“Fake News” Went Viral After the Death of King James I

Alastair Bellany, chair of Rutgers University-New Brunswick’s history department, discusses how the death of one early-modern English king spurred a viral conspiracy theory that, through pamphlets and word of mouth, contributed to the execution of the next king – and whether parallels can be drawn to our own age of QAnon-fueled and politically driven lies about everything from vaccines to election integrity.