Hoopes grew up in Baltimore with a typical boyhood interest in fantastic stories of ancient alien astronauts, the Bermuda Triangle, healing powers of pyramids and crystals. He even wrote a 10th grade research paper on the “lost continent of Atlantis,” and acknowledges that his passion for archaeology was spurred, at least in part, by his “interest in some of these alternative theories.”

But fanciful tales carried along on dreamy currents that defined the Age of Aquarius long ago outlived their innocent emergence; what once was playful has since grown the whiskers of unsightly aging.

“It was in 1973 when I went to see the film ‘Chariots of the Gods’ in a movie theatre,” Hoopes says. “That was 50 years ago. Here we are 50 years later and this stuff is bigger than it ever was. It didn’t go away, and I think it’s having pernicious effects.”

Hoopes majored in archaeology at Yale College. He spent six months after graduating on archaeological projects in Ecuador—his specialty is the archaeology of southern Central America and northern South America—and he worked as a professional archaeologist at varied sites that included subway construction in Washington, D.C., and pipeline easements for oil and gas projects in the New Mexico desert.

Although he earned only $250 a week, Hoopes “lived on a shoestring” to save half of every paycheck, and in summer 1982 he was hired to assist Harvard archaeologist Stephen Williams in developing the course “Fantastic Archaeology.” Williams’ idea was to use popular pseudoscience topics such as the Great Pyramid of Giza, Easter Island, lost continents, ancient astronauts and Stonehenge—the same stuff that had thrilled Hoopes’ reading as a boy—to teach his students skills in critical thinking, while at the same time conducting his own research into the backgrounds of those who accumulated wealth by peddling lies.

Williams even clashed academic swords with a Harvard colleague, a professor of comparative zoology, who had fallen under the spell of what he thought to be stone inscriptions carved across North America by mysterious travelers from the mists of time who had somehow crossed the Atlantic Ocean; another Harvard colleague was selling popular books on similar tales of an unknown ancient America.

Hoopes continued developing the course as a graduate assistant while working toward his doctorate, and he found inspiration in his mentor’s dedication to teaching young scholars how to think.

“I think he understood that the authors were challenging authority, and, back then, that was a very appealing thing,” Hoopes recalls. “He saw how some very weird stuff resonated with the general public, and he found it insane that these books that were based on fantasy were getting so much attention.”

Hoopes believes the mission of his critical-thinking course is vital to a college curriculum, and he argues that it should be an academic staple for students in elementary and secondary schools. Sadly, that is not—and never has been—an easy sell.

“The problem is that in a capitalistic, consumer-based society, the powers that be benefit from having a population that is not good at critical thinking,” Hoopes says. “The same kinds of logical fallacies that you see in Graham Hancock’s series are ones used in the commercials that you watch on a regular basis, and these deceptive advertising methods are something that the economy sort of depends on.”

As hucksters spin their tales for consumers who lack the skills to resist such deft salesmanship, a strange contradiction takes root: A belief in the unbelievable somehow fosters distrust of the provable. Conspiracies, Hoopes contends, are both real and dangerous, and their existence is why pseudoscience that has far broader exposure than authentic science needs to be called out, exposed and ridiculed.

Hoopes has dutifully done just that, especially since the sudden rise of predictions for a 2012 apocalypse based on absurd readings of Maya calendars (“The Gloom of Doom,” issue No. 4, 2010). Pop-culture conspiracy theories—whether a Maya death knell, the lost civilization trumpeted on “Ancient Apocalypse,” or JFK assassination tropes still championed by educated Americans who otherwise proclaim themselves immune from such maddening hysteria—have real-world consequences.

“They absolutely do,” Hoopes says, “and it’s all a distraction from real conspiracies to keep knowledge from the American public.”

Hidden within the chaos of the fanciful, there are also ominous conspiracies to “hide the truth of the treatment of Native Americans in American history,” including the Indian Removal Act, forced migration on the Trail of Tears, dishonored treaties, stolen lands. Hoopes also mourns an “active conspiracy to remove Black history from the American curriculum by labeling it ‘critical race theory,’ when that’s not what it is,” while “claiming that’s not something that should be taught because it makes white students feel bad about their own heritage.”

There’s also the ongoing conspiracy, as Hoopes sees it, “not to tell the truth about the reality of LGBT people who’ve existed for millennia in every culture on the planet, and that there have been trans people throughout history, and gender is a spectrum, not a duality. There’s a struggle to tell that story, as well, because there’s a conspiracy to hide it.”

When audiences tune in by the millions to watch television shows such as “Ancient Apocalypse,” which purports to link global advancements made within the past millennia or two to what Hancock describes as a far older “civilization that was lost in the great cataclysms of flood and fire that we know occurred near the end of the last Ice Age,” they can find themselves enamored of, and comfortable with, the notion that scientists, experts, are hiding the real truth.

Hoopes, whom Hancock has called “the most vehement and insulting of all archaeologists,” terms it the “cultic milieu of conspiracy theory,” which, once embraced, opens the door to such real-world dangers as vaccination conspiracies and climate change and election denial.

“All of those things,” Hoopes says,“go together.”