[Full disclosure: The writer of this review believes in a spherical earth and assumes the reader does as well.]
Like a good underdog story?
If you're just an average person who stumbled across the title of this podcast and then decided to listen to an episode just to see how weird it was, it would probably surprise you to learn that you have some common ground with its hosts, Lori Frary and Lawrence Wright. They believe, as l'll bet you do, that it's preposterous to assume that the earth is a flat disc circled with a two mile high wall of ice and covered by a dome.
Forward of that, your beliefs and theirs are almost certain to diverge. They do, after all, they believe the earth is flat. They offer a different model (one with corners and a certain amount of teleportation). But at its heart, this program tells the story of two people who believe something so earnestly as to risk ostracism from an already marginalized group.
The world of Flat Earth Theorists is richer than you might suspect. It is rife with allegiances and betrayals, stalwart idealists and agent provocateurs. Every counter opinion is a potential PSYOP and every dissenter (among these dissenters) might be a puppet of government mind control. There is a broad cast of personalities, each vying for attention and validation in the way of Facebook likes or Youtube views, which, in this shadowy world of hidden truths, seem to be the coin of the realm. There's contention between the authors of conflicting theories, open questioning of the movement's leadership and suspicion at every turn.
They've got a real Game of Thrones thing going on over here.
The belief in a flat earth is often rooted in biblical literalism, so you might expect there to be an evangelical overtone to the presentation, but interestingly, there isn't. Frary, in fact, goes so far as to refer to her detractors with an impolite word that rhymes with 'blucktards'.
I was particularly impressed by a section of one episode in which our hosts mused aloud about eclipses. Neither of the hosts can imagine how they can be predicted with such precision and they marveled, openly and honestly, about how amazing it was. It's easy to imagine avoiding topics without easy answers, being wary of appearing uncertain. This speaks to an open-mindedness that might surprise the listener.
(Note: this freewheeling, off-the-cuff dialog also led them to conclude that the International Space Station, since it crosses the International Date Line multiple times a day, is traveling backwards in time.)
So, should you, a "glober" as we are sometimes called, listen to this podcast? I say "yes". And not as an excuse for you to be snotty and judgmental. There's nothing you can say or type to belittle and malign these people that has not been said and typed a thousand times before. There are lessons here, REAL lessons about belief, perception and confirmation bias. As a bonus, if you can listen to 24 hours 37 minutes and 3 seconds (the combined duration of the itunes-available episodes) of people carving up the laws of the physical world to accommodate an imaginary construct, something as ordinary as looking at the moon, with its simple truth and beauty, becomes new again.
The things you believe most deeply are the very beliefs you should be most suspicious of, because you never question them.
Prior to listening to this show, I believed the earth was a sphere for the (sinful) reason of merely believing what the scientists say. But now, I believe it because in every flat earth model I've seen, the sun never crosses the horizon, which is something that bazillions of people have seen it do twice daily for as long as we've had eyeballs and bothered to call ourselves people. Additionally, having listened to 24 hours 37 minutes and 3 seconds of single-minded and highly-motivated people struggle to replicate even the most basic characteristics of a spherical earth on a flat map, I can also categorize their failure as Observable Phenomena.
Flat Earth belief apparently strikes suddenly. Both of the hosts and many of the people they talk to relate stories of being openly contemptuous of the idea one day, and embracing it fully the next (although, it seems that having a long history of disbelieving every single thing you're told increases the likelihood of this happening). There's an amusing phrase that Frary often repeats, "Once you go flat, you never go back." There's also a troubling variant, "If I flip, it's because I've been tortured."
That's not the attitude that moves us forward, Lori Frary. Life is long. The chance for you, or for any of us, to change our minds will exist for as long as that forty-mile diameter sun races through your broad, unbending sky.
Like a good underdog story?
If you're just an average person who stumbled across the title of this podcast and then decided to listen to an episode just to see how weird it was, it would probably surprise you to learn that you have some common ground with its hosts, Lori Frary and Lawrence Wright. They believe, as l'll bet you do, that it's preposterous to assume that the earth is a flat disc circled with a two mile high wall of ice and covered by a dome.
Forward of that, your beliefs and theirs are almost certain to diverge. They do, after all, they believe the earth is flat. They offer a different model (one with corners and a certain amount of teleportation). But at its heart, this program tells the story of two people who believe something so earnestly as to risk ostracism from an already marginalized group.
The world of Flat Earth Theorists is richer than you might suspect. It is rife with allegiances and betrayals, stalwart idealists and agent provocateurs. Every counter opinion is a potential PSYOP and every dissenter (among these dissenters) might be a puppet of government mind control. There is a broad cast of personalities, each vying for attention and validation in the way of Facebook likes or Youtube views, which, in this shadowy world of hidden truths, seem to be the coin of the realm. There's contention between the authors of conflicting theories, open questioning of the movement's leadership and suspicion at every turn.
They've got a real Game of Thrones thing going on over here.
The belief in a flat earth is often rooted in biblical literalism, so you might expect there to be an evangelical overtone to the presentation, but interestingly, there isn't. Frary, in fact, goes so far as to refer to her detractors with an impolite word that rhymes with 'blucktards'.
I was particularly impressed by a section of one episode in which our hosts mused aloud about eclipses. Neither of the hosts can imagine how they can be predicted with such precision and they marveled, openly and honestly, about how amazing it was. It's easy to imagine avoiding topics without easy answers, being wary of appearing uncertain. This speaks to an open-mindedness that might surprise the listener.
(Note: this freewheeling, off-the-cuff dialog also led them to conclude that the International Space Station, since it crosses the International Date Line multiple times a day, is traveling backwards in time.)
So, should you, a "glober" as we are sometimes called, listen to this podcast? I say "yes". And not as an excuse for you to be snotty and judgmental. There's nothing you can say or type to belittle and malign these people that has not been said and typed a thousand times before. There are lessons here, REAL lessons about belief, perception and confirmation bias. As a bonus, if you can listen to 24 hours 37 minutes and 3 seconds (the combined duration of the itunes-available episodes) of people carving up the laws of the physical world to accommodate an imaginary construct, something as ordinary as looking at the moon, with its simple truth and beauty, becomes new again.
The things you believe most deeply are the very beliefs you should be most suspicious of, because you never question them.
Prior to listening to this show, I believed the earth was a sphere for the (sinful) reason of merely believing what the scientists say. But now, I believe it because in every flat earth model I've seen, the sun never crosses the horizon, which is something that bazillions of people have seen it do twice daily for as long as we've had eyeballs and bothered to call ourselves people. Additionally, having listened to 24 hours 37 minutes and 3 seconds of single-minded and highly-motivated people struggle to replicate even the most basic characteristics of a spherical earth on a flat map, I can also categorize their failure as Observable Phenomena.
Flat Earth belief apparently strikes suddenly. Both of the hosts and many of the people they talk to relate stories of being openly contemptuous of the idea one day, and embracing it fully the next (although, it seems that having a long history of disbelieving every single thing you're told increases the likelihood of this happening). There's an amusing phrase that Frary often repeats, "Once you go flat, you never go back." There's also a troubling variant, "If I flip, it's because I've been tortured."
That's not the attitude that moves us forward, Lori Frary. Life is long. The chance for you, or for any of us, to change our minds will exist for as long as that forty-mile diameter sun races through your broad, unbending sky.
No comments:
Post a Comment