“The myths and folklore of many premodern cultures have explanatory or at least mnemonic value. In stories that everyone can appreciate and even witness, they encode the environment.” – Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World”

Here, Sagan is engaging in a critique of modern intellectual habits by reflecting on the purpose of ancient myth. He’s saying these seemingly now quaint stories had, and may still have, some practical value. It’s subtly rebuking those who think folklore equals primitive nonsense.

Knowing Sagan’s larger point in The Demon-Haunted World, he’s implicitly criticizing the modern disconnection from that kind of encoding—where today’s pseudo-myths (conspiracies, media spectacles, algorithmic lore) lack grounding in actual knowledge. So, it’s both a respectful nod to the old and a veiled jab at the new.

Sagan’s quote also touches on a theory of knowledge transmission—how humans remember, explain, and embed understanding in culture. There’s an epistemological question underneath this: How do people come to know what they know when they don’t have direct access to formal education or scientific tools? He’s tracing the roots of scientific thinking to its narrative ancestors.

The folklore of the past wasn’t just for campfire thrills; it encoded knowledge such as seasonal cycles, edible plants, flood zones, taboo behaviors, and collective anxieties. Who needs textbooks when stories can be told all across the shared landscape?

This got me thinking: What modern folklore and myths do we have outside of the various book, TV, and film franchises that have become most popular?

While the polished hero’s journeys of book deals and streaming services have their place, I’m looking beyond entertainment. We want to consider the ambient folklore, the pass-it-around culture, and the beliefs and stories that encode how we understand our modern environment—both digital and physical.

Some contenders for modern myths:

• Urban legends of the internet — e.g., “don’t microwave your phone to charge it.” Sounds dumb, but it’s a myth born of techno-illiteracy trying to cope.
  
• Conspiracy theories as cosmologies — they’re not just political, but entire explanatory worlds, filled with good vs evil, hidden knowledge, and prophetic warnings.
  
• Meme cycles — the myth of the “NPC,” the rags-to-riches influencer, the cursed object sold on eBay. We pass these around not as facts, but as shared language.
  
• Pop-rituals — “Mercury is in retrograde” has become secular folk astrology. It functions more as a cultural diagnostic than a belief system.
  
• Digital ghost stories — abandoned Minecraft worlds, YouTube Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), Reddit threads that suddenly vanish, AI chatbots that get too personal. There’s a haunted texture to our collective techscape.
  
• Corporate folklore — Apple launch-day myths, Elon Musk’s sci-fi messiah complex, Google’s Easter eggs, or the sacred lore of startup hustle.
  

These may not be myths in the academic sense. But they serve a similar function: helping us navigate a world that’s vast, abstract, and increasingly alien.So, I’ll leave this thread open: What modern myths encode your environment? What stories do we keep telling not because they’re true, but because they help us understand the systems we live in?