Build a conspiracy theory from scratch.
The best way to learn to spot a conspiracy theory is to make one yourself.
Pick a real news story. On the next step you'll choose who's behind it and why. Then walk through the four moves real conspiracists use, with a debunk on every step.
- Hunt anomalies — turn coincidence into evidence of a secret plot.
- Fabricate connections — draw lines between unrelated dots until they look meaningful.
- Dismiss counter-evidence — if a fact disagrees, make the fact part of the cover-up.
- Discredit the critics — dismiss people who point out flaws in your theory.
Pick the event.
Choose whichever real-feeling headline your imagination will run wildest with. Don't overthink it.
Airline to weigh passengers pre-flight.
South Korea's flag carrier Korean Air will begin weighing passengers and their carry-on luggage at Gimpo and Incheon airports. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation has required the checks to collect actual passenger weights for aircraft weight-and-balance calculations. Airline officials say measuring passengers helps crews calculate load distribution, takeoff performance, and fuel needs more accurately than relying on assumed average weights. Officials emphasize it is about technical calculations, not personal data collection.
Mozart's Lullaby soothes pain in newborns
A recent study in New York, conducted between April 2019 and February 2020, tested whether recorded music could reduce pain in newborns during routine heel-prick blood tests. Researchers enrolled 100 infants and randomly assigned about half to listen to Mozart’s Lullaby before and during the procedure while the other infants received standard care without the music. Clinicians measured pain using standard scoring tools at baseline, during the prick, and after the procedure to compare responses.
Film's production plagued by misfortune
William Friedkin’s 1977 film Sorcerer is a tense thriller about four desperate men hired to transport highly unstable explosives across dangerous, remote roads. Inspired by Georges Arnaud’s novel and echoing the earlier French film The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer aimed for a raw, realistic tone. Friedkin, fresh from the success of The Exorcist, pushed for authentic locations and intense performances to heighten the film’s unrelenting atmosphere.
Apple Teaching Siri Lip Reading
Apple has filed a patent application that describes using motion sensing to detect lip and head movements so Siri could recognize commands without relying only on a microphone. The filing, titled "Keyword Detection Using Motion Sensing," explains how analyzing mouth shapes and subtle head motions might identify common phrases, which could help the assistant work better in noisy environments or avoid false activations from background speech.