Conspiracy theory books and videos. Granted, I do try be somewhat rigorous in what I might be willing to believe and what looks like total garbage, but I do think some conspiracies are real. When I look at a theory, I try to look for both evidence and a clear motive. If the there’s a clear motive behind some event, it might be worth looking to see if there’s any additional evidence. If there’s plenty of evidence but no clear motive, it might be worth digging a little more to see if something was overlooked. If you have both, then a theory might be at least somewhat viable.

An example of a theory that has both a clear motive and plenty of supporting evidence would be CIA involvement in the JFK assassination. An example of a theory that really has neither (though some poor “evidence” may exist) would be that the CIA invented AIDS/HIV. An example of a theory that (to me at least) has a clear motive, but not enough existing evidence to really consider it viable, would be Bush/Saudi direction of the 9/11 attacks.

There are also some conspiracy theories I come across that are less discussed, but still extremely interesting. One of those is the theory that Obama’s mother was CIA (she worked for a number of CIA front groups) and Obama himself was basically raised into a natsec community along with others like Tim Geithner. Another is the theory that the US, with the help of Japanese scientists from unit 731, used germ warfare against Korean and Chinese troops during the Korean War in violation of international law.

So I’m a little careful talking too loudly about this stuff lest people write me off as a crank, but I do think there are plenty of conspiracy theories that may in fact be at least partly true, but haven’t yet been properly researched.