Stephen Curry said the moon landing was faked, but let's all pretend he didn't

Warriors player Stephen Curry during Golden State Warriors' practice in Oakland, California, on Monday, Nov. 26, 2018. Warriors player Stephen Curry during Golden State Warriors' practice in Oakland, California, on Monday, Nov. 26, 2018. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Stephen Curry said the moon landing was faked, but let's all pretend he didn't 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

Stephen Curry says he does not believe humans have been to the moon, a stance which is clearly unsupported by facts and hopefully just a joke.

Curry made the proclamation on The Ringer's podcast "Winging It" with teammate Andre Iguodala and hosts Vince Carter and Kent Bazemore; you can hear the exchange around the 46-minute mark. There's some talking over each other that makes it hard to hear, but when the discussion turns to the moon landing, almost everyone seems to agree we've never been there. In the chorus of moon landing rejections, Curry clearly says, "They're gonna come get us. I don't think so either."

Co-host Annie Finberg gives Curry a chance to reconsider, asking, "You don't think so?"

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"Nuh uh," he responds. You can almost hear the groans from Warriors fans echoing in the background.

"You gotta do the research on Stanley Kubrick," Bazemore adds.

Kubrick is a common rallying point for people who ascribe to moon landing conspiracy theories. The story goes that NASA was desperate to make it to the moon, so they hired the famed director to stage and film much of the Apollo 11 and 12 missions. There is no evidence for this.

On the other side of the scale is a mountain of proof, including the fact you can literally see astronauts' footprints on the surface of the moon.

If he's serious, Curry is hardly the only person to question the moon landing. It's one of the most popular and enduring conspiracy theories in American popular culture, and research shows belief in conspiracy theories is one way people attempt to make sense of a chaotic world. According to a Washington Post story from earlier this year:

"Assigning meaning to what happens has helped humans to thrive as a species, and conspiracy theories are internally cohesive stories that 'help us to understand the unknown whenever things happen that are fearful or unexpected,' said Jan-Willem van Prooijen, a social psychologist at Vrije University in Amsterdam. For some believers, the sense of comfort and clarity such stories bring can override the question of their truth value."

The belief is so persistent that one moon debunker told Buzz Aldrin, to his face, that he'd participated in a hoax. Aldrin responded by punching the man.