"It seems that increasingly, people don't trust scientists and experts, or their motives," Douglas says.
I can heartily agree with this much!
This is actually a fun game.
Prove the earth is round without reliance on information from other sources...
Newtonian science.
I am not a flat-earther - The evidence for a round earth is contained in the different stars in southern skies, and in opposing seasons southern v northern hemispheres...
But I will submit that some of their evidences ring true - There is certainly something wrong with the math used to determine earth circumference. It is true that one can see way further than the circumference of the earth should allow... Boats out to sea with modern optics... Distances across water (water is self leveling) which defy that math:
I have seen the lights of Chicago at night from the other side of lake Michigan... Traveling toward them by sailboat, right to the docks... That is no mirage.
I have looked across Flathead lake on a clear summer morning from Bigfork bay to see the beach at Polson...
Both of the above, with my own eyes, which the math says cannot be true. But true it is.
Y'all are welcome to disabuse me of the notion, as I would like a reasoned answer.