Conspiracy Why the Rational Believe the Irrational

The book is called Conspiracy. Why the rational believe the irrational.

It's harder than ever to spot a false one to really know what's real and what's not.

Most conspiracy theories are not complete nonsense, right? There's always a little bit of an element of truth.

You see, good thing Chuck didn't write that book.

He would have just said, you ain't rational if you believe...

My book would have been called Conspiracy. What's up, dumbass?

So, you are deep in this topic your whole life. Yes.

I mean, it's a career, you're a career skeptic.

Jeff Flake's book. Oh, Jeff Flake's book? Man, you know what? Jeff Flake should have read his fucking book before he voted to confirm every Donald Trump judge, before he didn't do a fucking thing to stop Donald Trump.

I've got it right here in my hand, Conspiracy Why the Rational Believe the Irrational.

First one was, first real book as Mr. Skeptic was why people believe weird things, 1997.

So it takes me three to four years really on average.

So there's kind of an overarching theoretical model that holds together all the different parts.

My point is that people that believe conspiracy theories are not tinfoil hat idiots. They're me and you, everybody, surveys show everybody believes at least one conspiracy theory.

Yeah, just like in your newest book Conspiracy, Peter Teal wanted to bring down Gawker and then he kind of solved for that as well.

And I tried to write that book that I squeezed it in, you know, with a, with a, you know, a five day old at home or whatever.

I mean, I had access to Peter T. All this billionaire. I had access to Nick Dand, who is a founder of Gawker. There are these sort of two mortal enemies who have just spent like 10 years and tens of millions of dollars trying to destroy each other.

How, I, and they were both willing to talk to me. And a publisher was willing to publish the book.

I felt like it was crazy to say no.

Yeah, just like in your newest book conspiracy Peter Teal wanted to bring down gocker and then he kind of solved for that as well.

I felt like it was this sort of once in a lifetime opportunity. I mean, I had access to Peter T. All this billionaire. I had access to Nick Dand, who is a founder of Gokker.

And I felt like I was the only person on the planet that could write it the way that I thought it should be written.

I ended up having to say no to some other things or push other things certainly to make it happen.

But I felt like it was one of those things I would definitely regret not having done.

I wrote a book a number of years ago called Conspiracy, which is about this billionaire Peter Thiel and his secret daring gamble to go after this media company. I use it as an excuse to explore the idea of strategy and risk and contrarian thinking and doing what people don't expect. It's not like any of my other books, but it's a book I'm very proud of. They're actually making it into a movie.

I used an epigraph from Lancelot as the opening for my book Conspiracy.

I wrote a book a few years ago called Conspiracy which about the billionaire Peter Teo on this sort of insane thing he did but I am proud of it because it was the most radically different than all my books and so even though actually it probably has sold the fewest copies of any of my books I grew the most for having written it

When I was writing my book Conspiracy, I was fascinated by the contrast of Peter Teal and Nick Den to polar opposites who also had so much in common who ended up clashing, destroying each other and so much in the process.

He has no recollection. Of course he didn't know me from his class because it was just an online class he could take for free but I didn't remember meeting some random kid at a conference 12 years ago but he read my book, Conspiracy.

And that was just the coolest full circle thing he liked the book for someone who was so influential in shaping my development to be familiar with my work and to like it.

Conspiracy, I know you've done other books. I know this is the so-is-is-something but conspiracy is an amazing book.

And it's just, it is a great story. It is a great story with heroes and villains and it is just, and you know, a good meditation on conspiracies.

he talked about my book conspiracy you're still in this is key

My book, Conspiracy, I talk about this 10-year campaign of Peter Thiel to destroy a website that he thought was ruining American culture.

It's a different kind of book for me. I'm talking about my book Conspiracy, which is about the sort of insane conspiracy that Peter Thiel embarks on to. Take revenge on. Justly smite down depending on your interpretation, Gawker Media site that had outed him as gay roughly a decade earlier.

That book because of the struggles that went into it for me, I'm ultimately really proud of it. It's not the same as my other books. It was a challenging sort of it was a mountain I was trying to climb. It's up to you to decide how successfully I did that or not. I will say it's the only one of my books to be optioned to be turned into a movie.

I think Conspiracy is one of the best books I've read in the last decade just an astounding piece of fucking work.