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Capsule Review of Ancient Aliens S22E05 “UFO Hot Spots”

2/27/2026

On Thursday, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton sat for a deposition with members of Congress about her, her husband’s, and their foundation’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. Following the deposition, Clinton held a news conference in which she said that the questioning went off the rails, with investigators asking Clinton about “UFOs” and “Pizzagate” instead of Epstein. At the same time in the United Kingdom, Spyros Melaris lost a court bid to assert copyright over the infamous 1995 Alien Autopsy hoax video in order to quash an upcoming documentary about the hoax. Ray Santilli, who produced the 1995 Alien Autopsy special, is assumed to be the copyright holder, not Melaris. A few hours later, Ancient Aliens returned from an unplanned two-week hiatus to resume its new season in a new timeslot, now airing at 10 pm on Thursdays. The episode, however, was yet another “Special Edition” clip show, with segments cut and pasted from past episodes:

Segment 1 is from “The Hotspots Connection” (2023) about San Diego.
Segment 2 is from “The UFO Superhighway” (2024) about the area around Trinidad, Colorado.
Segment 3 is from “Destination Chile” (2020) about Santiago, Chile.
Segment 4 is from “Britain’s UFO Files” (2025) about Yorkshire, England.
Segment 5 is from “The Hotspots Connection” (2023) about New Castle, New York, and the Hudson Valley.
Segment 6 is from “The Volcano Factor” (2025) about Colombia.

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Lue Elizondo Claims Vatican Showed Him an Ancient UFO Account (But It Didn't)

2/25/2026

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Glenn Beck interviewed Lue Elizondo by phone for his podcast yesterday, and Elizondo made an unfounded claim that the Vatican showed him evidence of ancient flying saucers. Beck—who has used his platform in the past to claim a lost white race inhabited ancient America—promoted the supposed revelation online with hyperbolic headlines: “Former UFO official saw ANCIENT EVIDENCE of aliens at the Vatican?!” Meanwhile, the supposed “evidence” is (a) not secret, (b) well-known, and (c) has nothing to do with aliens except in the minds of ufologists, as I will show you below. This, though, is yet another example of what ignoramuses who don’t know what they are talking about do not actually create knowledge by bouncing their ignorance off one another.

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Hollywood Disclosure Alliance Awards Honor Elizondo, Loeb, Coulthart, and More

2/24/2026

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It’s been a big week for UFO advocate Lue Elizondo. Earlier today, Elizondo announced a new nationwide tour this spring in which he will sell tickets for audiences to watch him have conversations with ufology-themed guests that he will then repackage for podcasts, which will presumably also carry advertising while serving to promote his next book, due out later this year. The bizarrely named Persona Non Grata tour—from a man who is literally welcomed into Congress and the biggest media in the world, like 60 Minutes and the New York Times—will include twenty cities across the United States with guests to be announced later.

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Check Out My Article in the March Issue of "Fortean Times"!

2/20/2026

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I wrote the cover story for the March 2026 issue of Fortean Times (no. 468), examining the life and legacy of Erich von Däniken in the wake of the recent death of the most famous ancient astronaut theorist in the world. Across the eight-page retrospective, I look at how von Däniken transformed ideas from other authors into a palatable and popular form that reached more people around the world than any pseudohistorical theory since Ignatius Donnelly wrote Atlantis: The Antediluvian World.

I also consider what made his ideas so exciting for his readers, how his populist tone and infectious enthusiasm impacted science writing, and why even the most egregious of errors had little impact on his fame or his followers.

Be sure to check it out wherever you get your magazines or directly from the publisher on their website.

A small note: It is a little ironic that Fortean Times gave my last word on von Däniken the same headline as my first piece about him, in Skeptic magazine back in 2004.

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Donald Trump Says Barack Obama Disclosed Classified Info with Alien Comments

2/19/2026

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While taking questions aboard Air Force One this afternoon, President Donald Trump said that former president Barack Obama disclosed classified information in a podcast last weekend when he said that space aliens were "real" but that he had seen no evidence for alien contact and the U.S. government was not holding any space aliens, Trump made the comments in response to questioning from Fox News reporter Peter Doocy:

Peter Doocy: Barack Obama said that aliens are real. Have you seen any evidence of non-human visitors to Earth?

Donald Trump: Well, he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that. You know.

Doocy: So aliens are real?

Donald Trump: Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that. He made a... he made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information. No, I don't... I don't have an opinion on it. I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it. Do you believe it, Peter?

Peter Doocy: Uh, well, if the President can declassify anything that he wants to, so if you want to make an announcement...

Donald Trump: I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.

It is not clear which of Obama's comments supposedly contains allegedly classified information, nor is it clear how Trump can know Obama gave out classified information while also claiming not to know the information.

By evening, Trump appeared to walk back the comments in a Truth Social post when he directed the Department of Defense "to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs)," implying that there is indeed no secret knowledge of alien life if they have to hunt for the files.

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In Brief: Barack Obama Causes Brief Alien Frenzy

2/16/2026

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This weekend, former president Barack Obama appeared on the No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen podcast and briefly caused a frenzy about space aliens. During a lightning round of questioning at the end of the podcast, Cohen asked Obama if aliens are real. "They're real," Obama replied, "but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in, what is it, Area 51." The response about aliens being real led to a media frenzy. It was the top headline on the Drudge Report for a day, and Time magazine sent out an email alert with the supposed admission as the top story. It trended for a day on X, where users seized on the comments as proof of alien contact, and was even one. On Sunday, Obama clarified his remarks, saying in a social media post that he was trying to give a "speed round" answer. He meant, he said, that statistically, given the size of the universe, "the odds are good there's life out there." He added that "I saw no evidence during my presidency that aliens have made contact with us. Really!" The frenzy, which made the NBC Nightly News Monday night, might have been avoided had Cohen, who has no background in journalism, thought to ask the obvious follow-up question once Obama said aliens were real. Indeed, it might also have been avoided had the mainstream media asked Obama to clarify rather than running with a half-answer.

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In Brief: Two Papers Retracted in New Blow to Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

2/15/2026

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The journal PLOS One has retracted two recent papers providing alleged evidence for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, citing deceptive citations, failure to follow standard research methodology, misidentification of materials, and faulty age models and sampling strategies, among other concerns. The two papers attempted to prove that a comet airburst caused megafauna extinctions and that comet dust had been found in Baffin Bay dating back to this time, around 10,800 BCE. Taken together, the errors suggest either intentional deception or a research team so enamored of its hypothesis that they disregarded the safeguards of scientific inquiry. Only one of the co-authors agreed with one of the retractions. Many of the others, including those from the Comet Research Group, disagreed with both retractions, while PLOS One editors could not reach a plurality of the authors. The retractions are another blow to Graham Hancock’s favorite catastrophe and the broader claim that a comet impact sank Atlantis caused the Great Flood of mythology.

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In Brief: History Channel Pulls New Episodes of "Ancient Aliens"

2/13/2026

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The History channel pulled at least two new episodes of Ancient Aliens that were set to air on February 12 and February 19 from their schedule, replacing them with reruns of Dan Akryod’s The UnBelievable on February 12 and Danny Trejo’s Mysteries Unearthed on February 19. The network did not offer a reason for the schedule change, and they have not rescheduled the episodes, which were scheduled to be clip shows assembled from segments of previous episodes.

The schedule change was abrupt, coming just four weeks into the show’s twenty-second season and sudden enough that the History channel’s website still contains the original air dates on the Ancient Aliens page, though their published schedule has been updated. The stars of the series made no mention of the schedule change on their social media feeds, most of which have not been updated in weeks.

The schedule change was made prior to Ancient Aliens star Nick Pope announcing yesterday that he is currently in the final stage of esophageal cancer and has stepped back from his work on Ancient Aliens and as moderator of Ancient Aliens Live, the traveling stage show featuring the program’s talking heads.

Tickets are still being sold for Ancient Aliens Live shows this month.

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Some Interesting New Insights into Medieval Legends about Ancient Egypt

2/11/2026

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I wanted to call your attention to some new additions to my Library. As most of you know, I have spent more than a decade researching the medieval Arab-Islamic pyramid myth, which told of how either Hermes Trismegistus or Surid built the temples and pyramids of Egypt before Noah’s Flood to preserve scientific knowledge. I have finally completed some of the translation work I had long mean to do but hadn’t quite gotten around to, as a supplement to the many translations I had already posted, and the material contains some interesting insights into the growth and development of the myth, which I had previously discussed in my book The Legends of the Pyramids (2021).

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Epstein Files Describe Billionaire's Secret Supervillain-Style Library of Relics

2/9/2026

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A February 9, 2014, email in the Epstein files describes a secret billionaire dinner on the premises of a major defense contractor that reads like the kind of dark conspiracy you would find in the browning pages of a twentieth-century occult thriller or in a knockoff James Bond movie. The dinner was hosted by ultra-wealthy internet pioneer Rick Adams, who founded UUNET, and featured fellow internet pioneer Vint Cerf, a cast of unnamed “famous people,” and skeptical activist James “The Amazing Randi” eating in what sounds very much like a villain’s lair from a bad movie, stuffed with ancient relics, Nazi memorabilia, and priceless historical artifacts.

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<<Previous

Capsule Review of Ancient Aliens S22E05 “UFO Hot Spots”

Lue Elizondo Claims Vatican Showed Him an Ancient UFO Account (But It Didn't)

Hollywood Disclosure Alliance Awards Honor Elizondo, Loeb, Coulthart, and More

Check Out My Article in the March Issue of "Fortean Times"!

Donald Trump Says Barack Obama Disclosed Classified Info with Alien Comments

In Brief: Barack Obama Causes Brief Alien Frenzy

In Brief: Two Papers Retracted in New Blow to Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

In Brief: History Channel Pulls New Episodes of "Ancient Aliens"

Some Interesting New Insights into Medieval Legends about Ancient Egypt

Epstein Files Describe Billionaire's Secret Supervillain-Style Library of Relics

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