When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

Flat-earthers tend to get all the attention these days, and I don’t begrudge them their fame. But I regret that it comes at the expense of the hollow earth crowd, whose driving geologic theory is at once far more plausible and far more insane.For those who did not spend the last several hours following the same internet rabbit hole I did all the way down into the center of the earth, the basic tenets of the hollow earth theory are: The Earth is hollow. The hollow part can be accessed via giant holes in the North and South Poles. This is where Eskimos come from. Perhaps a diagram would help:Gardner, Marshall, A Journey to the Earth’s Interior; or, Have the Poles Really Been Discovered, self-published, Aurora, Ill., 1913.Or maybe another one:Marshall, A Journey to the Earth’s Interior; or, Have the Poles Really Been DiscoveredNeedless to say, aspects of the hollow earth theory have been contested over its history. The idea goes back to Edmond Halley, of Halley’s comet fame, who originally proposed it in the 17th century to explain irregular compass readings and the aurora borealis. Subsequently, hollow earth geology departed from the realm of credible science but continued to find devoted adherents, particularly in the New World. In the early 19th century, John Cleves Symmes Jr. travelled from state to state insisting that the earth was not only hollow but filled — Russian-doll style — with a series of smaller earths. In 1906, William Reed’s The Phantom of the Polls proposed a habitable world on the inner surface of the globe. Then, several years later, Marshall Gardner argued in A Journey to the Earth’s Interior that there was a miniature sun at the center of the earth to light and warm this inner world. Finally, in 1964, Walter Isidor