Zach Mack and his dad try to mend a rift between them in a very unusual way. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira Glass introduces Zach Mack’s story. (1 minute)Part One: Zach and his father enter into an agreement that could change their entire relationship. (9 minutes)Part Two: Zach’s mother and sister weigh in on the agreement. (28 minutes)Part Three: With the year coming to an end, someone is going to have to say, “You were right, and I was wrong.” Will it change anything? (16 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.
Chapter 1: What is the unusual agreement between Zach and his dad?
It doesn't get solved, even if they also want things to change. We're devoting our entire show today to a story like that. It's from Zach Mack. He's a reporter. And the story is about him and his dad and how they both wanted to mend a rift that had grown between them that lasted for years, but they couldn't figure out how until Zach's dad offered a very surprising way out.
That's going to be our whole show today. His dad's unusual solution and how it played out That's all I'm going to say for now. From WBEZ Chicago, this is American Life. I'm Eric Glass. And with that, I turn things over to Zach.
This all started about a year ago. My father called and left me this message.
Hey, Zach. Dad again. Good conversation last night. Hey, I didn't remember to tell you this because I was kind of tired, but they're going to shut us down again, and it's going to be a worse shutdown than than 2020 because of this EMP, all the supply lines are going to be disrupted.
So you really want to store up two months worth of food and water because they probably won't be able to pump water throughout the city because that's all controlled by computers and electronics. And the EMP is going to shut down everything electronic.
My dad's talking about something called an electromagnetic pulse, EMP for short, which I only know about because it's what George Clooney uses in the movie Ocean's Eleven to pull off the casino heist.
What's a pinch?
A pinch is a device which creates like a cardiac arrest for any broadband electrical circuitry, an electromagnetic pulse which shuts down any power source within its blast radius.
You should buy enough water.
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Chapter 2: Why did Zach's dad propose a $10,000 bet?
As always, he didn't agree. But what he did next surprised me. Dad texted me a photo of a sheet of paper where, in his barely legible cursive, he had written out a list of 10 predictions. 10 things that he was positive would all take place sometime in 2024, assuring me that when all of these things happened, I would see once and for all that he was right.
At the bottom of the page was a challenge to a bet for $10,000. And let me just say, Dad and I are not big gamblers, nor are we rich. 10K is easily more money than either of us has ever wagered. Looking over the list, I was a combination of surprised, horrified, and also, it was a little hard to take seriously. I immediately called him up to discuss the terms of the bet.
Do you have the list in front of you? Yeah, yeah. Can you walk me through the 1 through 10? I just want to add, each one, I'll probably have a couple clarifying questions. Yeah, absolutely. Keep in mind, this call took place back in January 2024. Number one, Obama...
will be found guilty of treason in 2024. So like by a court?
Yes. Okay. Not the court of public opinion. Correct. Okay.
And then number two? Oh, yeah. Biden will be found guilty of treason in 2024. Just treason for something specific? For selling all those secrets that he had in the back of his Corvette.
I don't know if that's a joke. I'm not sure.
It's partially a joke, but it's also real.
It went on like this, all political. Dad's other predictions were that Nancy Pelosi would also be convicted of treason. Same for Bill and Hillary Clinton, who would go down for murder as well. That Trump would be reinstated without an election and cleared of all charges. That Biden would be removed from office. Same for both the governor and mayor of New York.
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Chapter 3: How is Zach's family reacting to his dad's beliefs?
Well, not even in the Civil War. This is going to be the biggest shakeup to ever hit the United States of America and the world at large.
I mean, I think the way you've laid it out here, there'll be a pretty clear case of, like, who's right and who's wrong.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it will be very black and white. And if you are wrong... Then you're $10,000 richer.
Yeah, but look, this isn't just about the money, right? I would like to make some positive strides for our family.
Well, I think that once you see that I haven't been duped by AI and social media and the algorithms, I think you will gain a lot more respect for... who I am and how I think and how I've come to believe. The other thing I want to have you say after each one of these is that, wow, dad, you were right and I was wrong. Same goes for you then. Okay, absolutely. All right.
Deal. Happy to do it. And so our strange bet was on. I saw Dad's challenge as an opening. Instead of just arguing until the end of time, we were actually going to settle this. And now we had a deadline. New Year's 2025. The moment I saw his proposal, I knew I had him beat. And for the very first time, he'd have to admit he was wrong.
All I had to do was wait 12 months, and once he decisively lost, I figured he'd be more open to my version of the truth. And maybe I could pull him back to reality a bit. And the timing for the bet couldn't be better because his beliefs were starting to tear our family apart.
Coming up, Zach calls his mom, who has some news of her own. Stay with us. Support for This American Life comes from Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform with features like design intelligence, combining two decades of design expertise with AI technology.
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Chapter 4: What role does prophecy play in Zach's dad's beliefs?
wrote him a long letter i wrote him like a two or three page letter and mailed it to him um because i wanted him to be able to read the whole letter so i could finish what i really wanted to say to him without interruption and i said you know dad i love you i want the best for you you know i'm not trying to say anything horrible or damaging or critical about you but
Your whole family is concerned about you. Can't you see this? Can't you recognize that we all would like to see you live to a ripe old age? Because I said, if you continue on this path, I don't know when you're going to die, but I know you're going to die. So...
Not long after this, I was 10 years old at the time, my parents called my sister and me into the kitchen to tell us something. But before they said anything, I already knew. My grandfather was dead. His vehicle veered off the road and flipped over. When I think about my grandfather, I think about how what caused his death may have been stubbornness, a refusal to listen to those around him.
He was 68 years old, the same age my father was when he proposed our bed. As the year pressed on, we continued discussing dad's life and the things he'd come to believe. Turns out a lot of his predictions were coming from a single source online. And something you should know about my father is that he really struggles with technology. He can barely navigate the internet.
He can't even figure out how to access his own email account from his laptop. Around 2019, dad got an iPad and that felt like a turning point. It wasn't long until he started saying weird things. One time I was home visiting and we got into it because he was trying to tell me that the government was controlling Facebook from the very beginning and that Mark Zuckerberg was just a pawn.
And when the pandemic hit, it felt like the perfect storm. Like so many of us, Dad went searching for answers.
I was Googling around trying to find someone who I thought was reputable, reliable, and truly plugged into God. I was trying to find someone who was a legitimate prophet, because there's a lot of false prophets out there.
What Dad found was a lot of conspiracies, of course, but also the next evolution of his faith. During the pandemic, dad came to believe strongly in prophecy, the idea that God still speaks through intermediaries. When you're talking about how God speaks today and you believe it's through prophets, that is a divisive within Christianity, right? That is a divisive thought?
Very divisive.
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Chapter 5: How does Zach attempt to understand his dad better?
My fact checker wants me to point out here that we don't actually know Allen Iverson's real height or Netanyahu's height or whether or not Saddam Hussein had body doubles. But this is the joy of debating a conspiracy theorist. Inevitably, you run out of patience or just don't know the facts well enough to continue pushing back.
So whenever I debate Dad, it feels like I can never do enough research or compile enough evidence. Later in the summer, I was reading a science journal and saw a possible way around that.
This research group was doing some experiments where they had some conspiracy theorists engage in conversations with AI chatbots, which had all the facts, could push back gently, and unlike me, had infinite patience. The data on its effectiveness looked pretty promising, so I reached out and actually got them to program something special just for my dad to try, which he did for several minutes.
To be honest, it didn't say anything that I hadn't already heard.
Swing and a miss, but the work continues. In August, Dad got it in his head that Kamala Harris was going to be replaced as a Democratic nominee at the convention. And out of nowhere, he made a second political conspiracy bet, this time with my mom. The terms. If Mom lost, she'd have to give up, as he put it, all mainstream media for the rest of the year.
And if he lost, he'd have to stop watching Julie Green entirely, his favorite prophet. Much to mom and I's delight, he lost that bet a few days later when Harris officially accepted the nomination.
Your father's in his silk robe and he's got a cocktail.
Yeah, drink up, buddy. So dad, so no more Julie Green till the end of the year?
Correct.
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Chapter 6: What impact do conspiracy theories have on Zach's family dynamics?
She began to fill me in. The night before, Mom and Dad were talking about the state of the family over dinner.
And I told him that... He was welcome to come Christmas Eve, but that likely Christmas day, you and I would do something by ourselves. And he got very upset, and we... had a, I mean, I can't remember exactly all the parts of the conversation, but I said the, the reasoning way, how I got to this place was the situation with Kira. And then, you know, I, I was tolerant of his religious journey.
Um, I can be tolerant of political differences, but when he started following the, um, The YouTube shit.
Profit.
The profit stuff. And and what I feel is fake news and all of the doom and gloom and generators and flats of water and granola bars all over the place. I said, I just it. I can't. I just can't anymore. A 40-year history is just not enough for me. We are already living very, very separate lives.
Separate realities.
Yeah, and separate realities. I didn't say that. He said that he's not going to change his religious viewpoints. He's not going to change. And then I just said it. Then I just don't see, I don't see a path where this marriage can continue. I don't see a path for me. And what did he say? He sort of didn't really respond.
After 40 years of marriage, they had agreed to separate and for my dad to move out. Dad's beliefs around Kira, the conspiracies, it had just become too much.
I'm embarrassed to say the situation with Kira wasn't the one that knocked it over. But I was ever hopeful that he would come to a reality about that. But what I realized is that... He's beyond redemption at this point. There's this little piece of me that is like, you have this conversation with him on January 1st. His list is debunked.
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