​Rep. Anna Paulina Luna claimed yesterday that a new batch of UFO files will be released by the end of the week, and in reporting this, Luna alleged that her “witnesses” had told her that flying saucers come from another dimension. “I think in a week or so, there’s going to be another tranche of documents and/or footage. But, you know, it’s one of those things that we won’t tell you what to believe. You can look at it and review it for yourself. I think a lot of people realize, yeah, maybe we’re not the only thing on this planet. But I don’t like to speculate other than, you know, our witnesses have told us some very interesting things. They did not use the word ‘extraterrestrial.’ They use the word ‘interdimensional.’ And then look at the stuff for yourself and make your own conclusions.”

​A couple of months ago, I offered a critique of the presentation English professor Timothy Burbery was scheduled to give to a European space conference in which he claimed that the fall of Satan in Dante’s Inferno offered an early attempt to grapple with the physics of a large, asteroid-type body hitting the Earth, resulting in a “remarkably accurate description” of an impact crater. I noted at the time that Dante’s depiction of Satan’s fall bears scant resemblance to the actual physics of such a collision and that Dante’s poem has too little detail to draw any solid conclusions about his conception of the science involved. 

​Graham Hancock appeared on The Diary of a CEO podcast today to discuss his life and work ahead of what he says is very serious heart surgery. Hancock said there is a 15 percent chance he will not survive the surgery, and he did not want an upcoming feature about him that he suspects will be hostile to be the last word on his claims about a lost civilization. “One of the failed valves in my heart is causing blood to regurgitate inside the heart rather than pumping it through the body. And that means that oxygenated blood is not getting to my lungs,” Hancock said. “I probably would live another two or three years without the surgery, maybe even five, but the quality of life would be very low. I can’t even walk up three stairs without being exhausted at the moment.”

Playboy magazine ran a feature profiling a day in the life of Jeremy Corbell, following the UFO podcaster at the Contact in the Desert paranormal gathering. Reporter Mattha Busby captures the tawdry side of ufology, from UFO show host Ben Hansen selling $720 binoculars to UFO buffs during a for-profit UFO hunt that brought in an estimated $10,000, to what Busby implied was Corbell's narcissistic and controlling personality. Busby correctly identifies ufology as an incipient religion, and UFO celebrities, as depicted in the piece, ride the line between wannabe saviors basking in the adoration of their fans and paranoid grifters scamming every last dollar from revelations they have no intention of delivering. 

The piece left Corbell enraged, and he demanded an apology because Busby confused statements from two alleged UFO witnesses, attributing them to the wrong witness. Corbell then used that opening to attack the article as a hit piece that failed to pay sufficient homage and respect to ufology and ufologists, especially, say, Jeremy Corbell.

I invite you to read the piece in full, but there are a few highlights worth pointing out:

• Corbell is now proudly an ancient astronaut theorist: “I suspect that there’s a technologically advanced civilization that has been in contact with humanity since the beginning of recorded human history,” he said at Contact in the Desert.
• Corbell seems to reveal some Freudian reasons for his deference to the US government as the sole path to Truth, calling the government "Daddy."
• Corbell has a large contingent of female fans in an otherwise male-dominated field, and they seem to be sexually attracted to him.
• Corbell is apparently obsessed with his press and tries to alternately charm or intimidate reporters into writing only positive things about him.
• Everything in ufology comes with a fee attached. It's all about the Benjamins. 

​The majority of the news conference was devoted to complaints that the Trump Administration and the Department of Defense have not released enough records. Lawmakers called on Trump to grant immunity from the Espionage Act to anyone who can provide information on the location of an alien or its ship, presumably due to unproved allegations that such information is classified.
 
The members of Congress demanded the U.S. government release files related to the 1996 Varginha UFO sighting in Brazil, a country which is not the United States, despite the convincing evidence presented on Brazilian television earlier this year that the alleged alien encounter was a hoax. The FBI investigated at some point, and Congress reviewed the files. A former Brazilian official who has no power to declassify anything allegedly said that Brazil would not release its Varginha files until the U.S. did. (Why?) Believers allege that the Varginha alien traveled to the U.S. after visiting Brazil, but none of the lawmakers made any move to subpoena testimony from Bill Clinton, who was the president at the time and would have overseen the alien’s transportation.
 
In addition to the de rigueur praise from several GOP representatives of Donald Trump as the greatest human alive (“a leader that the American people can trust to challenge institutions that have grown far too comfortable operating without accountability”), the mostly Republican lawmakers added, weirdly, that the real purpose of demanding to see the aliens was to investigate how the Pentagon spends money and whether it is meeting its obligations to report to Congress.
 
Kean advocated for the “public release of any evidence concerning recovered advanced nonhuman biological entities.” As a journalist, she ought not to be standing with lawmakers to advocate for specific government policies, and it will be interesting to see how quickly The New York Times violates its own policies on political advocacy to have her write another UFO feature. (Kean previously advocated for UFO disclosure actions as part of a lobbying organization with political operative John Podesta in the early 2000s before pretending to have always been a disinterested journalist when writing her UFO book and reporting for the Times.)
 
Grusch closed the show with an impassioned call for an end to UFO secrecy and government conspiracies. He claimed that Donald Trump and his team are being blocked and lied to by “high-ego, politically appointed actors,” so Trump is blameless in the conspiracy. He blew more smoke up Trump’s ass in begging Trump to disclose the truth about aliens, finishing with “God Bless America!”
 
Then the choreographed presentation of supposedly serious claims about UFOs and national security all fell apart when right-wing network Real America’s Voice got the first question and asked Grusch how many types of aliens there are on Earth.
 
“I certainly don’t have the compendium,” Grusch said. “It’s a continuum from a corporeal bipedal type life to, you know, what I would consider is like sentient plasma life, but there are several that the US government is aware of.” (He might have said sentient plasmoid instead of plasma; it was a bit difficult for me to make out the word.)
 
There isn’t really any coming back from that, and when the questions devolved into speakers recommending the public watch UFO documentaries to learn the “truth,” that pretty much said it all.
 
Unfortunately, the sentient plasma declined to attend the news conference, citing a prior engagement.

My new piece on the secrets of Ohio's Serpent Mound is now available in the July/August issue of Archaeology magazine in print and online for Archaeology subscribers. I examine exciting new research into the cosmology and mythology behind North America's largest effigy mound.

Read the full story in Archaeology ​magazine.