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.
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.
Tools Reveal Hidden Website History
Online tools now let anyone view past versions of websites, exposing changes that site owners may have made over time. The Wayback Machine at archive.org stores snapshots of millions of pages, while archive.today preserves copies that sometimes survive when other archives don’t. The Memento Project links these services and helps users search by URL and date, making it easier to see how pages, policies, and content evolved.
Baby Al Capone" orchestrated crypto heist
Ellis Pinsky, who grew up in Irvington, New York, has been linked to a large cryptocurrency theft that investigators say happened when he was 15. Authorities allege he orchestrated the theft of about $23.8 million in digital assets. By May 2020, masked intruders were reportedly trying to access some of the stolen funds, but Pinsky apparently no longer had the money. The case attracted attention because of the amount and the age of the alleged organizer.
China's decline, America's reputation rises
The YouGov–Cambridge Globalism Project survey finds growing public willingness to support Taiwan if China used force. That backing is strongest in anglophone countries and visible in some other regions too. Respondents make distinctions between hard military assistance, like weapons and troops, and softer forms of support such as sanctions or humanitarian aid, so public readiness varies depending on the type of help and the perceived risks of intervention.