Straight answers to the questions people search about the cases we cover on the show.
No. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, United Airlines Flight 93 was not shot down. The Commission found that the hijackers deliberately crashed the plane into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001, as the passengers fought to break into the cockpit. No military aircraft fired on it. By the…
World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed on the evening of September 11, 2001, roughly seven hours after the North Tower fell nearby. NIST’s multiyear investigation found that debris-sparked fires caused thermal expansion in a floor beam, which pushed a critical girder off its seat at column 79 and triggered a progressive interior collapse. NIST reports…
Al-Qaeda rose out of the Soviet-Afghan War, when a network built by Osama bin Laden and mentor Abdullah Azzam formally organized on September 10, 1988, with a founding roster of just fifteen men. Over the next thirteen years, it grew into the organization behind September 11. By the Conspiracy Podcast team | Last updated: September…
On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb built by Ramzi Yousef exploded in the World Trade Center’s underground parking garage, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand. Yousef told investigators he hoped to topple the North Tower into the South Tower and kill up to 250,000 people. He failed for lack of money,…
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed showed up to Guantanamo Bay hearings with a beard dyed bright orange because he was not allowed a real dye. Detainees cannot access chemical hair dyes, which are treated as contraband that could be turned into a weapon or an irritant, so he used what was on his breakfast tray instead. Pentagon…
The 19 hijackers were not stopped because 2001 airport security was built to catch a smuggled bomb, not a passenger willing to die in the act. Blades under four inches and box cutters were legal to carry on planes. Ten hijackers were flagged by a screening system, and being flagged changed nothing about whether they…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Happened to Flight MH370? Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, about an hour into a red eye from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. Its transponder went silent, radar tracked a sharp turn back across Malaysia, and satellite pings show it flew for seven more…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS How Did Kurt Cobain Die? Kurt Cobain died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Seattle Police Department ruled his death a suicide in April 1994, a finding based on the scene, the shotgun, and a note found with his body. His body was discovered at his Seattle home on April 8,…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS How Did Michael Jackson Die? Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, at age 50. The coroner ruled the cause of death acute propofol intoxication, a homicide tied to the anesthetic his physician, Conrad Murray, had been giving him as a sleep aid. Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011….
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Is the Oak Island Money Pit? The Oak Island money pit is a mysterious shaft on a small Nova Scotia island where a boy reportedly found a strange depression in 1795. Treasure hunters have dug there for more than 200 years, spending fortunes and losing at least six lives, without…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke? The 115 English colonists of Roanoke Island most likely did not vanish. When Governor John White returned in 1590, he found the settlement empty except for the word CROATOAN carved into a post, a direct pointer to a real island and a real,…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Who Built Stonehenge and Why? Stonehenge was built by Neolithic and Bronze Age people native to Britain, in stages from roughly 3000 BC to 1500 BC, using sledges, log rollers, ropes and large crews. The bluestones came from Wales, roughly 150 miles away. Why remains unsettled: the leading answers are burial…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Are We Living in a Simulation? Nobody knows, and that is the honest answer. The most serious argument for simulation theory, philosopher Nick Bostrom’s 2003 trilemma, does not actually claim we are simulated. It argues that at least one of three things must be true, and living inside a simulation is…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Is the Denver Airport Conspiracy? The Denver airport conspiracy is the theory that Denver International Airport hides an underground bunker for a global elite, supposedly tied to a demonic-looking horse statue, apocalyptic murals, a Masonic marker, and unexplained tunnels. The airport’s own explanation for all four is far less exciting:…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Why Do People Believe the Earth Is Flat? People believe the Earth is flat mostly because they no longer trust the institutions that tell them otherwise, not the evidence itself. The modern movement traces to one Victorian experimenter’s flawed canal test in the 1830s, and every argument since leans on distrust…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Is the Mandela Effect? The Mandela Effect is when a large number of people share the same false memory of something that never happened, or happened differently than the record shows. It is named after Nelson Mandela, who many people wrongly remember dying in prison in the 1980s. He was…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Was Atlantis a Real Place? No archaeological evidence has ever confirmed Atlantis. The entire legend comes from one source, the Greek philosopher Plato, writing around 360 BC. Most historians read his account as philosophical fiction, not history. But the story of how one invented island turned into a 2,000-year obsession is…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Is the Loch Ness Monster Real? No. Decades of sonar searches, a 2018 DNA survey of the entire loch, and forensic analysis of the most famous photograph have never turned up physical or genetic evidence of a large unknown animal. What people are seeing is a mix of known wildlife, floating…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Why Is Lake Lanier So Dangerous? Lake Lanier is dangerous because of what is under the surface and who is on top of it. The lake was formed by flooding farmland and a small town, so old roads, foundations and dead trees sit hidden underwater, while the lake’s huge recreational boat…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Is Skinwalker Ranch? Skinwalker Ranch is a 512-acre stretch of high desert in northeastern Utah that became famous for reports of cattle mutilations, strange lights and poltergeist activity. Originally called Sherman Ranch, it passed from a billionaire’s private research institute to a real estate developer and a reality TV franchise….
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Who Was Jack the Ripper? Jack the Ripper is the name given to an unidentified killer who murdered at least five women in London’s Whitechapel district in 1888. The name comes from a letter sent to a London news agency claiming responsibility for the murders. Despite a massive police investigation, he…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Caused the Salem Witch Trials? The Salem witch trials of 1692 grew out of two young girls’ convulsive fits, a Puritan village primed by fear of the devil, and a court willing to accept spectral evidence, testimony about a vision of a person’s spirit, as proof of guilt. Twenty people…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Was Project MK Ultra? Project MK Ultra was a real, CIA-run mind control program that ran from 1953 to 1973 under chemist Sidney Gottlieb. Approved by CIA Director Allen Dulles, it tested LSD on prisoners, patients and unwitting citizens. Declassified records confirmed it in the 1970s. It is not a…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Is the Bermuda Triangle Real? The Bermuda Triangle is not an officially recognized danger zone. The US Coast Guard, insurers, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have found no evidence ships or planes disappear there more often than in any other trafficked stretch of ocean. The individual cases behind the…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Was the Moon Landing Faked? No. Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the moon on July 20, 1969, and five more crewed missions followed through 1972. Independent tracking, hundreds of pounds of returned lunar samples, and mirrors astronauts left behind that observatories still use today all confirm it happened. By the Conspiracy…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Who Was DB Cooper? DB Cooper is the name given to an unidentified man who hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971, claiming he had a bomb. He collected 200,000 dollars and four parachutes, then jumped from the plane over southwest Washington and disappeared. He bought his ticket as…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS Who Killed JFK? Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with shooting President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The Warren Commission concluded he fired the fatal shots alone. He was shot dead two days later and never stood trial, so no court ruled on his guilt. More than sixty years on, the case…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Is Really Inside Area 51? Area 51 is a real, active US Air Force flight test site at Groom Lake, Nevada, built in 1955 to develop classified aircraft. The U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird and early stealth jets were all tested there. The CIA formally acknowledged the base’s existence…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Happened at Dyatlov Pass? On January 23, 1959, nine experienced Soviet hikers led by Igor Dyatlov vanished into the Ural Mountains. Weeks later, searchers found their tent slashed open from inside and abandoned, with eight sets of barefoot or sock-footed prints leading away into subzero cold. All nine died. Investigators…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Really Happened at Roswell? In July 1947, wreckage appeared on a New Mexico ranch. The Roswell Army Air Field announced it had recovered a flying disc, then retracted the story that same day and called it a weather balloon. In 1994 the Air Force identified the source as Project Mogul,…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Happened to Amelia Earhart? Amelia Earhart disappeared on July 2, 1937, over the Pacific Ocean, along with her navigator Fred Noonan. They were trying to reach Howland Island, a tiny coral strip, on the longest leg of an around-the-world flight. No confirmed wreckage and no confirmed remains have ever been…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS How Did Princess Diana Die? Princess Diana died in the early hours of August 31, 1997, after the car she was travelling in struck a pillar in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. She was 36. A 2008 inquest jury ruled it an unlawful killing caused by the grossly negligent…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS How Did Marilyn Monroe Die? Marilyn Monroe died on the night of August 4, 1962, at her home on Fifth Helena Drive in Los Angeles. She was 36. The toxicology report found acute barbiturate poisoning, and on August 17 the coroner announced a verdict of probable suicide. Accidental overdose was specifically…
THE CONSPIRACY PODCAST☰HomeEpisodesAboutPressMerchListen // CONSPIRACY QUESTIONS What Really Happened to Bruce Lee? Bruce Lee died on July 20, 1973 in Hong Kong at age 32. The autopsy found cerebral edema, a brain swollen about 13 percent larger than normal. A Hong Kong coroner’s court ruled it death by misadventure, blaming a hypersensitivity reaction to a painkiller called…
