Conspiracy thinking finds you when you feel most alone. You are more connected than any human in history right now, and somehow more isolated at the same time. You have a screen full of faces and voices and not enough people you can actually call. That gap, between having people everywhere and knowing nobody, is where the false explanations get in.

What does it feel like to wake up to someone’s voice every morning and never know their last name? You have the faces and the voices, the parasocial relationships with people you will never meet. And in that simulated closeness, something real goes missing. When it goes missing long enough, the explanations that show up to fill the space start to feel like community.

The way out of this is not more information. Fact-checking and sharper analysis will not close the gap. Inconveniently, the answer is other people. A shared burden is lighter. And what conspiracy thinking cannot survive is a real conversation with someone who actually knows you.

Topics: conspiracy thinking, why people believe conspiracies, anomie, social disconnection, conspiracy theory psychology

GUEST: Nathan Radke | https://www.amazon.ca/Uncover-Up-Think-Clearly-Conspiracies/dp/1770418873

Originally aired on2026-03-18