Paranormal Women pt 3: From Blood Libel to Blue Beam
What did last year's drone mystery have to do with an antisemitic myth that won't die?
Medievalist and conspiracy scholar Elise Wang connects the dots between the West’s 900-year-old conspiracy theory playbook and the UFO psyops flooding TikTok today. She and Cristen also unravel the Battle of Los Angeles, hypersexual alien abduction tropes, and how conspiracy theories serve the powerful—not the paranoid.
guest:
Elise Wang is a 2024 - 2026 Carnegie Fellow, researcher and writer who specializes in the long history of conspiracy theories. A medievalist by training, her academic work focuses at the intersection of law, literature and history. She’s working on a book about the structure of conspiracy theories.
sources:
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Luo, Ya; Choi, Jin-A; Benton, Bond. Online Activity Related to ‘New Jersey Drones’ Increases by 1900% with “Fear” as the Dominant Emotion in 116,000 Social Media Posts. Montclair State University. 2025.
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