THE MOOD OF THE CROWD gathered alongside a highway just
outside Denver is euphoric. Around 75 people stand in the brush
beneath a roadside billboard with their phones out, filming one
another and tossing around a beach ball that looks like a globe.
Several of them are livestreaming the
event, part of the kickoff for the Flat
Earth International Conference, the
largest ever summit of its kind. A drone
buzzes overhead, collecting footage.
Every few minutes, a passing car slows
down to honk, and the crowd erupts into
cheers. The billboard reads: “GOOGLE
FLAT EARTH CLUES.”76 FALL 2019 • POPSCI.COM
YouTube, a Google property, with
something close to reverence.
A man named Robert Foertsch ap-
proaches me. He wears a black T-shirt
and carries a large reflective sign,
both urging people to “YOUTUBE
TRUTH.” “Should I warm you up?”
he asks. It’s a brisk afternoon, and he
helpfully tilts the panel so the sun’s
rays hit me. “I used to drink vodka
for breakfast and smoke cigarettes in
the shower,” the homeschooling dad
from South Carolina tells me. First
he found Jesus. Then, four years ago,
came the conversion he believes was
more consequential: He realized he
was living on a flat disc.
I have flown to Denver to learn
why a growing number of people
could believe this, despite thou-
sands of years of science showing
that our planet is spherical. In the
fourth century B.C., Greek scholar
Aristotle observed that Earth always
casts a round shadow on the moon
during a lunar eclipse. He con-
cluded the planet is round, and for
the following two millennia, peo-
ple mostly accepted that as truth. It
took until the 1800s for the notion
of a flat Earth to take hold in limited
circles— and until the past few years,
aided largely by YouTube, for people
to reject the globe in large numbers.
The movement’s rise tracks with
the emergence of more-dangerous
conspiracy theories, like the idea
that the Sandy Hook Elementary
School shooting is a hoax.
Like almost everyone I meet over
the coming three days, Foertsch
switched to flat Earth ideology as
a result of clicking on a YouTube
video. That clip led to another, and
before long, he was a believer. Early
in his conversion, Foertsch came
to Flat Earth Clues, a 14-part series
by Mark Sargent, a baby-faced
man from South Whidbey Island,
Washington, whom those outside
the movement might know as the
star of the 2018 documentary Behind
the Curve. The videos in Flat EarthThis stretch of road has few landmarks
beyond a Best Buy distribution center, so
to direct attendees here, conference or-
ganizers gave them the coordinates on
Google Earth. People seem unbothered
by the apparent contradiction. They
owe the rapid spread of their belief that
Earth is flat to the technologies of the
so-called globular world. Some speak of