Category: Projects

Read My New Piece for CNN

1/25/2023

I wrote an opinion column for CNN about the recent controversy over museums renaming mummies with more person-centered language. I survey briefly the history of displaying dead bodies and analyze a bit what kinds of messages these displays send. You can read the complete story at CNN: "Why it’s time to stop displaying human bodies in museums."

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Read My New Piece on "Ancient Apocalypse" in "The New Republic"

12/5/2022

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British journalist Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse has become a surprise cultural phenomenon since its November 11 release on Netflix. The archaeology-themed series garnered an impressive 24.62 million hours of viewing in its first week of release, landing in the streaming service’s top 10 in 31 countries. It has also sparked unparalleled outrage from archaeologists and journalists, resulting in dozens of think pieces decrying the show’s many false claims and illogical arguments, analyzing its racist implications, and declaring the series everything from “fishy” to the “most dangerous” show on Netflix. “Why has this been allowed?” asked Britain’s The Guardian. The answer to that seemed pretty obvious: Hancock’s son, Sean Hancock, is Netflix’s senior manager for unscripted originals.

Hancock’s show speculates that a crashing comet destroyed Atlantis, or a similar lost civilization, 13,000 years ago in a series of events remembered as the Great Flood. Ancient monuments and wisdom are therefore the legacy of Atlantis’s survivors, not Earth’s diverse peoples and cultures. Explaining all the reasons Hancock is wrong would take a whole book. Fortunately, I’ve written two. Reader, he is wrong...

Read the rest in The New Republic!

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Project Update

12/1/2022

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I am sure you noticed that I have been quieter than usual this week. That's because a magazine has commissioned me to write an article, so I spent my free time this week working on that project. The good news is that the piece is done and filed. If all goes well, it should run in the coming days, and I will post a link once it does.

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Queer Numbers: Tracing the Origins of a Misleading Statistic

5/2/2022

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As part of the research for the new book I am crafting out of parts of the one that didn’t garner much interest, I have been researching government persecution of queer people in the postwar era. In so doing, I came across a rather dramatic fact that led me down a statistical rabbit-hole as I hunted the source of a seemingly dramatic fact that turned out not be what it seemed.

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Read My New Article in "Esquire"

9/30/2021

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On the anniversary of James Dean's death, I am proud to share my new piece for Esquire on the actor's life and legacy.

In 1956, Esquire magazine ran a story blasting James Dean and helping to shape public opinion about him for decades. I am honored to be the one to write a rebuttal in the same publication 65 years later. Thanks go to my brilliant editor at Esquire, Kelly Stout, for making this piece great, and special thanks to Esquire editor-at-large Dave Holmes for supporting my story and making this article possible.

Read it here: “It’s Time to Let James Dean Be the Queer Icon He Is.”

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My New Magazine Article Will Be Published Soon

5/20/2021

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Undoubtedly, you saw the news this week, from the ongoing national media stories about UFOs, to Sen. Martin Heinrich’s declaration that he believes recently leaked Navy UFO videos depict craft not of this world, to the launch of UFOPAC, the first-ever UFO political action committee, run by Gavin Newsom’s spokesman and a Republican consultant to push for UFO transparency.

I am pleased to announce that I will have an article on the current UFO flap in The New Republic in the coming days. I will post a link as soon as the article is available.

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What's in a Name? "The Incredible Hulk" and the Secret Meaning of "Bruce"

4/13/2021

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I have a new piece about the 1978 Incredible Hulk TV series and its weird connection to homophobic language policing over on my Substack newsletter. Read it here.

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Join Me on Substack

3/27/2021

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Because so much traffic has moved away from blogs and toward new platforms, particularly Substack and its competitors, I launched a Substack newsletter channel this past week to provide an additional outlet for my writing. I cross-posted my previous blog post there and received nearly four times the traffic as I did here on my blog. Given the disparity in audience size, for the time being I will be cross-posting archaeology and alien content both here on my blog and on my Substack newsletter. I will also offer on Substack cultural pieces that are not directly relevant to the topics that are covered here on my blog. You can read a Substack-exclusive article, "The Curse of the Black Widow Spyder," about the recent recovery of a piece of James Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder here.

If you subscribed to my old newsletter prior to Wednesday, you have already been invited to subscribe to my Substack newsletter. If not, you can visit jasoncolavito.substack.com to sign up.

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Proofreading and Indexing "Legends of the Pyramids"

2/24/2021

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I wanted to let you know briefly that I will not likely be posting much for the next week. The publisher of my Legends of the Pyramids has returned the typeset manuscript to me for proofreading and indexing. This is a time-consuming process, and they have given me far less time than comfortable to complete this work while also doing my actual job. Since I need to complete at least 15 pages per day to make the deadline, I will not have time to write blog posts on top of everything else. I hate indexing, but I loathe the idea of hiring an indexer who will charge more money to index the book than I will ever make back in royalties.

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My Book Now Has a Working Title

1/17/2021

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After some final discussions with the last people on my team to weigh in on the title for my new book, we have come to an agreement on the working title we will be using:

The Rebel & the Fear: James Dean, Flying Saucers, and the Great Cold War Panic

Yes, it's different than the one I though we would be going with just this morning, but I like it. It recalls the sort of melodramatic titles that 1950s movies had: Rebel without a Cause, All That Heaven Allows, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc. The next step will be sending the proposal and manuscript to editors, which should take place this week.

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