It’s a great title for a show. I heard about it while they were making it. I was walking from my Department (English and Creative Writing) to my car, and I came across my friend Jeffrey Kripal. We hugged—I really like Jeff—and he told me I was being talked about in a TV show, called Cosmosis. That I could find it on my Apple TV. And would I like to come to dinner with him and James Madden, author of Unidentified Flying Hyperobject? (He had just been doing some filming for the show.)
I said yes, definitely. That was in early 2024.
I hadn’t seen Jeff for ages. It was really good to see him. Soon after that, we had dinner, and soon after that, Stuff started to happen. And I didn’t watch Cosmosis.
In fact Cosmosis sat in my watchlist on Apple TV for almost two whole years, until I started to watch it right at the end of 2025. Just sat there. I didn’t want to watch it. My body—my body includes my brain—wanted to watch it, but the part that I call me kept hitting the snooze button on that want. I’m funny that way. I quarantine things until I feel ready. I can tolerate a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings.
But I could’ve missed a LOT if I hadn’t hit play. Very rapidly I wrote a mea culpa to James Madden, and now I’m glad to say that I’m reaching out to Kelly Chase to thank her for this incredible work.
If the UFO has been militarized, it has also been melodramatized. I mean, Cosmosis like almost everything on TV is indeed melodrama in the strict sense of talking and action with accompanying music…but you know what I mean? Melodramatic. National Geographic, Sci-Fi Channel, History Channel bamboozlement with scary, intense, “dramatic” voices and music. “After the break…” (so you keep watching). Creating anticipations of further shock and awe.
Shock and awe.
This is in effect the aesthetic equivalent of militarization. Highly mechanical. Relentless. Overbearing. Always holding another secret out as a plot device (“Hidden Secrets of King Tut’s WW2 Space Weapon”). Cosmosis is none of that.
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