Behind the Curve a fascinating study of reality-challenged beliefs

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There's a scene somewhere in the middle of a new flat Earth documentary that acts as a metaphor for so much that surrounds it. Two of the central figures of Behind the Curve are visiting a spaceflight museum that pays tribute to NASA, an organization that they believe is foisting a tremendous lie on an indoctrinated and incurious public. One of them, Mark Sargent, sits in a re-entry simulator that suggests he should press "Start" to begin. He dutifully bangs away at the highlighted word "Start" on screen, but nothing happens.

He wanders away muttering even more about how NASA's a giant fraud. Meanwhile, the camera shifts back to the display and zeroes in on the giant green "Start" button next to the seat Sargent was in.

Into the fringes

It's hard not to think back to two earlier scenes in the movie. In the first, Sargent talks about how he started having suspicions about the globe when he spent weeks watching a flight tracker for flights crossing the southern oceans but couldn't find any. This seemed to fit with his favored model of the Earth's disk, one with the North Pole at the center and the continents spread out like spokes from there. This would place the southern continents much farther apart and make air travel prohibitive-just as the lack of flights suggested.

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