Where Geography, Physics, and Sanity Go to Die There’s something uniquely humbling about realizing that in an age where we can send robots to Mars, track hurricanes from space, and map the molecular structure of proteins, there are still people — allegedly literate — who believe Earth is shaped like a cosmic frisbee. Flat Earth … Read more
If there’s one thing more enduring than human stupidity, it’s the deep, desperate hope that someone, somewhere, has figured out how to escape it — preferably by building a machine out of junkyard parts and disappearing into the swirling folds of time. Enter time travel: the grand, glittering promise that somewhere out there, beyond the … Read more
Every few years, Nostradamus trends again. Someone cracks open The Prophecies, finds a quatrain about “great trembling under the sky of the seventh month,” and declares it proof that Nostradamus foresaw everything from 9/11 to last Thursday’s gas station sushi incident. It never fails. Nostradamus wrote hundreds of vague, cryptic four-line verses — allegedly predicting … Read more
There are cryptids you can almost respect. Bigfoot, for example — majestic, mysterious, blurry in every photo like he’s permanently on the run from copyright infringement. The Yeti, Bigfoot’s more sophisticated older brother. Even the Chupacabra, Mexico’s favorite demonic desert creature. But then there’s the Jersey Devil, whose mythology pales in comparison to its cryptid … Read more
There was a time when looking at the Great Pyramid of Giza could fill a person with proper awe — the kind of admiration you should feel when you realize that, five thousand years ago, without cranes, GPS, or a single MBA consultant, human beings dragged two-ton stones across a desert, stacked them with supernatural … Read more
If you ever feel underachieving, remember: two thousand years ago, a group of ancient Peruvians spent decades carving enormous pictures into the desert floor — and modern humans immediately assumed it must have been aliens. The Nazca Lines — sprawling geoglyphs etched across the Nazca Desert — depict hummingbirds, monkeys, spiders, and a few abstract … Read more
If there’s one thing guaranteed to make me break out in a full-body rash of secondhand embarrassment, it’s the enduring, relentless, utterly unkillable myth of the Curse of King Tutankhamun’s Tomb. Ninety-nine years after Howard Carter cracked open a Pharaoh’s dusty front door, we are still being subjected to whispered campfire stories about vengeful ancient … Read more
There’s a special circle of intellectual hell reserved for those who still believe that the world is secretly run by shape-shifting, blood-drinking, dimension-hopping Lizard People. Not content with being confused by economics, governance, biology, or basic probability, these brave soldiers of stupidity have instead decided that every figure of authority — every politician, every monarch, … Read more
There are many glittering examples of mass delusion in human history, but few sparkle quite so tragically — or quite so stupidly — as the great Fairy Photograph Scandal of the early 20th century. In 1917, two young girls from Cottingley, England produced a series of photographs allegedly showing themselves frolicking with tiny, winged fairies. … Read more
There’s nothing quite as inspiring — or insulting — as the ancient astronaut theory: the belief that early civilizations could not possibly have built pyramids, temples, or intricate road systems without the intervention of extraterrestrial babysitters. The premise, for those unfamiliar: aliens visited Earth thousands of years ago, uplifted our ancestors, taught them how to … Read more