Blog Archives

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E18 “The Power of the Talisman”

8/25/2023

Avi Loeb told Michael Shermer that he was very upset about a New York Times Magazine profile depicting him as an out-of-touch scientific pariah who makes basic analytical mistakes and is increasingly unmoored from reality due to his obsession with space aliens. He ran to Shermer’s podcast to complain about the magazine alleging that he is thin-skinned and uses the media to retaliate against criticism rather than produce strong science. But what else should we expect from a man who is now a regular on Ancient Aliens? Loeb’s quest for aliens is a bit of magical thinking according to his peers, so it’s appropriate that this episode of Ancient Aliens is devoted to the magic of talismans.

12 Comments

"Permission to Wonder": A Review of "UFO" by Garrett M. Graff

8/24/2023

10 Comments

When Martha MacCallum of Fox News asked Gov. Chris Christie about UFOs at the August 23 Republican presidential debate, the roaring laughter from the audience cut off her question. “C’mon, man” Christie responded, making a crack about “Martians.” A few weeks earlier, Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand brought up UFOs at an outdoor constituent event, only to have the audience laugh and giggle until she responded in kind. Among the public, outside of the very online world of UFO-themed social media, flying saucers just aren’t a serious subject. However, interest in UFOs among media and legislative elites has convinced American publishers that UFOs are due for a prestige-media makeover.

10 Comments

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E17: “The New UFO Hunters”

8/18/2023

13 Comments

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand raised the ire of social media UFO advocates when she appeared to pivot away from space aliens during a recent event with constituents. Referring to so-called UFO whistleblower David Grusch only as “the second guy” at last month’s House UFO hearing, Gillibrand giggled along with her laughing audience at claims of “dead aliens.” Instead, Gillibrand said that the real concern with UFOs was Russian, Chinese, and Iranian spying. Naturally, believers in visitation by non-human intelligence responded by accusing Gillibrand of being a traitor to the cause or of being compromised by the Deep State. Meanwhile, Galileo Project head Avi Loeb suggested in a Fox News Digital interview that space aliens may have the technology to create entire universes and therefore have the attributes we associate with God or a god. He is rapidly moving toward the final stage of UFO belief, making a religion of aliens.

13 Comments

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E16: "The Gods of Greece"

8/11/2023

10 Comments

This month, pseudohistory writer Graham Phillips has a new article on Graham Hancock’s website, based on his new book, claiming that Doggerland, the sunken territory that connected Britain to Northen Europe nine millennia ago, was the home to an advanced lost civilization (sigh) and that the memory of it persisted in Celtic memory for nine thousand years. His evidence, however, is misrepresented. In the article he uses the unusual spelling “Tu-lay” to obscure the fact that he bases his analysis on Classical and post-Classical references to the island of Thule. However, in Classical literature Thule is not a sunken island but instead is described as a real and still-extant land north of Britain. To make the texts match Doggerland, Phillips purposely conflates them with wholly separate Irish legends about an unnamed sunken island, for which there is no historical evidence that the story is particularly ancient or that it is true. Sunken islands are a dime a dozen in ancient literature after all. For Phillips to be right, we have to accept that the Greek and Romans were completely wrong about all the important facts but nevertheless preserved correct information, while the Irish remembered the sinking of the island but forgot everything else about it, including the fact that Doggerland wasn’t actually an island.

10 Comments

New Paper Rebukes Claim That an Exploding Comet Destroyed Hopewell Culture

8/9/2023

29 Comments

Last year, researchers associated with the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis claimed that an exploding comet destroyed the Hopewell culture of ancient Ohio. At the time, I pointed out many of the reasons their claim did not pass the sniff test, notably because Hopewell culture persisted more than two centuries after the supposed impact. Now, a new paper in Nature confirms that the original claim is almost absurdly flawed:

Tankersley et al. claim a cosmic airburst over modern-day Cincinnati, Ohio in the 3rd or fourth century CE catalyzed the decline of Hopewell culture. This claim is extraordinary in the face of hundreds of archaeological investigations in the Middle Ohio River Valley (MORV) that have heretofore provided no evidence of a widespread cataclysm or “social decline” in need of explanation. Tankersley et al. misrepresent primary sources, conflate discrete archaeological contexts, improperly use chronological analyses, insufficiently describe methods, and inaccurately characterize the source of supposed extraterrestrial materials to support an incorrect conclusion. While charcoal and burned soils are found on virtually all excavated Middle Woodland archaeological sites in the region, these have prosaic explanations. Many of the burned “habitation surfaces” mentioned are actually prepared surfaces for ceremonial fires, not the result of a synchronous regional catastrophe. Radiocarbon dated samples from one context are mistakenly attributed to distinct and unrelated contexts. The chronological analysis does not support the notion of a single event spanning 15,000 km2. The composition of their supposed extraterrestrial materials is inconsistent with an origin in comet or asteroid events. In sum, there is no evidence to support the conclusion that a comet exploded over modern-day Cincinnati in the third or fourth century CE.

The whole paper is a great read and a decisive rebuke to the expansive but fantastical types of claims Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis researchers have proposed.

29 Comments

UFO Roundup: Gillibrand Hasn't Seen Aliens, but on Fox News UFOs Are Demons

8/8/2023

16 Comments

In a new interview, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand repeated that she has seen no evidence of space aliens, despite having access to the classified information so-called whistleblower David Grusch provided to Congress. When asked specifically about crashed saucers and dead aliens, Gillibrand for the first time opened the door to concluding that Grusch is either confused or misinformed:

I have no ability to verify that testimony because we’ve not been told of any such programs. We’ve asked for all information related to all programs and have not been given that detail. One of three things are true: Either it doesn’t exist and they worked on programs that were alien-related which weren’t, or they are making it up, or these programs do exist and the Department of Defense is not either read in on it, or the need to know is so small that the people that have been testifying in front of us don’t know about it, or they are just misrepresenting the facts.

16 Comments

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E15: "Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet"

8/4/2023

19 Comments

It’s depressing that I still need to review Ancient Aliens each week because the series feeds into an actual multipronged Congressional inquiry into space aliens. This week, Ancient Aliens star David Childress appeared on NewsNation to discuss the Vatican’s role in suppressing space alien information, a claim that Ross Coulthart, the journalist who interviewed David Grusch for NewsNation, is also pushing on social media. The return of anti-Catholic conspiracy theories stretching back to the nineteenth century (when Protestants claimed Catholicism hid demons and paganism) would seem to be a case of the cat that ate the canary. Now that the U.S. government has given ufologists everything they claimed to want, and there are still no aliens, they need a new villain preventing the truth from coming out.

19 Comments

David Grusch Works for Garry Nolan and Chris Mellon, New Document Shows

8/2/2023

18 Comments

The U.S. House of Representatives has published the CV that David Grusch submitted prior to his testimony before a House subcommittee last week. It reveals a startling and undisclosed potential conflict of interest between Grusch’s public statements and his private business interests. In the CV, we learn that in May of this year, Grusch started a new job as the chief operating officer for the Sol Foundation, an organization founded by Garry Nolan, the UFO-investigating Stanford professor who is afraid of open windows because of a childhood alien abduction attempt. The Sol Foundation is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, the aerospace industry hub where Space Command was supposed to move until Pres. Biden canceled the plans this week, alongside Radiance Technologies, the defense contractor Secret of Skinwalker Ranch star Travis Taylor (who thinks he’s infected with a disembodied alien parasite) and former UAPTF head Jay Stratton (the werewolf-haunted Skinwalker portal believer) quietly work for. It supposedly produces advisory and public work for the U.S. government. Chris Mellon is listed as one of the company’s directors. This certainly isn’t suspicious at all.

18 Comments

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E18 “The Power of the Talisman”

"Permission to Wonder": A Review of "UFO" by Garrett M. Graff

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E17: “The New UFO Hunters”

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E16: "The Gods of Greece"

New Paper Rebukes Claim That an Exploding Comet Destroyed Hopewell Culture

UFO Roundup: Gillibrand Hasn't Seen Aliens, but on Fox News UFOs Are Demons

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E15: "Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet"

David Grusch Works for Garry Nolan and Chris Mellon, New Document Shows

Author

Newsletters

Categories

Terms & Conditions

Archives