Jason Colavito

An ancient archaeological site meets conspiracy theories — and Joe Rogan In the hills of southeastern Turkey lies a site so ancient, it's turning our understanding of civilization on its head and leading to conspiracy theories.

NPR visits Göbekli Tepe and grapples with problems Joe Rogan, Graham Hancock, and Jimmy Corsetti are causing by pushing conspiracy theories about the ancient marvel. www.npr.org/2025/08/09/n...

The first thing I asked GPT-5 resulted in completely fabricated historical sources and an attempt to gaslight me into agreeing that the non-existent material was historically correct. If it's "PhD-level," it's one of those fake PhDs from an online scam school.

I'm curious how this got to this stage with no one saying, "Hey, wait a minute: This looks kind of weird."

Inca Stone-Dissolving Plants ​NOTE

This was fun. @jwhoopes2.bsky.social asked if I had ever looked into the claim that the Inca used a plant-based liquid to turn stone into clay in order to build their monuments. I looked today and traced the story back to some weird folklore about woodpeckers. www.jasoncolavito.com/inca-stone-d...

Sure, it may be fascist, but if it means being able to fire thousands of people and replace them with a Hitler-bot, what's a little Mecha-Hitler between friends?

Oh, my--35,000 viewers in a country of 340,000,000 people? That will certainly change the world.

If we can't guarantee that law enforcement will follow the law, or be held accountable if they do not, then there isn't really any law, only words deployed ad hoc and post hoc.

The text was available in Google Books, but their copy is missing several pages, and the OCR is spotty. I edited a clean text that is searchable.

The Search for Atlantis ​NOTE

New in my library: "The Search for Atlantis" by Edwin Björkman (1927). Long before Richard Freund or the "Atlántica" team claimed Atlantis was Tarshish and Cádiz, this book made all the arguments they later ripped off wholesale. www.jasoncolavito.com/the-search-f...

Though obviously intended as humor, an actual professional "psychic" tried passing off that same message as a revelation in 1957, and it was played straight in a magazine that year!

I have never understood the idea of having dinner at 8 or 9 and being done right in time to go to bed. I guess it works if you don't have a job, or are an opinion columnist, and can be up until 2 AM every night.

Now that podcasting is "video-oriented," in a year we'll see the shift to live studio audiences, and then podcasting will achieve its final form, becoming the rebirth of 1990s daytime talk shows, but with crappier production values.

I wish I was paid so well for a part-time job.

Two large red hibiscus blossoms in my front yard.

My biggest flowers, the hibiscus, are in bloom this week.

A Hot Wheels-style car from Greenlight Collectibles depicting a gray 2015 Ford Explorer under the "NCIS: New Orleans" logo on the package. The toy hangs on a peg in the Walmart toy aisle.

My kid was looking at the toy aisle in a big box store and wanted to know why all the toys seemed to be for adults. I tend to agree with him. Most stuff seems intended for adult collectors, and I have no idea what kid would be excited to play "NCIS: New Orleans."

The exception was the famous claim that a quote inspired by Diodorus' account of Ozymandias was written on the pyramid: “I am the one who built these. Let him who proclaims himself a powerful king destroy them, for to destroy is easier than to build!”

Medieval Pyramid Lore In addition to the pyramid myths and legends recorded by Al-Maqrizi around 1400 CE, which I have translated and published on a separate page , medieval European and Islamic authors recorded many...

You can read the Arabic sources and judge for yourself, but there is no mention of al-Ma'mun having a book made of translations of the texts. The actual Arabic historians mostly said they were unreadable. www.jasoncolavito.com/medieval-pyr...

MSN is promoting this video claiming the pyramids were covered in inscriptions in multiple languages. It's an old claim, going back to Herodotus, and popularized by Arabic sources, but which conflates (possible) hieroglyphs, graffiti, and erosion patterns. www.msn.com/en-us/video/...

Gene editing and pedophilia, not so far apart - Washington Examiner IVF startups pop up all over the place and leave children to fend for themselves.

A disgusting article in the Washington Examiner claims surrogacy is "very often" a ruse for "gay couples posing as parents" to "buy" children for pedophilia. Emma Fuentes ought to be fired for such outrageous libel. www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3488...

I can't even monetize the audience for my online writing since Google's "A.I. summaries" on search and ChatGPT have destroyed my web traffic, down almost 90% year-over-year. They have eaten my content, serve it up for profit, and have left me nothing.

This has been my worst business year yet. Almost every organization I provided writing and communication work for has switched to A.I., and the government's assaults on science and education are further shrinking my opportunities, and I'm not sure how I'm going to make money.

Bar-Ron is trying to distance himself from his books' more extreme claims. While the book I cited claims quite literally to be proof that God personally composed the Pentateuch, today Bar-Ron elides that book on his Academia page as a study in the Bible's "elegant structure."

Guess who found out I wrote a blog post about him and is now mad at me. Michael Bar-Ron says it's "low" of me to mention his book about pyramidal proof God pierced the veil of reality to write the Bible when discussing his claim to have found Moses's own signature.

Bayard Dodge translated the Fihrist in 1970, but the text is under copyright. The book can be borrowed from the Internet Archive, but it isn't searchable on the open web. So, now it is.

Also new in my Library: My English translation of the chapter on Manichaeism from ibn al-Nadim's "Fihrist" (987 CE), one of the primary sources (and one of the longest) on Mani's cosmology. www.jasoncolavito.com/the-fihrist-...

Gwyneth Paltrow, From Cigarette-Addicted Vassar Reject to Oscar-Winning Wellness Guru The actress is the subject of a delicious, unauthorized biography by Amy Odell.

It amuses me how much the reviewer seems to think Gwyneth Paltrow dominates everyone's mental world as much as hers. In our atomized pop culture, I've gone my whole life with only tangential exposure to Paltrow and Goop. airmail.news/issues/2025-...

The Manichaean Cosmology NOTE

New in my Library: My translation of Belgian scholar Franz Cumont's foundational 1908 study, "Manichaean Cosmology," which examined the elaborate and largely forgotten cosmic mythology of Mani. www.jasoncolavito.com/the-manichae...

The Online Right’s Favorite Nativist Slogan Is Gaining Traction in the Real World Daniel Boone, burial plots and no birthright citizen: Welcome to the MAGA world of “Heritage America.”

The Trump Administration is promoting the idea of "heritage Americans," who can trace their ancestry to colonial times, as the only real Americans and true citizens--even though many GOPers, like Donald Trump, don't qualify. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

YouTube video by The Daily Show Joe Rogan: The Path to Roganlightenment | The Daily Show

The Daily Show produced a biography of Joe Rogan, "the world's greatest thinker." www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RmB...

Many of the famous "traditional" Italian dishes were invented in the 20th century because no one today would actually eat the stuff they used to make in historical times.