"Now Voyager" Publishes Joint Profile of Graham Hancock and Flint Dibble

​Now Voyager, a new magazine for longform journalism, published a new 8,000-word story about Graham Hancock’s and Flint Dibble’s 4.5-hour-long debate on The Joe Rogan Experience in 2024. “Bones of Contention,” by freelance culture and entertainment journalist Chantel Tattoli, who frequently writes for the New York Times, provides biographies of both men, a brief account of their debate, and short coda about the new projects both men undertook afterward. I feel like, given the length of the story and the convoluted path it took to publication (it is believed to be the story that compelled Hancock to appear on a recent podcast to defend himself), there should be more to say about it. But there is nothing new in the story, certainly nothing to justify spending $160 for an annual subscription to Now Voyager, or even $7 for the article. Far from the devastating portrait Hancock feared, it’s a fairly straightforward recital of what most of my readers already know.

My biggest problem with the article is that it lacked a strong sense of purpose. Tattoli never quite decided if the article should be a tick-tock of the lead up to a titanic podcast clash (which might have been dramatically compelling with stronger reporting), a cultural evaluation of the lost civilization theme, or a meditation on the question of who represents “truth” in the twenty-first century. As a result, it isn’t really much of anything at all.
 
Tattoli is strongest in providing biographies of Hancock and Dibble, though much of the information is well-known. In Hancock’s case, he tried to get ahead of the elements that might have surprised readers—particularly some of his father’s more unpleasant behavior—by telling the same stories, in nearly the same words, on the Diary of CEO podcast. Tattoli does a good job of tracing both men’s paths toward representing their respective sides of the Atlantis question and the role that their respective upbringings played in shaping their worldviews.
 
However, where Tattoli walks up to insight, she never quite achieves the goal. She discusses, for instance, the similarities between Graham Hancock’s books and those of Ignatius Donnelly. She says that Hancock “discovered” Donnelly in the late 1980s and that “Hancock had found a soul brother.” However, whether due to authorial oversight or editorial negligence, no proof supports these statements, and it is unclear whether Hancock actually believed this or whether Tattoli is speaking metaphorically. We know from the introduction to Fingerprints of the Gods, where Hancock name-checks Donnelly as an inspiration, that he read him, but it would have been nice to have in his own words or from evidence exactly how he felt about Donnelly. As best I can tell, Tattoli never asked and extrapolated two paragraphs about Donnelly from that single sentence in Fingerprints.
 
Similarly, throughout the piece there is an overreliance on previously published interviews, giving the story a dated, half-hearted feeling. Tattoli met with Hancock in person and spent the day with him at Stonehenge, and yet most of what we hear from him in the story comes from other interviews and previously published writings. Since Dibble has much less on record, his half of the story is more clearly rooted in the day they spent together in Athens.
 
Despite the article’s great length, it is oddly hollow. Tattoli’s account of the Rogan debate contains no fresh insights. There are no interviews with Rogan or his staff, very little reference to statistics about viewership, no real reporting into what went on behind the scenes. It’s mostly just a summary of the video as seen on YouTube. — No, that’s not quite right. It talks about the debate without really getting into the weeds of claims involved. Throughout the story, Tattoli references specific claims and bits of evidence, but she paints no overarching picture of the evidentiary case or its underpinnings—particularly what Hancock considers his strongest suit, the use of myths and legends. (Despite Tattoli framing the argument as Hancock vs. archaeology, his books are as much about history, mythology, and folklore as they are about archaeological evidence.) Compare, for example, my review of Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods where I outline the argument and where it goes wrong, showing how Hancock assembles the pieces and how the house of cards collapses under its own weight. Granted, we are writing for vastly different audiences, but without that kind of granular understanding of the intricacies of the evidence, the piece can’t help but portray Hancock as more or less the equal of the archaeology he condemns.
 
It's clear that Tattoli thinks Hancock is wrong and a crank, but the article was far from a full-throated condemnation of pretenders to science. She devoted too much space to personality to do more than sketch the actual stakes involved and why it is that so many are attracted to epic fantasies about the past, and why they care so passionately about an imaginary lost civilization. “While Hancock’s beliefs have not, on balance, changed much since the nineties,” she concludes, “the collective consciousness has edged closer and closer to his frame of mind. In the United States, media and science literacy has collapsed, replaced by the ‘do your own research’ mentality of Facebook antivaxxers, and the valuation of amateurs ‘just asking questions’ above experts.” This is the kind of assertion that ought to be proven from the article, not simply accepted as a truism.
 
All in all, “Bones of Contention” is not a bad article, but also not a good one. It might serve to introduce readers of longform journalism to the personalities involved in a now years-old Joe Rogan podcast, but I expected something more, or at least something new.