Rapper: You've Been Fooled, the World Is Flat

"They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round," sang Fred Astaire—and Atlanta rapper B.o.B is still laughing. In dozens of tweets over the last few days, he has passionately defended what appears to be a genuine belief that the world is flat and says "sheeple" who believe otherwise have been deceived by Freemason fraudsters like Pythagoras and Galileo, reports Pitchfork. "A lot of people are turned off by the phrase 'flat earth' ... but there's no way u can see all the evidence and not know ... grow up," he said, posting "evidence" such as pictures of flat horizons and arguing that if the world were round, airplanes would fly straight into outer space if they didn't constantly adjust their course.

All of which led astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to jump into the fray. "Being five centuries regressed in your reasoning doesn't mean we all can't still like your music," he tweeted, prompting the rapper to ask him if he was a Freemason. "Once you go flat, you never go back," said B.o.B, insisting that he isn't doing this to promote his music and he hasn't been smoking anything stronger than pot. "I'm going up against the greatest liars in history," he said. "You've been tremendously deceived." The Guardian reports that B.o.B isn't alone in his beliefs: A growing number of people claim to believe the Earth is flat, though the movement can't agree whether Antarctica is a continent or a wall of ice that keeps people from falling off the edge of the world. (Tyson had some quibbles with the movie Gravity, too.)