- Okay, we're making this video.
The Flat Earth movement
is a very serious subject
and frankly risky for me
to even make a video about
considering YouTube is discouraging
any kind of conspiratorial content online.
But it has to be talked about.
Now a couple weeks ago I saw
a trailer for a documentary
called Behind the Curve,
which is a documentary
that is talking about
the subculture of people
who believe in the Flat Earth theory.
At first I thought, who
would make this film,
it just seems absolutely ridiculous.
But my eyes have been opened.
I watched the film and frankly,
it's one of the best space
documentaries I've seen in years.
So I sat down with the filmmakers
to talk about their motivations
and what they hope this film will achieve.
I hope you enjoy.
You guys are the creators of
Behind the Curve, the film.
When I saw the trailer
my brain kind of broke
for a second because I was like,
why would somebody make such a film?
That's honestly my
ignorance speaking there,
because I just never really expected
that it was a bigger story to be told.
And before we get into the interview here
I'd love for you guys to each
just introduce yourselves,
what your role was in the film
and if you are a Flat Earther.
- I'm Daniel Clark, director, producer,
and none of us are Flat Earthers.
(Caroline chuckling)
- I am Nick Andert, I am the editor
and also a producer,
again, not a Flat Earther.
- I'm Caroline Clark and
I'm a producer as well.
And I would like to give Nick credit,
credit where credit's due,
that he came up with the idea as well, so.
- it's really great, and honestly,
and I'm not fluffing this up by any means
I take a very critical eye of films.
This might be one of the
most important space films
that have come out in
the last several years
just because we're really
opening up our eyes
to a whole other corner
of the quote, unquote,
space-like universe here.
My next question for you guys is
why a movie about Flat Earth?
- I, and I think these two as well,
just sort of thought it was
kind of an elaborate joke,
kind of, like people
didn't actually think this,
said people were pretending
to actually believe
the Earth was flat maybe there were like
three or four of them.
- Some sort of trolling.
- Exactly, yeah, trolling.
There was some Reddit thread where
people were constantly speaking up
and being like, oh I have a
cousin who's a Flat Earther,
I have a a co-worker who's a Flat Earther
and it kind of shocked me and
I was like, wait a minute,
this is actually a real phenomenon,
people actually believe this unironically
and I got really sort
of fascinated by that
and how that could how that could be true.
It was a sort of topic that
could lead to a discussion
of a lot of other really
interesting things.
- Yeah, and then from the start
we knew we didn't want to make the movie
about whether or not the Earth was flat.
It was it was more of why
do people think it's flat
or why are they continuing to believe
it's some sort of big conspiracy
that's being kept from us.
We're very interested in
the people in the movement
as well as the psychological process
behind why people believe stuff like this.
- Now you guys spent clearly a lot of time
with these people in lots
of different locations.
What did you learn about these people
by the end of production?
- These people are very
rational normal people
who live very functional daily lives.
They're not going around,
for the most part,
most of them aren't going around all day
thinking about the Earth being flat.
It's kind of just who they are
and what their core belief is.
They're people, you know,
and they're very functional
and a lot of 'em are very intelligent
and that was surprising at first, I think.
- I think when you hear
about Flat Earthers
you kind of want to put them in a box
that's like different from you
if you don't believe the Earth is flat
and so it was kind of an awakening
of realizing that these people
are not that different from you.
They can be very educated
they can be very literate.
- It turns out the biggest predictor
of whether or not somebody
believes in Flat Earth
is whether or not they have bought into
the conspiratorial way
of thinking like en mass
because to get to
believing the Earth is flat
you have to have accepted such
a wide range of conspiracies.
Your mind has to be in a place
where you can be open to this
concept in the first place.
Only through sort of diving deep down
the conspiracy rabbit hole do you,
is even possible to get to that place.
- Was it hard to convince a talent upfront
to do this project with you?
- No, Mark we, his number's available
and I think we emailed and called him
and right away he was
willing to talk to us.
I mean he said if you're
willing to come up here
and talk to me, I'll spend time with you.
But Mark immediately, I think
after the first couple hours, I realized,
I was very much sure
that we were gonna have a
good project on our hands.
The other people kind
of came because of Mark,
because Mark trusted us and we met him
and he knew us and he vouched for us
for a lot of other Flat Earthers.
Some were still hesitant
until further down the road
and they eventually let us in.
And they knew we weren't Flat Earthers.
We never tried to pretend like we were
because that would have
been a bad approach.
- [Nick] Dishonesty is not ideal.
- Dude, it's not great.
They didn't expect it to be
pro Flat Earth necessarily
but I think some of them
were disappointed when it wasn't.
- I do want to give kudos to you guys
about just showing these, the
main characters especially
but generally the community
is just normal people.
It never made me once
question that these people
were bad people, they're all good people
and we just have a
fundamental disagreement
about how the world and
universe and everything worked.
When you start one of these projects,
it's kind of hard to see where
the narrative is gonna go.
It depends on what you
shoot, what you bite to get
and everything, but
I'd really like to hear
what each and every one of you
were hoping to achieve with this film.
- I made a film about Sandy Hook truthers
a few years ago and with that project
I really learned what conspiracy
theorists could look like
and how they were different from
how I perceived them to be
based on their internet profile.
Just kind of like you said earlier,
so with making this film I was hoping
to again reach reach audiences and
who are not conspiracy theorists
and maybe change their mind
about what a conspiracy theorist
looks like and acts like.
- I would say I was really interested,
particularly, in delving
into the concept of belief
and why we believe certain things.
We all believe things that might not be
particularly rational or logical
and it's tough to sort
of confront yourself
with that fact with your own
sort of illogicality with your beliefs.
I think by exploring a belief system
that most people would say is irrational,
it allowed us to sort of delve into like
that the concept of belief in a way
that we could like sort
of expose some of the
really interesting underpinnings of it
and then we could apply that
back to things that we believe.
- We really wanted to use flyers
as an example of something
that is so extreme
that it doesn't matter if you're,
what political ideology you have,
basically it doesn't matter
what religion you are,
it's something that most
everyone can look at
and say well that's provably false,
but these people still believe it.
And then really pull that
back to lesser degrees
of absolute true or false
and say like well these two ideologies
hate each other and think
that they're absolutely wrong,
that each of them thinks
they're 100% right,
there's gray area there and in taking
the idea of flyers and applying that back
to everybody's internal beliefs
was really important to me.
- Well when I was researching
just to do this interview with you guys
and I tried watching a lot
of the Flat Earth videos,
I got a lot of anxiety.
I think one of the big things
that I need to learn for myself
is how to talk to these people
so that we can find common ground
and common understanding
of how the world works
and then have constructive
conversations with them.
How can the space
community do a better job
communicating with Flat Earthers
so that we can find a more common ground.
- We interview a psychologist in the film.
His name is Per Espen and he talks about
that you shouldn't come
into the conversation
with the goal of changing
each other's mind
and I think that's how a lot of times
we both, like a Flat Earther
and a non Flat Earther
would come into a conversation
as you're trying to
persuade the other person
that your belief is correct
and when you do that you're
already positioning yourself
kind of like an offense
defense sort of thing
where you have you have your points
that you're bringing up
in the back of your mind
to say at the other person
and you're not truly
listening to each other.
So Per Espen encourages you
to explore things together
versus trying to convince
each other who is right.
- I think that they, some of these people
just really want someone
who is listening to them
and is considering what their beliefs are
by the mere fact that they have
such a negative perspective
on how the globe works, you're
fighting an uphill battle
from the start, so just
by listening to them
you may just break down some
barriers right at the get-go
to find some common ground.
It's almost like, you know, the old rule
with having dinner with family
is don't bring up religion and politics
and I really hope we don't
have to get to a point
where you don't bring up religion,
politics, and Flat Earth.
The story or even the rhetoric
that your film had is an
important perspective.
We care about this subject so much
because we just care
about people in general
and we know what disinformation can do
to a society and can do to culture,
so it's important to
have these conversations
and it's important to fight back
these kind of ideologies,
but it's really important to just
respect and hear people who
have different opinions.
- Even if, let's say, you're never able
to change a Flat Earther's mind,
it's important to make sure
that you yourself don't become that
for some other topic, even if it's
something much less radical or extreme
than Flat Earth, because
we're all very susceptible
to disinformation, to illogical ways
of thinking and I think the
more that we can be aware
of those sort of pitfalls,
the better off we'll all be.
- We recently spoke with Asheley Landrum
who's a psychologist and she said
that these sorts of ways of thinking
are not unique to conspiracy theorists.
It's a human condition and so I just think
realizing that it's not
an us versus them thing,
it's how we all think is
really important, too.
- Yeah.
- This film ended up being a lot deeper
than I was expecting.
There were several moments of the film
that were disturbing
yet enlightening for me.
One of them being when this woman said
that she has made herself,
her daughter, and her
grandchildren all Flat Earthers.
When you hear those kinds of statements,
like what goes through your mind?
- I was as shocked as
you or when I heard that
for the first time.
I was the one who was
not in the room for that
but when that footage came back,
I think it was pretty clear that that was,
like we ended up making that
more of a climactic moment
than we expected to because it was sort
of a way to express the
consequences of this
in a way we hadn't considered before.
The internet sort of
enabled confirmation bias
to a degree that just
wouldn't ever have existed in the past.
You know, in the past
and say if you're Jeff
from some village and you have this belief
that the Earth might be flat,
good chance that everyone around you
is gonna disabuse you of that notion.
You're not gonna find
anyone who agrees with you
and you'll come to accept
the general consensus on it.
Now if you come up with
one of these notions,
it's very easy to find
people who agree with you
and it's very easy to only listen to them.
That confirmation bias,
that ability to find people
who share your unusual beliefs
never existed even
close to the same degree
that it does not with
the internet, before.
- Yeah, I mean we could
definitely make the assumption
that these communities
existed before the internet,
but the internet just, it was like
just throwing gasoline on a fire,
you know, and it's not
just with Flat Earth,
it's with conspiracy theories in general.
You know, yes that is a
negative side of the internet
but I would say that
the, it's the internet
has brought so much more better education
that it's worth us coping with this.
I'm sure you guys have
learned through this project
about some celebrities who kind of
subscribe to the Flat Earth theory.
Do you think that other celebrities
and other people who have platforms
have the responsibility
to counter this rhetoric
that they put out?
- It's tough to say they
have a responsibility.
- Sure.
- But the NBA made a big joke of it.
Like a lot of commentators
would joke about Kyrie Irving
and then Shaq was kind of trolling people
for a while, pretty sure he was trolling
and having fun with it.
- Yeah, I don't think Shaq is, actually.
- And I that kind of behavior
doesn't help stop it from growing
'cause people who are Flat Earthers
are gonna look to this celebrity
as some sort of authority.
And the same thing happens
with like vaccinations.
When those celebrity sits there and says,
well this is what I know,
people look at celebrities,
whether they have any authority or not,
as an authority because they're successful
so they must be doing something right.
And they look at them as proof.
- When you're a celebrity
and you use your platform
to spread that misinformation,
that's massively irresponsible
and I think a lot of celebrities
need to consider the
power of their platform
better than they have been.
(gentle upbeat music)
- I want to thank the filmmakers
for coming on my show and
talking about Behind the Curve.
I highly recommend the film.
You can find it on Netflix,
iTunes, Amazon Prime,
and wherever your digital
streaming videos are sold.
I also I'm wearing the shirt
by Michael from sfsf.space.
He makes a lot of cool
shirts and all the proceeds
from the link below that
would usually go in my pocket
are actually gonna go into the pockets
of the Iraq and Afghanistan
Veterans of America,
which is a non-profit.
I'm just, you know, trying
to support the troops.
I hope you liked the video.
Please subscribe to my channel
and I'll see you guys next time, bye.
