Weekend Edition gets a lot of emails that start like this: "Why don't you tell the truth about ..." The Kennedy assassination, Sept. 11, the Lincoln assassination, the birthplace of Barack Obama or John McCain, Pearl Harbor, Area 51, black helicopters or the moon landing — fill in the blank however you like.

Conspiracy theories are everywhere, and they're more widely believed than many people think. In The United States of Paranoia, Jesse Walker, a senior editor at Reason magazine, suggests that paranoid political arguments are as American as apple pie. Walker tells NPR's Scott Simon about the popularity of conspiracy theories, the long history of paranoia and how pop culture is shaped by revelations of real conspiracies.

ronintetsuro, wanted to make sure you saw this piece as I know it's a topic of interest for you.