Blog Archives

Review of Ancient Aliens S14E01: "Return to Antarctica"

5/31/2019

It’s hard to believe that Ancient Aliens has been on the air for 14 seasons stretching over ten years. When the series debuted as a 2-hour special in 2009, few thought it would have the staying power to last for a decade, much less to become a cultural touchstone. For better or for worse (well, for worse), Ancient Aliens has done more to impact how Americans view ancient history than any other media in living memory. Even highly successful specials of the past, like the 1993 Mystery of the Sphinx documentary that launched the “alternative archaeology” movement, lacked the staying power and ongoing cultural cachet of Ancient Aliens. Celebrities declare their allegiance to the show, tens of thousands gather at fan conferences around the world, and its talking heads have become famous in their own right. Ancient Aliens is now a lifestyle brand, with a wide range of merchandise, both officially licensed and exploitative knockoffs chasing the show’s more than one million weekly viewers.

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Returning "America Unearthed" Draws Just 440,000 Viewers, Beat by Reruns of Itself in Key Adult Demo

5/31/2019

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My new book on the history of the mound builder myth now has an official title: The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and America's Hunt for a "Lost White Race." The official title is close to one of the titles I asked about in my survey last week, and that option scored a whopping 95% of votes cast! My thanks to everyone who participated in my survey over the weekend, and for all of you who offered thoughtful suggestions for alternative titles. Some elements from those suggestions have made their way into the final title.

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Ralph Blumenthal Says Copying To the Stars Isn't the Same as Following Their Lead

5/30/2019

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After reviewing America Unearthed Tuesday night, I was a little too tired to spend too much time writing again yesterday for posting today. Staying up past 11 PM has become a lot harder since having a kid, and the fact that I had a 7 AM appointment the next morning only made it worse. So, today I want to spend only a few minutes highlighting some of the questionable statements that journalist Ralph Blumenthal made to Mike Damante of Punk Rock and UFOs in discussing his recent story reporting on the claims of some Navy officers who will appear on Friday’s History Channel show Unidentified, the network’s show made in conjunction with To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, whose work Blumenthal and writing partner Leslie Kean have been feeding off of for almost two years. The pair have steadfastly refused to disclose to readers their conflicts of interest, including their relationship with To the Stars and Kean’s founding of a UFO advocacy group. Imagine the Times asking an anti-abortion advocate to cover abortion for the paper, and you will start to see the problem.

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Review of America Unearthed S04E01: Vikings in the Southwest

5/28/2019

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America Unearthed debuted in December 2012 on the now-defunct H2, the spinoff network of the History Channel. Over the course of three seasons, the program attracted a loyal audience of about 1.5 million viewers and rivaled Ancient Aliens as the H2 network’s most popular program. The show ended in 2015 when H2’s parent company, A+E Networks, shuttered the channel to make way for the Viceland network and its younger Gen Z target audience. Earlier this year, the Travel Channel announced that it would revive America Unearthed as part of a retooling that would see the network target the History Channel’s niche as a purveyor of paranormal history and conspiracy theories.

For those of you who are knew to America Unearthed and are visiting this review after watching the premiere of the show’s fourth season, it is worth reviewing a bit of the controversial history of America Unearthed.

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New York Times' UFO Coverage Still Just a Front for To the Stars and History Channel

5/28/2019

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Later today, America Unearthed returns, and I know you are all waiting with baited breath for the Travel Channel to relaunch the controversial ex-H2 show. In fact, the only people who don’t seem excited are those at the Travel Channel, which are dumping the show with no publicity and no fanfare. Megan Fox got New York Times and major magazine writeups for her crappy fringe history show, and America Unearthed just barely got a line in the nightly TV listing highlights. Ironically, it the show will air opposite CBS’s archaeology-themed summer drama Blood & Treasure. Both shows lie outrageously about history, feature bearded dudes who dress like Indiana Jones, and imagine elaborate conspiracy theories about dangerous secrets in the ancient past. Calling one “fiction” and the other “reality” is at this point a distinction without a difference.

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Hunting for a Title for My Book on the Mound Builder Myth

5/25/2019

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Seeing as it is Memorial Day weekend and we are facing down the gauntlet of several months stacked with multiple fringe history and UFO TV shows airing each week, I am going to give myself a break today and spend the day correcting copyedited chapter pages instead. I need to get something done before trying to review America Unearthed, Ancient Aliens, and possibly that To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science show all in the same week. My publisher has suggested three possible titles for my Mound Builder book but remains open to suggestions. In the poll below, let me know which you prefer, and feel free to share your suggestions for a better title in comments below.

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The Pentagon Admits to Investigating UFOs, Plus: Graham Hancock Cleared of Josh Reeves's Plagiarism Charge

5/24/2019

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The usual characters from cable TV ufology are very excited this week because a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the military investigates when it receives reports of incursions into U.S. airspace by unidentified aerial vehicles. In response to a question from the New York Post that I would guess was connected to the upcoming History channel series following To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science and their efforts to explore military UFO research, the Pentagon conformed that it investigated “unidentified aerial phenomena,” a fact that should have surprised no one.

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Two New Articles Discuss UFO Demons in the Defense Department

5/23/2019

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This week, two very different articles both discussed the same bonkers idea, namely that a significant faction in the U.S. Department of Defense believes that the country is battling demons, poltergeists, psychic mind storms, and other refugees from bad horror movies. A Den of Geek article pulled together a number of statements from the past year given by various players orbiting around ESP investigator, former U.S. government paranormal researcher and To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science executive Hal Puthoff to the effect that the U.S. government has been investigating what one former employee of Robert Bigelow’s UFO research company called “bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more,” all under the cover of UFO studies.

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New Book Claims Homer's Iliad Proves Troy Was a Celtic City in Northern Europe

5/22/2019

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To promote the release of his self-published book The Discovery of Troy and Its Lost History, historical researcher Bernard Jones published an article in Ancient Origins highlighting the book’s central claim, that the ancient city of Troy (Ilium) was not located in Asia Minor as has been assumed since ancient times but instead was located in the Celtic world. His evidence is Homer’s Iliad, whose poetic descriptions he takes as literal depictions of a voyage to the New World.

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Christopher Mellon of To the Stars Calls for Congressional Action on UFOs

5/21/2019

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On Sunday, Christopher Mellon, a wealthy financier and scion of the Mellon banking family, published an op-ed in The Hill conveniently calling on Congress to launch an investigation into UFOs, just days before Mellon’s employer, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, launches its new History channel TV series about government UFO investigations. Mellon served as deputy defense secretary for intelligence at the turn of the century and was a Senate staffer in the 1990s and again in the early 2000s. Now, he’s a UFO nut, who like so many other former officials mysteriously developed a passion for demanding government UFO answers only after he left government and was no longer in a position to do anything about it.

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