Intermediate English Podcast | What the English?!: Ep. 3, Flat Earth

Hello fellow weirdos, and welcome to episode three of What the English? !, a podcast for intermediate English learners who want to listen to interesting, thought-provoking and sometimes weird content spoken in clear and natural English.

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If you‘ve been listening from episode one, you might remember I said my name is Jahrine. Well, it still is, but I've started using my middle name now, Elizabeth (Elle for short). Just wanted to let you know so there isn't any confusion. I've been wanting to go by my middle name for many years and this year I went for it. “Went for it” means I decided to just do it, no more thinking about it. If 2020 taught me anything it's that life might be shorter than you think, so eat the dessert, call your grandparents, change your name, take that painting class or start that podcast. Whatever it is you've been thinking about but haven't felt brave or ready enough, just go for it!

If you ever think of a topic you'd like me to cover in an episode, just email me at hiwhattheenglish@gmail.com and let me know. I'm happy to talk about anything weird and wonderful. The transcript to each podcast episode is always available to anyone who would like it. I will always create a lesson with the transcript on LingQ, so if you're a member you can study it there. For those of you who don't know LingQ, it's an app that allows you to make lessons out of any content you find online, like this podcast. You then translate any words and phrases you don't know as you go and save all vocabulary to your personal dictionary. I'm part of the team at LingQ, and I also use it to study French. Actually, a French podcast called Inner French was the inspiration for this channel and podcast. Check it out if you're also studying French.

In this the third episode of What the English?! I want to talk about conspiracy theories, or one in particular. Do you know that term, “conspiracy theory”? It's an idea that a group or organization is behind an event. The popular story of how something happened or is happening is not the truth, and, in fact, there are groups who are responsible, they are working in the shadows, manipulating everyone for their own benefit.

Some conspiracy theories you might have heard of include the moon landing (some people think it was faked in a movie studio, even directed by the legendary movie director Stanley Kubrick), September 11 (some believe the American government was responsible), the assassination of JFK, the British Royal family actually being reptilian aliens, Bill Gates created COVID-19 so he could make a vaccine with nano-technology in it… the list goes on.

I'm just going to focus on one conspiracy theory in today's episode though. One that I find fascinating. The Flat Earth Theory. So put your tin foil hat on (that's a dig at conspiracy theorists as some are said to wear hats made out of tin foil to block mind control or electromagnetic fields) and let's discover more about a group of people who believe that we have been lied to for too long. Our planet is not a sphere, Earth is flat.

Over 2000 years ago in Greece the great philosopher Aristotle made a discovery. Here's how I imagine he sounded “"Again, our observations of the stars make it evident, not only that the Earth is circular, but also that it is a circle of no great size.” Of course, he would have said it in Greek. I wouldn't offend any Greeks by trying to do an accent!

Before this, the common understanding was that the Earth was flat. It makes sense. We don't see a curve when we look to the horizon. Once Aristotle had shocked the world with this information, another Greek philosopher, Eratosthenes, measured the circumference of our planet, that means the distance around. Do you know the Earth's circumference? I tried to guess before checking and I was way off, nowhere near the actual number. No idea? It's 40,075 km. Now you know. Maybe that question will come up when you're doing a general knowledge quiz one day. You're welcome.

If people back in the 1500s still weren't convinced that the Earth wasn't flat, surely Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan changed their mind. Magellan circumnavigated the planet, meaning he sailed all around it, from 1519 to 1522. So that proved it then, the Earth was not flat. It isn't possible to fall off the edge. Super… so how are there people today, Flat Earthers they call themselves, that still do not believe that the Earth is spherical? What exactly do they think is the truth, and who is behind this conspiracy theory?

Those sounds are chorus radio waves with the Earth's atmosphere recorded by the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) team at the University of Iowa. There are actually lots of recordings like this on the NASA website. You can hear recordings from different missions: earthquakes on Mars, lightning on Jupiter and very creepy radio emissions from Saturn. I'll be using these sounds throughout the episode today, they are very cool. I think so anyway.

Another fact for future general knowledge quizzes: do you know what the acronym NASA stands for? It's National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

So what do Flat-Earthers believe exactly? Well the most popular Flat Earth organization is the Flat Earth Society and their website states that “...the Earth is in the form of a disk with the North Pole in the center and Antarctica as a wall surrounding the known continents. This is the generally accepted model among members of the society. In this model, circumnavigation is performed by moving in a great circle around the North Pole.

The Earth is surrounded on all sides by an ice wall that holds the oceans back. This ice wall is what explorers have named Antarctica. Beyond the ice wall is a topic of great interest to the Flat Earth Society. To our knowledge, no one has been very far past the ice wall and returned to tell of their journey. What we do know is that it encircles the earth and serves to hold in our oceans and helps protect us from whatever lies beyond.”

Wow! So explorer Ferdinand Magellan didn't actually circumnavigate the globe back in the 1500s according to Flat-Earthers, he just sailed around the North Pole. Ok then.

If you are a Round-Earther (yep, that's what Flat-Earthers call us) like me, you will likely have a lot of questions after hearing this theory that the Earth is actually a disk and the water is held in by walls of ice. The Flat Earth Society website has answers to the most commonly asked questions. Let's take a look…

That of course was the recording of astronaut Neil Armstrong's first words when he stepped onto the moon on July 20, 1969. Armstrong and his fellow astronauts aboard Apollo 11 got a pretty great view of the Earth from up there, they took some pretty great pictures too. So how do Flat-Earthers explain those pictures? Easy, they believe that the space agencies of the world are all faking any travel into space. So the Flat Earth conspiracy theory is linked to the fake moon landing conspiracy theory. The Flat Earth Society makes it clear that they do not believe that the space agencies are trying to make us all believe that the Earth is a sphere, they are just saying it is a sphere because that's what they believe it is.

I wonder what the world's astronauts think about these claims that they are, in fact, actors. I know what Buzz Aldrin thinks of it. Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon after Armstrong. There is a video online of Aldrin punching a Flat-Earther in the nose after he calls him a coward and liar.

So Flat-Earthers simply don't believe that any recordings or photographs of Earth are real, but how do they explain night and day and the seasons?

Apparently the Sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When it is over your head, it's day. When it's not, it's night. The light of the sun is confined to a limited area upon the Earth. As for the seasons, When the sun is further away from the North Pole, it's winter in the northern hemiplane (that's Flat-Earther language for hemisphere) and summer in the south.

So, these are the Flat-Earther responses to some of the most obvious questions us Round-Earthers have, but what evidence do they have to suggest that our planet is actually flat?

The Flat Earth Society website claims that Flat-Earthers use the empirical approach, which means they use their senses to figure it out. Our world looks flat, the bottoms of clouds are flat, you don't see the curvature, which means the way it curves, of the Earth when you look to the horizon… that's all the proof they need apparently!

I wonder how they would explain how ships appear to be coming up out of the water when you see them sailing toward you. Wouldn't they just appear smaller and then get bigger as they get closer if Earth were flat? That's an easy experiment to do with one of the senses. There are of course many other proofs for the Earth being a sphere:

The Earth's curved shadow on the moon during an eclipse.

The fact that shadow clocks work on our planet.

No one has ever flown off the edge of the Earth on a plane, and you can actually see the curvature of the planet when flying in a plane. And so on...

That was my favourite of the sounds on the NASA website (I listened to them all). So eerie. It's the sound of radio emissions from Saturn recorded by the Cassini spacecraft.

Anyway, let's get back down to Flat Earth. There are more proofs that the world is a sphere than the ones I just listed of course, but none of these proofs seem to matter to Flat-Earthers. And that brings us to what, I think, is the most interesting factor in this movement, and in a lot of other movements around conspiracy theories too: the psychology behind it.

Why do some people believe these conspiracy theories, even though there is lots of evidence that they are wrong? This is a very important question these days, especially with the conspiracy theories around COVID-19.

In an article on The American Psychological Association website, researchers say the driving force behind beliefs like the Flat-Earthers have is because humans “perceive patterns and embrace information that meets needs for security and belonging.” So we see what we want to see and we believe what we want to believe basically.

That makes sense, it's easier to believe that some shadow group is in control because otherwise no one is in control, life is random, and that's a scary fact to come to terms with. That's a great phrase “come to terms with”, it means to accept as true. Some people will not or cannot accept some truths, and so they find patterns and what they see as “proof” for a different explanation. Then they find other people who believe the same and feel like they have found their community.

Us humans are social animals, and so that feeling of connection to and belonging with other people is a powerful motivation to believe even more strongly. It becomes almost like a religion in a way, they have faith in the idea. These ideas can come to define a person too, they use them as part of their identity “Hi, my name is Karen and I'm a wife, a mother, a vegetarian and a Flat-Earther.”

When people connect their identity with a belief like the Earth is flat or Bill Gates is adding nanotechnology to the COVID-19 vaccines it's very difficult for them to be convinced of the truth.

If you have ever wondered what lightning on Jupiter sounds like, now you know.

So are there people who are more likely to believe conspiracy theories? Well, psychologists believe that people who are eccentric, meaning a little strange or not in line with the majority, and suspicious of others are more likely to believe conspiracy theories. Also, a study done by a psychology student at Emory University in the US surveyed 2000 people and discovered that people with low agreeableness, conscientiousness, and humility were more likely to believe conspiracy theories. And people with high grandiosity, which means you think you are above other people, or very low self-esteem were even more likely to believe.

I wonder if life experiences can make a person more likely to believe in a certain conspiracy theory too. Perhaps the small business owner who lost everything because of the COVID-19 lockdowns believes that the pandemic is all a lie told by the governments of the world so they have somewhere to direct their anger. You can't shout and scream at a tiny virus. I guess you could, but it wouldn't care.

Perhaps those people were already disagreeable though, who knows.

It's a good thing to question authority and do your own research if you don't think a theory is correct, but it seems that more and more people these days believe the conspiracy theory even when there is lots more evidence for the general theory. Or maybe it just seems this way because these people are very active online.

I chose the Flat Earth Theory because to me, it is one of the most ridiculous. I simply cannot understand how someone would believe this theory, and I have to wonder if it's all a big joke. But there are so many websites, groups and events now that I don't think so.

There are conspiracy theories I believe, like the Jeffrey Epstein “suicide” (you can't see me but I'm using air quotes as I do not believe Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in prison), but that's maybe a topic for another episode. If you haven't heard of Epstein, there's a great documentary on Netflix.

So that ends episode three of What The English?! I'll leave the link to the NASA sounds in the description, as well as the link to this video as a lesson on LingQ if you're a member.

I wish you all the best for the new year. For many of us 2021 couldn't have come soon enough! See you next time.