BROADCASTS.com

b'

As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of the violent public assassination of President John F. Kennedy, over half of all Americans surveyed continue to believe that he was killed by a conspiracy involving multiple assassins.

Shermer and Gagn\\xe9 discuss: conspiracies and conspiracy theories \\u2022 what role conspiracy theories play in society \\u2022 who believes conspiracy theories and why \\u2022 why conspiracy theorists rewrite the past \\u2022 paranoid skepticism as a role in conspiracism \\u2022 Oliver Stone\\u2019s \\u201calternative version of history\\u201d \\u2022 scapegoat theory of conspiracism (Rene Girard) and the military industrial complex \\u2022 Marx\\u2019s dialectical materialism and conspiracism: all life is a battle between rival tribes \\u2022 stolen future theory of conspiracism: there but for the conspiracy\\u2026 \\u2022 common themes in conspiracy theories like JFK, 9/11 Truth, Obama Birtherism, QAnon, Rigged Election and many others \\u2022 JFK: the lone-gunman theory vs. hundreds of conspiracy theories \\u2022 the nostalgic myth of \\u201cCamelot\\u201d and balancing the ledger of moral outrage \\u2022 when Jack Became Jesus: JFK as a crucified Jesus \\u2022 who was Lee Harvey Oswald and why did he kill Kennedy? \\u2022 Cuba, Castro, the Bay of Pigs debacle, and Operation Northwoods \\u2022 the CIA and why it is rational to be skeptical of their activities \\u2022 how to determine if a conspiracy theory is true, false, or uncertain \\u2022 epistemology, truth claims, how to evaluate evidence, knowledge as justified true belief \\u2022 knowing vs. believing: I don\\u2019t want to believe in anything that must be believed in to be true \\u2022 empirical truths vs. mythic truths \\u2022 Did the resurrection of Jesus really happen or is it a mythological narrative with moral meaning.

Michel Jacques Gagn\\xe9 teaches courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and ethics in the Humanities Department of Champlain College Saint-Lambert, located near Montreal, Canada. His podcast is called Paranoid Planet and his latest book under discussion is Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination.