Blog Archives

Review of Ancient Aliens S20E11 “Mysteries of the Maya”

6/28/2024

After a three-month hiatus, Ancient Aliens returns with a “new” episode, but you would be forgiven for thinking it another rerun. This episode, “Mysteries of the Maya,” can easily be confused with 2012’s “The Mayan Conspiracy” and 2019’s “Secrets of the Maya.” The show covered the Maya in at least fifteen other episodes, according to a 2019 History Channel playlist. The number is undoubtedly higher now. It’s depressing to think that I have been reviewing this show for almost fifteen years and have spent at least ten of them complaining about the endlessly recycled content. And yet, it’s still important to cover this unfortunately influential show. Just last week, Ancient Aliens superfan Danica Patrick went on a podcast to rant about Reptilians and dimensional rifts and vast conspiracies, and Congress is still trying to hunt crashed flying saucers and dead aliens while Tucker Carlson panics about an ancient lost cryptoterrestrial civilization, and this is what America’s chattering class ignores as voters lap it up and use it to make decisions that may send the world into a doom spiral. But, hey, Giorgio Tsoukalos’s hair sure is funny, right?

8 Comments

Unveiling the Cover of "Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean"

6/25/2024

6 Comments

I am proud to share the cover of my new book Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean, out this fall from Applause Books, and imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. It was a long, challenging road to develop an attractive cover that captured the feel of the book, but I think this one more than succedeed.

6 Comments

New Academic Paper Challenges Adrienne Mayor's Griffin-Protoceratops Link

6/24/2024

10 Comments

A new academic paper is challenging folklorist Adrienne Mayor’s identification of the dinosaur Protoceratops as the inspiration for the legendary griffin of mythology. Mayor’s claim, first made more than thirty years ago and most famously outlined in her turn-of-the-century book The First Fossil Hunters, posits that Central Asian merchants observed the exposed bones of Protoceratops, some with their nests, and passed these tales on. As they traveled westward, the creature turned into a winged lion with an eagle’s head, resembling the beaked skull of the Protoceratops.

10 Comments

Review of Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction S01E01 "You Saw a UFO"

6/20/2024

12 Comments

We don’t get as many alien-themed cable quasi-documentaries as we used to. Part of it is the shifting taste of the public, which prefers to freebase its conspiracy theories straight from the internet’s darkest corners. Part of it is due to the collapse of the cable TV industry, which has dramatically slashed programming. And part of it is due to the cyclical nature of kooky programming, which toggles between the paranormal, the extraterrestrial, and ancient mysteries with a numbing regularity. Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction probably wasn’t destined to dethrone The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch as the top paranormal program, but it’s a pretty dire affair for a supposedly professional production from one of Warner Bros. Discovery’s crown jewel networks.

12 Comments

Graham Hancock Says Flint Dibble "Conned" Him; Plus: Avi Loeb's Big Night Out

6/17/2024

3 Comments

Months after debating archaeologist Flint Dibble on The Joe Rogan Experience, Gaham Hancock broke his silence about the encounter, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that he had been “conned” and endorsing a YouTube video alleging that Dibble lied five times over the multi-hour debate in order to humiliate Hancock with false information. Hancock did not explain how he failed to recognize the allegedly false information, which was directly relevant to the information he claimed to have researched for more than thirty years. The arguments used by YouTuber “DeDunker” were not terribly convincing, but even if taken at face value would hardly rise above slight misstatements or minor confusion when speaking extemporaneously for many hours. More concerning is that Hancck jumped on the “conned” bandwagon to save face after having no other response to Dibble dominating the debate for three months.

3 Comments

House Drops UFO Amendments; Coulthart Mad Australia Laughed at Him

6/13/2024

3 Comments

This week the House of Representatives quietly dropped proposed UFO amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. The Rules Committee rejected four proposed UFO amendments from Democrat Rober Garcia and Republican Tim Burchett that would, among other things, have established a federal UFO agency, created reporting protocols for private UFO sightings, and declassified all UFO records. The House Intelligence Committee, however, put new protections for intelligence community whistleblowers into the Intelligence Authorization Act, which may impact alleged UFO whistleblowers.

3 Comments

Ross Coulthart Claims Trump Under Assassination Threat Over UFO Knowledge

6/6/2024

13 Comments

This past weekend, NewsNation UFO journalist Ross Coulthart gave an eyebrow-raising speech at a meeting of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies in which Coulthart suggested that both he and former president Donald Trump were under assassination threat because they know too much about UFOs. However, the speech had even more disturbing undertones.

13 Comments

Ufologists Accuse Journalist of "Attacking" Tim Gallaudet Over Cable TV Ghost Show

6/1/2024

2 Comments

I usually prepare my weekend newsletter on Friday and take the weekend off. Naturally, that’s when the ufologists decide to make news. Chris Mellon, who only months ago insisted UFOs were alien craft, did an about-face and began talking about UFOs being drones and tweeting that everyone has always known the big problem was drones. Ross Coulthart gave a speech in which he alleged that he had arranged to have all the UFO secrets he knows published by a third party should unnamed nefarious forces succeed in assassinating him for knowing too much. He could, of course, forestall his death by simply revealing his secrets, or even who is after him, but instead he has hopped on the bandwagon with Lue Elizondo, Jeremy Corbell, Garry Nolan, and other UFO influencers claiming unspecified death threats.

2 Comments

Review of Ancient Aliens S20E11 “Mysteries of the Maya”

Unveiling the Cover of "Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean"

New Academic Paper Challenges Adrienne Mayor's Griffin-Protoceratops Link

Review of Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction S01E01 "You Saw a UFO"

Graham Hancock Says Flint Dibble "Conned" Him; Plus: Avi Loeb's Big Night Out

House Drops UFO Amendments; Coulthart Mad Australia Laughed at Him

Ross Coulthart Claims Trump Under Assassination Threat Over UFO Knowledge

Ufologists Accuse Journalist of "Attacking" Tim Gallaudet Over Cable TV Ghost Show

Author

Newsletters

Categories

Terms & Conditions

Archives