024: David Aaronovitch on conspiracy theories, truth, QAnon & social media

A Load of BS on Sport: The Behavioural Science Podcast with Daniel Ross and Liam Botham

Friends,

There is no dry January on A Load of BS. It’s time for much needed refreshment.

Vodkast & Soda

In my 2021: My Year of Total BS essay, I shared with you some personal ruminations on BS and this publication’s motivation.

Put simply, the raison d’être of A Load of BS is to try to explain why we do the things we do. Furthermore, I’d like to include your questions in my podcasts. My next two conversations are with Melissa Hogenboom and Dave Trott.

Melissa is a BBC science journalist who wrote ‘The Motherhood Complex’, an exposé of the challenges women endure in motherhood - from fighting a system which, despite progress, is still skewed in favour of men’s needs, to the creation of a new identity in the face of physical & psychological change.

Dave is an advertising legend having founded 3 extraordinarily successful agencies, written 5 books on creative thinking and been voted Most Creative Agency In the World by Advertising Age.

If you have a question you’d like me to share with Dave or Melissa, please email me at [e-mail] and I’ll credit you in the show.

The Cosmopolitan David Aaronovitch

Talking of explaining why we do the things we do, this week’s podcast is with journalist, author & broadcaster David Aaronovitch. While David’s frames of reference are broad, here we focus on conspiracy theories, the subject of David’s book Voodoo Histories.

Talking of conspiracy theories, mine’s a Virgin Mary.Today we explore:

• Why we choose to believe what we believe
• What's so attractive about conspiracy theories
• Jews in conspiracy theories
• The elitist, moral high ground that believers typically take
• Combatting conspiracy theories
• QAnon and departures from reality
• The importance of truth
• The real agency we have over social media algorithms
• And what David is truly optimistic about for the future

One for the road

Can I ask you a small favour before I close up? Go to Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts, and leave me a 5 star review. It does me the world of good in this cold Winter weather ❤️.

And if you haven’t signed up here yet for all my writings and pod archives, now is the time to do so at aloadofbs.substack.com

Next week, I’m talking to experimental psychologist and leading scholar in evolution and human behaviour Dr

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Podcast music: Tamsin Waley-Cohen's Mendelssohn's violin concerto