Behind the Curve (2018) Movie Script
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.
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!
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
[]
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.
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!
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