Do we have something to learn from conspiracy theories? (w/ Peter McIndoe) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy:
You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today's guest is Peter McIndoe. He's the leader of a group called Birds Aren't Real, and here's a clip from his TED Talk.

[00:00:13] Peter McIndoe:
The proof that birds are robots is all around us if you start looking. For starters, uh, birds charge their batteries on power lines so they can refuel up high and they can watch the civilians, you know? They also track civilians using a liquid tracking device. You ever wonder why birds poop on your car? Do you need more evidence? I can really, I can go all day up here. Uh, who here has seen a baby pigeon? You haven’t, have you? It's weird. There's all these adult pigeons. Where are all the babies? Uh, they come outta the factory as adults, so there's no organic growth, you know?

[00:00:58] Chris Duffy:
As you can already tell, Peter and the Birds Aren’t Real movement sit at the intersection between this ominous suspicion of conspiracy theories and the absurdity of comedy.

Peter spent the last few years traveling the country in a cargo van telling everyone who will listen that between the years of 1959 and 2001, the US government killed all the real birds and replaced them with bird-shaped surveillance drones to spy on the American people. Now, in my opinion, Peter's work perfectly holds up a mirror to this world that we live in right now because people don't always know what to make of him.

Is this a performance art piece? Is it a real dangerous conspiracy theory? Is it somewhere in between? Is it both? Is it neither? And after years of bird truthing, Peter is finally talking as the real him, not the character that he played in that van. Today we're gonna talk to him all about what he learned on the road and how that changed the way he thinks about approaching people with fringe beliefs. We'll get into all that and more with Peter right after this.

[BREAK]

[00:02:02] Chris Duffy:
We’re talking with Peter McIndoe, the founder of Birds Aren't Real.

[00:02:07] Peter McIndoe:
Hi, I'm Peter McIndoe. I created the conspiracy theory that birds aren't real, and I think I accidentally conducted a social experiment.

[00:02:15] Chris Duffy:
So for me, coming at this as a comedian, I have thought for so long that Birds Aren’t Real is just hilarious. Like, it's just purely technically on a comedy level, very, very, very funny.

[00:02:28] Peter McIndoe:
Thank you.

[00:02:29] Chris Duffy:
So I wonder if we can maybe just play a couple of the greatest hits. Like, what are some of your favorite Birds Aren’t Real lines and tropes? I have a few of my own, but I'm, I'm curious what some of your favorite like lines or chants or ideas that you've been able to, to get out there as part of this work?

[00:02:45] Peter McIndoe:
Totally, totally, I'll start with some of my favorite chants. We hold rallies in different cities. Our last rally was in Washington Square in New York City, and people came to demand that the mayor shut down all the pigeons in the city. So at those rallies, you know, we need chantsm right? So a few of my favorite chants, one of them is “Birdwatching goes both ways.”

[00:03:06] Chris Duffy:
That’s such a good one. That's one of my, my favorites too.

[00:03:09] Peter McIndoe:
One of, one of my favorites, I've gotta say, yeah. Because with Birds Aren’t Real, the key was to kind of like make this absurd statement and then find other ways that were sort of doors to the same house for the idea.

[00:03:20] Chris Duffy:
Uh-huh.

[00:03:21] Pete McIndoe:
You know? Things that can spread on their own. Another favorite is “If it flies, it spies.”

[00:03:26] Chris Duffy:
Classic.

[00:03:26] Peter McIndoe:
And then there's some that are more accusatory. You know, one, one of them is “Pigeons are liars.” So at, you know, the rallies I'll chant, “Pigeons are,” and they go, “Liars.” And then sometimes we have a chant that says, you know, “What do we say to birds?” And they go, “Get a warrant.” What do we say to birds?

[00:03:47] Chris Duffy:
That's incredible. That's incredible.

[00:03:48] Peter McIndoe:
Those are some of my favorite chants, you know? But it's the ideas that really fuel the passion behind the chants, right? For the people.

[00:03:55] Chris Duffy:
Yeah. I mean, the ones that have always, that always stick with me and that I, when I tell people, we just always start laughing about if they're not already familiar with Birds Aren’t Real, are two of the pieces of proof for people who are skeptical and who say birds actually are living creatures and they are not spy drones. The, my two favorites are, “Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? No. Because they come out of the factory fully adult already.” And then the other one that I love is that the reason birds sit on power lines is so that they can recharge their batteries.

[00:04:23] Peter McIndoe:
That they can recharge their batteries. Of course.

[00:04:27] Chris Duffy:
It just makes sense. You know, when you think about it. It tracks, all of a sudden it makes sense.

[00:04:30] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah. We see this, these things throughout our life and we just accept them as facts without even, you know, questioning if they, if they could be actually extremely abnormal and not make any sense. You know, how can humans touch a power line and get shocked, but birds can sit on them all day? It doesn't make any sense.

[00:04:47] Chris Duffy:
So, okay. So this is what's interesting though, is like you've taken a lot of what makes like, I wanna say real conspiracy theories… You’ve taken a lot of what makes real conspiracy theories actually effective and really dangerous, and you've turned it into an ironic satirical presentation that kind of exposes the ridiculousness of conspiracy theories and of believing in, in things like this. I've heard you described as a performance artist, like how do you self-identify? Are you an activist? Are you a comedian? Are you a performance artist? Are you all of the above?

[00:05:19] Peter McIndoe:
I really have no idea. That's my honest, that's my honest answer. I have no idea. Maybe ideator is the closest thing that I can think of. Just I, just being in idea world. Yeah.

[00:05:32] Chris Duffy:
Here's the thing that I, I, I imagine people listening, some subset of people are gonna have this, like, immediate reaction of like, “Oh, but what you're doing is kind of dangerous.”

[00:05:40] Peter McIndoe:
Right.

[00:05:40] Chris Duffy:
Right? Like a lot of the things that people really, truly believe and have led to deep social issues that have led to violence, that have led to, you know, kind of the fraying of society, not just in the United States, but around the world, are similarly absurd. If you just said to someone, like, “JFK Jr. is actually alive and he's running for president, but he's undercover,” like you'd be like, well, “That, that, come on. That's not real.” But people really believe that. Deeply believe that.

[00:06:12] Peter McIndoe:
Right.

[00:06:12] Chris Duffy:
How do you think about like, keeping this on the funny side and the fun side, and not spiraling out of control?

[00:06:18] Peter McIndoe:
That's a very important question, one that I was asking myself once the idea became nationally syndicated news, and I wanted to prevent it from snowballing into something that it was never supposed to be.

So that's when I came out of character with the New York Times and throughout the course of the project, it was important to keep in mind sort of this, we called it sort of embedding a wink in everything that we did. So, you know, if we made a video, for instance, of an ex-CIA agent confessing to, you know, his involvement in the bird drone plot, you know, we would hire an 80-year-old actor and he'd be sitting, you know, in a kind of professional interview setting.

But instead of him just, explaining his, his, his involvement, you know, about 30 seconds into the interview, drool kind of starts going down from his mouth and then it's longer into it and drool keeps going down his mouth, and my character's kind of like looking off to the side. Like, oh, could, does he realize he is drooling? And then more drool.

And so we would compare, it's like a twinkle in the eye, you know? Right. If I'm telling you a joke, deadpan in a room, or there's someone standing next to you, and then I kind of turn to the person and you know, give them a little like, “You know, I'm joking,” and so we would try to embed that in, in everything that we did.

And that's made the reaction from real conspiracy theorists not at all believe this, but you know, we've gotten different theories. Some conspiracy theorists think that this is a psyop to discredit conspiracy theorists, to have stumbled upon some forums claiming that, and then, there was just really just one instance at a rally that I met someone who actually believed this, and it was a wild, it was a wild moment for me.

[00:08:04] Chris Duffy:
I wanna talk about both of those things, but let's first start with the people who kind of believe that this is a, a, a psyop, a counter-op to discredit conspiracy theories. What is the actual purpose of this? Because it's not that far off. I wouldn't say it's to… It seems to me like it's not to discredit them, but it is to shine some light on how conspiracy theories work. What is the point of this?

[00:08:25] Peter McIndoe:
I think it has multiple points, and it's shifted throughout the years. You know, I think, like, running a project like this for four years has kind of required like a series of rebirths in my understanding of it, to kind of sustain it, you know? So at first when I was starting this, it was sort of an outlet for this character that I or-organically had stumbled into where I was essentially pulling a prank at a tense rally with counter-protestors, and then somebody took a video, and all of a sudden this character that I improvised was, you know, known on the internet as Birds Aren’t Real guy.

And so I'd asked myself, “Why was this the character I went to first?” And you know, I thought this is really sort of me channeling this thing I grew up around my whole life. So how can I, you know, get deeper into this? And I found it really interesting, the thought of entering the topic or the idea space of conspiracy theories or disinformation, sort of these big ideas, but being able to think about them in a disarming way and kind of role-play these almost amorphic idea or like this, like almost mythic idea of a conspiracy theorist.

You know, this guy that's in his basement and you know, feels massive, but really most of the time is someone looking for identity and purpose and community and finding it in a really twisted place. You know? Then for a while, it was combating lunacy with lunacy and, you know, not legitimizing conspiracy theories or QAnon by debating them on a level of rationality, but instead holding up a mirror and kind of showing the ridiculousness of it all, laughing at it for a second rather than being, you know, overwhelmed by it.

[00:10:12] Chris Duffy:
We're gonna be right back with Peter in just a moment, but first, we're gonna hold up a mirror to advertiser-driven economic models by playing you some podcast ads.

[BREAK]

[00:10:24] Chris Duffy:
We’re talking with Peter McIndoe, founder of Birds Aren't Real about conspiracy theories, truth, and how to connect on even the wildest ideas. Peter, I'm biased as a comedian of course, but I think that one of the most powerful pieces of humor is that if you get someone to laugh, they're momentarily more open to the absurdity of what they're laughing at.

So you can get them to see it from a new angle, and I'm not sure if that really changes people's minds, but I wonder what you think about that since obviously Birds Aren’t Real is hilarious and has so many brilliant jokes built into it.

[00:10:55] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah, I think comedy can be disarming and sort of un-kink a tense hose so the water can go through more, more, more clearly. But, to your question about how my past really contributed to this character, I grew up in Arkansas. I was homeschooled in sort of a rural part of the state outside of Little Rock, in a very conservative community, almost hyper-conservative, honestly. And one of the big reasons for a lot of the people in my community being homeschooled was that there was sort of a grand conspiracy against the public school system, that it was kinda meant to brainwash, brainwash kids and sort of indoctrinate them in a system of, you know, government-injected ideas that were gonna shape society into this anti-religious. You know, they would talk a lot about how, you know, it was pro-gay rights. It was a very homophobic sort of place that I grew up.

And for context, before I moved to Arkansas, I grew up in Cincinnati ‘til I was 12, and then ended up moving to Arkansas with, with my family when my dad got a, got a new job and, but that meant that my very early years were spent not with homeschoolers, but with, you know, normal public school kids with normal interests doing normal things.

And so by, by the time I got to Arkansas, I think that I was already separated from the ideology to an extent and kind of got through it by laughing at it. I made a Twitter account called 501 Homeschooler, which was the, the area code of Little Rock was 501 because there's a big homeschool community there.

And I basically just played a homeschool character who was really unaware of society and naive, and it ended up being, you know, just kind of an outlet for me to make fun of my situation rather than be depressed by it. And I kind of viewed the Birds Aren’t Real accident as now in retrospect, sort of a similar thing.

[00:12:58] Chris Duffy:
What do the people who you grew up with or in your family, what do they think about Birds Aren’t Real? And what do they think about where you've ended up and what you've done with this?

[00:13:06] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah. I honestly don't know how many, um, people who I grew up around, what kinda what they think about this, and I have wondered about that because I'm not really in touch with them anymore. But I hope that, yeah, I hope that they don't feel that it is condemning of them, but more so just sort of a way for me to process my own experience.

Not even that it's been overtly, I guess, judgemental or offensive to conspiracy theorists or the people that I grew up around. I’ve kept it in the, you know, concept of birds not being real. It was sort of satirizing this broad concept of something that's clearly not true, that someone believes wholeheartedly.

[00:13:50] Chris Duffy:
That's also what's interesting to me about hearing you break character and be your actual self, is that your message is really about empathy and understanding and kind of creating an opening for people to come into the more logical non-conspiracy theory reality.

[00:14:09] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah.

[00:14:09] Chris Duffy:
Right, like you could come out of it in a really negative way. And you're, that's not what you're doing at all.

[00:14:14] Peter McIndoe:
I sort of have an unbearable compassion for the people that I grew up around, 'cause I truly don't view that to be the best way of living life, fixated on evil. And kind of fixated on, you know, a grand conspiracy against you. I dunno, I view that more as a sad thing than something to like, uh, make fun of or like, “They’re so crazy.”

And during my time playing the character and method acting more and more and growing more and more obsessed with the role and spending more and more time in character and feeling the emotions of the character, it led to me understanding the people that I grew up around on a completely different level than I could have imagined.

[00:14:58] Chris Duffy:
Can we just pause for one second and talk about this van? 'Cause I, I, if you haven't seen it, I strongly encourage you to Google “Birds aren't real van”. It's, it's one of those big white cargo vans. It has all this like wild, the text on the side, small, big, different fonts. But my favorite part of the van is that on the top it has, like, a satellite dish as though you're broadcasting. But then also, all of those anti-bird, like spikes along the top.

[00:15:21] Peter McIndoe:
Uh-huh.

[00:15:22] Chris Duffy:
That is, to me, that is one of the funniest jokes that like, every time I think about the bird spikes on the top of the van, I just instantly start laughing. 'Cause it's, it's such a perfect attention to detail.

[00:15:32] Peter McIndoe:
Thank you so much. Yeah. The character, you know, has to put the spikes in the van to prevent birds from, you know, sitting on it and pooping on it. Uh…

[00:15:38] Chris Duffy:
Yes.

[00:15:39] Peter McIndoe:
So of course, bird poop is a liquid tracking device. So—

[00:15:41] Chris Duffy:
Of course! That’s why they’re doing it.

[00:15:42] Peter McIndoe:
We can't have our vehicle— that's why birds poop on your car, you know? But thank you. Yeah. The van, we got the van, uh, for like a thousand dollars. It's a white old cargo van. Very beat up. You know, we, we couldn't get something nice for this character. You know, this character would have, you know, his uncle's old van.

[00:16:02] Chris Duffy:
Of course.

[00:16:03] Peter McIndoe:
Back in the woods and we, yeah, put satellites on top, you know, which were meant to broadcast our message, but also pick up any, you know, gamma rays being, you know, emitted by the bird drones and yeah, put two satellites on it, bird spikes. Got a bunch of decals. It didn't have any chairs in the back, though, at all. It was just, you know, a metal cargo van. So we just put, like, a lazy boy in the back of the van. And whenever we would turn a corner, it would just fly around the van and we didn't put, get the satellites put in any professional way.

We just drilled them through the metal in the top of the van and put, like, a wooden plank underneath. So there were just screws and you know, the pointy spikes of the screws hanging down. So it was a very dangerous—

[00:16:45] Chris Duffy:
Absolutely. Sounds like the most dangerous vehicle you could possibly have been driving.

[00:16:49] Peter McIndoe:
The brakes wouldn't work half the time. It, it broke down countless times, but we would always make it a part of the story and the storyline.

[00:16:55] Chris Duffy:
Yes.

[00:16:56] Peter McIndoe:
Which, yeah, it was interesting blurring the line between reality and fiction, because a lot of the time the things that would happen to the character were real as we were out on the road.

[00:17:04] Chris Duffy:
Uh-huh. So you'd pull up in the van.

[00:17:06] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah.

[00:17:06] Chris Duffy:
And something would happen and you would feel it as yourself actually.

[00:17:09] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah. My character, as I continued to play him for four years, I grew more and more obsessed with the concept that the more real and serious I could play this character, the funnier it would be. So I wasn't trying to be funny a lot of the time. I was just trying to be as gravely serious and real as I could be.

I grew obsessed with Andy Kaufman after a reporter asked me if I'd heard of him, and I hadn’t. They asked me if I was doing an Andy Kaufman thing, and I really didn't know who he was, which worked out, but ended up looking into him and then just, yeah, becoming totally fixated on this idea that you could just embody a character.

So, I did that for years and would travel around in the van going, you know, city to city holding rallies and people would walk by me, double take. Their face would morph into disgust, and they would start hurling insults at me because it would hit this part of them and their frustration with society and how it's impacting their lives.

And I think especially, you know, kind of post the initial COVID boom and pandemic, like, there's, you know, an understandable frustration against conspiracy theorists. And I think that I saw a lot of that frustration and experienced it directly, and I, for a long time, I looked at it as, as a Rorschach test of the character and how people would respond to the character really taught me about themselves.

So, you know, a few times people would approach me and pray for me, and I could see how they interpreted the Rorschach test. Other times they'd hurl insults and that, you know, really taught me about their perspective, and more so though as, as the project went on, I found myself inable or unable to look at the project from that zoomed-out perspective while I was in character.

Because as I embodied him more and more, I felt the emotions of him, not myself. When people would respond to me as if they didn't know I was trying to help them too, and wouldn't even get to know me or try to listen to me, they would instantly condemn me and other me. You know, there were times when I would yell back at them without even thinking about it.

I felt sad and emboldened, and it made me think of times when I was in high school debating with people who believed, you know, things that I thought were crazy and um, how the debate went nowhere. And how it often just lead to anger and us going further into our places that were apart from each other. And you know, they would usually get emboldened. And for the first time, I really understood that standing on the streets in front of the Birds Aren’t Real van.

[00:19:50] Chris Duffy:
I’m so torn in talking to you about this because you know there's the, there's a famous quote about jokes that analyzing a joke is like dissecting a frog. Uh, afterwards, you might understand it better, but the frog is dead. You know?

[00:20:04] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah.

[00:20:04] Chris Duffy:
I totally butchered that. But basically the idea of being that, like, you take it apart, you can't put it back together, it doesn't work anymore. But I do think that what you just touched on is the reason why it's worth putting the humor aside and, and talking about the deep idea, which is that there are a lot of people out there who believe things that are not grounded in reality, and some of those things are harmless, and some of those things are extremely dangerous, and we have this instinctive desire to correct them by telling them they are wrong and by saying how wrong they are.

I think we have a lot of proof that that doesn't really work. That that is not winning people over, that if it was just needing to be presented with the facts, well, conspiracy theories wouldn't really exist, right?

[00:20:46] Peter McIndoe:
Right.

[00:20:46] Chris Duffy:
Like it's easy to be presented with the actual facts, so there's something else going on. Can we get really practical about this? Like—

[00:20:53] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah.

[00:20:53] Chris Duffy:
Like someone is listening. They have someone in their life who they love and care about.

[00:20:56] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah.

[00:20:56] Chris Duffy:
Right? I have people in my life who I love and care about, who believe things that I, I know are not based in reality. How do you start that conversation? How do you ground it in belonging rather than belief?

[00:21:08] Peter McIndoe:
Hmm. I think I'll just tell a story that I haven't really, I haven't told publicly, but it's one of the many examples of kind of how this has impacted my life. There's a friend of mine, I've asked him if I can, you know, talk about this, and he gave me the go-ahead. But I lived in Arkansas with him. He was a close friend of mine growing up. But he came from a similar background as I did and had a different experience with it, as many people do when they grow up in something and only have reference points for one set of beliefs. The time came for us to go to college, and we both wanted to do something different. I wanted to pursue creative projects, and he wanted to go to the mountains.

He loved Alaska. And uh, so he went and chased that beauty and he went to Alaska and followed his dreams and ended up living there and doing what he loved on in the mountains, and then moved to Aspen, Colorado after a couple years there. It was incredible just watching him, you know, actualize this life that he'd always wanted.

And then COVID hit. And he became obsessed with this idea that it was the Mark of the Beast, meaning that this was a sign of the end times that it had talked about in Revelations in the Bible, and that the world was going to end imminently. So, he dropped everything, quit his dream job he worked years toward in the, in the mountains and moved back to Arkansas to live in the forest and build a bunker.

I would argue with him and say, “Man, what are you doing?” You know, I'd talk with him about the interpretation of Revelations and what that could mean and, but I would do it in a very argumentative way, you know, before I even started even looking under the surface and going toward the interpretation of that, which I do think is good to do and can be more effective.

I was just trying to show him my, you know, facts and say, “Well, look at these scientists, they're saying this, you know? Look at how real this is.” But for everything I had to bring to the table, he had alternate facts. Arguing with him didn't do anything, and he had different facts and would just make him more and more emboldened that I was just one of the people who didn't understand and was brainwashed.

So then I just started asking him about his life. I started asking him not about what he believed in, but maybe what was fueling his need to believe in something like that. And I learned that even though he was around the mountains in Alaska and Colorado, he didn't have community in either of those places. And even though he was surrounded by, you know, an environment that he wanted to be in, that's not really where a sense of belonging or identity or purpose comes from.

That comes from your people in your life, your relationships, you know, tribe to belong to. Which is, I think, just a fundamental human need. So, when the time came and there was something that came along that, you know, it switched him from a victim to a hero and the internal narrative that he was telling himself about his own life, about how he's doing as the main character in his own story, I think as a lot of us are doing, you know, “Am I a worthy, main character of, of a life?”

By believing these things, he, yeah, he became a hero, but there's not longevity there, and I started asking him about his passions and trying to help him find community outside of these forums on the internet. Then over time, he had community in those places and I realized he just wasn't even talking about COVID anymore, and it sort of fell away because he was experiencing belonging elsewhere.

So I sort of learned through that experience that it was not productive to start the conversation on the level of belief, and that through doing that, I was starting the conversation at the wrong place.

[00:24:47] Chris Duffy:
The three things that I'm taking from that are that the first step is really, like, just getting curious and, and actually listening to this person. Then understanding where they're coming from, what the emotional needs are that are being filled by this belief that you are troubled by. And then the third is rather than trying to convince them straight on, trying to help find healthier ways to solve that need. And when you think about this, it's like that's a very caring and empathetic way to approach anyone, whether they're, whether you're trying to get them out of a conspiracy theory or not, right?

[00:25:21] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah.

[00:25:21] Chris Duffy:
Is to, like, listen to them, to understand where they're coming from and to try and help them in a healthy way meet their needs. That's, that's actually really good, even if your friend is not in a conspiracy theory, that's a good way to be a good friend.

[00:25:31] Peter McIndoe:
Absolutely.

[00:25:32] Chris Duffy:
Um, I also wanna just say a lot of times when we're talking about things like conspiracy theories or, or people who believe things that are, you know, let's just say in, in quotes, “unscientific”, there’s a lot of condescension and a lot of prejudice that can come around, like the kinds of people who believe those things.

[00:25:49] Peter McIndoe:
Right.

[00:25:49] Chris Duffy:
Um, and as someone who also, you know, I have family from Arkansas. That's where my, my grandma was, was from.

[00:25:55] Peter McIndoe:
No way.

[00:25:56] Chris Duffy:
I think… Sometimes you can even, I’m sure you experienced this, right? Like you can say Arkansas, and that is shorthand for a lot of people on the coasts for a lot of things that it's not necessarily shorthand for, right? People are like—

[00:26:07] Peter McIndoe:
Isn’t that wild?

[00:26:09] Chris Duffy:
I get it. Oh boy.

[00:26:11] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah.

[00:26:11] Chris Duffy:
And it's like, that's actually not true. That's not representative of the people that live in any place anywhere in the world. Right? There's always a diversity of beliefs and backgrounds.

[00:26:20] Peter McIndoe:
Right.

[00:26:20] Chris Duffy:
And I think especially politically in the US, we look at these maps that are like blue and red because that's how the state votes for president.

[00:26:28] Peter McIndoe:
Right.

[00:26:29] Chris Duffy:
And you don't actually understand that, like, where the votes go is not necessarily representative of a hundred percent of the people. Yeah.

[00:26:34] Peter McIndoe:
Absolutely. It's, there's always nuance. I don't think we should look at, you know, the Bible Belt or these states in middle America as these lost causes. I've found that with people in my own life. You know, people that wouldn't have gone to a pride parade when I was growing up, you know, but are now there. 'cause they're focused on love and understanding and you know, we talked about the interpretation of this ancient text more and just taking the time to look under the hood and get un—get over the lump of your ego and your gut reaction to something that you disagree with out of not only empathy and care for that fellow person, but as a productive means toward, yeah, just living in a shared reality with people who are around you in a healthier community for everyone.

[00:27:20] Chris Duffy:
I mean, I think nuance is like the, that, that’s the name of the game here.

[00:27:22] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah.

[00:27:22] Chris Duffy:
And I think that's what you're so good at and what's fun. 'Cause the other nuance that I think is really important to acknowledge is that it's not an acceptable solution to say, especially since we're talking about pride and LGBTQIA people, right? It's like, it's not acceptable to say like, “Hey, this person who denies your right to exist and wants to violently harm you, the solution for you is to just like love that person more and have more empathy.” Like that's not acceptable either, right?

[00:27:49] Peter McIndoe:
Right.

[00:27:49] Chris Duffy:
If someone is putting you at risk physically or even emotionally, if you just can't handle that, like, it's not on you to convince someone else that you deserve to live and to live in peace and to be able to do that. However, there are a lot of people who are not at personal risk, who can have these conversations in ways that are more effective. So, I wanna just make sure we're not saying, like, if someone is a violent homophobe and you are threatened by them, the solution is to like be more empathetic towards them.

[00:28:20] Peter McIndoe:
Absolutely.

[00:28:21] Chris Duffy:
That’s not necessarily it. You have to be safe first.

[00:28:22] Peter McIndoe:
Yeah. Something we talk about a lot is, you know, empathy with boundaries and that's part of the nuance, I think. 'Cause not looking at it as this blanket concept of, you know, identifying and you know, hearing out beliefs that dehumanize you.

[00:28:39] Chris Duffy:
Yeah.

[00:28:39] Peter McIndoe:
Or lead to, yeah. A life that is separate from that. Yeah. Safety has to come first, and I think that there are some ideas that are left to others to figure out.

[00:28:51] Chris Duffy:
I’d never heard this phrase before, and I learned it recently and it seems very relevant to this, which is “intellectual humility”, and it's the, basically it's this emerging field in psychology that's the study of how people are willing to acknowledge that they might be wrong and change their mind. And the idea that there actually is a ton of science out there around this, right? That like, there are a lot of researchers who are thinking about how do you actually get people to a place where they're willing to accept new ideas that are different than their previous ideas?

And I think the reason why it's so relevant to Birds Aren’t Real and to your work is that a lot of what we tend to think of how people change their minds is this, like, very false Hollywood version. Which is that, like, you think you're gonna go up to someone and they say the earth is flat and you say, “Uh-uh-uh, the earth is actually round. Here's a piece of proof.” And then they go, “Oh my gosh, you convinced me. Thank you so much, wise person. The earth is round.”

And in reality, people change their minds on a much slower basis. It takes, you plant a seed, you build connections with them. Like you said, you build community, you help them to, like, shape it, and then they come around to it in a much more subtle way.

There's very rarely the moment of like, “You know what? I had a, a conversion, a full instantaneous conversion to this new way of thinking.” And it seems like that's a lot of what people wanted from you as the bird character and what you would like instinctively get from is that they'd say like, “Birds are not real. Look at this bird right here.”

[00:30:21] Peter McIndoe:
Exactly. And it was totally ineffective because I would say, “Well that's, you know, biotechnology, that's made to look just like a real bird.” Very much like if you told a flat earth that the earth is round and here's a picture, they would just say, “That’s CGI. That’s Photoshop. Have you seen it with your own eyes?” You know?

[00:30:36] Chris Duffy:
Yep.

[00:30:37] Peter McIndoe:
You know, I think we need to be conscious of sort of the macro context of where we're at with truth and where we're at as, as a society. Really, the post-truth era has sort of always been there in a way, you know, sort of a lot of what we believed uh, a hundred years ago as a people, we now look at as completely insane, and a lot of what science has said a hundred years ago we'd look at as completely insane.

Or even 50 years ago, you know, when my grandparents were born, there were colored water fountains. In addition to all this, the internet is in its infancy and no civilization in society has ever had information like this, or I guess as dealing with connection with, with other people and I guess truth like this.

So, I think that it's a danger to forget the context that we're in and assume that we're farther along than we are with the concept of truth or that we're in a whole new place now. There are millions of members of Q Anon who thought that Democrats are eating babies, and it's still a very mainstream thing and has been in the greater context of our country, and I think that's important to remember and stay vigilant about that you know, we're not totally past that.

[00:31:56] Chris Duffy:
Well, Peter McIndoe, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for making the time to be on the show. And also, I wanna say if you're listening, the merch for Birds Aren’t Real is absolutely fantastic. Check out the Birds Aren’t Deal graphic design 'cause it's spectacular and hilarious and amazing. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:32:14] Peter McIndoe:
Hey, it is so great to talk with you. Thanks for having me.

[00:32:20] Chris Duffy:
That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Peter McIndoe. I am your host Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED Side by Daniela Balarezo, Alejandra Salazar, Cloe Shasha, Whitney Pennington Rodgers, and BanBan Cheng, who are all currently purchased on a power line outside of your home.

Every episode of our show is professionally fact-checked. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Matheus Salles, who claimed that bird poop does not actually track your car. But that is just because they have been paid off by Big Bird.

On the PRX side, our show is put together by a team who are ready at any moment to roll out in their specially equipped anti-bird van: Morgan Flannery, Noor Gill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzales.

And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show and making this all possible. If you're listening on Apple, please leave us a five-star rating and review. And if you're listening on the Spotify app, we would love to have you answer the discussion question that we've put up there. We want to hear your thoughts.

We will be back soon with more episodes of How to Be a Better Human. Thanks again for listening.