Blog Archives

Project Update

9/30/2023

It's been a bit of a difficult week for me. Unfortunately, I have been swamped with work, family issues, prior commitments, and book publishing obligations, and this has left me no time for writing blog posts this week. Truthfully, it will likely be a couple of weeks before things calm down enough for me to do any substantive writing that I’m not getting paid for. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends to keep up with the volume of obligations, but something has to give. There are only so many hours in the day.

In the meantime, my publisher has asked my for suggestions for titles for my James Dean book. They are looking for something that is resonant and intriguing and somehow incorporates the concept of masculinity without using that word. I have never been any good at titles, and I have no idea what to suggest.

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Gillibrand on UFOs: "Some Look Like Drones, Some Look Like Balloons"

9/22/2023

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Fortunately for all of us, Ancient Aliens isn’t on this week as the History channel prepares to launch the new season of William Shatner’s The UnXplained. I will be enjoying the night off. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed trying to work through all of the paperwork, permissions, and photography that goes into producing a book, so I have had relatively little time to write this week. However, I did want to point out this interview that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand gave to my local public radio station, WAMC, this week. Note that the hype about space aliens and interdimensional poltergeists has faded into a fairly straightforward question of why the military never bothered to check for balloons and drones.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E20: “The Top Ten Alien Petroglyphs”

9/15/2023

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Yesterday, NASA released a report about UFOs and made plain that there was no evidence of space aliens. NASA administrator Bill Nelson said that he didn’t know what some UFOs were and that more investigation is necessary; however, the report agreed with the Pentagon’s AARO that nearly all of them are aerial junk, drones, optical illusions, etc. The report added that the sensors that ufologists insist provide the best evidence for alien spaceships simply do not produce the right kind of information to draw effective conclusions, particularly when distance can’t be established. As with so many of these types of reports, funneling everything in the sky into the “UFO” bottle disguises the real issue: We aren’t studying alien spaceships but human perception—why it’s so hard to make sense of blobs on the edge of vision. And speaking of perception, this Ancient Aliens clip show is focused on just that, showing us ten examples of ancient astronaut theorists imagining science fiction stories in ambiguous rock art they lack (or ignore) the information to understand in its cultural context.

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Jaime Maussan Displays Fossilized "Aliens" at Mexican Congressional UFO Hearing

9/13/2023

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Longtime UFO huckster Jaime Maussan showed the Mexican Congress two alleged “fossilized” alien bodies whose “DNA” was one-third “unidentified” in a presentation attended by Mexican and U.S. officials. Maussan claimed the bodies had been recovered near Cusco, Peru and had been carbon-dated to at least 700 years ago. They looked very much like crude clay sculptures of Steven Spielberg’s E.T., and an x-ray showed small bones embedded within them. (Previous, similar fakes were made from the bones of human fetuses and/or animals, some looted from graves; experts identified these fakes as sand-covered paper mâché over animal bones.) The bodies were first publicized in 2017. At the time, the World Congress on Mummy Studies declared them a fraud. Avi Loeb, who told the Telegraph this week that his critics are mostly “bloggers” who aren’t fit to judge him, judged Maussan via video link and requested that scientists be allowed to study the alien bodies, something he hasn’t yet allowed for his own alleged extraterrestrial discovery. The Mexican UFO hearing occurred shortly after Jesse Michels released a multi-hour interview with U.S. UFO “whistleblower” David Grusch, who endorsed various Majestic-12-style conspiracy theories and speculated about a number of Ancient Aliens-style ancient astronaut hypotheses.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E19 “The Top Ten Mysteries of the Deep”

9/8/2023

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After a week off for the Labor Day holiday, Ancient Aliens returns with … another clip show. I could try to vamp for a paragraph or two about the philosophical background of claims of underwater civilization, draw connections to Atlantis, or even cite the influence of the 1936 Saturday morning movie serial Undersea Kingdom and its vision of subaquatic high technology and a hostile civilization beneath the waves. But I’ve done all of that before, and so has Ancient Aliens, and so did sister show The UnXplained last year in a very similar underwater-themed episode. This clip show contained previously broadcast segments surrounding ten topics vaguely connected by having something to do with water.

Not all of the segments match notes I have made about past episodes. It is possible some might include new talking head clips, or else the excerpts are from minor segments I did not mention in my reviews.

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Applause Books to Publish My James Dean Biography Next Year

9/6/2023

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I am delighted to announce that I have partnered with Applause Books to publish my biography of James Dean next year. I am deeply appreciative of the tireless work of my agent, Lee Sobel, in helping to find my book the best possible home, and for the support and enthusiasm of my editor at Applause, Chris Chappell. Publication of the book is the culmination of a years-long journey that began when I happened upon Rebel without a Cause on Turner Classic Movies one day during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and involved the largest and most comprehensive literature and archival research into James Dean’s life and legacy ever conducted. I am so thankful to have found a team that believes in my book and my work and wants to help me share with the world a story that needs to be told.

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The Return of the Stasis Tomb of the Red-Haired Giants

9/5/2023

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Ufologist Michael Salla presented an interview with “JP,” who allegedly serves in the United States military, about the discovery of a dimensional portal to an ancient temple housing the slumbering body of a dead-but-dreaming red-haired, presumably white-skinned, Giant. Here’s how Salla describes JP’s claims:

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George Knapp Speculates That "God" Might Be an Evil Space Alien

9/1/2023

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Ancient Aliens is taking the week off for the holiday, and I spent part of this week at work finalizing a project, which will be announced next week. I am taking the next few days off to enjoy the last week of my son's summer vacation before I get back to the grind next week. In the meantime, enjoy George Knapp's bizarre speculation about the space aliens' evil agenda and its connection to conservative efforts to promote Intelligent Design, from yesterday's Joe Rogan Experience. It doesn't tell you much about aliens but tells you a lot about the mindset of the people pushing bizarre claims about space aliens.

What could be so terrible that they can't tell us about it? Let's say, these aliens, wherever they're from, made us, that we're a genetic experiment. That they created our religions, our religious figures. That we are an agricultural product that somehow they harvest us. That our time is limited, that once the experiment is over, poof, we go away. […] Be careful what you wish for because you might find out that the intelligent designer isn't God that you're thinking of, it might be some alien science project or something like that. You can imagine a lot of different things that would be really disturbing to people to come out.

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Project Update

Gillibrand on UFOs: "Some Look Like Drones, Some Look Like Balloons"

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E20: “The Top Ten Alien Petroglyphs”

Jaime Maussan Displays Fossilized "Aliens" at Mexican Congressional UFO Hearing

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E19 “The Top Ten Mysteries of the Deep”

Applause Books to Publish My James Dean Biography Next Year

The Return of the Stasis Tomb of the Red-Haired Giants

George Knapp Speculates That "God" Might Be an Evil Space Alien

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