I’m Jason Smith. By profession, I work in marketing and historical research; by inclination, I’m a skeptic with a historian’s allergy to convenient stories. Much of my professional life is spent working with primary sources—land records, aerial imagery, archival documents—and evaluating claims that either hold up under scrutiny or don’t. That evidentiary mindset isn’t situational; it’s how I approach questions in general.
I didn’t arrive at skepticism through abstraction. I was raised in a Pentecostal Christian environment and spent years immersed in its theology, culture, and assumptions. Over time, what unsettled me wasn’t doubt itself, but how rarely doubt was allowed—how often certainty was rewarded even when evidence was thin or absent. That experience shaped both my interests and my standards.
Today, my work and writing sit at the intersection of history, belief, and power. I’m interested in how narratives form, how authority is justified, and how stories—religious or secular—become insulated from challenge. I’m not hostile to belief, but I am resistant to claims that ask for exemption from scrutiny simply because they are familiar, comforting, or culturally dominant.
Outside this site, I work in marketing and research, write and edit historical content, and contribute to long-form documentary projects focused on evidence, context, and historical continuity. This blog reflects the same commitments: clarity over comfort, sources over slogans, and questions that are allowed to remain open when the evidence demands it.
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