JASON COLAVITO

Gillibrand on UFOs: "Some Look Like Drones, Some Look Like Balloons"

9/22/2023

Fortunately for all of us, Ancient Aliens isn’t on this week as the History channel prepares to launch the new season of William Shatner’s The UnXplained. I will be enjoying the night off. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed trying to work through all of the paperwork, permissions, and photography that goes into producing a book, so I have had relatively little time to write this week. However, I did want to point out this interview that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand gave to my local public radio station, WAMC, this week. Note that the hype about space aliens and interdimensional poltergeists has faded into a fairly straightforward question of why the military never bothered to check for balloons and drones.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E20: “The Top Ten Alien Petroglyphs”

9/15/2023

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Yesterday, NASA released a report about UFOs and made plain that there was no evidence of space aliens. NASA administrator Bill Nelson said that he didn’t know what some UFOs were and that more investigation is necessary; however, the report agreed with the Pentagon’s AARO that nearly all of them are aerial junk, drones, optical illusions, etc. The report added that the sensors that ufologists insist provide the best evidence for alien spaceships simply do not produce the right kind of information to draw effective conclusions, particularly when distance can’t be established. As with so many of these types of reports, funneling everything in the sky into the “UFO” bottle disguises the real issue: We aren’t studying alien spaceships but human perception—why it’s so hard to make sense of blobs on the edge of vision. And speaking of perception, this Ancient Aliens clip show is focused on just that, showing us ten examples of ancient astronaut theorists imagining science fiction stories in ambiguous rock art they lack (or ignore) the information to understand in its cultural context.

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Jaime Maussan Displays Fossilized "Aliens" at Mexican Congressional UFO Hearing

9/13/2023

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Longtime UFO huckster Jaime Maussan showed the Mexican Congress two alleged “fossilized” alien bodies whose “DNA” was one-third “unidentified” in a presentation attended by Mexican and U.S. officials. Maussan claimed the bodies had been recovered near Cusco, Peru and had been carbon-dated to at least 700 years ago. They looked very much like crude clay sculptures of Steven Spielberg’s E.T., and an x-ray showed small bones embedded within them. (Previous, similar fakes were made from the bones of human fetuses and/or animals, some looted from graves; experts identified these fakes as sand-covered paper mâché over animal bones.) The bodies were first publicized in 2017. At the time, the World Congress on Mummy Studies declared them a fraud. Avi Loeb, who told the Telegraph this week that his critics are mostly “bloggers” who aren’t fit to judge him, judged Maussan via video link and requested that scientists be allowed to study the alien bodies, something he hasn’t yet allowed for his own alleged extraterrestrial discovery. The Mexican UFO hearing occurred shortly after Jesse Michels released a multi-hour interview with U.S. UFO “whistleblower” David Grusch, who endorsed various Majestic-12-style conspiracy theories and speculated about a number of Ancient Aliens-style ancient astronaut hypotheses.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E19 “The Top Ten Mysteries of the Deep”

9/8/2023

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After a week off for the Labor Day holiday, Ancient Aliens returns with … another clip show. I could try to vamp for a paragraph or two about the philosophical background of claims of underwater civilization, draw connections to Atlantis, or even cite the influence of the 1936 Saturday morning movie serial Undersea Kingdom and its vision of subaquatic high technology and a hostile civilization beneath the waves. But I’ve done all of that before, and so has Ancient Aliens, and so did sister show The UnXplained last year in a very similar underwater-themed episode. This clip show contained previously broadcast segments surrounding ten topics vaguely connected by having something to do with water.

Not all of the segments match notes I have made about past episodes. It is possible some might include new talking head clips, or else the excerpts are from minor segments I did not mention in my reviews.

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Applause Books to Publish My James Dean Biography Next Year

9/6/2023

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I am delighted to announce that I have partnered with Applause Books to publish my biography of James Dean next year. I am deeply appreciative of the tireless work of my agent, Lee Sobel, in helping to find my book the best possible home, and for the support and enthusiasm of my editor at Applause, Chris Chappell. Publication of the book is the culmination of a years-long journey that began when I happened upon Rebel without a Cause on Turner Classic Movies one day during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and involved the largest and most comprehensive literature and archival research into James Dean’s life and legacy ever conducted. I am so thankful to have found a team that believes in my book and my work and wants to help me share with the world a story that needs to be told.

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The Return of the Stasis Tomb of the Red-Haired Giants

9/5/2023

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Ufologist Michael Salla presented an interview with “JP,” who allegedly serves in the United States military, about the discovery of a dimensional portal to an ancient temple housing the slumbering body of a dead-but-dreaming red-haired, presumably white-skinned, Giant. Here’s how Salla describes JP’s claims:

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George Knapp Speculates That "God" Might Be an Evil Space Alien

9/1/2023

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Ancient Aliens is taking the week off for the holiday, and I spent part of this week at work finalizing a project, which will be announced next week. I am taking the next few days off to enjoy the last week of my son's summer vacation before I get back to the grind next week. In the meantime, enjoy George Knapp's bizarre speculation about the space aliens' evil agenda and its connection to conservative efforts to promote Intelligent Design, from yesterday's Joe Rogan Experience. It doesn't tell you much about aliens but tells you a lot about the mindset of the people pushing bizarre claims about space aliens.

What could be so terrible that they can't tell us about it? Let's say, these aliens, wherever they're from, made us, that we're a genetic experiment. That they created our religions, our religious figures. That we are an agricultural product that somehow they harvest us. That our time is limited, that once the experiment is over, poof, we go away. […] Be careful what you wish for because you might find out that the intelligent designer isn't God that you're thinking of, it might be some alien science project or something like that. You can imagine a lot of different things that would be really disturbing to people to come out.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E18 “The Power of the Talisman”

8/25/2023

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Avi Loeb told Michael Shermer that he was very upset about a New York Times Magazine profile depicting him as an out-of-touch scientific pariah who makes basic analytical mistakes and is increasingly unmoored from reality due to his obsession with space aliens. He ran to Shermer’s podcast to complain about the magazine alleging that he is thin-skinned and uses the media to retaliate against criticism rather than produce strong science. But what else should we expect from a man who is now a regular on Ancient Aliens? Loeb’s quest for aliens is a bit of magical thinking according to his peers, so it’s appropriate that this episode of Ancient Aliens is devoted to the magic of talismans.

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"Permission to Wonder": A Review of "UFO" by Garrett M. Graff

8/24/2023

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When Martha MacCallum of Fox News asked Gov. Chris Christie about UFOs at the August 23 Republican presidential debate, the roaring laughter from the audience cut off her question. “C’mon, man” Christie responded, making a crack about “Martians.” A few weeks earlier, Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand brought up UFOs at an outdoor constituent event, only to have the audience laugh and giggle until she responded in kind. Among the public, outside of the very online world of UFO-themed social media, flying saucers just aren’t a serious subject. However, interest in UFOs among media and legislative elites has convinced American publishers that UFOs are due for a prestige-media makeover.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E17: “The New UFO Hunters”

8/18/2023

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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand raised the ire of social media UFO advocates when she appeared to pivot away from space aliens during a recent event with constituents. Referring to so-called UFO whistleblower David Grusch only as “the second guy” at last month’s House UFO hearing, Gillibrand giggled along with her laughing audience at claims of “dead aliens.” Instead, Gillibrand said that the real concern with UFOs was Russian, Chinese, and Iranian spying. Naturally, believers in visitation by non-human intelligence responded by accusing Gillibrand of being a traitor to the cause or of being compromised by the Deep State. Meanwhile, Galileo Project head Avi Loeb suggested in a Fox News Digital interview that space aliens may have the technology to create entire universes and therefore have the attributes we associate with God or a god. He is rapidly moving toward the final stage of UFO belief, making a religion of aliens.

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