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Diana Pasulka Can't Answer Simple Joe Rogan Query: "How Do You Know It's True?"

7/31/2026

Yesterday, Diana Pasulka appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience to promote her new book, which I reviewed earlier this week. The interview did not go well for Pasulka, who seemed surprised that Rogan—of all people!—pushed back on some her outlandish ideas. One particular exchange stood out because Pasulka was unable to answer the simplest of questions: How do you know these things you are saying are true? A frustrated Pasulka stammered through what seemed like interminable efforts to sidestep the question before admitting she does not know. It seemed to be the very first time Pasulka had ever been challenged on one her outrageous UFO claims, and I was doubly surprised that Rogan ever so gently pushed back on the claim that space aliens deceive humans by implanting false visions of the future in their dreams and that Pasulka appears to have never considered, even for a moment, that these false prophecies—which I remind you are visions that do not come to pass--might not be real or from aliens and could simply be a person’s dreams.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E14: “Alien Investigators” (Special Edition)

7/31/2026

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This week, we watched Ross Coulthart devote NewsNation’s Reality Check time to an interview with a UFO YouTuber who goes by the name UAPGerb, and this ridiculous ouroboros of UFO YouTubers eating each other’s tails resulted in UAPGerb accusing Lue Elizondo of angling to become UFO Czar for Donald Trump, saying that it smacked of “controlled” disclosure from intelligence operatives. Elizondo raced to YouTube to fire back and to call UAPGerb ungrateful for the help Elizondo had given him, and the whole thing turned into a messy social media blow up. By contrast, this “special edition” of Ancient Aliens takes a much more laudatory look back at the show’s profiles of a number of UFO investigators, offering repeat biographical segments.

The six ufologists and UFO organizations whose hagiographies we see include:

MUFON, from “The MUFON Files” (2023).
J. Allen Hynek, from “The Legacy of J. Allen Hynek” (2025).
Jacques Vallée, from “Jacques Vallée: UFO Pioner” (2024).
Linda Moulton Howe, from “The Linda Moulton Howe Files” (2024).
John Mack, from “The Abduction Files” (2025).
Erich von Däniken, from “The Alien Phenomenon” (2019).

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Review of "The Others" by D. W. Pasulka

7/27/2026

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Reading American Cosmic author Diana Pasulka’s The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny is supposed to be an enlightening philosophical exploration of human deficiency in the face of potential intelligences greater than our own. In practice, it was more of a book length extrapolation of a verse from “Weird” Al Yankovic’s classic parody “Amish Paradise”:

           Think you’re really righteous?
           Think you’re pure in heart?
           Well, I know I’m a million times as humble as thou art

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Timothy Alberino Resurrects the "Kandahar Giant" in Joe Rogan Appearance

7/24/2026

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Joe Rogan was on a pseudoarchaeology and pseudohistory kick this week, with two separate multi-hour episodes devoted to imaginary history, so lucky me: I am making a second bonus post today because so many bad things happened. This time, his guest was Nephilim-hunter Timothy Alberino, who was on to promote his special edition of the Book of Enoch. Alberino related the story of the Kandahar Giant, which I examined a decade ago. I encourage to you to read what I found back at the time, namely that there were at least four different versions of the story Quayle told, one being explicitly a work of fiction (Quayle’s 2006 novel), followed by yet another contradictory account by L. A. Marzulli—all of which find no supporting evidence in U.S. military records from the Afghanistan War. The supposed military member who confirmed the story also refused to give his name, making it impossible to evaluate his story.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E13: “Secrets of the Amazon”

7/24/2026

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After I graduated college in 2003, I briefly worked in the anthropology department at the New York State Museum before being transferred to a different unit. Now, this was back in the day when accessing scholarly information was difficult if you weren’t part of a campus community. I can remember talking with one of the archaeologists on staff there about the discovery of platforms and possible cities in the Amazon, and she was able to get me a copy of the Nature report about it, something the Museum had access to but I, as a civilian—and one with little money—did not. I remember being fascinated to learn that there had been a whole civilization I wasn’t aware of, and I mention this because that happened almost a quarter century ago. Since then, a great deal of work has been done on the settlements of the pre-Contact Amazon, and even Graham Hancock wrote a book about it in 2019 (America Before), in my review of which you will find more information and details.

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Joe Rogan Talks Lost Super-Civilizations with Yet Another Pseudoscience YouTuber

7/22/2026

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Joe Rogan was at it again this week with a podcast exploring archaeological conspiracy theories. This time, Rogan interviewed Cassie Coppersmith, a YouTuber who makes videos about ancient stone constructions that average around 25,000 views apiece as of this writing. Other than appearing on other minor pseudohistorians’ podcasts, I can’t find any reference to her anywhere, so I imagine her Rogan appearance was her big moment in the sun. She doesn’t have much to say to Rogan that we haven’t heard before. Her schtick is the usual fringe ideas that rocks are too hard and too heavy for ancient people to have carved and transported without advanced modern technology. But her real purpose in appearing on the show was to give Rogan an excuse to rant about how much he loves Graham Hancock and just how unfair all those evil academics are for not accepting ideas without real evidence.

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Ross Coulthart Says He Can't Disclose Why He Thinks Another Hoax Is Secretly True

7/20/2026

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There’s not much to say about this head-slapper, but it seems worth recording for posterity that, after saying he was chatting about UFOs with Dr. Phil, Ross Coulthart then promoted a twenty-year-old hoax on his Reality Check NewsNation YouTube show last night. Back in 2007, a man calling himself Isaac Caret posted on a freebie Fortune City web page documents allegedly showing reverse-engineered alien technology and alien writing. The materials had been stolen and rendered from images made by digital artist Margaret Gel, who explained how she had created the original images and why. Coulthart, however, thinks that the hoax claim is a coverup of a real secret reverse engineering program—and, of course, it’s yet another thing he claims he can’t tell us about for secret reasons, just like his buried UFO, his interdimensional gateway, and so many other claims he raises and then drops.

You say it was a hoax categorically, definitively, widely known to be a hoax. Why do you say that? Is it because there are people online who just say it’s a hoax? I actually don't agree. […] I can't dismiss this case for reasons I cannot disclose. It's an ongoing investigation for me. […] There are reasons to be skeptical about the case and there's been a whole debunk that's been published. Um, uh, it does beg questions to me. Why would somebody create such an elaborate document? It’s a bit like the MJ12 documents. Why would somebody create such an elaborate document if it’s all just a silly hoax? And a lot of people have suggested that it was a publicity effort by an animation company, a CGI company to generate business. But if it was, they never said who they were or generated any benefits for themselves by publicizing their role in doing this.

Sigh. The assumption that everyone is as lazy as ufology pundits is depressingly frequent in ufology and ancient astronaut theory, and entirely at odds with the whole of human history.

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Heather Lynn Is Upset with Me

7/17/2026

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Not many of you read my recent piece analyzing H Files creator Heather Lynn’s conspiracy theory about Zecharia Sitchin, Jeffrey Epstein, and an alleged Israeli effort to use the ancient astronaut theory for propaganda purposes. But Lynn did, and last night she appeared in a 5-hour X Spaces conversation in which she complained not about my criticisms of her poor scholarship but rather about how offended she felt that I mentioned the undertones of antisemitism in her conspiracy theory. The irony was rich because Lynn—who uses a pseudonym—did this in the X Space of a social media personality who goes by the name Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum’s character from Jurassic Park) and who (ironically, given his handle) focuses on promoting conspiracy theories about Jewish influence in media and politics.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E12: “Hidden Messages” (Special Edition)

7/17/2026

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Oh, look: It’s another “special edition” of Ancient Aliens recycling segments from past shows. Last season, there were six clip shows across seventeen episodes, but they aired consecutively. This season, we have had five clip shows across the first twelve episodes, spread out in between new outings. As I believe most of you know, clip shows used to air under their own spin-off titles and were not counted as part of the mothership (ha!) series’ episode numbering. However, starting in 2023, Ancient Aliens began producing a different line of clip shows—billed as “Top Ten” episodes—that were officially part of the season. This allowed them to fill out a supersized 20-episode season with just 15 original episodes. Once they set the precedent, the number of Top Ten episodes increased even as the per-season episode order declined. This season, they gave entirely on the Top Ten conceit, and the official in-season clip shows are now indistinguishable from the clip shows that air as spin-off series and specials.

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"Now Voyager" Publishes Joint Profile of Graham Hancock and Flint Dibble

7/14/2026

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Now Voyager, a new magazine for longform journalism, published a new 8,000-word story about Graham Hancock’s and Flint Dibble’s 4.5-hour-long debate on The Joe Rogan Experience in 2024. “Bones of Contention,” by freelance culture and entertainment journalist Chantel Tattoli, who frequently writes for the New York Times, provides biographies of both men, a brief account of their debate, and short coda about the new projects both men undertook afterward. I feel like, given the length of the story and the convoluted path it took to publication (it is believed to be the story that compelled Hancock to appear on a recent podcast to defend himself), there should be more to say about it. But there is nothing new in the story, certainly nothing to justify spending $160 for an annual subscription to Now Voyager, or even $7 for the article. Far from the devastating portrait Hancock feared, it’s a fairly straightforward recital of what most of my readers already know.

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<<Previous

Diana Pasulka Can't Answer Simple Joe Rogan Query: "How Do You Know It's True?"

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E14: “Alien Investigators” (Special Edition)

Review of "The Others" by D. W. Pasulka

Timothy Alberino Resurrects the "Kandahar Giant" in Joe Rogan Appearance

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E13: “Secrets of the Amazon”

Joe Rogan Talks Lost Super-Civilizations with Yet Another Pseudoscience YouTuber

Ross Coulthart Says He Can't Disclose Why He Thinks Another Hoax Is Secretly True

Heather Lynn Is Upset with Me

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E12: “Hidden Messages” (Special Edition)

"Now Voyager" Publishes Joint Profile of Graham Hancock and Flint Dibble

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