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Review of Ancient Aliens S21E03: “The Top Ten UFO Crashes”

2/22/2025

When the House of Representatives announce a conspiracy theory task force to investigate the JFK assassination, UFOs, and other paranoid bugaboos beloved of the internet and the antigovernment right, it seemed like a waste of time. After Rep. Anna Paulina Luna announced on Friday that the taskforce would be using taxpayer dollars to fund trips to conspiracy hotspots for its members, it also appeared to be a waste of money. First up: Dallas, to speak to “first-hand witnesses” of the assassination 62 years ago. So, with the government once again descending into paranoid conspiracy theories, what better time to check in with Ancient Aliens? This week, the show once again delivers a recycled clip show devoted to the very theme Luna so loves—UFO crashes!

Here are the clips presented in this episode:

19 Comments

Review of Ancient Aliens S21E02 “The Top Ten Mysterious Monoliths”

2/15/2025

24 Comments

It’s been a miserable week in which the current administration in Washington devastated what remains of American science with indiscriminate cuts that will compromise everything from disease detection to cancer research to weather forecasting. So it’s entirely appropriate, I guess, that the same day that saw a governmental attack on science happened as the History channel launched another broadside against public knowledge and the integrity of knowledge with yet another Ancient Aliens clip show larded with commercials for still more programs promising “mysteries” upon “mysteries”—because, apparently, nothing can be known for certain except about the Confederacy and the Nazis.

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YouTube Megastar Mr. Beast Explores Giza, Asks about Ancient Astronauts

2/10/2025

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This weekend, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, posted a 21-minute YouTube video documenting the 100 hours he spent at the Giza pyramids with the permission of the Egyptian government, which closed the site for his video shoot. Donaldson toured the pyramids, the Sphinx, and the associated temples with the help of Ramy Romany from Ancient Aliens and Zahi Hawass and he repeatedly referenced the ancient astronaut theory and/or a lost civilization in discussing the pyramids.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S21E01: “The Top Ten Extraordinary Discoveries”

2/8/2025

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Ancient Aliens has been off the air since September, when the last new episode aired. The intervening months were filled with Ancient Aliens: Origins, in which the series rebroadcast old episodes of the show and let its talking heads share their thoughts about how much better the show was in the good old days. It is therefore entirely appropriate that the new season of Ancient Aliens opens with a clip show of segments from old episodes. As has been my policy since Ancient Aliens began padding its episode order with these clip shows, I will simply list the segments that are rerun and link to my original reviews of the episodes excerpted where I can identify them.

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In Brief: UFO News Roundup

2/6/2025

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The torrent of horrifying news coming out of Washington every few hours has left precious little room in the media to talk about anything else, so it’s no surprise that there hasn’t been much news about UFOs, Atlantis, space ghosts, and other indulgences that dominate only in boring, normal times. Bloomberg has a feature about the bizarre life of Joseph Firmage, a onetime tech leader who descended into UFO and antigravity scams. Politico ran an odd story this week that crossed between the paranormal and the Trump carnival. According to the report, an “informal working group” of FBI agents investigating UFOs are concerned that the Trump purge of thousands of agents who worked on January 6 investigations will cost them their jobs. The media spun this as an admission of an FBI UFO task force, but it turned out that the entire story was based off a claim made by Ryan Graves, the UFO witness turned UFO think tank founder who stands to gain from continued government UFO investigations. Politico claimed three other unnamed people confirmed the existence of the group, but they provided no information about who those people are or whether they have business ties to Graves or other UFO organizations. They said only that they were “familiar,” which could mean anything from FBI agents to filmmakers to SOL Foundation staffers. The bureau denied that anyone at the FBI had confirmed the existence of any such thing. And so it goes.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S21E03: “The Top Ten UFO Crashes”

Review of Ancient Aliens S21E02 “The Top Ten Mysterious Monoliths”

YouTube Megastar Mr. Beast Explores Giza, Asks about Ancient Astronauts

Review of Ancient Aliens S21E01: “The Top Ten Extraordinary Discoveries”

In Brief: UFO News Roundup

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