Category: Ufos

"To the Stars" Falls Back to Earth, Refocusing as an Entertainment Company

2/22/2021

Since I bothered to make the graphic several years ago, I feel like I need to deploy it one final time to report that this will almost certainly be the last To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science Alien Metals and Poltergeist Update. TTSA, it turns out, is getting out of the alien metals and poltergeist business after successfully poisoning the public discourse by infecting the media with unproven stories of likely industrial waste they pretended was debris from crashed UFOs. According to their latest filing with the SEC last week, TTSA is reorganizing and dropping nearly all of its science and aerospace initiatives in order to focus primarily on entertainment products. The relevant section of the SEC report is copied below:

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Review of Ancient Aliens S16E06 "William Shatner Meets Ancient Aliens"

2/12/2021

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In recent interviews, William Shatner claims that he is agnostic on the question of ancient astronauts, or even skeptical of some of the ancient astronaut theorists’ claims. That wasn’t always the case. Almost 45 years ago, Shatner at least pretended to be an enthusiastic ancient astronaut theorist when he stepped into the shoes of the late Rod Serling to serve as host of Mysteries of the Gods—“as incredible as Star Trek”—a film adaptation of Erich von Däniken’s book Miracles of the Gods and a follow-up to the various film versions of Chariots of the Gods, including Serling’s In Search of Ancient Astronauts. Shatner’s former Star Trek colleague Leonard Nimoy was also subbing for Serling on In Search of…, the television continuation of In Search of Ancient Astronauts, and the most successful of von Däniken’s various intellectual offspring.

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Read My New Slate Magazine Article on Joe McCarthy, Tucker Carlson, and UFOs

2/12/2021

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I have a new article out today in Slate magazine examining Joe McCarthy, Tucker Carlson, and UFOs in light connection with masculinity issues and pop culture.

On a cold December night in 1950, red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy spent a charity dinner at Washington’s Sulgrave Club trading insults with liberal journalist Drew Pearson. McCarthy had attacked Pearson on the floor of the Senate, calling for a boycott of his radio show. Pearson had attacked McCarthy on air and in his newspaper column, accusing the senator of lying about communist infiltration of the American government. McCarthy had recklessly accused the State Department of harboring hundreds of communists, sparking a massive investigation and an ongoing purge. After dinner, the two ran into each other in the cloakroom and their conflict turned physical. McCarthy kneed Pearson in the groin, and Sen. Richard Nixon had to pull McCarthy off Pearson.

Read the rest at Slate magazine by clicking here.

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New York Times Puff Piece Celebrates Robert Bigelow's Hunt for Life after Death

1/21/2021

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Recently, UFO propagandist Leslie Kean had her book on the afterlife adapted as a Netflix series. Her writing partner, Ralph Blumenthal, is about to publish his long-gestating biography of alien abduction researcher John Mack, endorsing Mack’s ideas about reaching a transcendent afterlife through aliens. The pair came to renewed national attention in December 2017 when they revealed the existence of a Pentagon UFO office, a report instigated through the offices of To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, staffed by refugees from both the government office and its major contractor, wealthy UFO believer and hotelier Robert Bigelow’s flying saucer research organization. The relationship between these various data points wasn’t entirely clear until now. Today, the New York Times ran a new piece by Blumenthal rhapsodizing over Bigelow’s newest venture, an effort to prove life continues after death.

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Review of "The Believer" by Ralph Blumenthal

1/1/2021

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Ralph Blumenthal’s The Believer is probably the wrong book for me to be reviewing right now. Coming on the heels of me finishing a six-month project writing my own new book, which also combined biography with UFOs, the structural and formal similarities between our two volumes became uncomfortable. That Blumenthal made exactly the opposite choices in putting his book together served for me as an object lesson in the difference between reportage and storytelling. The Believer is a bad book, though not without a basic factual utility. It’s unpleasant to read, confusing, and lacks a clear perspective on its subject beyond hagiography. But worst of all, it’s bad as biography. You won’t leave this book feeling anything for or about John Mack, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who became an alien abduction researcher and who serves as the book’s titular subject. He never feels human.

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The Year in Review: 2020 in Ancient Mysteries, Modern Conspiracies, and Aliens

12/28/2020

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For years now, I have ended each trip around the sun with a summary of the preceding twelve months in fringe history, space aliens, and the weird. Most years, these summaries run into the thousands of words because so much happened. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic and the American presidential election severely curtailed the number of extreme claims made about ancient history, as conspiracy theorists turned their attention toward disease and politics. Last year, I said I was ready for a long, difficult year to end, and now those look like the good old days. This year I published a new book and wrote two more, and I look forward to what I hope will be big things next year when publishers get a look at my newest manuscript. In the meantime, we can look back in sadness and anger.

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Big Names Leave "To the Stars" While Alien Claims Swirl Around Remaining Star

12/22/2020

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This week, I am finishing the last few pages of my book, and I am also on deadline for an article that a national magazine has asked me to write for next month. So, I will not be writing too much this Christmas week. However, I did want to note in passing the big goings on over at To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, where three of its big names abruptly quit to start their own competing UFO company. Lue Elizondo, Chris Mellon and Steve Justice all left the company, with Elizondo concerned that TTSA had focused too much on UFO entertainment and not enough on crashed flying saucer wreckage analysis.

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Scott Wolter and Richard Hoagland Accuse CIA, Aliens of Monolith Meme Conspiracy

12/14/2020

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On December 12, former America Unearthed host Scott F. Wolter appeared on Mars conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland’s amateurish podcast The Other Side of Midnight. It was weird. Much of it was the same repetitive blather about Wolter’s greatest hits, particularly the Kensington Rune Stone, but listening to him try to discuss his ideas with a man who thinks the universe is filled with ancient alien ruins makes it an unusual exercise in mutual delusion.

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Mainstream Media Jump on Ex-Israeli Official's Familiar Space Alien Claims

12/9/2020

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I feel like I need to take note of the bizarre statement from former head of Israel’s defense ministry space directorate made recently alleging that the United States is touch with space aliens and that Donald Trump considered breaking the news before the election. Haim Eshed is 87 years old and currently promoting a new book about the cosmos. He served as the head of the space directorate from the early 2000s to 2010. Prior to that, he worked on Israel’s satellite program, beginning in 1980, and was one of the founders of Israel’s space agency in 1983.

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New Article Claims Military Has "Clear" Photo of Flying Triangle Rising from Ocean

12/3/2020

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As most of you probably know, Tim McMillan has an article in the new online news site The Debrief in which he outlines the continued Pentagon interest in the question of flying saucers, or "unidentified aerial phenomena" as they have been known among the military on and off for the past seven decades or so. The article, which is a bit shaggy and at times somewhat unclear, contains some new details about previously reported interactions between the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and lower-level staffers for the U.S. Senate:

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