Blog Archives

Review of Ancient Aliens S14E22 "Secrets of the Exoplanets"

11/29/2019

Last week, Ancient Aliens surged in the overall ratings, up to 925,000 live plus same day viewers, up about a third from its season 14 average. However, it’s demo ratings among the coveted 18-49-year-old age group fell again, meaning that the surge in viewers was driven by those 49 and up. Since this is also the same demographic that watches Tucker Carlson, who guest starred on Ancient Aliens last week, I’m guessing the Fox News cross-promotion helped goose Ancient Aliens’ ratings. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that its lead-out, In Search Of, which had been outpacing Ancient Aliens for most of its season, didn’t move the needle very much week-to-week while the Fox-infused Aliens soared. I write about this in the introduction to this episode because there are few topics I have less interest in than Earth-like exoplanets beyond our solar system, whose existence I have long assumed and whose properties are for me mostly an academic exercise since there is no chance that humans will visit them in my lifetime, and there is a statistically insignificant chance that space aliens, should they live there, would ever manage to reach Earth, given the vast distances involved.

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Review of Unexplained + Unexplored S01E03 "Knights Templar in America"

11/27/2019

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Would you trust the unearthing of history’s deepest secrets to Baron Ambrosia, the “quaffer of culinary consciousness” from New York City public access television and the Cooking Channel’s The Adventures of Baron Ambrosia? The Science Channel trusts the flamboyant showman, whose real name is Justin Fornal, to remake himself as an “international explorer and cultural detective” (he is primarily a travel writer and film producer for National Geographic and Vice) in a new series in which he and his exploration partner, Emiliano Ruprah, a longtime cable TV producer, basically remake old episodes of the Travel Channel / History Channel pseudoscience series America Unearthed but with a twist—each one is based on an old map! Woo-hoo. The first episode remade the America Unearthed episode about the California “Viking” ghost ship from this past season (newsflash: they didn’t find it either), and the second episode revisited the season three America Unearthed episode about the treasure of the Superstition Mountains (they didn’t find it either). Future episodes will retrace Wolter’s hunts for Meriwether Lewis’s “real” killer and the Ark of the Covenant.

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Famed Historian to Appear Alongside Ancient Astronaut Theorists at History Channel Convention

11/27/2019

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Several months ago, the PR flak representing Tom DeLonge contacted me to ask if I wanted a review copy of DeLonge’s and Peter Levenda’s new book Gods, Man, & War, Volume 2: Man: An Official Sekret Machines Investigation of the UFO Phenomenon by Tom DeLonge with Peter Levenda. It’s a mouthful, but I said, sure, why not. After the original publication date passed (later pushed to December) and the several weeks went by, I assumed that they weren’t sending the book. Imagine my surprise when yesterday, almost a month after I had given up, a box showed up with a hardcover printing of GM&W2M—an initialism I now realize looks more like an online hookup tag than a book title. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that they kept their word, albeit very late. Credit where it is due: They are much braver than the History Channel, New Page Books, and the other companies that have banned me from receiving review copies of their products. My plan is to take the holiday weekend to read the book and then review it on Tuesday of next week.

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Graham Hancock Reacts to SAA Archaeological Record Articles on "America Before"

11/26/2019

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I’ve told this story before, but it is worth repeating here. When I was in college, a Jewish classmate angrily refused to ride in, or consider purchasing, a Chrysler PT Cruiser because he considered its 1930s-style aesthetics offensive. He thought it looked like a “Hitler car.” Instead, he was inordinately proud to have purchased a brand new, apple green Volkswagen Beetle, ignorant of the fact that it was almost literally a Hitler car. Hitler personally sketched a rough concept for the Volkswagen Beetle, and the Nazis founded Volkswagen to build them (though World War II prevented actual production). I was reminded of this story when Graham Hancock reacted to last week’s special issue of The SAA Archaeological Record, which devoted a lengthy, multi-article section to Hancock’s America Before, including an article by me.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S14E21 "Countdown to Disclosure"

11/22/2019

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At the end of the day, maybe the ancient astronaut theory and ufology are all about daddy issues. The concepts come pre-loaded with the notion that punitive and/or loving parental figures will descend from the sky to teach all of Earth’s naughty children important lessons, but it seems that the emotional need for parental validation in the form of government “disclosure” of UFO secrets represents another facet of the same mindset. The same people who tirelessly assert that government is an evil nasty punitive asshole who takes away all our toys and always treats our siblings better than us are also the same people who so desperately want daddy’s love that they believe only a government endorsement will validate their belief in the UFO faith. This is prima facie absurd since government endorses so many ideas that they clearly have no faith in and which they denounce as lies, but deep in their shriveled hearts they still think that if government agrees to something it must be true.

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Read My New Article in the "SAA Archaeological Record"

11/22/2019

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In this month's edition of The SAA Archaeological Record, a publication of the Society for American Archaeology, there is a special section organized by John Hoopes in which a number of authors, including several friends of this blog and me, have pieces examining aspects of Graham Hancock's America Before, pseudoarchaeology, and popular understandings of the past. My piece focuses on racism and the Mound Builder myth, in anticipation of my forthcoming book on the subject. The special edition can be read for free in its entirety here, and my piece also appears on my website by permission of the SAA. In lieu of a lengthy post today, please enjoy my article.

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Is the Paranormal Proof We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?

11/21/2019

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My wrist is still in pain, so I will have a brief post today and then wait until I review Ancient Aliens on Friday to write again so that I can give it some time to heal. (I will have a special brief post Friday morning, so stay tuned.) Today, I’d like to talk a bit about some weird speculation that occurred at the Cucalorus Connect festival at the University of North Carolina Wilmington this past weekend. At the festival, two professors entertained the possibility that we are living inside a computer simulation. So far, so boring. But when it came time for computer science professor Curry Guinn to provide some evidence for the speculation, he first reached for an argument from authority—Elon Musk believes it!—and then turned to the paranormal, according to WRAL.

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Were the Knights Templar Hunting Hermetic Knowledge in Harran?

11/20/2019

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I managed to injure my wrist shoveling heavy, wet snow yesterday, so it is a little difficult for me to type today. As a result, I am going to (try to) be brief. In Ancient Origins this week, eco-apocalyptic thinker Lucy Wyatt tries to make an argument about why the Knights Templar were interested in the ancient city of Harran, the longtime seat of the Sabians, until rural Muslim militias destroyed their community in the 1030s. Wyatt argues that St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Knights Templar participated in the Second Crusade in 1145 in order to have a pretext for invading Harran to steal the Sabians’ Hermetic and alchemical secrets, since the Sabians were well-known Hermetic philosophers.

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New Roswell "Alien" Metal Under Investigation By UFO Believers

11/19/2019

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First, the good news: I am so close to finishing Legends of the Pyramids that I want to take the rest of the day to close the books on that project, at least until after the holidays, when the publisher will send me the typeset page proofs to proofread and index. Therefore, I will keep the rest of this entry short. Therefore, our second topic for the day: The hunt for “alien” metal is spreading. It was bad enough that To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science convinced the U.S. Army to help them analyze “Art’s Parts,” but now there is a new piece of alleged Roswell wreckage in the care of a new team of researchers.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S14E20 "The Storming of Area 51"

11/15/2019

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This week, Linda Moulton Howe of Ancient Aliens confirmed that she sold a chunk of the “Art’s Parts” metal slag she claimed fell off the Roswell flying saucer to the brain trust at To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science for $35,000 more than a year ago—before she appeared on Ancient Aliens to discuss To the Stars and its claims about alien metals. She said she cried when she sold it. Needless to say, neither she nor the program disclosed that she had a financial stake in To the Stars when the episodes aired. This kind of undisclosed conflict of interest would be wholly unethical in a newsroom—and Moulton Howe claims to be a journalist—but somehow is just fine for the History Channel, as long as the fake alien claims come fast enough to keep a declining audience (currently 778,000 viewers to In Search Of’s 869,000) entertained. Similarly, tonight’s episode topic, “The Storming of Area 51,” is also a bit of self-dealing since Ancient Aliens was not a neutral party. It heavily promoted the event on social media and streamed live coverage of it online. After helping to drive people to the event, it then produced this show as though it weren’t actively involved in celebrating the alien-themed festival.

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