Good morning and Happy Monday! Thanks for reading today.

I’ve been taking breaks from the news coverage on the weekends, which I’ve decided is mandatory for my mental health. It’s not that I don’t know what’s happening — when you’re as big a news junkie as I am, it’s impossible to ignore all the text alerts — but I don’t immediately file notable stories away to write about later. Rather, I just sort of acknowledge the story, nod, and go about my business. Right now, spring planting is dominating my headspace, and I must tell you, constantly thinking about flowers and fountains is highly preferable to thinking about Donald Trump.

Tuning back into the news on Sunday afternoons is a bleak affair. The Commander in Chief’s brain is still leaking out of his ears, eight kids were murdered by a family annihilator in Louisiana, five people were shot in Iowa City, the US and Iran are still beefing over the Strait of Hormuz, and on and on until we die.

Maybe it’s because I fell asleep Sunday afternoon watching a program about the US government confiscating Nikola Tesla’s research after his death, but I wound up going down a rabbit hole about the missing/dead/murdered US scientists, a story the mainstream media is just starting to pick up on. So let’s talk about that. I love a good conspiracy theory, as I, like all red-blooded American kids, was raised on a steady diet of In Search Of, The X-Files, and the Stefano DiMera storyline on Days of Our Lives.

If you haven’t yet heard the whispers about the “missing scientists,” as they’re known on the Reddit boards, here’s a quick explainer. In the last five years, 11 US scientists, all with “ties” to the US nuclear program, have disappeared or died under “mysterious circumstances.” Most, if not all, of these scientists had high-level security clearances, and federal agencies are now investigating at the direction of Trump, who I’m pretty sure discovered this topic the same way I did — by inadvertently falling into a sleepless night on r/conspiracy.

The UFO crowd is having a field day with this one, with theories ranging from alien abductions to some Smoking Man-esque figure taking the scientists out. Normally, I’d think it’s cruel to turn tragedy for 11 families into fodder for the internet message boards, but given the current state of the world, I understand it. I, too, would rather spend my time thinking about alien conspiracies than the actual state of the world.

These are the scientists whose deaths/disappearances are under “investigation”:

So, is it odd for so many people with so many different specialties to have died or gone missing within a few years of each other? After all, thousands of people go missing each year while exploring America’s wilderness. Just because everyone on the list was involved in “science” doesn’t mean their scientific fields had any relation to each other. It’s also worth mentioning that a few of those on the list struggled with mental health or medical issues.

Most of the speculation centers around McCasland, who spent time as a bigwig at Wright-Patterson AFB. If you know anything about alien conspiracy theories, it always comes back to WP AFB, where many tin-foil hatters believe UFO wreckage from the 1947 crash in Roswell, New Mexico, was taken. WP was also, infamously, the headquarters of Project Blue Book, the official US government investigation into UFOs.

The alleged links between all the scientists look something like this.

Is it weird that four people with ties to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab died or disappeared within a few years of each other? Maybe. According to Wikipedia, NASA JPL has around 5,500 employees, and who knows how many additional contractors. Hicks, Reza, Maiwald, and Grillmair died/disappeared in 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026, respectively. If this were some grand conspiracy to take out scientists with illicit knowledge, that’s a pretty slow roll of assassinations.

One of the more interesting conspiracy theories revolves around a large object found hurtling into our solar system in July of 2025, known as 3I/ATLAS:

The theory goes something like this: 3I/ATLAS is actually an alien craft, scientists know this, and global governments are desperate to keep this knowledge from the inhabitants on Earth. How does that scenario involve an administrative assistant at Los Alamos or a custodian in Kansas City? Your guess is as good as mine, but another theory is that all of these people, somehow, learned information they shouldn’t have, perhaps inadvertently.

As I said, some of the deaths/disappearances on the list probably aren’t as “mysterious” as they are being made out to be. We don’t even know the causes of death for Maiwald or Hicks. For all we know, both men died of natural causes or by misadventure. While Amy Eskridge told people she feared for her life before her suicide, it’s hard to know if that’s because she was truly in danger or because she was suffering from mental illness that caused her to be paranoid. McCasland was suffering from medical issues and, according to his wife, left his home without his personal items but with his sidearm, leading her to conclude “he planned not to be found.” Casias was reportedly seen walking along the side of a highway without her phone or wallet.

The sad truth is that all those on the list worked in high-pressure, high-stakes jobs at a time when science and our natural environment are increasingly devalued by the US government and billionaires with political connections. I mean, Sean Duffy is in charge of NASA, for crying out loud.

That’s not to say there is nothing to the perceived connections among those on the list. Physicist Michio Kaku recently demanded an investigation into the fates of his fellow scientists, and he’s a lot smarter than I am. He’s the guy who explained M-Theory to me.

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, and I understand the urge to connect tragedies that share common elements. After all, the human brain naturally looks for patterns — it’s how we make sense of our world. But it seems that if there really was a top-secret reason for all of this, the US Government would already know about it, no? Then again, we’ve got people like Kash Patel involved in sussing out crimes and conspiracies, so maybe not.

I think there’s a danger in suspecting a “big bad” is behind the sad things that happen, because the “big bad” gives us someone to focus on, a way to solve the problem. On The X-Files, getting rid of the Smoking Man and his cohorts means the good guys finally have a chance to prevail. Get rid of the Smoking Man, and everything can go back to “normal.”

The truth is much more sobering.

We’ve abdicated the care of our democracy to those with nefarious purposes, who have spent the last several decades remaking the systems in our world to benefit themselves, and no one is coming to save us. Billionaires are so ingrained in our political system that we have no laws to safeguard us against mental illness, the pressure of our jobs, life-altering medical issues, or our declining quality of life. We certainly don’t get those protections from our employers, especially when the employer is the US government under Donald Trump. We have a Congress that is content to watch gun violence run rampant. We are quickly losing laws and regulations that have kept our environment clean. Science is being defunded, particularly where it involves women and people of color.

But all of that seems too insurmountable to contemplate, much less take on. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, give us an easy out. Take out the “big bad,” and happy days are here again.

But then again, what do I know? I’m not done following this story, and if an alien craft really is speeding towards us at this very moment, and someone is taking out scientists to hide it, I’ll be the first to say “My bad.”

We’ll go back to our regular format tomorrow. Until then, here are some other stories that caught my eye yesterday:

This is a great piece that will make you want to walk into the sea.

And finally:

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

I can’t believe this song is 15 years old. Do the kids at Coachella even know this one?

And, just in case you haven’t seen this yet:

Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Follow Julie on Bluesky and Instagram so she can get another book contract.