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I am currently knee-deep in revising and editing my manuscript for my publisher and on deadline for a forthcoming piece for a major media outlet, so I don't have the time to break down today's New York Times Magazine piece about the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis point-for-point. I will just observe that it is another entry in the Times' ongoing fascination with all things Graham Hancock and Ancient Apocalypse a year and a half after the show aired. I am not sure why the Times is still rehashing Ancient Apocalypse speculation, or spending so many words to say that the show's claims have no value but they want to hope they could be true anyway. I do recommend that you read the full piece, but the conclusion is sadly quite correct: People want to believe things that are just a bit beyond true to experience the frisson of transgressive excitement, and when these claims are repeated often enough, they become a maker of group identity, frequently in opposition to a perceived oppressive mainstream that has ill-served them: In a recent paper, two psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Spencer Mermelstein and Tamsin German, have argued that pseudoscientific beliefs, which range from the relatively harmless (astrology, dowsing) to the deeply malignant (eugenics, Holocaust denial), tend to find cultural success when they hit a sweet spot of strangeness: too outlandish, and the epistemological immune system will reject it; too banal, and no one passes it on. [...] The [Younger Dryas Comet Impact] hypothesis has already penetrated deeply, and perhaps indelibly, into the public imagination, seemingly on its way to becoming less a matter of truth than a matter of personal and group identity. Nobody I spoke with seemed to think it would go away soon, if ever.
I have often argued that the driving force behind ufology beliefs is primarily spiritual, an attempt to reenchant the world, reverse the damage Charles Darwin did to faith, and seek meaning in a literalized higher power, substituting aliens for angels in paying backhanded homage to the place of science as modern arbiter of truth. From the aliens-as-religion department comes two surprisingly blunt confirmations this week.
This week, various editions of Vogue magazine published a lengthy piece on the failed romance of James Dean and Pier Angeli, born Anna Maria Pierangeli. The original Italian article by journalist Giacomo Aricò, published on Wednesday, and the truncated English adaptation published on Friday contain a number of misrepresentations and errors that came from the telephone game of repetition and PR that passes for “celebrity” coverage in our media. But the broader purpose of the piece, as the author writes in Italian, is to deny that Dean was either homosexual or bisexual, a remarkable claim for a major magazine in 2024. Let’s take a look at some of the ways the Vogue pieces went wrong.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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