Conspiracy Talk at the Art Museum

Jesse Walker's speech at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been hosting an exhibition called Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy, and I spoke there last month as part of the program. My talk took a look at the intersection between conspiracy stories created as works of fiction and conspiracy stories that people actually believe, and what happens when a story crosses over from the first category to the second.

Video of the evening's program is now online at the Met's site, and I've also embedded it below. After a three-minute intro by Marianna Siciliano of the Met, Doug Eklund—one of the curators of Everything Is Connected—takes the stage to offer an overview of the show. At the 11:30 mark, Jack Bratich, author of the 2008 book Conspiracy Panics, takes over and delivers the first lecture of the night. I come to the podium at 34:58 to give speech #2.

Obligatory advertising link: They invited me to speak because I wrote a book a few years ago called The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory. It makes a great stocking stuffer, especially if you have large feet.