Heaven’s Gate – also known as the “UFO cult” – burst into American consciousness on March 26, 1997 when law enforcement discovered 39 decomposing bodies in a San Diego, California mansion.
Each detail that emerged from the scene stunned a rapt public: Adherents had committed suicide in waves on March 22 and 23, ingesting a lethal mix of barbiturates and alcohol; they lay under purple shrouds, with five-dollar bills and rolls of quarters in their pockets; all wore simple dark uniforms and Nike tennis shoes.
Bizarre as these details may seem, if you actually look at the group’s beliefs and history, Heaven’s Gate has far more in common with American culture than you might expect.
In my book on Heaven’s Gate, I argue that the group drew from broad trends in American culture – religiosity, apocalyptic thinking and an interest in fusing science and religion.
But one theme has become even more evident since I wrote the book. The group’s embrace of conspiratorial thinking reflects a culture of conspiracy that has long existed in the margins of society – and has re-emerged at the center of American life.
Christian, New Age origins
At the time of the suicides, Heaven’s Gate had been in existence for over two decades.
It was founded in 1972 when two Texans, Bonnie Lu Nettles and Marshall Herff Applewhite, bonded over shared interests in alternative spiritual exploration, astrology and biblical prophecy. They came to believe that the Bible foretold an extraterrestrial rapture wherein some individuals would be saved from life on this planet and journey to what they called the “Next Level,” a physical realm in outer space where they would live as an immortal, perfected species of space aliens. They gained their first significant attention and converts in 1975 among alternative spiritual seekers in California and Oregon.
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Nettles and Applewhite drew from Christian sources, particularly prophetic and apocalyptic material. They were also inspired by the New Age movement, which emphasized meditation, diet and the channeling of spiritual beings. Like many religious people, members of Heaven’s Gate sought salvation from what they considered a corrupt world.
After Nettles died of cancer in 1985, the group’s adherents increasingly rejected their earlier belief in what they called biological metamorphosis, wherein their human bodies would chemically transform into extraterrestrial forms. Instead, they now envisioned abandoning their human bodies on Earth and transferring their consciousnesses – through (unspecified) technological-spiritual means – into new extraterrestrial “Next Level bodies.” (This is roughly analogous to reincarnation.)
Eventually, some members came to believe that they actually were space aliens – that they’d taken on human forms to learn about life on our planet – though this belief appears to have not been universally shared.
The paranoid style of American religion
It may come as a surprise that, until the suicides, Heaven’s Gate attracted little outside attention.
They didn’t face government persecution, angry ex-members or professional anti-cultists eager to destroy them – all of which dogged other new and alternative religions like the Peoples Temple (the group behind the Jonestown massacre) and the Branch Davidians (the targets of the Waco siege).
So what drove Heaven’s Gate to consider collective suicide?
In the final years of the group’s existence, members came to believe in an elaborate conspiracy that leading governmental, religious and economic figures had colluded with a group of demonic extraterrestrials called “the Luciferians.” According to Heaven’s Gate members, these evil forces were all working in concert to cover up the existence of UFOs, and specifically a UFO “companion” that trailed the Hale-Bopp comet, which came closest to Earth on March 22, the day the suicides began.
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The sort of conspiratorial thinking that Heaven’s Gate adopted was nothing new. Their belief in government conspiracies and UFOs could be traced back to popular responses to the first “flying saucer” sightings and the crash of an unknown object in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
Religious studies scholar Joseph Laycock has written about how some aspects of the emerging UFO subculture blended scientific and supernaturalist theories, bringing together religion and conspiratorial thinking. Likewise, historian David G. Robertson has documented how UFO conspiracy theories eventually merged with New Age religious thinking to create what he calls “UFO millennial conspiracism.” Heaven’s Gate was part of those trends.
While Heaven’s Gate emerged from ufological culture, they also engaged in a long and storied pattern of conspiratorial thinking by American religious and political movements, a relationship historian Richard J. Hofstadter explored in his famous 1964 essay on the “paranoid style of American politics.”
In the 19th century, this relationship was especially pronounced in a strand of American Protestantism that envisioned an array of nefarious agents attempting to wrest American culture from the values – and control – of white, English Protestants. They initially targeted (sometimes violently) Catholic immigrants – who were neither Protestant nor English – and justified their actions with a blend of nativism and conspiratorial thinking.
And it was this sort of conspiratorial thinking that suffused American political movements, whether it was McCarthyism or the anti-Masonic movement. Hofstadter wrote that proponents of such ideas often felt “dispossessed,” that the country had been “taken away from their kind.”
Heaven’s Gate also embraced what historian Michael Barkun calls a “culture of conspiracy,” which divides the world between evil forces secretly conspiring among one another, true believers aware of the conspiracies and the mindless masses who operate without awareness of the truth.
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While Barkun focuses on the religious and cultural margins, today the same elements are arguably at work in American political discourse, whether it’s talk of secret government wiretaps, a deep state, or cover-ups within the scientific community on topics ranging from vaccines to climate change.
The adherents of Heaven’s Gate wouldn’t probably be drawn to these various political conspiracies, though they shared the belief that powerful forces colluded behind the scenes to hide the truth. In order to support their claims of the existence of extraterrestrials and UFO visitations, they embraced this conspiratorial logic.
In the 90s, people laughed off the conspiracy theories that consumed the group and eventual led them to “opt out” of the planet and commit suicide.
But what happens when political leaders embrace a similar logic?
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A mourner holds a portrait of Pope Francis at the Basílica de San José de Flores in Buenos Aires, a church where the pope worshipped in his youth.
AP Photo/Gustavo GarelloMolly Jackson, The Conversation
Pope Francis, whose papacy blended tradition with pushes for inclusion and reform, died on April, 21, 2025 – Easter Monday – at the age of 88.
Here we spotlight five stories from The Conversation’s archive about his roots, faith, leadership and legacy.
1. A Jesuit pope
Jorge Mario Bergoglio became a pope of many firsts: the first modern pope from outside Europe, the first whose papal name honors St. Francis of Assisi, and the first Jesuit – a Catholic religious order founded in the 16th century.
Those Jesuit roots shed light on Pope Francis’ approach to some of the world’s most pressing problems, argues Timothy Gabrielli, a theologian at the University of Dayton.
Gabrielli highlights the Jesuits’ “Spiritual Exercises,” which prompt Catholics to deepen their relationship with God and carefully discern how to respond to problems. He argues that this spiritual pattern of looking beyond “presenting problems” to the deeper roots comes through in Francis’ writings, shaping the pope’s response to everything from climate change and inequality to clerical sex abuse.
2. LGBTQ+ issues
Early on in his papacy, Francis famously told an interviewer, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Over the years, he has repeatedly called on Catholics to love LGBTQ+ people and spoken against laws that target them.
An LGBTQ couple embrace after a pastoral worker blesses them at a Catholic church in Germany, in defiance of practices approved by Rome.Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
But “Francis’ inclusiveness is not actually radical,” explains Steven Millies, a scholar at the Catholic Theological Union. “His remarks generally correspond to what the church teaches and calls on Catholics to do,” without changing doctrine – such as that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
Rather, Francis’ comments “express what the Catholic Church says about human dignity,” Millies writes. “Francis is calling on Catholics to take note that they should be concerned about justice for all people.”
3. Asking forgiveness
At times, Francis did something that was once unthinkable for a pope: He apologized.
He was not the first pontiff to do so, however. Pope John Paul II declared a sweeping “Day of Pardon” in 2000, asking forgiveness for the church’s sins, and Pope Benedict XVI apologized to victims of sexual abuse. During Francis’ papacy, he acknowledged the church’s historic role in Canada’s residential school system for Indigenous children and apologized for abuses in the system.
But what does it mean for a pope to say, “I’m sorry”?
Members of the Assembly of First Nations perform in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on March 31, 2022, ahead of an Indigenous delegation’s meeting with Pope Francis.AP Photo/Alessandra TarantinoAnnie Selak, a theologian at Georgetown University, unpacks the history and significance of papal apologies, which can speak for the entire church, past and present. Often, she notes, statements skirt an actual admission of wrongdoing.
Still, apologies “do say something important,” Selak writes. A pope “apologizes both to the church and on behalf of the church to the world. These apologies are necessary starting points on the path to forgiveness and healing.”
4. A church that listens
Many popes convene meetings of the Synod of Bishops to advise the Vatican on church governance. But under Francis, these gatherings took on special meaning.
The Synod on Synodality was a multiyear, worldwide conversation where Catholics could share concerns and challenges with local church leaders, informing the topics synod participants would eventually discuss in Rome. What’s more, the synod’s voting members included not only bishops but lay Catholics – a first for the church.
Participants arrive for a vigil prayer led by Pope Francis and other religious leaders before the 2023 Synod of Bishops assembly.Isabella Bonotto/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The process “pictures the Catholic Church not as a top-down hierarchy but rather as an open conversation,” writes University of Dayton religious studies scholar Daniel Speed Thompson – one in which everyone in the church has a voice and listens to others’ voices.
5. Global dance
In 2024, University of Notre Dame professor David Lantigua had a cup of maté tea with some “porteños,” as people from Buenos Aires are known. They shared a surprising take on the Argentine pope: “a theologian of the tango.”
Pope Francis drinks maté, the national beverage of Argentina, in St. Peter’s Square on his birthday on Dec. 17, 2014.Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images
Francis does love the dance – in 2014, thousands of Catholics tangoed in St. Peter’s Square to honor his birthday. But there’s more to it, Lantigua explains. Francis’ vision for the church was “based on relationships of trust and solidarity,” like a pair of dance partners. And part of his task as pope was to “tango” with all the world’s Catholics, carefully navigating culture wars and an increasingly diverse church.
Francis was “less interested in ivory tower theology than the faith of people on the streets,” where Argentina’s beloved dance was born.
This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.Molly Jackson, Religion and Ethics Editor, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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There is currently no bird flu vaccine for people.
Digicomphoto/ Science Photo Library via Getty ImagesHanna D. Paton, University of Iowa
The flu sickens millions of people in the U.S. every year, and the past year has been particularly tough. Although infections are trending downward, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called the winter of 2024-2025 a “high severity” season with the highest hospitalization rate in 15 years.
Since early 2024, a different kind of flu called bird flu, formally known as avian influenza, has been spreading in birds as well as in cattle. The current bird flu outbreak has infected 70 Americans and caused two deaths as of April 8, 2025. Public health and infectious disease experts say the risk to people is currently low, but they have expressed concern that this strain of the bird flu virus may mutate to spread between people.
As a doctoral candidate in immunology, I study how pathogens that make us sick interact with our immune system. The viruses that cause seasonal flu and bird flu are distinct but still closely related. Understanding their similarities and differences can help people protect themselves and their loved ones.
What is influenza?
The flu has long been a threat to public health. The first recorded influenza pandemic occurred in 1518, but references to illnesses possibly caused by influenza stretch back as as early as 412 B.C., to a treatise called Of the Epidemics by the Greek physician Hippocrates.
Today, the World Health Organization estimates that the flu infects 1 billion people every year. Of these, 3 million to 5 million infections cause severe illness, and hundreds of thousands are fatal.
Influenza is part of a large family of viruses called orthomyxoviruses. This family contains several subtypes of influenza, referred to as A, B, C and D, which differ in their genetic makeup and in the types of infections they cause. Influenza A and B pose the largest threat to humans and can cause severe disease. Influenza C causes mild disease, and influenza D is not known to infect people. Since the turn of the 20th century, influenza A has caused four pandemics. Influenza B has never caused a pandemic.
A notice from Oct. 18, 1918, during the Spanish flu pandemic, about protecting yourself from infection.Illustrated Current News/National Library of Medicine, CC BY
An influenza A strain called H1N1 caused the famous 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed about 50 million people worldwide. A related H1N1 virus was responsible for the most recent influenza A pandemic in 2009, commonly referred to as the swine flu pandemic. In that case, scientists believe multiple different types of influenza A virus mixed their genetic information to produce a new and especially virulent strain of the virus that infected more than 60 million people in the U.S. from April 12, 2009, to April 10, 2010, and caused huge losses to the agriculture and travel industries.
Both swine and avian influenza are strains of influenza A. Just as swine flu strains tend to infect pigs, avian flu strains tend to infect birds. But the potential for influenza A viruses that typically infect animals to cause pandemics in humans like the swine flu pandemic is why experts are concerned about the current avian influenza outbreak.
Seasonal flu versus bird flu
Different strains of influenza A and influenza B emerge each year from about October to May as seasonal flu. The CDC collects and analyzes data from public health and clinical labs to determine which strains are circulating through the population and in what proportions. For example, recent data shows that H1N1 and H3N2, both influenza A viruses, were responsible for the vast majority of cases this season. Standard tests for influenza generally determine whether illness is caused by an A or B strain, but not which strain specifically.
Officials at the Food and Drug Administration use this information to make strain recommendations for the following season’s influenza vaccine. Although the meeting at which FDA advisers were to decide the makeup of the 2026 flu vaccine was unexpectedly canceled in late February, the FDA still released its strain recommendations to manufacturers.
The recommendations do not include H5N1, the influenza A strain that causes avian flu. The number of strains that can be added into seasonal influenza vaccines is limited. Because cases of people infected with H5N1 are minimal, population-level vaccination is not currently necessary. As such, seasonal flu vaccines are not designed to protect against avian influenza. No commercially available human vaccines currently exist for avian influenza viruses.
How do people get bird flu?
Although H5N1 mainly infects birds, it occasionally infects people, too. Human cases, first reported in 1997 in Hong Kong, have primarily occurred in poultry farm workers or others who have interacted closely with infected birds.
Initially identified in China in 1996, the first major outbreak of H5 family avian flu occurred in North America in 2014-2015. This 2014 outbreak was caused by the H5N8 strain, a close relative of H5N1. The first H5N1 outbreak in North America began in 2021 when infected birds carried the virus across the ocean. It then ripped through poultry farms across the continent.
The H5N1 strain of influenza A generally infects birds but has infected people, too.NIAID and CDC/flickr, CC BY
In March 2024, epidemiologists identified H5N1 infections in cows on dairy farms. This is the first time that bird flu was reported to infect cows. Then, on April 1, 2024, health officials in Texas reported the first case of a person catching bird flu from infected cattle. This was the first time transmission of bird flu between mammals was documented.
As of March 21, 2025, there have been 988 human cases of H5N1 worldwide since 1997, about half of which resulted in death. The current outbreak in the U.S. accounts for 70 of those infections and one death. Importantly, there have been no reports of H5N1 spreading directly from one person to another.
Since avian flu is an influenza A strain, it would show up as positive on a standard rapid flu test. However, there is no evidence so far that avian flu is significantly contributing to current influenza cases. Specific testing is required to confirm that a person has avian flu. This testing is not done unless there is reason to believe the person was exposed to sick birds or other sources of infection.
How might avian flu become more dangerous?
As viruses replicate within the cells of their host, their genetic information can get copied incorrectly. Some of these genetic mutations cause no immediate differences, while others alter some key viral characteristics.
Influenza viruses mutate in a special way called reassortment, which occurs when multiple strains infect the same cell and trade pieces of their genome with one another, potentially creating new, unique strains. This process prolongs the time the virus can inhabit a host before an infection is cleared. Even a slight change in a strain of influenza can result in the immune system’s inability to recognize the virus. As a result, this process forces our immune systems to build new defenses instead of using immunity from previous infections.
Reassortment can also change how harmful strains are to their host and can even enable a strain to infect a different species of host. For example, strains that typically infect pigs or birds may acquire the ability to infect people. Influenza A can infect many different types of animals, including cattle, birds, pigs and horses. This means there are many strains that can intermingle to create novel strains that people’s immune systems have not encountered before – and are therefore not primed to fight.
It is possible for this type of transformation to also occur in H5N1. The CDC monitors which strains of flu are circulating in order prepare for that possibility. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a surveillance system for monitoring potential threats for spillover from birds and other animals, although this capacity may be at risk due to staff cuts in the department.
These systems are critical to ensure that public health officials have the most up-to-date information on the threat that H5N1 poses to public health and can take action as early as possible when a threat is evident.Hanna D. Paton, PhD Candidate in Immunology, University of Iowa
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.
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Inglewood, California, is taking a new approach to enhance mobility as plans for an ambitious automated people mover falter. On Tuesday, city officials announced a strategic pivot from the Inglewood Transit Connector’s original vision—a fully automated elevated system—to a more practical solution centered around dedicated bus lanes. This shift aims to bolster transit connections between local hubs and the city’s thriving sports and entertainment district.
Inglewood Transit Project
The revised project intends to transform the urban landscape over the next few years. Residents and visitors can look forward to the rollout of new mobility hubs dedicated solely to buses, separate lanes to ensure efficient transit, expanded bike infrastructure, and improved overall traffic flow. Furthermore, upgrades to walkability are including features designed to accommodate the influx of attendees for events at major venues like SoFi Stadium, YouTube Theater, Intuit Dome, and the Kia Forum.
Originally, the Inglewood Transit Connector sought to seamlessly link the Downtown Inglewood Metro station on the K Line with the rapidly developing sports and entertainment area. However, the ambitious people mover project faced significant challenges. Local officials, community members concerned about business displacement, and prominent figures like U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters voiced their apprehensions, ultimately leading to the project’s cancellation.
This strategic pivot signifies a more pragmatic approach to transit solutions in Inglewood. By focusing on dedicated bus lanes, the city can effectively improve access to its bustling attractions without the complexities and potential disruptions associated with constructing an elevated system.
The transition underscores Inglewood’s commitment to enhancing urban mobility, catering to both the local residents and the increasing number of visitors drawn to its vibrant entertainment scene. As the city embraces this new direction, the focus remains steadfast on creating a more connected, accessible infrastructure that meets the needs of its community.
Inglewood’s dedication to improving transit connections exemplifies a growing trend in urban planning—prioritizing adaptable solutions that can be implemented quickly while still serving the long-term goals of connectivity and sustainability. The dedicated bus lanes, complemented by enhanced bike paths and improved pedestrian walkways, will offer a holistic approach to transportation that can keep pace with Inglewood’s dynamic growth.
As the city moves forward with these changes, all eyes will be on Inglewood to see how this revised plan enhances community connectivity while supporting its vibrant cultural and entertainment district.
STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.
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Molly Jackson, Religion and Ethics Editor, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
