So where are you, right now?
[♪♪♪]
You think you're on a globe spinning
at a thousand miles an hour.
That globe is spinning around the Sun
at 60,000-plus miles an hour.
That solar system is flying sideways through the galaxy
at half a million miles an hour,
and that galaxy is going through
the rest of the universe at millions of miles an hour.
And you feel nothing.
In reality, you are actually
in a giant planetarium,
slash terrarium,
slash soundstage,
slash Hollywood backlot
that is so big
that you and everyone you know
and everyone you've ever known
never figured it out.
REPORTER 1: At 17,000 miles an hour, the second stage leaves
the abandoned first stage far behind
as it soars 5000 miles downrange.
The curvature of the Earth is plainly visible.
[♪♪♪]
MAN 1 [OVER RADIO]: I have a beautiful view of the S4B
and the Earth here all at once.
I'll try and get a picture for you.
Our planet is beautiful. It's not really a planet.
♪ Caught between a lie And pain ♪
♪ For truth ♪ MAN 2: It's a great big plane.
REPORTER 2: A strange message of words "Google Flat Earth"
were carved into Mt. Rubidoux.
MAN 3: How would you feel if I say
there's absolutely zero real pictures from space?
♪ Ah ♪
Flat Earth theory is actually getting popular.
MAN 4: My children will have to pay
for the lies that NASA gives.
♪ ...sell our soul away ♪
♪ I know that The day's gonna come ♪
♪ When everything... ♪
REPORTER 3: The number of people who think
the world is flat is growing.
Thousands, if not millions of people--
A lie is a lie, even if everybody believes it.
These people live amongst us. I wanna point this out.
REPORTER 4: What drives such theories?
Why are people flocking to this absurd belief?
ANNOUNCER: Thank you for sailing aboard the Washington State Ferries.
We look forward to seeing you again soon.
[♪♪♪]
Everybody's been fed.
Except now we've got to--
Where's the silly chicken?
MAN: Right there. Oh!
We're having one of Mark's favorites.
We're having iced applesauce, with our--
[QUIETLY] It's not.
It was one of my favorites when I was young.
Well, you like it now too.
MARK: What are we having?
We're having chicken noodle soup,
iced applesauce, and some rolls.
Homemade rolls?
Homemade rolls and homemade jam.
He's spoiled.
I don't deserve you.
Okay, here we go.
PATTI: So Mark called and said that
he was a member of the Flat Earth Society,
and I said, "Oh, Mark, what are you on to now?"
How do you know it's a globe? It's 'cause you saw this.
It's not like you've been there in your Jetson's car.
Nobody's got a spaceship.
You've been looking at this for 30 years?
You can throw that away.
[WHISTLES]
This is the domed version
of the flat Earth model.
The south pole, it's like a 200-foot wall of ice,
straight up, Game of Thrones style.
And the sun and the moon are just lights in the sky.
I love movies, always have,
and so I try to compare it to The Truman Show.
You know, The Truman Show was just
a giant Hollywood stage 20 miles wide.
If you built a stage that was a thousand miles wide,
how many people could you fool besides just Truman?
Of course you're gonna have questions. Everybody does.
Because, it's like, "Okay, how does everything work?"
Here's a perfect example, if you wanna see it real quick.
So like, those buildings in the distance?
Right out there? That's Seattle.
You shouldn't be able to see it.
There should be hundreds of feet
of curvature between us and them.
You should barely be able to see those buildings.
[♪♪♪]
When you're doing the curvature of the Earth,
here's what the Earth looks like.
What we're saying is, and of course this is exaggerated,
is that if you're here, eventually,
if there's an object far enough,
you won't be able to see it over here,
because the curvature of the Earth puts it on
the other side of the hill.
You could say, "Oh, well, it's refraction,
or it's atmospheric effects, or mirage."
No, no, no. Not every weather condition,
not every light condition.
Science is having a problem combatting what we're doing.
Neil deGrasse Tyson-- I hate saying his name.
We call him "He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named."
--says that it's a growing anti-intellectual movement
which borders on the end of civilization
and democracy as we know it.
The Earth isn't [BLEEP] flat.
[CROWD CHEERING]
And by the way,
this is called gravity.
The reason why we're winning versus science,
against science, is science just throws math at us,
whereas we go "Hey, by the way, there's Seattle.
You can see it right now with your camera."
That's it. A picture says a thousand words.
I was well-versed in just about
every conspiracy you can think of.
I had heard about every conspiracy.
Flat Earth was the last book on the shelf.
It was the DVD that somebody gave you for Christmas
that you knew you weren't gonna open
'cause the title was horrible.
It's like How To Make A Poop Sandwich.
Or Poop Sandwich Volume Three.
But when you get bored enough with normal conspiracies,
you're looking for something new.
There was a certain novelty to it.
PATTI: I do think that he gets a little off
on some of the conspiracies.
I don't think that everything is a conspiracy.
Mom's always doing the whole glass half full,
and I'll go on and say, "Well,
the glass is probably controlled by
some sort of sinister group." Yeah, right.
[♪♪♪]
MARK: There was a video, a guy talking about
flight paths in the southern hemisphere,
how they didn't make sense.
Then I stumbled across a video by Matt Boylan,
and he was a contract artist for NASA.
I guess this is a photo of the Hubble Telescope
taking a picture of itself.
Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
MARK: And at a high-level NASA party out in the Hamptons,
they told him the GPS system doesn't work out
in Antarctica because the world is flat.
They started laughing. They all started laughing.
And my superior had quite a weird smirk on his face,
watching me to see how I would take all this.
This, this is what it is.
What do you think your first reaction's gonna be?
BS, no way.
If you don't make fun of this the first time you see it,
there's probably something wrong with you.
I became a flat-Earther 'cause I tried to debunk flat Earth.
Everybody that becomes a flat-Earther
does the same thing.
They say, "It's a stupid idea.
I'm gonna debunk flat Earth,"
and then they get sucked in like the La Brea tar pits.
When it came to this, I looked at it
for literally nine months before I turned around.
The Jerry Maguire moment that I had, I remember the date,
I remember the time, it was February 10th, 2015.
Three o'clock in the morning. Three-thirty, to be exact.
And I woke up and I said:
"This is now gonna flip."
Once I had my arguments down, I made the series of videos.
I tried to be as rational as possible,
I did a lot of editing,
and I made connections to dots that no one had done before.
MARK [ON VIDEO]: This is a Reader's Digest version
containing many of the interesting parts
of the flat Earth theory.
The first question is invariably:
"Is this a joke? Because it's a joke, right?"
And that's where we start.
Because it's one of our two basic childhood facts:
one plus one equals two,
and the Earth is a globe.
MARK: When I put the "Clues" out,
I partially thought
that this thing was gonna crash and burn,
because I thought some guy with a master's
in astrophysics or astronomy was gonna call me up and say:
"You forgot to do this math, you forgot to carry the two,
and that's it. You screwed up, you can shut down your channel,
and everyone can go home."
MARK [ON VIDEO]: The first part of the clue is the utter lack
of nonstop flights from anywhere
in the southern hemisphere,
or in the flat Earth model,
the land masses closest to the outer ring.
So I spend day after day looking at
the Plane Finder global map.
I need to watch a few as they cross
either the South Pacific or Indian Oceans.
For the first 30, 45 days, I was just holding my breath.
MARK [ON VIDEO]: I wait for an ocean plane.
And I wait. And I wait. And I wait some more.
Hours pass, days pass, and no red planes to entertain me.
And before I even got the first five "Clues" out,
people started responding to me.
[♪♪♪]
Someone said, "I wanna talk to you about this."
In fact, it was a debunker site.
A small-time debunker.
We went into it, and then he started reviewing the clues,
and next thing you know, he was on my side.
And then another podcast picked up on him,
then it started leapfrogging.
And we have Mark Sargent.
Your organization was amazing.
Hi, Mark Sargent! Hi.
Who better to bring on than our very up-and-coming,
quick-rising star, Mark Sargent?"
MARK: Now I go into chat rooms, and people freeze.
"Mark Sargent's here?"
Come on, just-just be normal, be cool.
I didn't want to wake up and do this.
It was something that just seemed to happen.
I didn't choose flat Earth. Flat Earth chose me.
MARK [ON VIDEO]: So I spend day after day looking at
the Plane Finder global map.
I need to watch a few as they cross either
the South Pacific or Indian Oceans.
I wait for an ocean plane.
I first heard of people thinking that the Earth was flat,
you know, in elementary school, but in the context of history.
I think it was in the last couple years
that I heard that people are still believing this,
and making a lot of videos on it.
So I started watching them because I was curious.
And...
it's, uh, it's something.
[HUMMING] [KEYBOARD CLACKING]
Oh, what-what's this guy doing?
He seems to be going south.
Where are you going, buddy? Where are you going, friend?
Yeah, where's that coming from? If not the southern hemisphere?
This is a very easy test to perform.
I'm not sure when I first heard about flat-Earthers.
Um, it was probably about five years or so ago.
Uh, probably on the Internet, I'm sure.
I saw an article, ah, maybe six months ago.
I found it fascinating because, I'm like,
if these people can pull it off,
they're probably really, really smart.
First time I ever heard about the flat-Earthers was
I think when I was in space last.
And I saw the stuff on social media.
I can't believe I'm talking about this.
How do flat Earth conspiracy theories
make you feel, Leo?
[LAUGHS]
Do you feel positive about them?
[SOFTLY] No.
[BOTH CHUCKLE]
I think someone told me, maybe,
that there's still people who believe
that the Earth is flat,
and so I Googled,
and then you find websites and YouTube videos.
Eight hundred and seventy-nine videos?
This man is prolific.
And I was fascinated, and I just, like, jumped right in.
I was probably in that spiral for three or four hours,
and I ended up subscribing to a podcast,
a flat Earth podcast and listening.
MAN [ON PHONE]: This, like others in the series,
is something you can--
Riveting, I would watch this for hours.
They're wacky.
They're bizarre.
But yet, they find this audience
that believes them, takes them as gospel.
There's enough of them that they can't all be people
wandering around with tinfoil hats.
Like, these are fairly normal people, at least some of them.
MARK: We go into a little sports bar,
a bartender runs over, and she goes:
"You guys talking about flat Earth?"
I go, "Yeah, why?" She goes, "High five!"
You go into the office, is someone a flat-Earther?
You go to a restaurant, is the person
making your food a flat-Earther? I don't know.
The very next day, I'm flying out,
and I'm wearing an "I am Mark Sargent" shirt,
and do you know where they go through the bag screens?
This tall, black kid, he motions me like in Fight Club,
"You Mark Sargent for real?" I go, "Yeah, why?"
And he goes, and I'm not kidding you, he winks at me,
and goes, "That's my name, too."
And he hands me the bag without even checking it.
They're everywhere.
[TAPPING]
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana...
I started this Whole Brain Power program,
bouncing balls off hammers,
working on my penmanship, memory--
Titanium, Vanadium, Chromium, Manganese,
Iron, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Zinc...
--and, uh, about 14 months ago,
my brain coach, Michael Lavery, said:
"Nathan, you've gotta look into flat Earth."
And then the more I researched it, and then I found out that
it's actually the biblical cosmology
is a geocentric cosmology,
then I realized why they're hiding the truth.
It's because they don't want anyone to know anything.
They want people dumb, blind, deaf to the truth,
so they can inject you with their vaccines,
and their public schooling and this heliocentric model,
which is basically forced sun worship.
Did you know they made up dinosaurs?
People in the school system to, uh,
perpetuate this six-billion-year-old Earth.
Oh, wait, the math doesn't work out,
fourteen-billion-year-old Earth.
So I actually ran into a NASA employee at Starbucks,
asked him why NASA means "deceive" in Hebrew.
Technically, it's the word--
[SPEAKS HEBREW]
--but it sounds so similar.
NATHAN: You hate Americans? Is that it?
Excuse me?
NATHAN: Yeah. How the hell did you get that?
Well, I just got kicked out of Starbucks
for asking a NASA employee questions.
I ended up getting kicked out of a bunch of Facebook groups,
so then I started the group:
The Official Flat Earth and Globe Discussion.
Um, it was a slow start at first.
I just added all my friends and said:
"Hey, talk about flat Earth. There's no cursing, no insults."
That was about 14 months ago, and that's blossomed
into 53,000 members.
[♪♪♪]
Excuse me, can I ask you a question?
Anyone ever told you the Earth is flat?
I feel like I have an obligation to tell people:
"You don't live on a spinning ball."
I've been telling 'em:
"You didn't come from monkeys."
Isn't that crazy?
I run the largest flat Earth group in the world.
We're actually filming a documentary about it, so...
That's how it's done right there!
Wanna hear some flat Earth music?
[RAP MUSIC PLAYING]
♪ Next level, ice cold ♪
♪ Flat Earth model On my bezel ♪
I got some good books right here.
Firmament: Vaulted Dome of the Earth.
George Orwell, 1984. Must read.
This is Edward Hendrie's masterpiece,
The Greatest Lie on Earth.
I'll just read you a little bit from
the table of contents real quick.
The first chapter is
"Samuel Rowbotham Proved the Earth is Flat"
The idea people have about flat-Earthers is totally wrong.
They think they're total idiots,
and they live in their mom's basement,
and they believe everything anyone tells them.
It's quite the opposite. We test everything.
We're all either super successful
or doing our own thing,
and I've met hundreds of flat-Earthers,
and none of them are living in their mom's basement, so...
MARK: There are millions of flat-Earthers.
It's a fantastic community.
Look what flat Earth has inspired.
So I was the first one to do a flat Earth license plate.
Then just a slew of them.
Everybody started coming in with them,
started changing up the words:
"It's flat" to "Flat Earth," "NASA Lies,"
all that fun stuff.
There's Arizona,
Arkansas, California--
Trying to figure that one out, aren't you?
I'll give you 10 seconds, ready?
MAN: It's flat, inside each other,
Perfect. Wow, you're good.
Personalized plates are not supposed to be negative,
but when you look at "NASA Lies," what do you read?
Nasal eyes.
Could be a frickin' nose and throat doctor. You don't know.
A lot of people realize that if you're a flat Earther,
you can only date flat-Earthers once you get into it,
'cause it's too much of a paradigm shift.
So there's now flat Earth dating sites popping up.
Ever since the whole flat Earth thing started,
I start getting merchandise in the mail.
Flat Earth paddle ball thing with a globe at the end.
It's a clever idea, you know, metaphorically...
"Have you seen this kitty?
"His name is Research Flat Earth,
"and like the curvature of the false globe model,
he is missing."
[WHISTLING]
Once in a while, someone will send me a book.
It is not light reading.
Flat Earth watch.
Flat Earth can be put on anything.
[CHUCKLING] This is a giant version of the license plate of my car.
Flat Earth clock.
And of course, this thing right here.
That's what makes this community different.
Because with every other conspiracy--
I'm not gonna rattle them off--
there's always this dark, sinister evil.
People feel bad about it.
This thing really makes people--
gives people a lot of positive energy,
so much enthusiasm, matter of fact, that they make things.
I mean, we've got songs.
♪ So we did A little research ♪
♪ And we learned About curvature ♪
When's the last time somebody made
a happy folk song about 9/11?
Greer?
[LAUGHS]
PATRICIA: Well, I started in broadcasting,
if you can call doing YouTube broadcasting,
because my father owned a radio station.
We've got the jukebox that was
in the lobby of the radio station when I was growing up.
It's a 1973 Wurlitzer 1050.
It is original, all original except for the records,
the 45s that are in it. Those are all my records.
[♪♪♪]
PATRICIA: Morrissey, the lead singer for the band The Smiths
is very close to my heart.
An inspiration to me when I was very young.
The song "Meat is Murder" changed me to being vegan.
He's not a flat-Earther, but there's still hope.
Oh, my gosh, I love cats.
I don't know why I love them so much.
They're beautiful and delicate and selective.
[MEOWS]
[LAUGHS] Come on, come on. That's good.
I have a bunch of conspiracy books,
a little vegan section,
I have some books that are written by
flat-Earthers, actually. Le Flat Earth.
It's all the varying memes about flat Earth.
Zen Garcia, Firmament: Vaulted Dome of the Earth.
MARK: When I was first doing the flat Earth stuff,
Patricia comes on a podcast.
She wasn't making flat Earth videos,
she wanted to interview flat-Earthers.
She was like the flat Earth reporter.
Hello and welcome to Flat Earth and Other Hot Potatoes.
Episode number 15.
Episode number 68.
Episode number 159.
Mark, thanks for being here.
Thank you very much for having me.
I could not be more excited
about being on this show right now.
MARK: We started talking on Skype,
and we'd have these marathon conversations,
three or four hours long, and we'd just talk, talk, talk.
What happened that day in flat Earth,
what had happened during that past week.
Anything involving any sort of conspiracy,
and then I said to him one day:
"Why don't we just do a show?"
And I jokingly called them "The Secret Show."
Where are you? She's late for everything.
She's always late.
[PURRING] Five minutes.
Five of your...
Oh, there he is. Hello!
MARK: Hey. Hey.
All right, are you ready to go?
[MARK SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
[LAUGHS]
Don't save the best stuff for the--
I mean, save the best stuff
for the show, is what I meant.
MARK: I know.
Hello and welcome to Flat Earth and Other Hot Potatoes.
This is episode number 174.
This is "The Secret Show."
I'm Patricia Steere and with me is Mark Sargent.
Hello, Mark. Hello. How are you?
I'm very good, thank you.
Did you get a chance to see the satellite
that went down in Brazil?
Yes, I did see that.
MARK: Fascinating. And it came down on a balloon.
You say, "How do satellites get there?" "Balloons."
They laugh at you. "Okay, well, here's one."
Me to you, let's just talk.
You and me, shall we? Let's bring it down.
Bring the lights down low. [LAUGHS]
PATRICIA: When we started doing "The Secret Show"
and even before that, we had a lot of chemistry.
Within, I think, two or three weeks, she said:
"You thinking about coming to Houston?"
Since I was thinking about anyway moving to Seattle,
which had nothing to do with him,
might as well go, check it out, and meet with Mark
to see if there's anything there.
A "Go See" as you might say.
She came up, and we spent a weekend
talking and comparing notes,
and just kind of getting to know each other.
It was really great. I wanna go again.
PATRICIA: You start with the mail,
and I'll go into the live chat
and see if anybody's actually listening
to this show except us.
MARK: Something could have developed from that,
where we were kind of toying with the idea.
She was thinking of buying in Seattle.
She was seriously gearing up for this thing.
It ended up that I didn't end up moving there.
Things happened in my life with another romantic relationship.
Then she moved to London for a year.
A few red flags I chose to ignore.
Now, in retrospect, I see that I should have not ignored them.
Something goes wrong, she turns around, hauls all her stuff,
moves all her stuff back at an enormous expense. And her cats.
You know how much it costs to transfer cats
into another country? A lot.
I know you love cats, but get different cats!
Bro Sanchez says, "Y'all make a good couple.
Quit playing. LOL."
MARK: No, no, no.
PATRICIA: We-- MARK: Well...
There's a reason why we've done this show
as many times as we have. PATRICIA: Exactly.
[CHUCKLES] We are a couple:
a couple of friends.
We do have love for each other.
I mean, I can't really speak for him,
but I do have love for him. I've told him this.
It's a love I don't really quite understand.
It's not like platonic love, and it's not like romantic love.
We're both in a cause together, and that is a kind of love.
MARK: Of course, the big news for today
is the Flat Earth International Conference.
The community has grown to such a size
that not only are we having meet-ups
on pretty much every given weekend in any major city,
but now we're doing an international conference,
which is in Raleigh, North Carolina in the fall.
So I'm gonna be doing the keynote speech on the first day.
90 percent of the flat Earth community are in the closet.
We're almost to that tipping point,
because now there's celebrity references,
and there's mainstream media references.
PATRICIA: The sky is the limit.
Probably literally. Ah, I see what you did there.
PATTIE: When Mark said they were gonna have this conference,
and I thought, "Oh, right."
And I said, "How many are you expecting?"
thinking that, you know, 300.
Well, shoot, they've already got, what? A thousand.
There's so many people that are excited.
I mean, heck, the VIP-- the VIP thing sold out
last night during my show.
PATTI: I cannot believe how this thing has expanded.
If there isn't something to be said for it,
then why is it expanding the way it is?
Right.
Kyrie Irving who plays for the Cavaliers,
he recently said that he believes the world is flat.
Is that a subject that you covered with him?
Were you aware of that?
I wouldn't know how to broach that topic.
You wanna talk about how you think the Earth is flat?
I do not think the world is flat.
I'm saying there's stuff about it.
How do people actually believe the Earth is flat?
I'm stumped. I don't know how people believe that.
Round Earth or flat Earth? Yeah.
Round Earth. Oh, okay.
You just drew a divide between us.
What is happening?
Actually, no. Shaq goes the other way:
not debatable, it's flat.
Kyrie: flat. Dremont: Flat.
What is going on in the world?
I often like to say that if you gave me five or 10 minutes
with you I can probably tease out some belief you have
that your friends would think that
that's a little bit strange.
We tend to form beliefs based on a couple things.
One is our intuitions, just what feels right.
Another is our subjective experience.
For most of us who look out on the horizon,
indeed it looks flat.
HANNALORE: That seems like a reasonable thing, and so you ask:
"Okay, well, why are we saying that the Earth's round?"
If you don't have someone
who's gonna give you a satisfying answer,
you might well then try to find alternatives.
PATRICIA: It's what you can observe.
You don't need complicated math formulas
to figure out where you live,
but the powers that should not be have told us so,
and "Trust us. Believe us."
And we have. I did. We all did.
HANNALORE: Something that you see a lot in science
is Imposter Syndrome, which is a phenomenon
where the more you know about a topic,
the more you feel like you aren't actually an expert.
You feel like you can't possibly be an authority on this.
On the flip side,
there is something called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a psychological finding
that people who don't have knowledge or expertise
about something tend to have a false confidence
that they are, in fact, very knowledgeable about something.
It becomes this tendency to assume that
you have all the facts, that what you know
is everything that there is to know.
[KEYBOARD CLACKING] JOE: If you get online,
you'll see pages and pages of so-called evidence
that seems scientific.
Right? Here's an equation, here's a diagram,
and you go, "Huh, maybe they're on to something there."
And I feel like that's just as good as
an opinion of a physicist
or a consensus of, you know, 20 physicists.
We've all been brainwashed by scientism.
By those priests of a new religion.
Science is just the search for truth, right?
Science is a way of thinking.
Starting at "I don't know,"
then chipping away at the "I don't know"
through evidence with no motive on where it takes you.
You come up with a new idea, the first thing that happens
is 10 people try to figure out why it's wrong.
It's called Institutional Disconfirmation.
When you have conviction, it's well-earned.
So to have a vendetta against that, uh, is a little odd.
MARK: Science should have wiped us out
literally in the first month,
and it's the exact opposite.
We're not just winning.
We're crushing them because they don't know how to address it.
Because they're not convinced they can knock it out,
they don't wanna get into the ring.
We've got questions out there which they can't answer.
How much time do you have to spend
on every theory that is out there?
Right, and many times,
the things that we are debating are not even theories.
Either because they're not falsifiable,
or sometimes they've already been falsified.
Absolutely ludicrous what they're teaching.
You can't feel any of the movement,
and they think we go faster than a bullet on space.
I'd say take physics. It's just fundamental.
If you're driving in a car,
I throw a ball up, where's it gonna come down?
It's gonna come down in my hand.
It's not gonna fly through the back windshield.
So are there any scientists that are in flat Earth?
No. And they can't be.
Once you get to a certain level of education,
the education system more or less owns you.
You're not allowed to do certain things.
I mean, think of a teacher.
Teachers have to get master's degrees. Yeah.
Think of a normal educator,
if they came out and said that.
No matter where they were--
Have you had any educators come out?
No. Oh.
[♪♪♪]
That are willing to go on the record?
MAN: Well, there's always whistle-blowers, you know,
there's always some people that--
There aren't, and even if you're a tenured professor,
If you come out with something like that,
you can get drummed out of your business.
So, I mean, obviously
there's a very real risk to their livelihood.
BOB: I work for Denver International Airport as a consultant.
I work for several of the city governments.
I'm a forensic consultant for the Denver Police Department.
Um, I do the town of Limon's entire IT.
There are physics students.
There's astrophysics students,
and they're arriving at the same conclusions.
How is it that they could possibly all be wrong?
And my response to that was that they are putting things
into a perspective that they've been taught.
Nobody wants to admit that they've been fooled,
but the reality is it's happened to every one of us.
PER: Confirmation bias is one of the most
solid empirical findings in psychology.
If I have a belief or an attitude,
I will search for instances that confirm what I believe.
And also, I'll find myself in a company
with a lot of other people who think the same way as I do.
WOMAN: Of course, we always listen to Bob,
'cause he always just has
a good collection of information.
People think that defining gravity
by taking a microphone and dropping it on the ground,
and saying there's gravity-- WOMAN: Bitch.
Yeah, "That's gravity, bitches!"
I mean, it's laughable.
We appreciate it.
You're welcome. You did awesome.
It gives me a little bit of practice,
for what I'm gonna be doing in Raleigh.
Are you going? Are you going to the conference?
No. Ah, bummer.
WOMAN: Flat Earth is positive. When flat-Earthers get together,
it doesn't matter their background, whatever.
There's-- it's like you connect on such a deep level.
Infinite plane, how does that work as far as a dome/celestial?
MAN: Yeah, Mark Sargent asked me about that.
I'm not gonna assume it's a dome
until somebody can show me the curvature of the sky.
Until I find out otherwise,
I'm just gonna say infinite.
A lot of infighting becomes something of a lot of factions.
We can't have agendas diverting us
from the fact that we don't know
if the world is, in fact, a ball or flat.
CAMI: As you're looking at the model,
you're looking at the different possibilities
and making it come together and work,
but it becomes about fighting:
"Oh, you're lying about this," or "That's not true."
To me, that's not productive.
MARK: Flat Earth has camps.
It is not unified by any degree.
70 percent of them believe that
this is covered by some sort of dome.
The other 30 percent believe that
it's not covered,
and there's just more versions of this outside.
I use Life of Brian as the, um...
one of the metaphors for how flat Earth fragmented
when it first came out.
When he was running away from them, and he drops his shoe.
He has given us a sign!
He has given us a shoe!
Instantly, within, I think, less than 90 seconds,
a series of religions formed around the dropping of the shoe.
Let us, like him, hold up one shoe,
and let the other be upon our--
No, no, no, the shoe is a sign that we must gather shoes
Cast off the shoes, follow the gourd! No!
There's a dome. There's no dome.
Infinite plane, it doesn't seem natural
I guess it's a dome.
Hold up the sandal.
It is a shoe! It is a shoe!
It's a sandal!
The enclosed system,
you're in a confinement model like the globe was.
Take the shoes and follow him.
[ALL YELLING]
MARK: There's competition everywhere.
Because of that competition,
you mix that with a little bit of conspiracy,
little bit of paranoia, people go off the freaking deep end.
Matt is one of the-- If not the-- oldest veterans
of the flat Earth community,
and so when he throws a temper tantrum, everybody hears it.
This is what they're doing, there's a mutiny going on.
The fact that you're here is, like, raising a red flag.
[SIGHS] Who am I? My name is Math Powerland.
I'm the reason why Edward Snowden spoke up.
When the flat Earth thing started taking off,
after the "Clues" were put out,
people were calling me, asking to interview him,
because I'm one of the only people
that knew Matt's phone number.
He's doing the aloof artist thing,
like, "Oh, no, I don't give interviews."
What was their follow-up question?
"How about you? Do you wanna talk about flat Earth?"
I go, "Pbbt. Sure. Why not? Here's my spiel."
Matt lost it. He went atomic.
Did a series of videos and called in
to another podcast streaming live.
Called everybody out.
Is convinced that I work for the government.
That you, sitting here now,
apparently, this is a government safe house,
and I'm on the payroll.
Matt wanted to be the king of flat Earth.
But he wanted to do it on his terms.
I started this.
I am the tension that caused the flat Earth.
That's how the flat Earth started!
Which is not what happened,
the community just kept growing bigger and bigger,
and he just-- his voice just became lost in the wind.
To where, all of a sudden,
the conference was announced down in North Carolina,
and he was invited, and he said:
"No, I'm not gonna do the conference.
Why should I be in a room with you guys?
You're nothing without me."
That whole song and dance, and that was just annoying.
So now it's getting more serious.
Mark Sargent is what I always thought.
He's been sent in in an intelligence fashion
working with Hollywood.
Mark Sargent is not Mark Sargent.
It's Warner Brothers, you idiots.
And I told you.
Warner Brothers has a deal with the Pentagon and the CIA.
Matt went on a complete tear.
PATTI: Did he?
Cried and swore that he would have revenge.
It's like, "Whatever, dude,
you're still not coming to the conference."
He's just thrashing. He's trying to
tear everybody down, and he can't.
In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal,
but it causes ripples with the ground troops.
We're trying to look for stability
to get to the point where it's accepted.
[♪♪♪]
HANNALORE: You cannot believe a flat-Earther theory
without believing in some giant conspiracy.
Because you have to have some reason
why all this proof is wrong.
And if it's wrong, then it had to have been faked.
And if it was faked, well,
there you go, there's your conspiracy.
And what I always am most curious about
is why would someone bother to fake all this.
MARK: So when it comes to science, think of it this way.
If you have 450 years of them showing you it's a globe,
how much is that worth to them to keep it?
It's worth everything.
But then, Mark, you have to go:
"Who was behind the whole thing?"
I mean, that's the-- I know, I know.
I wish I was in a conspiracy.
That seems so exciting.
I wish that I was getting paid off. I really do.
SCOTT: When I was in space, I got paid extra.
Five dollars a day.
That's how rich I got.
Well, I think of all of these conspiracies or belief systems
as a spider's web.
And from what I can see the flat Earth
is the center of it all.
If you can start getting conspiracy theory
into someone's head, it's amazing
how suddenly everything seems this way.
They, the powers that should not be,
are doing whatever they can with the vaccines,
with the GMO foods, with the chemtrails
The transgender push in the media.
They're trying to turn all the guys into girls
and girls into guys.
Even the fear, the fear
that there will be hijackers taking a plane
and putting it through a building.
By the way, I don't believe
there were planes through buildings.
They seem to have to tell us and disclose to us
what they're doing through media, movies, TV shows.
Who do you think are the real controllers?
I don't think there's anybody who knows
who's at the top of the control grid.
Some people point the finger at the Jews,
some say it's the Masons.
The Rothschilds and the Rockefellers
The Jesuits, the Satanists.
The Vatican.
Yeah, ultimately, the Vatican.
CAMI: There's bad people in all of those groups,
and probably pretty normal people in all of those groups.
Although, I don't know if there's good Satanists.
ODD REALITY: Anybody who you see or you know their name,
they're merely a front. You're never gonna know
who the real controllers actually are.
JOE: Often times, it actually starts with
"Conventional wisdom isn't to be trusted,
governments aren't to be trusted,
scientists aren't to be trusted."
And when you start with that premise,
then you can get into all sorts of corners.
And I think what's really scary is
what they're actually doing isn't just
hiding the flat Earth.
It's the fact that they're still doing
human sacrifice and blood rituals.
MAN: What sources do you trust?
Myself.
That's it.
[CHUCKLES] Uh...
I've jokingly said if there's an event like a--
I'll just use Boston Bombing again--
I'm not going to believe any of those events are real
unless, myself, I get my leg blown off.
For many people, no matter what evidence you throw at them,
they can come up with this more complicated,
and, I think, in most of our eyes,
less-believable hypothesis.
I get amateur astronomers will say:
"I can see the moons of Jupiter."
Go to a planetarium.
Does Jupiter look like a sphere to you?
Who's to say that when you walk out of that one,
you're just not in a much bigger one?
Above the clouds, it is a display system.
There's this huge mound of evidence
that most of us come to accept that really requires
that you go through one after another and say:
"Don't believe that. Don't believe that.
Here's a countervailing theory."
That just can really spiral in on itself
and have this sort of snowball effect.
A funny thing is that I'm a conspiracy realist,
but there's conspiracies about me.
I look at episode 54 of Patricia Steere.
These people are hired by section heads
and supervisors in supervisory roles
at NASA, the NSA, the FBI, the CIA.
These aren't regular people.
It started off with me being called a "shill,"
uh, as if I'm doing this... for money.
Then I was called a "Flat Earth Honeypot"
to bring men into flat Earth
and then steer them the wrong way,
because my last name is Steere.
So what Patricia does is she's so pretty.
All these guys... But that's a part of the allure
of narcissistic, psychopathic women.
I never thought that the name "Patricia,"
which is my birth first name,
would be spun into the fact that the last three letters
are C-I-A in the word "Patricia,"
which means, "I'm in the CIA,"
because the government would be that dumb.
But, okay, if you wanna believe it.
Ah, other things that have been said,
that I'm a reptilian, and people see my eyes
shape-shift while I'm on YouTube.
That I drink blood.
[♪♪♪]
The most recent one is that I'm transgender.
I mean, I even threw up a question one day:
"What's up with Patricia Steere?"
You know? 'Cause I don't know, but, um, I don't know.
Now, the thing about all of these things
is I can't prove any of it wrong.
I could and have shown people my birth certificate,
my driver's license, photos of myself as a child,
and they'll say, "Well, if you're CIA,
all of that stuff can be constructed."
People will still say, "You don't have a real family.
You don't have a brother and sister."
Um... There's nothing that I can do.
So...
anybody can believe whatever they want to believe about me.
But I wonder if in their hearts,
people who do that know they're lying
or are they so conspiratorial that they actually believe it?
Then it makes me worry about maybe things I believe in.
Am I like another version of them?
But I know I'm not.
[♪♪♪]
MARK: She gets a lot of hate because people love to hate her.
She's become the villainess.
JORDAN: I gotta ask, what's up with all the animosity?
MARK: All it is is competition. That's all it is.
You watched Matt's stuff. He was the same.
Yeah, okay.
He called the conference "Shillfest 2017."
Mark, you'll be right here
MARK: Cool. Can you say something?
Testing, one, two, three.
It's weird how, like, all of a sudden,
this movement of people believing in the flat Earth...
if you look on Google Trends, it's like, spike.
We actually broke a million videos,
physically a million videos. Wow.
Which is a lot. You're never gonna
get through them in your lifetime.
If you type "flat Earth" into YouTube
in the beginning of 2015, you had 50,000 hits,
roughly, right? Search results.
If you type it in this morning, I think it was at
19.3 or 19.4, I hadn't checked since I got here.
Nineteen-point-four million.
It feels like it's part of something bigger.
Well...
here it is, my, uh, four years of my life.
I call it my "Flat Earth Rider." It's all electric.
I love to work with wood,
so I decided to cover it in exotic hardwood.
I'll get behind here, you can kinda--
you can see me on the camera.
[♪♪♪]
The famous ride.
Oh, wow, it goes.
It handles great.
CHRIS: I really wanna bring my bike to the conference.
It's a good way to break some conversation.
People that aren't flat-Earthers, they go:
"Wow, that's a cool-looking bike you got."
I go, "Well, this is my Flat Earth Rider."
You know, and then kinda Flat-Smack them,
and go from there.
[♪♪♪]
I wanted to do something to contribute to it all
to help spread the word,
and I didn't have experience in making videos.
I thought, "Well, I have special skills and abilities
to maybe make some kind of physical model of the thing."
Because when you see it in 3D,
it's a little easier to get the concept.
If somebody would have said to me three years ago
that I'd be known as the first person in the world
to make these flat Earth models,
I would have laughed and said "You're completely insane,"
but here we are, and it happened,
and I don't know how it happened.
The very first one I made for Mark Sargent
had the cake dome on it.
Over here are some examples of the newest ones.
This one right here is number 33.
"Two years in making F. E. Models, September 11, 2017"
This little button I put on here to control the brightness.
I'm a perfectionist, and as much as I'm selling these for,
to me, they've got to be perfect.
For the bigger domes, they won't fit in my oven,
so I had to make this little box right here.
[♪♪♪]
Hopefully, I got that hooked up right.
She's gettin' hot.
There we go.
[CHUCKLES]
♪ Just over the horizon ♪
♪ That's where I'll always Think you'll be ♪
♪ It's always so surprising ♪
♪ To find you right there Next to me ♪
♪ In this sprawling landscape ♪
♪ How'd you know Just where I'd be? ♪
Just this mechanism right here is 21 parts.
♪ In this sprawling landscape ♪
And we are turning.
That's good, and...
♪ ...just where I'd be? ♪ They're on.
It's working. That's how you do it.
STEPHEN: These people can be very, very bright,
so the issue is not necessarily a lack of intelligence.
It's not about being educated or uneducated,
or smart or dumb, it isn't.
I think it's sometimes miseducation.
I think somebody can be educated in such a way
that they are educated to distrust authority
on a regular basis,
which kind of poisons the well up and down the line.
PER: However, sometimes a question like this is helpful:
What would be the type of evidence
that would make you review your position?
Is there any kind of test?
[♪♪♪]
JERAN: I started a channel called Globebusters.
Really the goal was, at the beginning,
was I wanted to be shown proof that the Earth was a ball,
because I was shocked to not find evidence.
I was like, "Bob, do you want to do a weekly show?"
This is where I broadcast the Globebusters show from.
We do our show once a week, every Sunday.
We are a grassroots group of engineers and scientists.
We have done several experiments
that show the Earth as flat.
I think that the scientific method
is the best way to get to the truth,
and I just want to feel comfortable
in things that I believe.
The difference between being skeptical about something
and being in denial
is very subtle, but very important, right?
Someone who is skeptical is willing to test
their own hypothesis, their own assumptions.
They are actually looking for the truth,
even if it turns out that they were wrong.
BOB: Recently, we carried out an experiment
to test the rotation to the Earth.
If the Earth is spinning at one rotation every 24 hours,
that means that every hour it has to turn 15 degrees.
And if the gyroscope is mounted
anywhere on Earth, it's going to drift.
In today's 21st-century navigation systems,
they're using what's called a ring laser gyroscope.
It is extremely precise.
If we could simply get one of these ring laser gyroscopes,
we could prove, once and for all, that there is
no rotation to the Earth.
One of the people in the community
actually purchased one for $20,000
You start at point A,
and you do some kind of process of collecting evidence,
of thinking, of whatever you want
and you end up at a conclusion you believe.
Okay? Science is the arrow.
That's all science is is the arrow.
Science is a process to get to conclusions.
But what we found is: is when we turned on that gyroscope,
we found that we were picking up a drift.
A 15-degree per hour drift.
Now, heh, obviously, we were taken aback by that.
Wow, that's kind of a problem, right?
There's another way to think, which is you start at B.
You start at the conclusion. You say:
"I have to find evidence that shows this is true."
You're not looking for data
to try to prove you wrong or refine your position. Right?
You're trying to look for all the data that proves you right.
You'll cherry-pick until you find evidence
that appears to be an arrow, a logical arrow, to your dogma.
We, obviously, were not willing to accept that,
and so we started looking for ways to disprove
that it was actually registering the motion of the Earth
and that it, in fact, was registering
the motion of the sky.
So the next thing that we set out to do
was to encase the fiber optic gyro
in what's called a "Zero Gauss Chamber,"
to see if we could actually shield the energies
being generated by the heaven,
and we were unsuccessful with that, unfortunately.
So the next thing that we're going to try
is encasing the entire apparatus in bismuth.
If anything works well, I'd like to release it
at the conference
If there's not anything you can say,
you can show me to make me believe:
"I guess I'm wrong." It's not falsifiable anymore.
It doesn't make any sense for a scientist to argue
with that kind of thinking.
There's no point.
MARK: We have been able to prove other aspects of it,
and so it's not unreasonable, then, for us
to continue claiming that the Earth is flat.
[♪♪♪]
[WOMAN MUNCHING]
What do you think?
The popcorn is great.
MARK: Why am I in Houston?
Uh, to court Patricia Steere. No...
When she was up in Seattle, we went to the Seattle Museum
of Flight just to go into enemy territory.
It has a sizable space exhibit.
So we did a live stream.
It went very well and no controversy,
we weren't thrown out or anything.
and we thought, "There's one down in Houston:
Houston Space Center."
It's like fly down.
We're going to NASA to get indoctrinated.
I'm scared. Hold me. Yeah.
[LAUGHS]
GPS: Prepare to keep left.
MARK: So why didn't you go with the male voice?
Because I don't want men telling me what to do.
[IMITATING GPS] Your destination is too far away.
[IMITATING GPS] Your destination is not worth going to.
You can't get there from here. Please make alternative choice.
Do you even know how to drive this vehicle?
[DRAMATICALLY] We're so close to the enemy, I can smell their breath.
[WINDOW WHIRS]
Hello.
I love the music in the background.
WOMAN: Okay. God bless America.
We're ready to go live. Once I hit the "Go Live" button.
It might take a while because we may have a bad connection.
We're...live. Hello.
We're here, it's Patricia Steere and Mark Sargent.
Hello. And we are in Houston, Texas
at the Houston Space Center.
This museum that we are in will probably be
a mix of real and fake. What do you think?
Well, it's gonna be mostly fake.
[♪♪♪]
You've got Angry Birds in Space endorsing this.
NASA is now taking co-sponsors.
It doesn't look like the moon. No, it doesn't.
PATRICIA: This is what NASA is reduced to:
their costume astronaut suit with a broken watch strap.
Okay? I think we're winning, people.
Wow! Mark's going into space.
At least this is free.
MARK: There's the curvature of the Earth.
I'm being brainwashed. I keep hitting this
for splashdown sequence, nothing happens.
Start. Start. So this isn't working
MARK: It's not even working. So there's a broken watch
on one of the astronauts, there's this broken...
Yeah, the Orien Simulator is broken.
It cost about $30 to get in, per person, give or take.
PATRICIA: Everything is run down.
MARK: Everything is worn.
PATRICIA: Chris Pontius could teach this place
how to make things.
Highlight of the whole thing.
Look, ma, I'm an astronaut.
[♪♪♪]
Wait, you guys, look.
I understand why this part is free.
It looks like it's a barn.
Empty. There is one car in the lot.
You know what, that's not the door to enter, come on.
[LAUGHING] I'm gonna try it.
Of course. He's gonna try it.
There's no way.
It opened.
This is it. This is the entry.
Whoa. Okay, this is impressive
because of magnitude of size.
Wait, we're the only ones here.
Does everyone see how big this is?
We're the only ones here.
I'm going to say something that's never been uttered
in any NASA facility, ever. Oh, I can't wait.
[ECHOES] The Earth is flat.
And it echoed. That was brilliant.
What you're looking at is part of
the greatest science fiction story ever told.
What if mainstream science figured out
that the world was not a globe anymore?
So you create a rocket program.
To take the pictures, to even fake pictures,
they had to discontinue it before the internet was created
way before HD technology was created.
You make it seem like it's just not that big a deal.
Mm-hmm. They took-- Yeah, from yesterday.
And honestly, you throw the general
Inception soundtrack on anything,
it makes it sound way better.
[SING-SONGY] Mark Sargent!
[GROANS] Can I have an autograph?
Yeah, this is the one that NASA gets to come at me for.
Oh, hi. Hello.
[CHUCKLES]
Welcome to episode number 186 of Flat Earth
and Other Hot Potatoes. I'm Patricia Steere.
And I'm Mark Sargent.
Laurel Austin asks, "Have you ever been
out somewhere and someone recognized you by your voice,
Mark or Patricia?"
For me, the answer is absolutely not.
Me, on the other hand, yes.
Really? Oh, my God...
PATRICIA: I don't think that we're celebrities.
I think that people who are looking into flat Earth
want to get away from that culture.
[CHUCKLING] No, it's good.
No, it's a safe answer,
I'm going to take it a little different direction.
I don't think I'm a celebrity, but when I
do public functions, I run into people that do
the deer-in-the-headlights.
She's just staring at me, and I go, "What?"
She goes, "You're Mark Sargent."
I go, "Yeah." She goes, "I didn't know."
[CHUCKLES] I was like, "Oh, seriously?"
And she had that whole thing.
That must be a very pleasing feeling,
because you've affected her life.
Being on with me during "The Secret Show"
has made your face more recognizable,
and being on with you on Strange World
was sort of a way that people got to know me a long time ago.
So we've been having a lovely symbiotic relationship.
Like a whale that has those smaller fish on it
that, like, eats all the algae in the gills.
Boy, I better be the whale in this story. Ha, ha.
MARK: The international conference is only about six weeks away.
So the first day, she's gonna be on a panel,
and then I'm doing a keynote speech/speaking event.
And then the second day, the last event,
really the last event of the conference,
Patricia and I are going to be hosting the video awards show.
I don't want to go, can I just stay?
You had a nice time, right?
I did have a nice time. I had a great time. It was fun.
Really nice time.
[♪♪♪]
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
BOB: At the conference in Raleigh,
we wanna have proof there's no curvature,
and if we can do that, it's game-over.
The rotation is not looking good at this point.
[LAUGHS] We don't want to blow this, you know?
MAN: Right, right, right.
BOB: We got $20,000 in this freaking gyro.
But yeah, if we dumped what we found right now,
we would be-- It would be bad.
[CHUCKLES] It would be bad.
So... But what I just told you is confidential.
Okay, I won't say anything.
BOB: Not any one experiment proves anything conclusively.
That's why we're building a preponderance of evidence.
I think there's a few more experiments
we could do with lasers and leveling.
I think Jeran is working on a great experiment now
that's gonna help, uh, with all that.
What we're gonna be doing is an experiment
at Victoria Canal in Holt, California.
It's a 3.88-mile stretch.
We're gonna actually have set up three posts.
One at the start, one at the end,
and one in the middle.
Then we're gonna shoot a laser from the first post
and see where it crosses that first post.
So let's say it's eight feet,
and get it to cross the same point at the far end.
And when we can confirm that both are passing
the exact same spot,
then somebody will tell us what the middle is at.
If the middle is eight feet, it's flat,
and if it comes back that it's only five-and-a-half feet,
then, yeah, that means that the Earth has curvature.
That's a cool experiment. It's interesting.
So I'm trying to think if there's...
a laser is just...
It's going straight...
[♪♪♪]
Um, yeah, that's-- They're in trouble here.
JERAN: A laser for your cat
I think would be five or even less milliwatts,
so this is 3000 milliwatts.
The beam will grow as it gets further.
And, um, if you put the expander on,
it's supposed to get smaller.
The most surprising thing I've learned
is how hard experiments are.
So many things could go wrong.
I didn't give enough credit to people who do experiments.
They have a way to say, "I don't believe that evidence."
But it's rare you have something which is performed by them
and it's just so obvious.
There's no other way to look at it.
I'm curious to see what happens.
It's gonna be interesting, how they handle it.
MARK: We, as flat-Earthers, feel that we have several smoking guns...
Several. There's no curve,
We don't wanna present yet.
We wanna have the whole package.
Between the laser and the fiber optic gyro,
this technology is gonna kill the ball.
They would like us to believe that the ball Earth
has been proven for a long, long time.
But this debate has raged on for centuries.
Here in the U.S., millions are getting ready
for a spectacular dance between the sun and the moon.
Today's eclipse is a reminder of our place in the solar system,
so I hope you're sitting down for this.
Despite loads of irrefutable proof,
some people still believe the Earth is flat.
[♪♪♪]
MARK: There's this big war right now.
Does the eclipse disprove flat Earth?
That's the big, hot debate.
In fact, the Philadelphia Voice, a newspaper,
just did their thing. They contacted me,
and then Bob from Globebusters.
What they don't know is the guy from the Philly Voice
is also one of ours.
[CHUCKLES]
Uh, no, I'm not a secret flat-Earther.
That line from Spectre, from James Bond, he goes:
"The thing you should know about us,
is we have people everywhere."
I might get business cards made up with that now.
MARK: If you were here, right now, where we are on Whidbey Island,
you would still have 93 percent of the eclipse.
To get that extra 7 percent, we gotta drive three hours
and face a mob of Woodstock proportions.
Is that worth it? No, not in my opinion.
But we're gonna be representing and putting the focus--
All we have to do is get attention.
Okay, mmm, love you.
Love you. All right.
[♪♪♪]
WOMAN [ON RADIO]: Additional delays are expected due to eclipse-related traffic.
DIRECTOR : See anything? MARK: Oh, not yet...
Ah, come on... I bet you, that's it.
Let's take a look.
You want my surreal moment of the day?
Here it is.
Two years after I make Flat Earth Clues,
here we are, on one of the biggest freeways
in the United States,
on the biggest eclipse in a hundred years,
and we're flashing flat Earth messages.
And I had nothing to do with it!
This was done by a completely different flat Earth chapter.
The fact that I'm saying, "flat Earth chapter"
like it's a thing is amazing.
[CHUCKLING] I love flat Earth.
I love them!
Uh...
[♪♪♪]
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
I found out the perfect thing for you to film.
Ladies and gentlemen,
boys and girls, gather 'round.
I'm here to tell you a tale: The tale of the globe.
Oh, it's not a happy story, my friends.
This isn't even the biggest one I've seen.
The biggest one I've seen is in Raleigh,
at the national convention, go figure.
We didn't even pick the city for that.
They start launching nukes straight up in 1958.
After the third shot, they form NASA.
The media has helped us. They've said:
"What do flat-Earthers think about the eclipse?"
It's great, because people wanna know,
they're curious, like, "What do they think?"
It's just another part of the firmament,
the dome, the display system.
What are your takes, then, about the moons of Jupiter?
Same thing.
I caught his smile
when I was talking about the planetarium part,
he wasn't buying it. It's in his head.
He may research it. That's what the billboard's for.
We're trying to put seeds in people's heads.
Go to Flat Earth Clues, and any one of those videos,
in the description, you'll see a link that says:
"Join the Flat Earth Army."
Right now, Bob, from Globebusters,
is launching a weather balloon as we speak.
They're hoping to see the eclipse from 100,000 feet.
MAN: Yep, there it goes. WOMAN: Whoo!
[PEOPLE CHEERING]
Safe for direct solar viewing...my eyes!
Oh, yeah, we're getting close now.
[♪♪♪]
[PEOPLE CHEERING]
Here it comes...
Totally worth it.
Worth it.
[CHUCKLES] Worth every second of it.
So glad I'm here.
PATRICIA: How was the eclipse itself?
Did you have a feeling?
Was there anything in the air when it happened?
Anything, um, weird?
It's like seeing-- Like a special effect in a movie
that really catches you off guard.
It appeared that the sun is self-eclipsing,
that there was no three-dimensional object
that was moving in front of the sun.
And that's what we've been thinking about the moon,
so when I saw this, it's like, "Oh, yeah, of course.
Of course that's what it's doing."
New York Times, Seattle Times...
Right.
[♪♪♪]
[COINS CLINK]
There it is.
This morning, the South Whidbey Record
ran a front-page story on the flat Earth.
"South Whidbey grad Mark Sargent has been known for many things.
"Once, it was for homemade fireworks.
"Another time, he was
"the digital pinball champion of the world.
"Today, he is a leading figure of the flat Earth movement.
Yes, he really believes the Earth is a disk."
Then on the inside cover,
you actually have the editor's column,
and he only wrote one thing this week, called:
[READS ON-SCREEN TEXT]
"I met with a conspiracy theorist this week,
"a bona fide flat-Earther.
"He's utterly and unequivocally wrong.
"So why promote a theory
the vast majority of people find ridiculous?"
I haven't told a lot of people that this is what Mark's into.
[CHUCKLES] Because I'm thinking,
they're just gonna think we're screwy!
DIRECTOR: I don't wanna put you on the spot, but do you think...
Do you agree?
That the Earth is flat? MARK: Say yes!
Well, I'll tell you what,
I want to see that it is proven that it is not flat.
So that's kind of where I'm coming from.
I'm-- I, uh-- Well...
Good answer, I didn't even coach her on that.
No, and I will tell you,
since we've done this, for what, three years?
Two. Two-and-a-half?
Two-and-a-half years. Not even.
And, um, my prayer has been,
continually, that truth will be revealed.
[♪♪♪]
All of us have that tendency to want to connect to people
around things that make us unique.
And one thing we know is that human beings
feel very threatened when we feel that identity
being taken away.
"'Joining the club' often comes as a relief
"because they can finally identify
"with other like-minded people.
"For the first time, they're not different,
and no longer alone."
Oh, I've got something for you to sign.
MARK: Yeah! Stay flat, something like that.
[WOMAN LAUGHS]
Defacing a harmless globe?
I was proud to do it. I'm excited to be a part of it.
MARK: This is a flat Earth meetup.
And they flew me down for this.
Because I'm infamous.
Because, no-- Because I'm real.
That's what everyone's saying:
They want to shake my hand,
and make sure that they, you know, touch me.
That sort of thing. It's like, "Oh, yeah,
he's a real guy, he's not just a voice on a video."
HOST: All right, so welcome to Der Wolfs Kopf,
uh, you're here for an Astronomy on Tap.
So what this is, it's a monthly outreach event.
We've got two astronomy talks related to something
that's going on in research,
something going on at JPL, in the news.
Lastly, but not leastly,
we have an extra-large NASA swag t-shirt.
MARK: Want to see something cool?
Bob Ross. Yep.
Lots of lies.
Um, so I'm going to talk tonight
about my favorite now-dead spaceship Cassini.
HANNALORE: I stayed up all night to watch
the last data transmissions come in.
I was sitting there with my dogs looking at me,
like, "Why is the light still on?"
Why are you awake? Why are we still awake?
Put, "I am Mark Sargent!" Oh, God...
Sargent...
Lamar Glover's gonna talk about dismantling
the scientific superiority complex.
[PEOPLE CHEERING, APPLAUDING]
Hey, what's going on? How y'all doing?
So I wanna talk about flat-Earthers real quick.
All right? [AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
The problem I see is actually
not from the side of the conspiracy theorists.
It is actually from our side, from the side of science.
Very often it is difficult not to look down.
I was so frustrated about getting told I was an idiot.
So I decided to say, "Laugh at me all you want!
Science is different than the shit they're believing."
I've already lost friends and stuff.
So I felt so good when I made the shirt.
SPIROS: My friend said, "Sometimes the way
to change somebody's mind is to shame them."
And I say, I don't think that is the last resort, ever.
This is the same as saying that
if a kid doesn't get a particular subject,
it's not your fault as their teacher, it is their fault.
I do not believe that.
It is you haven't developed your empathy
to see from their point of view where they're getting stuck.
LAMAR: We can't blame it all on people being delusional,
or the "C" word, which is the "crazy" word.
I think a lot of times we say crazy,
and it's a scapegoat. It's an umbrella term.
Right? How many people here have been called crazy before?
I have shared it with my mother, my daughter,
uh, two guys who I was dating
who didn't want to date me any more
after I told them about my belief in the flat Earth.
MAN: You know, I have four children, my sons are grown,
them and their mother, who's my ex-wife,
kind of think dad's a little off...
Gone off his rocker.
I, uh, just finalized the divorce.
I no longer speak to my parents, my brother,
or anybody else other than people
that are interested in doing truth research.
The worst-case scenario is
you just completely push these individuals
at the fringe of society
and then society just lost them.
PATRICIA: And you would say to yourself, "Well,
why would you pursue something if you're going to have
a falling-out with your blood relatives?
What's important is truth.
People give you strange looks, that's fine.
If you're not hurting them, let 'em think what you want.
They're asleep, going through life. They're background noise.
I do find Mark to be a hero.
But you're so lovely for doing that for everyone.
And it is so touching. But...
Give me a hug! Give me a hug. It just--
[SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY] [CHUCKLING]
I decided just to give it to you.
No, you don't have to give me this!
Yeah, yeah, give me the pin,
I've got apparently a schwag bag that's happening.
Do you get lots of stuff? Not this much!
Not like this!
LAMAR: Truthers, flat-Earthers, anti-vaxxers...
when we leave people behind,
we leave bright minds to mutate and stagnate.
These folks are potential scientists gone wrong.
Their natural inquisitiveness and rejection of norms
could be beneficial to science
if they were more scientifically-literate.
Let's take the metaphor of "argument is war."
One side wins and the other loses.
If my opponent feels he's better than me,
that's intolerable to me.
So I'll-- I'll not listen to what he says.
Already while he's talking,
I'll be planning my counterattack.
Another way of thinking is:
"Let's go and explore together!"
And this exploring together
takes us to another place than argument.
LAMAR: So every flat-Earther shouldn't be held with contempt,
but serve as a reminder
of a scientist that could've been,
someone that fell through the cracks.
And we, as ambassadors of science,
are called upon to do more. Right?
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]
So scientists of varying degrees of professionalism,
seriously consider becoming a mentor
to someone who is coming from a non-traditional
point of entry to the sciences.
If you're not willing to engage with them,
you-- you can't expect them to change.
You just hope that they will meet you even halfway,
but often when you push them to the corner,
it takes a lot of effort for them to even move
one step towards you.
[♪♪♪]
Those boats make pretty good waves.
Jeran. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Your name? Bob.
JERAN: We could use your help too. We're gonna, um,
maybe have you guys do the middle station.
We're going to try the panels instead of, I think, the posts.
Okay, we're gonna get the level right now.
See a red line right around where that green is?
This way a little bit. To your right.
Press it once to turn on then double-press it.
Yeah, hold on. Keep it right there.
Let's say this is the light that you see.
You just... mark it like this.
So it might be that big you're saying?
I don't think so, I think it'll be under a foot.
We're going to have a panel in the middle
and when we have both ones hitting at the same height,
then we'll move the panel, in between, the middle people.
And then wherever it crosses the panel, that's it.
Then, then we're done.
Okay. Where's the...?
MELISSA: We're-- We're ready.
JERAN: I got a big beam, so you're gonna see--
I wanna make sure you can see it.
Yeah, I can see it, but it's kind of high.
JERAN: Too high?
Yeah.
JERAN: There?
Go up a little bit.
MELISSA: Up a little bit. BOB: Up a little bit.
There.
There?
Keep it there.
Right about there looks good.
You got it?
I think the beam's gonna be too big.
BOB: We want you to narrow--
The beam. --the, uh, beam. Okay.
BOB: If it's too big for us, it's gonna be big for them.
Absolutely. Okay.
Tell me if the beam gets smaller right now.
BOB: That's what we need.
Okay tell me if it gets smaller. There.
The beam is taking up the whole panel.
JERAN: I should work on the beam first.
BOB: You should work on that beam first.
[♪♪♪]
Are the specs on that laser
that it should get to that small of a dot at that distance?
Uh, with the focuser, yeah. It should be less than four feet.
Okay, I've got it on a pretty tight beam,
I'm going to try and find you right now.
Okay, I see the light. Yes, I definitely that.
There.
BOB: Same as before.
Same size?
MAN: Safe travels! Thanks, you too!
People are-- They're all leaving.
That's okay, I don't mind.
But we should leave-- You too.
Takes two hours to get home. JERAN: I know. I know.
I'm not gonna-- We have to figure out the laser.
I'm gonna shoot it, and if you don't see it any smaller
then we're gonna have to reassess this.
Is it any-- Is it a smaller beam?
Uh...it's... No, it's not a smaller beam.
It's the same. It's 15 feet wide.
Man. I don't know what to do.
Not today. PRODUCER: You'll come back?
I-- We have to, yeah.
We just gotta figure out a way to make it work.
[♪♪♪]
REPORTER: Well, a sell-out crowd is expected
in North Carolina this weekend
for, get this, the "Flat Earth International Conference"
[♪♪♪]
Patricia! There's Patricia!
I'm so excited, it's like Christmas Eve!
♪ Bought it Guess you need it ♪
♪ Ride it like the dead horse It is ♪
♪ Believe you still got it Forget it ♪
Are you putting that on Facebook?
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]
♪ They believe it ♪
Still can't believe all of this is really happening.
MAN: Oh, my God!
Whew!
Right on, man.
Keep it flat.
You know, there's only a couple people
that have the blackout shirts.
Of course, I was there.
You're Hot Potatoes! That's me!
Get out!
WOMAN: This is Hollywood for her.
PATRICIA: In a way, for me too!
CHRIS: Are we twinkling? There we go.
MAN: I drove 1150 miles yesterday. So...
I traveled from Ireland then to Iceland.
Oh. You came even further.
PATRICIA: Hello, Bob. How are you?
Hug or handshake? How about both?
This room is big.
What if I trip when I walk up there, you know?
Like something like that?
I know.
I'm used to the safety of YouTube.
BOB: Is Mark here?
He's busy being Mark Sargent.
Look I got my--
PATRICIA: I have one too. I didn't put it on.
What does it say? It's not fashionable.
You changed outfits.
Hey! I wanted to shake your hand.
Nice to meet you.
I'm excited. I'm really excited.
I hoping we can, we can fill the place.
No, no, no, I get it.
It's like, come on, man. I still don't believe it.
Hello.
Anybody going to the Flat Earth Conference,
okay, first off, um, they're not
at a real Flat Earth Conference.
That's more a, uh-- A military play,
uh, using Hollywood assets.
Which explains why, uh, Dennis Luka,
who's playing the character Mark Sargent
owned by Joe Riehl or Ralph Riehl,
if that's his real name.
Um, has access to interview people
in the Air Force and the military.
So you think I'm a guy named Joe, or a guy named Dennis.
Now the sad part of this is
is that a lot of people bought a ticket...
and they said there's no refunds...
So if I were to put out a video exposing Mark Sargent,
well, they'd keep the money.
And now you're probably too scared to go...
It's a lot of people just not to come.
I'm like-- They understand,
they're not getting a refund. That's money out the window.
It's like, "Maybe he's got a point,
maybe this is a setup and we have to be careful.
I've been saying this for, I dunno,
like since this guy showed up.
People say, "Because of you, I'm not going."
"Because of Patricia, I'm not going."
I couldn't believe the amount of people that came to me,
and they're like, "I'm going with him.
I just let you call me delusional.
I let you call me crazy. Why?
Because I'm the one who came up with the flat Earth?
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
[♪♪♪]
ANNOUNCER [ON PA]: Welcome. Kryptos Media proudly presents
the first-annual Flat Earth International Conference.
[PEOPLE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING]
This is amazing. Absolutely amazing.
This is a time that we've all been waiting for.
This is now becoming something that cannot be ignored.
Unfortunately some people, you know, didn't attend this year.
That's okay.
Look, we have our differences.
We may not agree with one another. We can choose
to get all wrapped on that, or we can sit here.
And we can be here, and we can grow, saying:
"We all agree we're not on a spinning ball
flying through space."
[PEOPLE MURMUR INDISTINCTLY]
This will continue to grow. This will get bigger.
And honestly, change the world.
CHRIS: This one right here was number two.
And then, uh, this one's number 33...
And then the latest one here's this little simple one,
this is number 36.
ANNOUNCER: It is a privilege and an honor to bring out Jeran Campanella.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS]
When this all started, I was looking for the truth,
you guys know that. And deep down inside,
I think everybody knows that it's flat.
CHRIS: This is called the flat Earth rider.
This is the front brake right here.
You turn the brake on, it lights the crystals up.
These are models of the flat Earth.
And then, the latest one was this map
circulating around showing other continents
outside of our world.
PATRICIA: This is so life-affirming.
And I think that this whole event
is going to have a healing effect
on the whole flat Earth community.
I really liked that, that was really interesting.
I got, like, chills from it, and was like, "Yeah!"
It's going to be tough to see...
It's the house lights we're going to bring up.
Don't bring up the lights too far.
Go time.
Mark Sargent's the guy that kicked this off for me.
For me, it was the second video,
and I'm sure a lot of people can relate,
was the infamous Flat Earth Clues.
And I click on that video, and the first words I hear:
"This is a Reader's Digest version
of the flat Earth theory,
and some of the more interesting topics."
ROBBIE: I hear a lot of things about Mark Sargent.
But one thing I can say is that Mark Sargent
is one of the hardest workers in flat Earth.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING, CHEERING]
Thank you, thank you. Love you!
And I'm trying not to get emotional here
because it's such a great, amazing thing to see everybody.
I love the flat Earth community. That's no lie.
WOMAN: We love you too! I love you,
excited person over there!
[ALL LAUGH]
But let me clear,
I am the father of flat Earth, all right?
All I did was walk up to a door that was already there,
point at it, and say, "Hey,
I think there's something very interesting on the other side."
And all of crazy people...
You had to poke your head inside and take a look around.
Now, here we are, two years later.
You've taken this further than I ever, ever would've hoped.
For that, I'd like to give you my deepest
and most sincere "thank you."
So...
microphones, questions.
How long do you think it will take
for this to be taught alongside the globe Earth?
I think we're, almost at the critical mass point,
and the media here proves that.
Within the CIA, who actually implanted you
within the community? Just kidding!
Who is behind propagating the globalist lie?
Is it the U.S. government, are other governments in collusion?
Yes, yes, and yes, all those things, all of the above.
You, go!
Um, I was wondering, how high do you think the dome is?
How old are you? Twelve.
MARK: Good for you!
Thank you, by the way, thank you for coming!
Did you come with your parents,
did you sneak out of school?
I came here with my parents. Right on.
Where are your parents? Right over there.
Thank you, guys!
That will segue me
into my letter I was gonna read you guys:
"Mark, my grandkids are 12, 10, and 8 years old
"and are all third-generation flat-Earthers.
"You convinced me nearly two years ago.
"I passed it onto my kids, and together,
we passed it on to my grandchildren."
So flat-Earthers. Pretty innocuous, right?
People can believe what they want.
It's a bit funny, if you don't spend
too much time thinking about it.
"When their science teacher was telling the kids
"the Earth spins 1000 miles an hour and goes around the sun,
"the class erupted with about a third of the class saying:
"'No, it doesn't.'"
[AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING]
But the problem is that this isn't a phenomenon
restricted to flat-Earthers.
They try to make other people believe.
Those people take it a step further,
and then just kind of, you know,
discount all kinds of scientific principles.
"Long live flat Earth."
[AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING]
Got it. Cool.
Thank you. Hey, very welcome, man.
EVA: What is it that you want them to take away?
Question everything. Don't assume anything
when it comes to what you're told.
If you're wrong about this, what else do you wanna revisit?
Evolution, the Big Bang?
It runs the gamut from people that are anti-vaxxers
Denial of evolution because it conflicts
with the Bible, for example.
Then all of a sudden you get people
that maybe work in our government
that don't believe what 97 percent
of all climate experts say.
And so they're making uninformed or poorly-informed decisions,
and that affects all of us.
Especially with social media.
There's a lot of information out there,
They'll say YouTube is full of rabbit holes
that don't go anywhere. Everybody's like, "Fake news."
Fake news, yeah, of course.
HANNALORE: If you have a growing section of the population
that doesn't know how to think critically
and doesn't know how to evaluate expert resources,
they're gonna be easy to manipulate.
Why not, like, raise the money
and do an exploration and find the edge of the Earth?
Oh...spoilers.
[LAUGHS] We have acquired funding.
It was a matter of time before we were gonna get money,
so now the experiments start ramping up.
Go ahead and roll the video.
NARRATOR 1: Since the late 1800's,
science has been shifting from discovery to dogma.
It's time for the scientific research field
to be unencumbered.
NARRATOR 2: We announce the formation of "Field Engineers Core,"
an international group
dedicated to true scientific discovery,
free of dogmatic agenda.
[ALL CHEERING, APPLAUDING]
BOB: This is gonna be the chance
to do our science and present it to the world.
We will experimentally show that there is
no curvature to the Earth.
There is no forward motion to the Earth,
as well as the energy that's coming from the stars
and the sky is rotating around this plane
at about 15 degrees per hour.
The less plausible your dogma is,
the less it meshes with reality,
the larger the alternative reality you have to create.
All of existence, suddenly, is through a different lens.
I want to believe this. This doesn't mesh with reality,
so don't change my view, change reality.
You know, I do wonder what the motivation is for it.
It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.
MARK: It's their escape.
I'm in a room with people that absolutely will not judge me.
So many of you have been through so much pain.
My entire life, I've kind of felt separate,
like nothing was quite right.
DARRYL: We never really fit-in.
We find ourselves to be somewhat isolated.
And, um, we want to talk to people about this thing,
but nobody wants to talk to us.
MARK: In the Truman Show, a big reason why the lead character
left when he discovered his entire world was fake
was he had nothing to lose.
Jim Carrey was inevitably going to leave that place
because there was nothing for him inside.
Compare that with anyone else.
We'll go to the other end, which would be
the mayor of that town. Let's say the mayor of that town
got in a sailboat and got out to the edge.
The guy has got limos, the guy has got mistresses,
he's got money, he's got a pretty cushy life.
Does he open the door
and face the devil you don't know
versus the devil you know? No.
DIRECTOR: Wouldn't you say, in a sense, though,
you're now the mayor of flat Earth?
PER: Say you lose faith in this thing.
What then happens to my personal relationships?
What's the benefit of me of doing that?
Will the mainstream people welcome back?
No, they couldn't care less.
But have I now lost all my friends in this community?
Yes.
So suddenly, you're doubly-isolated.
If I tried to go, there would be many people,
they would come and say, "Don't don't do it."
So I couldn't leave if I wanted to.
It becomes a question identity: "Who am I in this world?"
And I can define myself through this struggle.
This is somewhat of a battle.
More or less between good and evil.
We're actually very special
and we start to realize there is a purpose to our life.
We need to take you seriously.
Then that makes you the protagonist.
It's very enticing, once you get into it,
it feels great to be the underdog protagonist.
Everything you do is justified.
When people mock you:
That's because they're evil.
When people try to prove you wrong,
you quickly say, "There you go. There's the evil."
No one is Ursula in their own story.
CARLY: We are changing the world.
We are making history.
MARK: This is what you've been waiting for.
You're not alone.
You're not this little speck of dust
flying through space at incredible velocities.
You are the center of the universe,
as a matter of fact. You are the star of the show.
[♪♪♪]
TIM: I think that what flat-Earthers can offer us
is a way to have 99.9 percent of people say:
"Well, that's ridiculous. Imagine believing that."
And then to turn it around and say:
"How are you a flat-Earther?
Where are you and your people
the protagonists in a Disney movie?
Where are you constructing your reality?"
Somebody asked me, "What if it turned out wrong?
What if it was wrong?
Would you feel this sense of guilt
if all of a sudden it was proved to be a globe?"
JERAN: We have a backup experiment.
If you're seeing through this hole through the next hole
and seeing a light at the back board
at 17 feet off the water, the Earth is flat.
If he's holding it up at 23 feet high,
and we're seeing the light, the Earth is curved.
So I should only be able to see it when it's at 17 feet
Drive down there, Enrique.
You're gonna hold the light there.
Enrique, how high is your light?
JERAN: I mean, I, you know... It's just--
Um... we don't see you, Enrique.
Lift up your light way above your head.
Interesting. Interesting there.
[♪♪♪]
That's interesting.
♪ You're wound up like a weapon You've got an evil streak ♪
JERAN: The person who was a globe believer was saying:
"Isn't that proof the Earth curves?"
Then the guy who was in the middle said,
"No, it's hitting weeds."
♪ Yeah, you gotta stop, stop Can't you hear me call? ♪
♪ And singing... ♪
BOB: It's a trial and error basis, and you're right.
I love the video that you came out with,
talking about the "Monday morning armchair quarterbacks."
♪ Stop, stop it, girl ♪
JERAN: We tried to do it again,
to replicate that result.
We didn't get the same result.
There was nothing we could walk away from
and say for sure was decided.
♪ I hounded you forever ♪
♪ But you never saw ♪
♪ This love was so strong It shoulda ♪
♪ Been against the law ♪
♪ Yeah, you gotta stop, stop Can't you hear me call? ♪
♪ And singing gotta stop Stop it, girl ♪
♪ Yeah, you gotta stop, stop Can't you see me fall? ♪
♪ And singing stop Stop it, girl ♪