Alternate Realities from NPR's Embedded
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Invisibilia told stories about the invisible forces shaping our lives. One of the things that I loved about Invisibilia was how intimate the stories were. Today we're bringing you a series exactly like that from the Embedded podcast. It's about conspiracy theories and families, how a son tries to reach his father across a seemingly unbridgeable divide.

Reporter Zach Mack thinks that his dad has been radicalized online and spent a year trying to get him to stop believing the misinformation he's bought into. We're bringing you the first episode of this three-part series, but you can hear the rest of it right now in the Embedded podcast feed. By the way, because their story is so personal, Zach's parents have asked us not to use their names. And you'll hear Zach refer to them as mom and dad. Okay, here's Zach.

This all started about a year ago when my father called and left me this message. Hey, Zach, Dad again. Good conversation last night. Hey, I didn't remember to tell you this because I was kind of tired, but they're going to shut us down again, and it's going to be a worse shutdown than 2020 because of this EMP. All the supply lines are going to be disrupted.

So you really want to store up two months worth of food and water because they probably won't be able to pump water throughout the city because that's all controlled by computers and electronics. And the EMP is going to shut down everything electronic. I know, I know it sounds like conspiracy theory, but they're going to do this. This is what they're planning. And I just want to have you be prepared. Okay.

My dad's talking about something called an electromagnetic pulse, EMP for short, which if you've ever seen the movie Ocean's Eleven, it's what they use to pull off the casino heist. What's a pinch? A pinch is a device which creates like a cardiac arrest for any broadband electrical circuitry. An electromagnetic pulse which shuts down any power source within its blast radius.

My dad says he's certain that sometime soon, technology like this will be used to wipe out all digital communication across the country. That's right. No cell service, no electricity, no George Clooney or Brad Pitt. Just the dark ages. I wouldn't describe my father as a paranoid person. I wouldn't even call him an anxious person. He's actually an optimist. He's very friendly and rarely serious. There's a lot of dad jokes.

But Dad and I have never been particularly close. Aside from watching Ohio State football games, there's not a lot we typically agree on. But lately, it feels like we can't even agree on reality. Like so many Americans, Dad's gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. He believes in chemtrails, that the government can control the weather, that January 6th was staged by what he calls the shadow government. Most of his theories connect back to an idea that a cabal he calls the globalists are secretly running the world.

These days, we can barely get through a family dinner without him saying something that fast-tracks us into debate, usually while my mom and sister look the other way.

You're saying that I'm a conspiracy theorist. Yes. And the facts that I'm citing are totally bogus, according to your opinion. Well, yes. One of the last times I was home, we got into it because dad was complaining about YouTube removing a lot of the stuff he wants to watch. It's called denying us freedom of speech. No. It's called denying us freedom of speech. It's misinformation. No. Who gets the right to label it misinformation?

These circular arguments never go anywhere. Nothing's ever resolved. So how do you reason with someone who's gone deep down the rabbit hole? And can you? A year ago, I decided to confront my father and tell him I thought he was being radicalized online. But as always, he didn't agree. But what he did next surprised me.

Dad texted me a photo of a sheet of paper where, in his barely legible cursive, he had written out a list of 10 predictions. 10 things that he was positive would all take place sometime in 2024, assuring me that when all of these things happened, I would see once and for all that he was right. At the bottom of the page was a challenge to a bet for $10,000. And let me just say, Dad and I are not big gamblers, nor are we rich. $10,000 is easily more money than either of us has ever wagered in our entire lives.

Looking over the list, it was filled with politically apocalyptic predictions. And I remember being some combination of perplexed, horrified, and weirdly amused. The bet seemed really over the top. But I also saw it as an opportunity. Instead of just arguing until the end of time, we were actually going to settle this. And now we had a deadline. January 1st, 2025. And hopefully that'd give me enough time to change his mind, bring him back to reality a little bit.

That is, before his beliefs tear the family apart. From NPR's Embedded, I'm Zach Mack, and this is Alternate Realities.

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Can you hear me okay? I can hear you. Can you hear me? When dad first sent over his predictions, I quickly got him on the phone to discuss the terms. I could tell that both of us were excited to try something new. Do you have the list in front of you? Yeah. Can you walk me through the one through 10? Each one, I'll probably have a couple clarifying questions. Yeah, absolutely. Keep in mind that this call and these predictions all came back in January 2024. Number one, Obama...

will be found guilty of treason in 2024. So like by a court? Yes. Okay. Not the court of public opinion. Correct. Okay. And then number two? Biden will be found guilty of treason in 2024. Just treason for something specific? For selling all those secrets that he had in the back of his Corvette. Okay. Okay.

I don't know if that's a joke. I'm not sure. It's partially a joke, but it's also real. Okay. Number three. It went on like this. Dad's other predictions were that Nancy Pelosi would also be convicted of treason. Same for Bill and Hillary Clinton, who would go down for murder as well. That Trump would be reinstated without an election and cleared of all charges. That Biden would be removed from office. Same for both the governor and mayor of New York.

Eventually, we landed on his final prediction for 2024, his boldest one. And then number 10. Number 10. I threw this in because I thought you'd be excited about it. Yeah, it's an exciting one. It's probably the most exciting one. The U.S. will come under martial law in 2024 because of mass rioting and chaos. So the military will have to step in.

For the record, I was never actually excited about the possibility of this happening. For this one, do you think this will be happening all over the country, only in certain parts? The whole United States will come under martial law and the biggest cities will be targeted. You know, New York, unfortunately, Washington, D.C., the Bay Area. Okay. Chicago, L.A., Houston, Dallas.

You seem pretty confident about that. I am 100% confident. Dad's always been sure of himself, but he'd never said anything like this before. And now he was predicting the future with certainty. When all these things happen, then you will realize that I'm not as big a crackpot as you think I am. And that these are not conspiracy theories. These are reality.

When I was growing up in the Bay Area, Dad was a lone Christian conservative in our family and social circle. My mother, on the other hand, is a fairly liberal Jewish woman, and my sister and I are generally on the same page as her. Dad's views have always been a point of tension, but for years they were easy to ignore because he usually kept pretty quiet about them. He barely ever mentioned politics, though I always knew he was skeptical of vaccines and that he hated the Clintons.

Eventually, his beliefs became more extreme. And around 2019, my dad, who has never been very tech savvy, got an iPad. And it wasn't long after that that he started saying weird things. One time when I was home visiting, we got into it because he tried to tell me that the government was controlling Facebook from the very beginning and that Mark Zuckerberg was just a pawn. And when the pandemic hit, he started getting more outspoken, bristling at mask wearing and refusing to get vaccinated.

Eventually, he came to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, who he didn't even vote for in 2016. I've tried talking him out of this stuff for years. Occasionally, I've even tried getting ahead on what I know is inevitably coming his way. How much do you know about QAnon? Not a lot. In fact, I still chuckle about this when I mention it to other people.

You actually turned me on to QAnon. I know this. I thought if I could warn you about a thing in advance, you would understand what it was and understand that it was bullshit. But go on. That might have been a miscalculation on my part. That was definitely a miscalculation on your part. But no, because...

I know, Zach, that you love me and you care about me and you want the best for me. Yeah, absolutely. You were warning me from your perspective because you didn't want me to fall down that rabbit hole. Yeah. So I totally respected your opinion and your belief. I simply didn't agree with it. While all this has been going on, there's been something else that's been causing a huge rift in the family.

Two years ago, my sister Kira came out to my dad. My mom and I had known for years, but she was always afraid to tell dad because she thought he'd disapprove. It didn't go well. He said he'd always love my sister, that she was always welcome in the house, but he thought her being gay was a choice. A choice that he ultimately didn't agree with. These past two years have not been easy for the family, especially Kira. I think the hardest part...

is that he looked at me and told me that I was wrong about myself and that he was right. And I don't understand how he could know that. There's this lingering question of how our family is going to move forward when my sister doesn't feel supported. Then there's all the conspiracy stuff, which is especially hard for my mom. It's getting pretty crazy, and I don't even know half of it. You know, we have two generators in the house. He's stockpiling weird food.

Because my dad thinks the grid is going to go down, he started hoarding survivalist supplies. And I guess he went on a little shopping spree one time when my mom was out of town. When I came home from Chicago, there are now eight flats of water in the garage that he bought at Costco. And some kind of fancy water filter system that was a couple hundred dollars. And he moved some money without my permission. How did he do that? He didn't need your sign-off? No, because it's a joint account.

And he withdrew from a joint account without telling me and made a purchase he knew I would never approve. What was it? He bought a precious metal. Dad's also worried the banks are going to collapse, so he wants to move big chunks of their money into things like platinum and silver. Mom was initially irritated by the bet because Dad didn't run it by her. But eventually, I could see her warming up to the idea of a deadline. I want a date, and then when that date happens,

The precious metals gets returned to cash. The flask of water go back to Costco. You do something else with the food generators we now have and you move on. I have been very clear that I'm not sure how much more I can take. And I've even said, you know, I'm considering leaving, ending the marriage. You said that to him? Yeah, which is very hard for me to say because I'm 69.

I'm about to retire, not necessarily the life I had planned for myself to be alone. But what kind of life do I have now? It was still early on, but it was already starting to feel like dad and I hadn't just made a friendly wager. Maybe we had just put our entire family on a collision course. One that could end with dad in financial trouble or estranged or both.

The problem I'm having is I don't know where he's getting this information. I'd been wondering the same thing for a long time. Where the hell is he getting all this from? And how is he so sure? After seeing dad's predictions, I started retracing his steps a bit. Curious about how he got here. He grew up in a deeply Christian household, but at some point in his younger years, he rebelled. And when my parents met in the 80s, neither of them were interested in religion.

Sometime after I was born, that began to change. And as the years passed, Dad's faith deepened. So every human being has five physical senses, right? Yeah. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Yep. And we tend to live in a physical world based upon all the perceptions we get from those five senses. Right. It's kind of like the old saying is, seeing is believing. Mm-hmm.

But in the spiritual world, it's just the opposite. And by that, I mean, you have to believe it first in order to see it manifest. During the pandemic, Dad started believing in prophecy, which is the idea that God still speaks through intermediaries. When you're talking about how God speaks today and you believe it's through prophets, that is a divisive within Christianity, right? That is a divisive thought? Very divisive.

Why do you believe it? Because it's a God-ordained process, and he's always had prophets. And it makes sense that just like he had prophets in Old Testament times, he would continue with it. Why would he suddenly stop? I never quite understood why God would stop talking to his people.

So, iPad in hand, he went searching. I was Googling around, trying to find someone who I thought was

This is a prophetic word. I'm very excited to give this one. It's just the authoritative power of God coming through me. A great fall is coming. A fall of a global cabal. A great fall of a global cabal.

She sits in an office chair in a drab-looking room and rattles off a lot of prophecies. My children, 2024 will be a year like no other. She's part of a growing movement within Christianity that emphasizes spiritual warfare and politics. And God's saying this, don't put up with this anymore. Global globalism, the elites, global control.

Dad told me he found her a couple years ago and watches her three to four times a week. Woe to you, enemies of Almighty God. Overthrow the rogue government. Every stolen election will be overturned. I am stopping their ultimate terrorist attack that would bring in martial law and complete shutdown of society as a whole. As you can probably tell, the majority of Dad's predictions, they came from Julie Green.

I firmly believe that, first and foremost, that God did lead me to Julie Green. When I spoke to Dad about all this, it was clear that his predictions all stem from his religious beliefs, which I've always found somewhat confusing because to look at his list, none of these ideas seem to have anything to do with God at all. Do you want these things to happen, or do you just feel confident that they are going to happen? Well, I mean...

Because this is like a pretty, this is a pretty huge shakeup. Yeah. I would say our country hasn't seen anything like this since the Civil War, probably. Well, not even in the Civil War. This is going to be the biggest shakeup to ever hit the United States of America and the world at large. So, yeah, I mean, I'm a fan of all this stuff happening except for the blackout and the martial law.

Are you at all afraid about what would happen if all the predictions come true? To be honest with you, I'm most concerned about your safety because you live in New York City. Okay. And I think New York City is going to be hit very hard. And I think the terrorists are going to wreak havoc on New York City. I'm very concerned about your safety and welfare.

Because I firmly believe that roughly 5% of the illegal immigrants coming across the borders are being brought in as terrorists. And they're being shipped to every major city in the U.S. to create chaos and havoc. And they're going to terrorize our nation.

Okay, just to be clear, there is no evidence to support these claims. And frankly, it's pretty hard to hear him spew these xenophobic ideas. When you say all this kind of stuff, to me it sounds... Not so. Right? It sounds nuts. Yeah, I totally get it. I guess what we probably can agree on is that this is not...

the publicly held belief. This is not like the sort of agreed upon truth amongst most people, right? Would you agree on that? Yeah, correct. So in that, it seems like the people that are in your life just don't buy into this. I'm wondering, how do you know that you're right? Why are we all wrong? I don't like to look at it in those terms. That's

I think that's overly judgmental to come from the position I'm right and you're wrong, although a lot of people would view it that way. I prefer to look at it from the perspective of I have access to more information so I can see the bigger picture more clearly than other people can. Okay. It's kind of like the president of the U.S., right? He has access to a ton of information that you and I don't.

He can see the big picture because he has more information. He has more resources. Why do you believe that you have more resources? Because I believe God has gifted me with wisdom and discernment to discern between fact and fiction and read between the lines. My dad's belief in prophecy means that he thinks he can see the world as it really is, whereas non-believers like me cannot.

But here's what drives me nuts. My father can barely navigate the internet. He can't even figure out how to access his own email from his laptop. So when he talks about having access to more information, it sounds less like wisdom from God and more like delusion. Looking back over his list about treason and martial law, I'm still surprised that this is what he wants to put his money on. What happens if you're wrong? Just what I said. I will pay you $1,000 for each one of these 10 things that are wrong.

But I mean, I think the way you've laid it out here, there'll be a pretty clear case of like who's right and who's wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I think it will be very black and white. And if you are wrong. Then you're $10,000 richer. Yeah. But look, I'm not. This isn't just about the money. Right. I would like to make some positive strides for our family. Well, I think that.

Once you see that I haven't been duped by AI and social media and the algorithms, I think you will gain a lot more respect for who I am and how I think and how I've come to believe. I do think for both of us, this is about respect. We each feel dismissed by the other and we're fighting to be heard. And I'm not going to lie, it's also about winning.

Because at the end of the day, these predictions will either happen or they won't. Right. But when they do happen, you're going to go, wow, that's amazing. How did he know that? 100%. If and when they do happen, I will definitely say, wow, that is amazing. The other thing I want to have you say after each one of these is that, wow, dad, you were right and I was wrong.

Same goes for you then. Okay, absolutely. All right, deal. Happy to do it. So this bet, it was always about the opportunity it presented, a chance to shift my father's perspective. I picture his beliefs like a giant cruise ship, and I'm just trying to nudge its trajectory a couple of millimeters, knowing that with enough time, even that slight adjustment will land the ship at a completely different destination.

But when you're charting off course, it's hard to tell where you'll end up. And that's especially hard for the family. So like, let's say these things don't come true and he's willing to say like, I was wrong about these things. I don't feel like that would affect his beliefs around like me. Like even if he's right about everything else, I'm probably still going to be gay after that.

I need an endpoint. And so the endpoint is December 31st and that when January 1st comes around, things have to change. If you're wrong, what happens to you? What happens to your beliefs? What happens to me? That's a good question because I haven't even entertained that idea because I feel 100% confident this is going to happen. So I can't really answer that question

You'll have to interview me at the end of the year. As we go at the end of the year. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I think that's all I have. Okay. All right. Fair enough. All right. I love you. I got to run. All right. Love you too. Good, good conversation. Good chatting. All right. Bye. Coming up on alternate realities. I try to figure out how my dad got here. See things from his side.

Zach, I could never talk to you about this again, have great times with you, great conversations, and pretend I didn't believe any of this anymore. So just suppressing it. That's what I feel pressured to do when I have these kind of conversations with you. This is Alternate Realities, episode one of three. And heads up, the next two episodes are available right now. Thank you for listening.

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On the Embedded Podcast. No. It's called denying a freedom of speech. It's misinformation. Like so many Americans, my dad has gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. These are not conspiracy theories. These are reality. I spent the year following him down the rabbit hole, trying to get him back. Listen to alternate realities on the Embedded Podcast from NPR. All episodes available now.