9. The Conspiracist Mindset

February 21, 2022·15 min·1 clip

Gary Matthews was a thoughtful salsa dancer drawn into COVID conspiracies before catching the virus and dying—defying every stereotype.

Marianna Spring opens the episode by conducting informal vox-pop interviews in a London park, collecting words people associate with conspiracy theorists: 'lunatic,' 'crazy,' 'isolated,' 'fantasist.' She immediately challenges these stereotypes by pointing to Gary Matthews, the subject of the series, as a thoughtful and sociable man who nonetheless fell into conspiracy belief. To explore the psychology behind this, she speaks with Phil from Belfast, who describes himself as always a bit of an outsider and anti-establishment. Phil explains that after college he was stuck in a standard job while peers were having broader experiences, which left him feeling stagnant. In 2009 he watched Zeitgeist, a documentary making false claims that 9/11 was orchestrated by government insiders and that a secret world government was being assembled. Phil explains that the documentary connected dots in a way he found compelling, and the broader political context — the financial crash, the Iraq weapons of mass destruction scandal — gave him real reasons to distrust authority. He developed what he calls an 'absolute answer' to why the world works the way it does, and began spending time in online forums with fellow Zeitgeist enthusiasts. As his views diverged from mainstream society, he felt intellectually superior to people around him, dismissing conversations about reality TV as trivial. He acknowledges 'chewing people's ear off' about 9/11 at social gatherings and showing conspiracy documentaries to family members, including his mother, who told him the films were propaganda — she was right, he now says. The pattern mirrors Gary Matthews: certainty, intellectual arrogance, and gradual alienation from people who disagreed. Phil notes that conspiracy belief becomes identity, driving people further toward communities that share the worldview. He explicitly pushes back against the 'lunatic in a basement' stereotype, arguing that intelligent people are in some ways more dangerous believers because they construct more coherent arguments. He suggests that dismissing conspiracy believers out of hand prevents genuine engagement and recommends asking open questions about how they arrived at their beliefs — an approach some of Gary's family members tried. Phil's exit from conspiracy thinking came when he encountered a young Earth creationist at university who used the same rhetorical moves — expert dissenters, official story skepticism — that he used for 9/11. On the bus home afterward, he had a 'penny drop' moment, recognizing his own flawed reasoning. He changed his information diet, replacing David Icke with Carl Sagan, and eventually started a YouTube channel where he now works to help people leave similar worldviews. The episode ends with a coda: the flatmate who first showed Phil Zeitgeist later got the COVID vaccine partly because of Phil's videos. Spring concludes that the 'crazy person' stereotype may itself be an obstacle to helping people caught in conspiracy thinking. She announces that the next episode will see her confront Charlie Parker, the man still using Gary Matthews' death to promote COVID misinformation.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Death by Conspiracy?