Why do so many people still believe the moon landings were a hoax? – podcast

On the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that first put humans on the moon, Richard Godwin explores why conspiracy theories about the landings still endure. Plus Geoff Andrews on his part in the Guardian’s lunar front page from 1969 – and how he missed the famous quote

It took 400,000 Nasa employees and contractors to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 – but only one man to spread the idea that it was all a hoax. His name was Bill Kaysing.

It began as “a hunch, an intuition”, before turning into “a true conviction” – that the US lacked the technical prowess to make it to the moon (or, at least, to the moon and back). Richard Godwin tells Anushka Asthana how Kaysing’s self-published 1976 pamphlet We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle sought to provide evidence for his conviction by means of grainy photocopies and ludicrous theories. Yet somehow he established a few perennials that are kept alive to this day in Hollywood movies and Fox News documentaries, Reddit forums and YouTube channels.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YW4GdA