A Very American Madness America is not fallen; it is simply given to periodic bouts of insanity. The patient is tiresome; the patient is ridiculous; but the patient is stable. Ronald W. Dworkin 12 Dec 2024 · 17 min read
Populism and Power Why a right-wing populist has qualms about J.D. Vance and his postliberal ideology. Dennis Saffran 23 Sep 2024 · 18 min read
The Paranoid Style in Shakespeare Denialism Against conspiracist trends, there is an obligation on defenders of a liberal society to uphold the integrity of its intellectual methods. Oliver Kamm 2 May 2024 · 25 min read
Aliens...Again! This time, they always say, it could be different. Michael Shermer 8 Jun 2023 · 10 min read
Military-Industrial Complexities President Eisenhower’s warning deserves to be better understood. George Case 26 Apr 2023 · 7 min read
The Rise of the Respectable Conspiracy Theory COVID, Trump, Brexit—everybody’s had something to break their brains in recent years and some people may never recover. Christopher J. Snowdon 31 Mar 2023 · 14 min read
Fantastical Beliefs in a Post-Christian Age Without a faith, people must find new sources of meaning, new congregations to which they can belong. Patrick Parkinson 20 Mar 2023 · 12 min read
At the Corner of Camp and Lafayette New Orleans has a starring role in many JFK conspiracy theories—as I learned during an odd but memorable street tour. Jonathan Kay 14 Mar 2023 · 10 min read
Wired for Conspiracism The fact that some conspiracy theories do sometimes turn out to be true helps explain why our minds are evolutionarily programmed to catastrophize. Michael Shermer 30 Oct 2022 · 8 min read
Lessons from Hannah Arendt on Arresting Our ‘Flight From Reality’ Fascism, communism, and transhumanism all lure us into rejecting the real human condition in favor of ideological constructs. Roger Berkowitz 19 Sep 2022 · 13 min read
An Outback Conspiracy Misinformation results from the toxic combination of these two defining features, a lack of proximity to the Territory, and viewing the world through the lens of oppression. Matthew Blackwell 28 Nov 2021 · 13 min read
Understanding the Motivated Reasoning of Anti-Vax Refuseniks Vaccine refusal also correlates with a feeling of alienation from the wider culture—what sociologists call “anomie.” Richard Redding 15 Sep 2021 · 6 min read
Twenty Years Later, Engineering Experts Explain How The Twin Towers Collapsed Some have questioned why the buildings did not “topple over” after being struck side-on by aircraft. But the answer becomes clear once you consider the details. Quillette 11 Sep 2021 · 6 min read
In Defence of Absolute Truth By rejecting any universally applicable standards of reason, it destroys the possibility of true conversation, of learning from and compromising with each other. Alan S. Rome 30 Jun 2021 · 18 min read
COVID-19 Conspiracists and Their Discontents The mind abhors a vacuum of explanation. So when gaps in knowledge open up, the empty spaces are filled with available explanations that, however implausible, seem morally compelling. Michael Shermer 7 May 2020 · 9 min read
