If you are looking for my review of the episode of America Unearthed that aired on July 2, I reviewed it last week when it debuted online. If the Travel Channel releases the following episode at midweek as they have been doing, I will review it this week. Otherwise, I will be taking off a couple of days for the holiday and will return Friday to review the next episode of Ancient Aliens. 

David Wilcock hasn’t been having a very good couple of years. Only a few years ago, he was the third most prominent ancient astronaut theorist on Ancient Aliens, behind Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress, and he was one of the biggest stars of the Gaia TV streaming service, which featured hundreds of hours of programming from him. He also had a lucrative line of books and DVDs and a speaking tour. But then Wilcock made the critical error of turning subtext into text. With the exception of Tsoukalos, nearly all of the Ancient Aliens crew and their colleagues are right-wingers, but they manage to keep their conservative ranting mostly confined to short asides in YouTube videos and tweets. Wilcock, on the other hand, has been outspoken in his embrace of the most extreme pro-Trump conspiracy theories, including both Pizzagate and Q-Anon, and he has proudly declared himself a recipient of Russian propaganda, which he repeats uncritically. Between this and his contentious departure from Gaia, even the brain trust behind Ancient Aliens finally cut ties with Wilcock, who has not appeared on the show since Wilcock refused to participate in their episode interviewing John Podesta, whom Wilcock considers part of an anti-Trump, child-raping alien death cult.

If you are looking for my review of tonight's episode of America Unearthed, "Phoenicians in America," I reviewed it last week and you can find it here.

​I am doing moving-related tasks today and don’t have a lot of time for writing, so today I’d like to share the ratings results for the past week in fringe history TV. On Friday, the History Channel and To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science collaboration Unidentified reached 1.158 million viewers (0.26 in the advertiser-preferred adults 18-49 demographic), beating its lead-in Ancient Aliens (1.1 million, 0.19 adults 18-49) for the first time. Both were trounced by HGTV’s My Lottery Dream Home. It’s interesting to see that Unidentified is growing its audience beyond that of Ancient Aliens, particularly in the younger demographic, though the small variance from week to week suggests that this isn’t yet a pattern and can be attributable to any number of factors, including the relatively dull topic for this past week’s Ancient Aliens. The ’90s throwback to Bob Lazar probably alienated some viewers who consider him old news. Last year’s In Search Of briefly topped its Ancient Aliens lead-in for a small part of its run, but the overall pattern has been for the 10 PM ET show to lose viewers since the 10 PM audience is smaller than earlier in prime time.

​Fake history is everywhere and often quite difficult to root out. Today, I’m going to break format a little bit to look at an inflated historical claim that is a little unusual. I came across this listing for an antique brass humidor for sale at a wildly inflated price of $795, and I had a hard time believing it.