James K. Lambert, just the facts, ma’am:
- Born and raised in Minnesota.
- MFA in Radio, TV & Film, with a focus on nonfiction filmmaking. University of North Texas, Denton.
- BA in Film Studies and American Studies. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
- Former Program Chair at the Minneapolis Media Institute.
- More than a dozen years of experience teaching about film, mass media, and history.
- Best known for the feature documentary, Conspiracy Theorists Lie (2015).
Listen Up and I’ll Tell You a Story
I came of age in the 1970s as the son of two musicians, raised in Minnesota, now a husband, father, documentarian, writer, and college instructor. But labels hardly tell the story. Like most people worth listening to, I’ve been shaped by a range of unexpected experiences, including a formative lesson on the stranger side of human behavior.
Back in the early ’90s, I worked for Mark Foster at his CD-ROM company, Quanta Press, where I had a front-row seat to an unforgettable chapter: Mark’s decision to escape his financial ruin by having two men stage his suicide as a murder. It worked out in part—he got the escape he wanted—but the police saw through it, and his accomplices went to jail for manslaughter. Not exactly a typical business learning curve, but the kind of introduction that shapes a person’s view of people, motives, and truth in all its gray areas.
Those questions have followed me ever since. Why do people do what they do? Believe what they believe? My documentaries and writing tackle history and the human condition from perspectives people don’t always consider. I don’t fit into anyone’s neat little box; I’m more of a “plague on both your houses” kind of guy.
One of my main concerns these days is the rise of disinformation and conspiracy theories. My work, especially Conspiracy Theorists Lie (2015), has earned me some detractors among those invested in distortion. But that only fuels me to keep going.
I am currently working on, The Fake History of America, a nonfiction book that confronts our myths head-on. I also write for my History Think Blog, and I’ve developed a History Think chatbot to make history more accessible (and maybe more fun). If the past can teach us anything, it’s that truth has a way of surviving; even if it’s unpopular at first.
If you’d like to keep up with my work, join my newsletter, And Now For Something Completely Different. I keep each update short and to the point, with just a little rambling. You can also find an archive of past issues here on this site.
