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Other times, needless to say, your imagination will be entirely wrong. There is no good reason to believe that white doctors injected black babies with HIV, for example, or that alien bodies have been concealed in Roswell. But even false beliefs have lessons to teach us. When a conspiracy story catches on, that says something about the anxieties and experiences of the people who believe it.

That Church's Chicken story, for example, emerged in a country with a long history of sterilizing low-income blacks without their consent, sometimes even without their knowledge. At the earliest point that the story is known to have circulated, some states still had sterilization laws on the books. The rumor was a fantasy, but it was also more than that. Like any form of folklore, it reflected the culture that created it.

So when you hear someone suggest, say, that Obama wasn't born in the United States, it's not enough to note that the evidence for the claim isn't there. It's worth considering what fears are afoot that allow such a story to find believers despite the facts. Something may be happening that we should not ignore, even if the form it takes happens to look absurd.