah. Doesn't sound very nice, but, you know, like using humour and ridicule even works.

Yeah. Doesn't sound very nice, but, you know, it's been found to work. So you can ridicule, but you have to pick your target. So for vaccine hesitancy, for example, the vast majority of parents that don't vaccinate their children are actually not anti-vaxxers. They're victims of anti-vaxxers. Vaccine hesitancy is a spectrum.

And if you hear scary stories, we have the availability heuristic. We remember scary stories. And in remembering them, they affect our choices. So there's only a very small vocal core of anti-vaccine activists that can make other people not vaccinate. Now, they're the ones that deserve ridicule, not necessarily the parents who don't vaccinate. You can reach them.

Although there was a study done in California in 2014 that found that you could reach some parents who are hesitant, but the more you try to reach anti-vaxxers, the hardcore mendacious kind of cohort of that, the more firmly entrenched in their beliefs they became. They call that the backfire effect sometimes. And it's a really bizarre thing. So you're wasting your efforts trying in that core but there's much better places that we can concentrate our efforts we'll never stop conspiracy theories we can just maybe like a prophylactic against them we can kind of have like a skepticism condom that people can't get infected with these weird beliefs but it has to happen before you're absolutely right it has to happen before rather

than after what um so do you do you think there are ways of arming yourself when you are you know in this world that we're saying where you've just got so many different points of information coming at you do you think there are a set of rules where you think hang on a minute let's just have a look at this how can i decide the veracity of this piece of information well like, like David said, it depends on intelligence and education and imagination and all those things that come from being an intelligent person, really, that come from education. I mean, otherwise, you just believe everything that everybody tells you. I mean, when I was a teacher, obviously, I encouraged critical thinking,

but some of the kids, they just didn't want to think. So if they don't want to think that way, you can't force them to think that way. It has to come from them. Well, we have a question to the audience. What is the strangest thing that you have ever believed? Brian Cox ages like normal humans. That's from Rebecca.

You called him human, though. Ah, your first conspiracy theory error. He is a replicant. Has Brian ever had Botox? No, we just swap the heads. Yeah, he comes out formaldehyde. I shake it, I wipe it down with an old J-cloth, pick the little bits of blue thread off,

and then we put him out, and he goes, I'm a real boy. Here's one, related. There are some people who can't sweat one sock of every pair turns into a coat hanger between the washing machine and the wardrobe this says i used to believe that div b equals zero well it does so there are no magnetic monopoles that's why it's one of maxwell's equations it's correct I used to believe that div B equals zero. Well, it does. Oh. There are no magnetic monopoles, that's why.

It's one of Maxwell's equations. It's correct. That's the joke. It's a piece of... According to my grandad, there are special trees for planting along bus routes that grow with the shape for the buses to fit through. I like that. My dad told me the hazard warning button in his car

was an ejector seat, and I believed him for years because of his fanciful yet convincing account of when he used it. I love that. What brilliant dads you've got. These are... What have you got, Brian? You got any more you've done with that? I've just got one more. Stupidity travels faster than the speed of light.

So, thank you very much to Karen Douglas, David Robert Grimes and Shazia Mirza. Next week, we are investigating coral reefs. Don't forget, by the way, if any of the conspiracy theories we've discussed today have affected you, well, that's kind of how we want you to feel, but we have set up a helpline.

We're not going to give you the number, because we'll call you, because we know who you are. Good night. APPLAUSE The Infinite Monkey Cage Till now, nice again. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Anna Delvey was due to inherit $67 million. I'm so excited about what the future holds.

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