The Michael Knowles Show - April 10, 2026


Did We Go (Back) To The Moon？ Michael Knowles Investigates Artemis II


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

148.60172

Word count

1,355

Sentence count

95

Harmful content

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 NASA is going back to the moon, or, depending on your particular perspective, NASA is attempting
00:00:16.360 to go to the moon for the first time.
00:00:18.720 As the Artemis II launches into deep space and bangs a U-E around the moon, we will take
00:00:23.520 a trip down memory lunar lane and consider why we are so fascinated by Earth's favorite
00:00:30.140 at rock.
00:00:38.220 Since ancient times, man has looked up to the moon and thought, what is that?
00:00:43.660 Why is it different shapes sometimes?
00:00:46.240 And I wonder if I could get up there and walk on it.
00:00:50.100 Then in the 1950s, American scientists and foreign communists figured out how to use 0.69
00:00:55.160 rockets to explode our way into space. 0.88
00:00:58.820 We began to race the Soviets, and while they got into orbit first, we set our sights on 0.96
00:01:04.520 a higher, rockier goal. 0.93
00:01:06.500 We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they
00:01:12.400 are easy, but because they are hard.
00:01:15.320 In 1969, NASA launched Apollo 11,
00:01:18.220 the first mission to put men on the moon.
00:01:20.980 Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins
00:01:23.480 were strapped to the top of a Saturn V rocket,
00:01:26.340 then hurled toward the moon
00:01:27.960 using six and a half million pounds of kerosene
00:01:30.360 and liquid hydrogen fuel.
00:01:40.280 Four days and 13 hours later,
00:01:43.100 Armstrong set foot on the surface.
00:01:46.220 That's one small step for man,
00:01:49.160 one giant leap for mankind.
00:01:52.360 We went back five more times
00:01:54.280 with Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 17.
00:01:58.380 13 had a little bit of trouble so they didn't land,
00:02:00.700 but they did get a movie out of it.
00:02:03.020 Astronauts did experiments, played golf,
00:02:05.740 and a couple of times they even brought
00:02:07.300 a moon buggy with them.
00:02:09.080 It was at that point that everyone looked around
00:02:11.620 thought, okay, I think we're probably good with this for a while. Big budgets and waning public
00:02:17.220 interest ultimately shut down the Apollo program. Journeys to the moon changed from a lofty future
00:02:22.600 goal to a thing of the past. America had won the space race. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
00:02:29.120 became household names. Everyone seemed to look back fondly at the time the United States defied
00:02:35.260 the odds and accomplished what man had dreamt of for millennia. But the whole experience was so
00:02:41.800 incredible that some people began to doubt that it was credible. I believe that we didn't go to
00:02:47.820 the moon. So there was a documentary that came on on Fox. He might not have looked into it. I have.
00:02:52.500 No one went to the moon. I don't think we did. I think it was fake. In 1979, a former naval officer
00:02:59.200 named Bill Kaysing wrote a book subtly titled, We Never Went to the Moon, America's $30
00:03:05.960 Billion Swindle.
00:03:07.860 Four years after the final Apollo mission, Kaysing claimed that NASA simply did not have
00:03:12.760 the technology required to make it to the moon, that the entire operation was an elaborate
00:03:17.440 anti-Soviet propaganda hoax.
00:03:20.800 A small group of Americans began to examine the story closer and started to notice that
00:03:25.840 some things seemed a little strange.
00:03:29.860 Why aren't there any stars in the photos?
00:03:32.740 Do shadows appear from multiple light sources?
00:03:35.740 Why does the flag look like it's waving when there is no air on the moon?
00:03:39.820 One theory answered all of these questions.
00:03:43.780 The landing was fake.
00:03:46.080 It was filmed in a movie studio, possibly directed by Stanley Kubrick.
00:03:51.080 The conspiracy theories percolated for years among small numbers of weirdos,
00:03:55.340 mocked by polite society, which was delighted to gobble up the government slop story that they
00:04:01.420 had been fed, as the doubters would have it. But then the conspiracy theorists had an Apollo 8
00:04:07.040 moment of their own, the invention of the internet. I'm at the center of the web. In theory, I can
00:04:13.800 pull in information from any other point at the speed of light. All of a sudden, the people asking
00:04:19.420 questions about starless skies and wavy flags found an audience of millions of people eager
00:04:25.240 to listen to them. People started making whole online careers out of questioning the truth
00:04:29.840 of the Apollo missions. Then some other people made careers out of debunking those people.
00:04:42.620 Then a slightly smaller group of people made still smaller careers debunking the people
00:04:48.600 who were doing the debunking. People began to take sides. If you thought they were faked,
00:04:54.460 you're an idiot. If you thought they were real, you're a bigger idiot, and probably Jewish. 1.00
00:05:00.420 Everyone claimed secret knowledge. Esoterica abounded. Which brings us to today. Artemis II 1.00
00:05:07.660 took astronauts to deep space, around the moon and back, paving the way for future manned missions
00:05:13.020 to the surface. To many, this is a grand return, a triumphant message that we still possess the
00:05:19.800 skill and audacity to travel beyond this goodly frame, the Earth, into and beyond the brave
00:05:25.560 oar-hanging firmament, a mission that sets the stage for the future of space travel.
00:05:30.760 Others, however, will never be satisfied. Every frame will be analyzed, every assumption
00:05:36.760 questioned, every discrepancy will be evidence of another grand conspiracy.
00:05:43.080 Whoever you are, whatever you believe, everyone was waiting for this moment.
00:05:49.800 Two. One. Booster ignition.
00:05:58.520 Wow.
00:06:04.000 Unfortunately, NASA rejected my application to join the mission and see the evidence firsthand.
00:06:09.420 But they did invite me to come to Cape Canaveral for the launch.
00:06:12.880 I will admit, even though I am pretty Apollo-pilled, you know, I think it happened,
00:06:18.240 I have gone down the internet rabbit holes.
00:06:21.740 Now, of course, the question is just where are they going to ditch that rocket ship, you know,
00:06:26.220 so that they can pretend to go to the moon and, you know, I don't know, get on a boat or something.
00:06:29.200 No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I think that's real.
00:06:31.320 There have been several multi-hour-long blocks in which I was convinced that the whole thing was a big hoax.
00:06:39.100 I made it my duty not just to report, but to investigate.
00:06:41.940 For the benefit of all mankind, I would use my access to try to answer the truth of this
00:06:47.860 supposed launch.
00:06:48.860 Hey, what's up?
00:06:49.860 What's going on?
00:06:50.860 I arrived, and immediately set out to inspect the rocket up close, at which point NASA informed
00:06:56.460 me that I would be stationed three and a half miles away.
00:07:00.020 Something about safety, or whatever.
00:07:02.060 Suspicious?
00:07:03.060 Well, call me what you will, just don't call me late for dinner.
00:07:06.660 At the very least, I saw and felt a very large rocket go very high in the air.
00:07:14.640 If anything is going to the moon, I am confident that it is that.
00:07:20.280 From my first-hand experience, I thought the case was closed.
00:07:23.940 And then I opened X.
00:07:25.540 Look at this.
00:07:26.540 They're escaping through the side.
00:07:28.540 I enjoyed watching.
00:07:29.540 What is this?
00:07:30.540 Michael, go touch the grass.
00:07:32.020 It looks like a green screen.
00:07:33.140 Okay.
00:07:34.140 You know what?
00:07:35.140 Fine.
00:07:36.140 I did not intend to take any hard lines on this subject today.
00:07:40.440 This may come back to bite me when the truth of the universe is hopefully revealed to me after the particular judgment.
00:07:46.960 But I think that those guys and that lady and that Canadian went to the moon.
00:07:53.960 And that is very, very cool. 1.00
00:07:56.640 We're so used to the general incompetence and perfidy of our decadent, degenerate culture
00:08:03.320 that we doubt that people can do important, impressive things.
00:08:07.160 It's hard to believe because it is incredible.
00:08:10.200 Some apparently will never be convinced.
00:08:12.640 Once we have the moon base up and running, there will be Twitter sleuths breaking down
00:08:17.280 the doors of every movie studio, which is fine by me because Hollywood is Gomorrah by
00:08:22.360 the sea.
00:08:23.360 meantime, though, America is going back to the moon.
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