Since Ancient Aliens is on hiatus to avoid competing with the Olympics, I thought it would be safe to take my on to the local aquarium. Surely a display of tropical fish must be free of the insidious mythology of space invaders. Ah, but I was wrong. Since last we visited, the aquarium opened a hall of animatronics offering, in either promise or threat, dinosaurs and “legendary creatures.” The disappointing attraction featured credulous displays about griffins and Bigfoot before reaching a crescendo in a hall where Ancient Aliens clips played on a big screen beside this janky diorama of extraterrestrials. It was not worth the upcharge.
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In recent days, former America Unearthed host and current ancient astronaut theorist Scott Wolter alleged that some very cheesy engravings of Grey aliens in Egyptian clothing and poses were as much as 17,000 years old, despite being obvious fakes in an amateurish contemporary art style. But more importantly, Lue Elizondo’s publisher released his forthcoming memoir Imminent to Google Books a month ahead of publication, and extensive excerpts appeared on the platform for about 24 hours before they disappeared and were replaced with a “No Preview” announcement. It was easy to see why Lue Elizondo and his publisher wanted the Google Books preview pulled: In the excerpts, Elizondo claims to have supernatural powers and to have appeared as an angel while engaging in psychic attacks on America’s enemies.
The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office sent it to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for testing in 2022. The report recently came back—yes, it took two years—and determined that the material was not able to function as a “terahertz waveguide,” and its isotopic composition was completely normal for Earth, not, as TTSA claimed, extraterrestrial. They could not identify a purpose for the uncommon composition of the earthly, heat-damaged fragment, but that’s probably because it never had a purpose. They suggest it is consistent with experiments of the time, without naming them. In short, it's probably a piece of scientific or industrial waste.
We don’t get as many alien-themed cable quasi-documentaries as we used to. Part of it is the shifting taste of the public, which prefers to freebase its conspiracy theories straight from the internet’s darkest corners. Part of it is due to the collapse of the cable TV industry, which has dramatically slashed programming. And part of it is due to the cyclical nature of kooky programming, which toggles between the paranormal, the extraterrestrial, and ancient mysteries with a numbing regularity. Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction probably wasn’t destined to dethrone The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch as the top paranormal program, but it’s a pretty dire affair for a supposedly professional production from one of Warner Bros. Discovery’s crown jewel networks.
Months after debating archaeologist Flint Dibble on The Joe Rogan Experience, Gaham Hancock broke his silence about the encounter, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that he had been “conned” and endorsing a YouTube video alleging that Dibble lied five times over the multi-hour debate in order to humiliate Hancock with false information. Hancock did not explain how he failed to recognize the allegedly false information, which was directly relevant to the information he claimed to have researched for more than thirty years. The arguments used by YouTuber “DeDunker” were not terribly convincing, but even if taken at face value would hardly rise above slight misstatements or minor confusion when speaking extemporaneously for many hours. More concerning is that Hancck jumped on the “conned” bandwagon to save face after having no other response to Dibble dominating the debate for three months.
This past weekend, NewsNation UFO journalist Ross Coulthart gave an eyebrow-raising speech at a meeting of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies in which Coulthart suggested that both he and former president Donald Trump were under assassination threat because they know too much about UFOs. However, the speech had even more disturbing undertones.
A few hiccups in the copyediting process meant that I spent most of this week dealing with book-related issues. It was just as well. This was a slow week in the world of space aliens and fringe history. Members of Congress made the usual noises about passing new laws to demand more UFO accountability, and the usual legislators spoke about new UFO hearings, and the usual UFO influencers demanded action, but it was all pretty much the same as it has been. A couple of interesting UFO year-in-review-style pieces ran in the Washington Spectator and the U.K. magazine The Skeptic, though these, too, had little in them we haven’t seen before. Over on NBC News Now, Gadi Schwartz invited oceanographer and retired rear admiral Tim Gallaudet on to opine that, “There are non-human intelligences visiting us in all domains: of the sea, the sky, and we see reports over land.” His argument, however, was more of the usual, which is to say, “I don’t know; therefore, aliens.” The claim amounted to arguing that if someone can’t immediately identify a shadow in the sky or a signal on sensor, it is therefore a space demon from another dimension.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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