Cultural critic Mark Dery delves deep into the history, causes, and current proliferation of conspiracy theories. He explores their appeal, social media’s role in spreading them, and the threat they pose to democracy and to the very notions of objective fact and nonpartisan truth.
About Mark Dery

Mark Dery is a cultural critic and the author of Escape Velocity, a critique of the libertarian-bro ideology that dominated the Digital Revolution of the ‘90s; two studies of American mythologies (and pathologies), The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and the essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, and, most recently, the biography Born To Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey. He popularized the concept of “culture jamming” and, in his 1993 essay, “Black to the Future,” coined the term “Afrofuturism.”
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