#027 - Conspiracy Epistemology: An Interview With Max Good

This week, we are grateful to welcome another guest to the pod - filmmaker and researcher Max Good. You may know him from his truly excellent (and we mean really, truly excellent) documentary "The Assassination and Mrs. Paine." If you don't, you would be wise to watch the film ASAP, available wherever fine films are streaming. In his movie, Max presents some of the last-recorded interviews with key witnesses and researchers around the JFK assassination including Ruth and Michael Paine, the bizarrely well-connected couple who famously hosted Marina and Lee Oswald in their Irving, Texas home in the lead-up to November 22, 1963.

In this episode, we discuss Max's movie, what it was like confronting spooked-up witnesses like Ruth Paine and CIA-connected author Priscilla Johnson McMillan (author of the pro-Warren Commission 1977 book, "Marina and Lee"), and the importance of family history in deep politics. But that's not nearly all.

We spend much of the conversation situating our collective truth-telling work in the broader historical and political context in which we live. We talk about the right-wing appropriation of "conspiracy" discourse, the encroachment of technofascist oligarchs into the reality of political conspiracies, and of course Trump's promised JFK disclosure. We also benefit from Max's sincerity and generosity of spirit as he reminds us to meet people where they are, take a kind approach to potential allies out there in the world, and keep our eyes on the ultimate goal of a true people's movement to reclaim the mantle of democracy while shunning the billionaire class and their cynical faux-populism.

We hope it will be both an educational listen, and also one that balances off the bleak picture of our present moment with some hopeful thoughts for a more humane future