Scott Wolter Wows Fitness Gurus with Conspiracies, Attacks Critics, Announces Summit with Graham Hancock

Well, this is a weird one. I’ve never heard of the Fit 2 Fat 2 Fit Experience podcast, hosted by Lynn and Drew Manning, and it seems the last place you’d expect to find fringe history. Drew Manning is the man who intentionally gained 75 pounds in 2012 to document his subsequent fitness regime to lose the weight. The fitness guru’s entire brand revolves around selling fitness regimes and health products. And yet here we are: Scott Wolter appeared on the fitness podcast to discuss fringe history with the hosts because Drew Manning was blown away after meeting Wolter as part of an event in Mexico this month to promote A+E Networks shows in Latin America. “He’s a scientist, and he definitely knows what he’s talking about!” Drew Manning enthused. Lynn Manning added that “these are the facts” and not a conspiracy, “and I find that fascinating.”

The pair said that they became convinced that history could be manipulated by powerful elites because “scientists” once claimed that fat was bad, but now say dietary fat is good. They argue that because scientists can’t get nutrition correct, history, too, must be part of a story told for profit because “corporations” “lie about things.” They will return to this idea later in defending their belief in Scott Wolter and his Jesus conspiracies.
 
The hosts don’t seem to know that Wolter’s H2 shows have been canceled, or that the H2 network no longer exists (at one point asking when the next season of America Unearthed will debut on H2), but both hosts hail Wolter, 57, as “the modern-day Indiana Jones,” who provided them with “mind-blowing” revelations about history.
 
To avoid confusion, I will refer to Drew and Lynn Manning by their first names, though it goes against my usual style.
 
Drew starts by asking Wolter “did aliens help build the pyramids?” Wolter replies that “my honest answer is that I don’t know, but I highly doubt it.” He says that it’s a mistake to underestimate the intelligence of ancient cultures—except, of course, when this involves the need for Europeans to deliver secret knowledge. Wolter claims that ancient people were more sophisticated than we are today, and he quotes Santayana’s dictum about repeating history to warn that the modern world is going to hell. Lynn asks him to explain this, and Wolter replies by announcing that he is going to have a summit with Graham Hancock in November in order to combine their research in order to discover a lost high civilization of the Ice Age. According to Wolter, the melting glaciers washed away all of the evidence of this lost civilization. Wolter gushes about Hancock’s “compelling geological evidence” for a comet destroying this civilization, and he says—without evidence—that the lost civilization lived in perfect “balance” with nature.
 
Wolter then pivots to the Knights Templar and alleges that there is conclusive evidence that the Knights Templar came to America in 1400 and brought a treasure with them that the Founding Fathers used to fund the Revolutionary War. Even though financial records from the Revolution provide no indication of a huge cash infusion—the Continental Congress used loans, I.O.U.s, and inflated paper currency to pay for the war—Wolter alleges that historians have been “brainwashed” into being unable to see the truth. “There are larger forces at work,” he said, “who have a vested interest in one version of history when in fact the truth is something else.” He claims that the Catholic Church is that vested interest, even though Anti-Catholic prejudice was a major feature of American life down to the 1960s and you’d think that Anti-Catholics would want to expose the Catholic Church’s suppression efforts. Apparently, the Jesuit secret agents were just that good.
 
Wolter then alleges that everything written about him on the internet (cough, ahem, cough – me) is “crap.” (“It’s all crap!”) He adds that “there are people actually being paid to continue to try to undermine people like me that are telling a different story than they want people to believe.” Wolter says that this mysterious “they” (i.e., me) cannot refute his “evidence” (since it does not exist) and therefore attack Wolter personally and viciously to discredit him “to try to undermine [his] credibility.”
 
It goes without saying that I am not paid by anyone to critique historical claims, much to my disappointment.
 
The hosts were somewhat baffled by Wolter’s rant, and the two of them together seem to know less than a modern high school student about history. They are unaware that no scholar believes Christopher Columbus was the first European to reach America (that was the Vikings), so they seem giddy with excitement at the idea that other Europeans came first. Wolter recites his fractured fairy tale about how the Catholics used Columbus (whom Wolter once identified as a Templar!) to deprive the Natives of their land in order to crush the Templars, who were also the Native Americans. It doesn’t make sense, but who can keep all of the conspiracies straight?
 
Wolter returns again to the idea that “online” critics (clearly, this must include me) are “creeping around” and criticizing him surreptitiously. “Anyone can be a tough guy sitting behind a computer,” Wolter said in response to a question about whether he ever felt his life was in danger. He implied that he would like critics to (verbally) attack him in person so that he could have a face-to-face confrontation. He later alleges that his critics have “stalked” him online.
 
Wolter claims that Mayan and Babylonian astrological systems are “scientific” and that because of the December 2012 “paradigm shift that occurred,” “the reign of the Fisher King would end.” Wolter, as you know, began hosting America Unearthed in December 2012. He identifies the Fisher King as Jesus based on Ralph Ellis’s fringe claims, but the medieval European Grail character is not typically identified as Jesus. In the real world, the Fisher King was a character invented by Chretien de Troyes for the poem Percival, and may draw on Celtic myths about Bran the Blessed.
 
This isn’t important, though, because Wolter announces that he believes that Jesus was merely a “good person,” but that the true semi-divine figure was Mary Magdalene, who should be venerated in his stead. Wolter adds that he is in the process of writing a new book, but “something big” came up and requires him to rewrite the book to incorporate it. He repeats after that some of his recent claims about the so-called Jesus Ossuary containing the “Hooked X®” and a “tau cross.” He wrongly asserts that the Hooked X® is the same as the Hebrew letter aleph, and he claims that the “last letter” of the Hebrew alphabet is a “tau cross” and derived from the Egyptian ankh. The Paleo-Hebrew version of that letter, the tav, is cross-shaped and is related to the Phoenician letter that became the Greek tau.
 
Wolter says that a Hooked X® and a tau therefore are the alpha and the omega, Jesus. He adds that the Knights Templar entered the Talpiot Tomb during the First Crusade and discovered all of this, because the Knights Templar were the genetic descendants of Jesus and received Christ’s secrets through “family” history. Hundreds or thousands of knights drawn from a geographically diverse area… Which of them were Christ’s hundred-times-great grandkids? All of them? Just the elite? If they were already elite, why did they need the Knights to share conspiracies they already knew?
 
“My life is an ongoing Dan Brown movie right now,” Wolter said. “The basic premise of the Bloodline is 100% true.”
 
Drew and Leslie repeat that they find Wolter’s claims to be convincing because they believe that Wolter is a scientist whose inferences and assertions are actually facts. Leslie believes that corporations and religions are hiding facts from us for profit, and therefore they believe that claims that oppose the interest of corporations must be true. Leslie and Drew believe that “scientists” lie all the time for money, and they claim that their experiences with bad nutrition claims and bad medical advice regarding dietary fat prove that science is intentionally teaching the public false information. They liken the suppression of fringe history to the inflation of cost for the Epi-Pen, even though “scientists” don’t set the price for the EpiPen, and other companies are free to make competing products. (Europe has competing brands.) This is an excellent illustration of how science is failing the public. Non-specialists have difficulty understanding the provisional nature of science and, for that matter, the difference between facts, inferences, and assertions. Note, too, that Drew and Leslie believe that when Wolter waves a microscope at a rock, he is revealing truth, but when credentialed scientists and historians offer evaluations of history they must be lying. In other words, their own sense of trust in an individual (Wolter) over an anonymous institution (“science” or “corporations”) leads them to believe ideas based on less evidence because it is personal, emotional, and keeping with their preexisting ideology and personal experiences.
 
Wolter chimes in that he believes that unnamed forces, perhaps drug companies, are suppressing a cure for diabetes in order to make money off of insulin sales. “It makes me crazy,” Wolter said, alleging that people in his family continue to suffer from diabetes because of a conspiracy. He adds that he thinks that cancer has also been cured as well, but that corporations are hiding the truth in order to make money. Drew and Leslie agree that the either the government or corporations are hiding health cures.
 
Wolter returns again near the end to criticizing “a lot of people online” (sigh, yes, me again) for allegedly calling him a liar and a pseudoscientist, saying that critics should not doubt his conclusions about runic inscriptions because “the government” (that arch-conspirator!) considered him competent to analyze the structural integrity of concrete from the Pentagon after 9/11. The two things have nothing to do with one another, as no one questions the structural integrity of a forged runic inscription, nor did anyone ask Wolter to date the construction of the Pentagon. They are two very different skills. It is probably worth noting again that Wolter uses relative dating, not absolute dating, and in most cases even his own windows for when an artifact was created, taken at face value, cannot exclude hoaxing. His windows for the Kensington Rune Stone and the Bat Creek Stone, for example, both could not exclude modern dates.
 
The show finishes with Wolter describing the episode of America Unearthed in which he wentin search of Bigfoot. He claims that he had to insist to the network that he be allowed to doubt Bigfoot’s existence on air. In the last minutes, Wolter claims that his favorite book ever is by Alan Butler, and says that he is planning a new TV series and is in talks with networks about it. The hosts tried a couple of more times to get Wolter to admit that aliens were involved in ancient history, but to his credit he didn’t take the bait.