1. There was a time when the truth had a simple authority. If a report appeared in a trusted newspaper or from a respected broadcaster, people generally believed it. That trust has become one of the quiet casualties of our age. We now live inside a storm of information in which a video can show a burning city that never burned, a voice can say words a person never spoke, and a photograph can seem to prove something that never happened. Artificial intelligence has made all of this terrifyingly easy. Alongside this technological flood, fake news has turned into a…

For decades, the idea that ancient astronauts visited Earth and left their mark on humanity was the stuff of late-night radio shows, low-budget cable television specials, and dog-eared paperbacks found at the back of used bookstores. It was a concept that, for most rational people, occupied a comfortable place on the shelf of harmless, guilty pleasures—entertaining science fiction that you didn’t have to take seriously. Within this peculiar niche, a recurring theme involved ancient rock art, with the flamboyant claims of pseudoarchaeologists often pointing to the extremely old paintings found across the Australian continent. Specifically, they pointed to the Wandjina…