Leah Feiger: Um, um.
David Gilbert: The calls to action, you know? They’re being very clear about what’s going to happen if Trump loses in November. And I think that needs to be paid more attention to, because it’s ongoing, it’s happening every day, and it could be very troubling. And maybe not in a single coordinated effort like we saw on January 6th, but in different locations across the country on a smaller scale, but no less terrifying.
Leah Feiger: David and Jess, thanks so much for joining. Jesselyn Cook is a journalist and author of The Quiet Damage: Qanon and the Destruction of the American Family, out now. We’ll be right back with Conspiracy of the Week. Welcome back to Conspiracy of the Week, where you bring me your favorite conspiracy theories that you’ve come across lately, and I’ll pick my favorite. The wilder the better. Jess, as our guest, go first.
Jesselyn Cook: You know about flat Earthers, but have you heard of hollow Earthers?
Leah Feiger: Wait. Wait, what? No.
Jesselyn Cook: Yeah. Tragically in my book, there’s a seven-year-old, a second grader who got really into Qanon, and his journey, in large part, was through TikTok. And so I learned a lot about a lot of the conspiracy theories on TikTok through his story.
Leah Feiger: Um, um.
Jesselyn Cook: The Hollow Earth Theory, the idea of civilizations inside the Earth, has been around for a long time, through many ancient myths and legends, but it has resurfaced on TikTok. A lot of young people that you will see, if you search for this on TikTok, are talking about-
Leah Feiger: I will speak in 10 minutes. Yes.
Jesselyn Cook: So the idea is that deep below the surface of the Earth, there’s a secret society, a very advanced society living there that somehow survives without sunlight, without oxygen, without all the things that we need to live. Some versions of the conspiracy theory say that they’re aliens, and other versions say that there’s just a society that’s going to show up one day and kill us all. So it’s not exactly a fun conspiracy theory, but…
Leah Feiger: Oh, they never are. Sometimes. It’s weird. It’s like a real Hunger Games meets Stuart Little/Ratatouille in a more globalist-focused way. What do people think the Hollow Earth theorists are doing? Are they controlling us or are they just existing?
Jesselyn Cook: They just exist. Some people who are unhappy on normal Earth seem to have come down there…
Leah Feiger: Sure.
Jesselyn Cook: …Just to create a new life for themselves. And it’s funny, but what’s not funny is when you click on the comments on these videos and you expect people to be like, “This is dumb,” but there are a lot of kids out there who are like, “NASA stands for Never A Straight Answer,” and just being opinionated and quoting Bible verses that supposedly prove the existence of this deep earth. Study after study shows that while we assume that digital natives, young people, can sort through truth and fakery online, that’s not the case. Most of the time, these studies show that it’s actually a pretty bleak outlook. And so it’s an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Check it out on TikTok if you want. But it’s pretty wild.
