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UFO News Roundup: Rubio's "Diversionary Tactic," Grusch's "Pilot" Photos, and More

8/13/2026

Unfortunately, it seems that Ancient Aliens concluded its season last week without any notice. There are no more episodes scheduled for the near future. If it is the end of the season, this is one of the shortest in a long time, with just 15 episodes, two fewer than last year and five fewer than the seasons that preceded it. Of the fifteen episodes, six were clip shows. That means there were only nine original episodes in 2026, the fewest since the abbreviated pandemic season.

So, since we don’t have an episode to dissect today, instead, it’s time for a UFO news roundup.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E15: “Africa’s Extraterrestrial Contact”

8/7/2026

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Following on the heels of the last original episode not composed of clips, the Amazon-themed outing from two weeks ago, we return this week to rehashing familiar ancient astronaut claims by geographic proximity. The topic under consideration is “Africa,” the second-largest continent on Earth and one of exceptional geographic and cultural diversity. But for Ancient Aliens, Africa is the mysterious netherworld beyond civilization. In the old Looney Tune “Porky in Wackyland” (1938), Porky flies into Africa and crosses “Dark Africa” and “Darker Africa” en route to “Darkest Africa,” where surreal mysteries await. It’s hard not to think that Ancient Aliens views Africa—and indeed every part of the world outside the U.S. and Europe—in much the same way. If it were not for Egypt being part of Africa, they might have considered it wholly wild.

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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 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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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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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E11: “Alien A.I.”

7/10/2026

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I suppose it was inevitable that Ancient Aliens would eventually get around to artificial intelligence. It’s a bit surprising that it took this long, but it takes time for the lazy producers at Prometheus Entertainment to wait around until they can rip their copy from online articles without having to do any real work. The conceit of this episode is that the A.I. tools that archaeologists and historians have begun to use to analyze artifacts and data might also be used to identify evidence of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. But most of the show is devoted to discussing recent A.I. analysis of archaeological sites without any real alien connection until the end of the episode. It’s a fine line Ancient Aliens needs to walk in this episode since it might encourage its audience to ask ChatGPT about the show and discover it is B.S., which makes it all the stranger that Ancient Aliens doesn’t bother to distinguish between ChatGPT-style large language models and machine learning—or just “computers,” for that matter.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E10: UFO Sightings (Special Edition)

7/2/2026

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I’ll confess that I have nothing to say here. “UFO Sightings” as a title is Ancient Aliens giving up completely: a mish-mash of previously aired UFO segments without even the half-hearted framework of “The UFO Conspiracy” from 2018, “The Ultimate Guide to UFOs” in 2020, “The UFO Investigations” of 2022, or even the last time the show revisited sightings, in “UFO Hot Spots,” a similar clip show that aired earlier this season. So, instead I will point you to the open letter archaeologist Flint Dibble published challenging Ancient Aliens’ star Giorgio Tsoukalos to a debate after Tsoukalos lashed out at Dibble on X following Dibble’s YouTube video (which complimented Tsoukalos!), writing “Fuck you and your cuntish demeanor” and questioning Dibble’s sexual prowess. Dibble wrote that “I am assuming you will decline this offer after seeing my performance against Graham Hancock.” Giorgio Tsoukalos has never done any original research and has never published a book. Everything he says on Ancient Aliens he has borrowed from his mentor Erich von Däniken. He likely won't agree to a debate because he doesn't have the knowledge to go beyond glib generalizations.

The segments from past episodes that aired include:

The first segment from “The UFO Conspiracy” (2018) on government UFO investigations.
The second segment from “Aliens in Our Midst” (2025) on the “jellyfish” UFO over Iraq.
The second segment from “The Glowing Orb Phenomenon” (2025) on foo fighters.
The fourth segment from “The Time Benders” (2022) on the Rendlesham Forest UFO encounter.
A clip from the first segment of “Aliens in Our Airspace” (2023) on commercial airline UFO sightings.
A clip from the first segment of “The Ultimate Guide to UFOs” (2020) on the Nuremberg sighting of 1561.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E09 “The Wars of the Gods”

6/26/2026

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Do you remember last week’s Ancient Aliens? Well, the show sure hopes you don’t, since they repeat a chunk of last week’s episode in this one, rehashing the same material about Vedic texts and nuclear bombs from last week. In fact, most of this episode is made up of repeats, rehashes, and outtakes from previous episodes, sometimes featuring dead people and sometimes strung together so poorly that Giorgio Tsoukalos occasionally changes clothes and his age while he talks! If putatively the topic is the “wars of the gods,” it is treated as nothing more than a vague theme, with “war” taken to be anything from an all-out nuclear battle to two beings having a disagreement to popping a balloon. One gets the feeling that the producers needed an extra episode and decided to construct one out of leftovers.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E08 “Secrets of the Vedas”

6/19/2026

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One week ago, Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day opened to modest box office returns but massive media coverage. This has apparently excited all of the worst people in ufology, who spoke to the Wall Street Journal about how excited they are to see their favorite UFO lore up on the big screen, right down to the tabloid story about Richard Nixon taking Jackie Gleason to see some aliens. Danny Sheehan even claimed, preposterously, that this movie would finally get Congress to take “disclosure” seriously. The comment amused me since multiple members of Congress have now appeared on Ancient Aliens, which is the gold standard for taking nothing seriously, and it would entirely appropriate for the debased and degraded rump of a legislative branch we still possess to take its cues from a sci-fi film and a cable TV pseudo-documentary. It is the fruit of our era of cultural decline.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E07 “Underwater Alien Bases”

6/12/2026

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Oh, my, we’re back again. After a months-long hiatus, Ancient Aliens resumed its twenty-second season with … well, another episode that rehashed material from a decade ago. You can pretty much guess what the topics of an Ancient Aliens season will be based on what topics were in the news and on social media about nine months before air time. Underwater bases were a big theme for a time in ufology last year, until the conversation shifted to orbs and now “sentient plasma.” (Coming next year to Ancient Aliens!) Viewers with a long memory might remember that Ancient Aliens did an episode on “Underwater Worlds” back in Season 2 in 2010, but the closer similarity is to the 2019 episodes “They Came from the Sea,” which covered underwater alien bases better than the episode bearing the name of “Underwater Alien Bases,” an episode with almost no underwater bases in it.

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<<Previous

UFO News Roundup: Rubio's "Diversionary Tactic," Grusch's "Pilot" Photos, and More

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E15: “Africa’s Extraterrestrial Contact”

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

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

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

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E11: “Alien A.I.”

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E10: UFO Sightings (Special Edition)

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E09 “The Wars of the Gods”

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E08 “Secrets of the Vedas”

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E07 “Underwater Alien Bases”

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