Blog Archives

A Dark Carnival: 2025 in Review

12/27/2025

When I started writing year in review columns in 2017, I intended those columns to be an amusing look back at the follies of the year. But somehow, they have grown into a chronicle of an incipient Dark Age, with each year’s rundown becoming a bit gloomier than that of the year before. This year was an especially depressing chronicle of the growing influence of irrational, paranormal, and conspiratorial thought at the highest levels of power, with Congress, the White House, and the billionaire class joining the major media in promoting—and apparently believing—insane notions ranging from space alien visitation to the imminent arrival of the Antichrist. By contrast, the traditional sources of occult and pseudohistorical claims—cable TV and book publishing—all but closed up shop, conceding the ground to Washington, D.C.

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Irving Finkel Claims Göbekli Tepe Plaquette Is Early Evidence of a Writing System

12/20/2025

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Last week, Irving Finkel, the British Museum Assyriologist who made headlines in 2014 when he discovered a cuneiform text describing the Mesopotamian version of Noah’s Ark as round, appeared on Lex Fridman’s podcast and made a controversial claim that a small carved stone found at Göbekli Tepe is evidence that the people who built the site had a writing system. In so doing, Finkel, who is now a contributor to Ancient Aliens, implied that archaeologists are blind to the writing system he sees so easily and that they don’t want to admit that a Mesopotamian-style social organization and set of cultural tools would be necessary to build the enclosures at the site. However, it turns out that Finkel is the one who is blind to archaeologists’ conclusions.

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In Brief: Number of Americans Who Believe Aliens Visited Earth Reaches New High

12/19/2025

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The percentage of American who believe that space aliens have visited Earth in the past or are currently visiting has reached a new high, according to a recent YouGov survey. The survey of 1,114 adults conducted last month found that 47% of Americans think aliens have already existed, while 56% are sure aliens exist. This places alien visitation above belief in the existence of Bigfoot (28%), the Yeti (23%), the Loch Ness monster (22%), and Chupacabra (16%). The survey found that belief was roughly even across demographics of age, gender, and ideology, though Republicans were slightly more skeptical of alien visitation than Democrats. Similarly, liberals tended to see potential alien contact as unifying for humanity while conservatives are more likely to see it as a threat. The numbers are a small but significant rise since the 2018 Chapman University survey that found 41% of Americans believed in ancient alien visitations and 35% in current alien arrivals. Most interesting, Americans seem to be polarizing on alien beliefs, with more people expressing strongly pro or con opinions and fewer claiming not to know. While there is no indication of why the numbers have risen, as they have steadily for a decade, the propaganda campaign to promote ufology currently running through Congress and the mainstream media is the most obvious source, amplified through waves of podcasts, YouTube videos, TikTok videos, and other social media platforms that reinforce and harden beliefs.

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Christopher Knowles Claims Chatbot "Proved" Lovecraft Borrowed from Alice Bailey

12/17/2025

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In the wake of the recent tragedies that plagued this week, Christopher Knowles, known to readers of this blog as the author of Our Heroes Wear Spandex, which I reviewed in 2014, and more recently as a blogger and podcaster under the name of The Secret Sun, put forward a confusing conspiracy theory in which the Brown University shooting, the death of Rob Reiner and his wife, and the push to release the Epstein files are all connected through H. P. Lovecraft, Theosophy, and a global plot to resurrect the Old Ones. It’s as confounding as you might expect, and now Knowles is calling me his “longtime nemesis” and promising to prove that Lovecraft adapted the Cthulhu Mythos from Theosophist Alice Bailey’s books of cosmology.

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Read My Interview about "The Age of Disclosure" in "The Guardian"

12/15/2025

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The Guardian ran an important story about skeptical view of the documentary The Age of Disclosure, and reporter David Smith interviewed me for the piece. I am quoted extensively in the article, and the headline--"A Lot of Stories But Very Few Facts"--is a quote from me. "One of the things that surprised me," I told Smith, "is how much of the film seemed to be an advertisement for investing in UFO-themed energy research. That’s where you have to look into the question of how many of the talking heads in that documentary have government ties, not just that they formerly worked in the government, but that they are currently profiting from the work that they’re doing promoting UFOs." You can read more of my interview in The Guardian at the link above.

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Storied French Publishing House Becomes Factory for Right-Wing Pseudohistory

12/10/2025

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As many of you know, the problems with fabricated history are not confined to the United States. Over in France, there is growing concern about the increasingly extremist tomes that the once-prestigious Librairie Arthème Fayard publishing house has put out since the publisher’s parent company saw control pass to far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré. I am indebted for this story to the Histoire Medievale account on X, which wrote about this at length.

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In Brief: Evidence for Younger Dryas Comet Impact Is Just Railroad Slag

12/8/2025

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One of the original authors of the 2007 paper that introduced the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis provided evidence this weekend that some of the evidence used to support the claim was not, in fact, ancient traces of a comet strike but rather modern railroad slag. Scott Harris coauthored the original comet impact paper but is now taking his coauthors Allen West and Ted Bunch to task, posting a video to Facebook reels showing that material from South Carolina claimed in 2012 to be samples from the comet strike was in fact railroad slag and noting that even in 2007, some of the authors knew that the area where they claimed to have found evidence of a comet strike had been contaminated with modern railroad slag and was in fact an old railroad bed. In short, the material used as evidence of melting and burning from a comet strike was, instead, melted and burned in an industrial furnace. I have a feeling that Graham Hancock is not going to be posting an excited video celebrating honesty in science in this case.

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Marco Rubio Distances Himself from "Age of Disclosure," Cites Lack of Evidence

12/3/2025

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Last night Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on the Fox News Channel show Hannity, and the first question was about the interview with him seen in the recent documentary The Age of Disclosure. Rubio, who has vacillated in his public statements about UFOs over the last eight years, distanced himself from the documentary, accusing producer Dan Farah of “selective editing” and conceding that there is no evidence to support the claims of the so-called UFO whistleblowers.

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A Dark Carnival: 2025 in Review

Irving Finkel Claims Göbekli Tepe Plaquette Is Early Evidence of a Writing System

In Brief: Number of Americans Who Believe Aliens Visited Earth Reaches New High

Christopher Knowles Claims Chatbot "Proved" Lovecraft Borrowed from Alice Bailey

Read My Interview about "The Age of Disclosure" in "The Guardian"

Storied French Publishing House Becomes Factory for Right-Wing Pseudohistory

In Brief: Evidence for Younger Dryas Comet Impact Is Just Railroad Slag

Marco Rubio Distances Himself from "Age of Disclosure," Cites Lack of Evidence

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