Netflix's new documentary Ancient Apocalypse was on top of the charts for quite some time. The show is hosted by Graham Hancock, a writer who has written several books regarding his theory of a lost stone age civilization. The series is based on Hancock's books "Magicians of the Gods" and "America before."

But how well do Hancock's claims hold up when examined? In this episode, Fredrik, with his background in archaeology, looks into the origins of the theories of Hancock. We will learn more about what he is about and where these ideas originated. This journey will be through esoterism, Blavatskian Theosophy, philosophy, and archaeological methods. 

We're also joined by Dr. Jeb Card and Brian Dunning, who shares their knowledge about these ideas. 

Dr. Card is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Miami University and a pre-Hispanic Maya political history specialist. He has also been dealing with pseudoscience for a long time. Dr. Card has written Spooky Archaeology and co-edited Lost city, found pyramid. He is also the co-host of the podcast "In research of" and, previously, co-host of Archaeological Fantasies.

Brian Dunning is the host of the award-winning show Skeptoid, that's been going on for 16 years. He has also produced several documentaries, but recently "Science friction." It's a documentary about how filmmakers edit scientists out of context, something people have witnessed happening in Ancient Apocalypse. Brian also has a new documentary that will soon be released called "The UFO Movie THEY Don't Want You to See".

In this episode:

Intro and setting of the stage

Jeb Card Interview (4:30)

Atlantis (23:40)

Hyperdiffusion (35:02)

Atlantis: Rebirth (39:40)

Ignatius Donnelly (42:28)

Esoterism (50:32)

Helena Blavatsky and Theosophy (51:13)

Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy (54:18)

Edgar Cayce (55:18)

Brian Dunning Interview (59:36)

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The intro music is Lily of the woods by Sandra Marteleur, and the outro is named “Folie hatt” by Trallskruv.

Hi. Hello and welcome into Digging Up Ancient Aliens.

This is the podcast where we usually watch and examine the TV show Ancient Aliens.

But this time we're going to switch out one of the A:s to Apocalypse instead

and see if these claims hold the water to an archeologist

or if there are better explanations out there.

I'm your host, Frederick,

and this is episode 30 and we're going out on a little detour again.

Last time we went and examined BuzzFeed's unsolved Mysteries,

we also talked about the Bosnian pyramids in the earlier episode.

But this time we're going for a little bit bigger fish here.

They're going after Netflix new show Ancient Apocalypse,

hosted by Graham Hancock, and this is largely

based on his books, Magicians of the Gods and America.

And what we're about to embark on is a break down in three parts.

So it's a little mini series here, but it means that we won't go into the nitty

gritty details as we tend to do with ancient aliens when we watch it.

But I felt that people has already gone through many of these claims

in such a great way that I think we should focus our effort

a little bit more on the parts I believe others might have missed.

And we also in the past, you know, talked about many of these locations.

Hancock could bring up in the show.

But from the alien perspective.

But it's basically the same argument.

But with less aliens in them. We will also be guested

by a couple of people that I think can bring us some good insights

and extra explanation to this phenomenon.

At first I was contemplating to invite Graham Hancock, but then I felt

that he already has a quite large platform to speak from So I'm going to skip it.

But I know you listen Graham

You're a big fan if you feel that you want to come on here,

just have your people

reach out to my people and we can figure something out down the line.

And remember that sources, resources and further

reading suggestions are in the show notes on our website.

diggingupancientaliens dot com or ancientapocalypse.net

And if you have any suggestions, post on the mistakes

or just want to reach out or contact details or on the website.

And if you like the podcast, feel free to leave a five star review.

And if you're watching this on YouTube,

like subscribe and hit that little notification bell.

Now when we're done with our preparation, let's dig down into the episode.

A comet is tumbling down through the atmosphere,

but the people witnessing this doesn't know it by this name.

In later tellings, they would refer to this as the serpent

in the sky, the dragon or the evil one

that's 50,000 kilometers an hour.

The large comet crashes into the ground.

If there are some close by, they suddenly were no more.

Those further away would feel the ground shake,

as if the earth itself trembled in fear of what was to come.

Those furthest away felt only a slight shiver,

but the omen in the sky had already told them something was coming.

For some time, everything was still,

but it could change quickly as the water rose

One of the greatest civilization we had ever seen until then

was promptly lost, except for a few people who managed to survive.

And these people took it upon themselves

to wander the earth, sharing a warning of coming danger

and teaching others the lost technologies and knowledge.

Now this story might be familiar to you if you've watched a show

Ancient Apocalypse or read any of Graham Hancocks books.

But this is not actually from Graham Hancock's writings.

No, this is taking from a book called Ragnarök:

The Age of Fire and Gravel by Ignatius Donnelly.

We will get back to Donnelly later, but I'm bringing this up to show

that the ideas presented in ancient apocalypse aren't really new.

They've been around since at least the last century.

And to contend with these ideas, we need to understand their origin

and to ease us into this first part of the exploration.

I want to welcome our first guest.

So I want to welcome Dr.

Jeb Card, assistant teaching professor from Miami University.

Author of Spook Archeology.

And you were the editor of “Lost City of Found Pyramid”.

I co-edited that very book.

And you also are the co- host of the podcast in the research of

and also in the past, you have been part of archeological

fantasies and a quite frequent guest on the monster talk. Yes.

So welcome.

Have you seen anything from Graham Hancock's new documentary on Netflix.

Or watch some? I watched some of it.

I wasn't terribly concerned about watching the whole thing.

Luckily, it's not super long.

I don't want to get into it, but you're going through all the ancient aliens.

I'm working on a project that might be familiar,

but I read reviews of what it was about and I'm like, I've read his stuff.

This is a presentation of his stuff.

It's not like, Oh, here's my new.

He adds, No, this is just that's not a criticism.

It's just I don't need to really sit down and watch all of it.

I also haven't been trying to take it,

but I will not try to take apart a thing I haven't watched.

No, you know that that's just ethical.

So when I watched, I watched some of it. Yes.

Not just the parts that interest me personally.

I know one of the people on screen.

I know from professional work, one of the people that's one of the

talking heads talking to one of the the guests that he talks to on it.

How did you feel that he represented this guest?

Was it fair or did you feel that it was

heavily edited?

I didn't.

I mean, I saw some of them on.

I didn't watch their whole, you know, I guess I kind of flipped around.

Yeah. Choices.

You know, I don't think I would have gone on that show.

But, you know, I'm not I'm not everyone. Yep.

And I have looked at this stuff quite a bit, so I have some ideas about that.

I well, we'll get into looking into some other things about.

And so let's go back and you've wrote

for a magazine article.

It was 2019, if I remember correctly.

Yeah.

John Hoopes, who obviously has been in kerfuffle with

Mr. Hancock and his

his fans recently over this ancient apocalypse show.

He put together a he asked people within America before,

and that was, I think

why really made sense because essays the society of American archeology

it very much has not study the Americas

and certainly not North America in it.

And, you know, when you go to their meetings,

there's stuff from all over the world.

But a lot of its focus is on one, the Americas and two, North America.

And so when his book, America Before, came out in 2019, which really focused

more on that part of the world

than he had previously, although a lot of it's about Egypt.

Yeah, a lot of it's about the book the dead

when he starts talking more metaphysically, John asked a number of us

both professionals and not to contribute pieces

to the archeological record

from the essay which is it's not their main peer reviewed journal

that's the Latin American American antiquity and American antiquity.

It is

the bulletin for members which most American archeology, most North

American and beyond our members off, I need to renew my

but it's meant for them.

So they but they opened it up to the hall.

They wanted people to read it.

But that bulletin is aimed at the archeological profession.

And so, yeah, I looked at his book America Before

and also his larger ideology, and I, I didn't want to write a review.

That wasn't the point.

I kind of wanted to talk to that audience

because I'm of the opinion that a lot

that there's been a category error, that

a lot of takes.

And it's not just hand, though I think he's probably the biggest one,

but a lot of takes by professionals don't actually entirely

really dig enough to understand what they're critiquing.

And that's not a defense.

I mean, my last line of my essay is

he is not a failed attempt at an archeologist.

He is a successful mythographer for a post science age

that I did not think he would take that as a compliment.

I mean, there's some.

Yeah, but it was more

that attempting to approach this from oh well this date is wrong and at

but we're still talking material is not really actually what's going on.

But what's your opinion on where Hancock comes from?

Does he want to change the paradigm of archeology as we do today,

or any harking back towards the 19 early 18/19 century?

It's not archeology.

I don't think it's about

I mean, it is about archeology, but it's about something bigger.

He he's very and this is this is why it annoys me.

Now, I will say from again, I haven't watched the whole show, but

from summaries, reviews, people talking about it, this is not very apparent.

I would not call it a bait and switch.

It's just it's an eight hour show or 4 hours for our show.

There's only so much.

But this part is not as explicit in the show, but it's explicit

in his writings and explicit in his other appearances that he is very much

and I would say this is part of a larger paranormal unified field theory,

interested in consciousness, interested in the soul.

And that's why I mention the Egyptian Book of the Dead shows up.

He tries to make comparisons, too, and there are some similarities,

like there are through all different kinds of narratives, but

two concepts of cosmology and how the, you know,

the nature of the world and the universe in Mississippi,

in eastern North America doesn't have to be from the Mississippi.

It's just from of eastern North America.

Indigenous thought, well, usually considered after 500 or a thousand,

but probably older, almost certainly older ideas about beyond death

transformations, ties to astronomy and so on.

He he talks about how his

he finally basically says it's Atlantis.

This global civilization before

the Holocene was not advanced

as much in physical technology

as in psychical technology and whatnot.

So it's not just, oh, you know,

I will see archeology go well, We change our paradigms all the time.

Like, look, we don't believe Clovis first anymore.

We haven't for decades. That is true.

Aren't the paradigms he's talking about.

You're talking about again.

And not just him.

Not just him at all.

Materialist science,

looking at things from a physical perspective

rather than also a metaphysical component.

And he talks about elsewhere that a part of this, you know,

people often like, well, he's not doing any and he's not, but he's like by

if you pierce the veil of reality through various attempts

at getting into alter consciousness, there are non-human entity teachers

on the other side that probably contributed

at least 50,000 years ago, and we start seeing much more human creativity

to to the development of our species.

That's not ancient aliens in the bond.

And I can sense and I wouldn't use the word aliens is much more complex,

but that's been there since at least his book Supernatural in the early 2000s.

I mean, he ends the book

with I'm going to go see the fairies when he takes shrooms at Avebury.

Yeah, Avebury is arguably where scientific archeology began.

So he wants to get back to a more esoteric look on the science.

He is one of several people.

There's Geoffrey Whitley Straw, and Cripples, Geoffrey Cripples

book Supernatural.

I haven't read his super Humanities yet.

Dean Raiden has one like this that basically argued

that science is a subset of larger knowledge creation, much of

which would also be considered magic.

I think their ideal scientists would be Isaac Newton, given that he spent

just as much, if not more, time in alchemy

as he did in physics and calculus.

Yeah.

Newton had some strange experiments going on there as

I remember, but do you think we need to look a bit more towards

Helena Blavatsky and other authors to really understand them properly?

Criticize Hancock and other authors?

Oh yeah, I, I, I am seeing more archeologists

who are familiar with this kind of material with, but

with blavatsky and the term theosophy, though it's still really rare,

like the number of archeologists where I say the word theosophy

and there's just blank stares and I'm like,

I mean, it's all about there's this, all what they're there for.

No, I understand that. That's not what they're there for.

So I can't really criticize one,

particularly for Handcock would be Ignatius Donnelly.

Yeah.

Ignatius Donnelly gives us the what we think of as Atlantis now.

Like it's, you know, what people think of it.

This Atlantis is much more like his than Plato and his two books.

What the two books on this.

He's also the guy who starts originating the Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare thing.

Yeah, but his Atlantis, the antediluvian world.

And I think it's Ragnarok, something of Fire and Gravel,

where he's like, Look, there was a super ancient civilization

and it was destroyed 12,000 years ago by a comet.

Well, that's

other than the spiritual stuff, other than the metaphysical stuff

that is very similar to what Hancock has been doing since the nineties.

But it does have that other component, which I don't believe

Donnelly had, but his stuff was very

enthusiastically melded in by Blavatsky

and her followers in its esophageal movement.

So yes, absolutely.

I also it would not hurt people looking at this stuff to maybe

also be familiar with Charles Fork and with Richard Shaver and Ray Palmer.

But that's a larger discussion.

And and. John.

Q Within your chapter in Lost City

Found Pyramid, Yeah, Steampunk inquiry,

you bring up that they often fall

back on these all the right things

because it's in public domain and easily accessible.

Do you think that affect how people

look at archeology due to their accessibility?

I think that's I don't think that's actually the main reason

I've heard others suggest like, Oh, well, it's out there, you can use it.

I don't actually think that.

I mean, that doesn't hurt, but I don't think that that's the primary.

And also they're not around to say, no, that's not what I mean.

I think it's because it is before professionalization.

Professionalization is not just a thing of archeology of the academy.

It is tied to the rise of a sort of, well, a professional middle class.

You really don't have the concepts of professionals before the 19th century.

It's skilled people,

but they often got their positions via patronage and relationships versus,

oh, I did a civil service exam or I went to university or whatever.

Yeah.

And that notes, you know, the professional

hits the academy in the 19th century and archeology.

I mean, the very first professorship of archeology is the Disney chair,

I want to say Cambridge of 1851, and that's classical archeology.

The first one in Egyptology is in 1890.

It goes to serve Flinders Petrie at University College, London.

We're not we may not be there,

I think it anyway, but it's really in the 20th century,

the the professionalization process is largely done

by about 1950, 60, depending on what are the world you're talking about.

But that's the you need credentials, you need to be part of an institution.

There are standards.

You can't be the hero saying what you want.

Yeah, I think that's why they like the stuff before that,

because it has that, it has that message, it has that importance.

It is not, you know, peer review.

And I honestly think the rise of somebody like Erich von Danica in the 1960s,

it is very interesting

that that is around the same time that there are developments in archeology

where publication is actually much more aimed at tenure

and going further in a professional institution

with the growth of the universities as state funded things.

The fact that, you know, I like to say I ask archeologists,

who's the most famous, who's the most influential

student of archeology or archeology writer of the 1960s?

And they all say if they're Americans.

Oh, Lewis Benford Yes.

He's like the sort of thing the figure of the new archeology profession.

I'm like, No, it's Eric Von Däniken, even though I don't believe

that he's right on anything, but he's influenced far more minds.

Yeah, is And so, no, I think that's why that stuff is useful

because it's and also they were very happy to talk about these kinds of issues.

There had not been that divide with, oh, we're getting rid of

Margaret Murray in the witches or we're getting rid of using

psychic vibrations to find Glastonbury and so on.

They weren't.

So it's it's more trying to reject

and repeal the development of professional science.

And the same thing is true in things like crypto zoology.

You look at parapsychology. Yes.

Are they doing their little experiments with machines?

But they're constantly citing stuff from the 19 section.

And if we try to look a bit forward, what can the,

well, academic sociologist and other who engage in these tactics that they're,

you know, engaged with the pseudoscience you're bringing up, for example,

two examples of mainstream science engaged in

kind of one in your chapter.

Well, is that the Crystal Skull and the Bigfoot?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the Bigfoot one was going on at the time with a lot of genetics,

and I have thoughts about that because it's only taken

somewhat in the community because now they're like, well, Denisovan DNA.

And I think, okay, the crystal skull thing,

obviously there are still people who are all about it.

But the fact that there was solid research and especially physical research,

as much as I hate to say I think is I think on these topics, history

is very much one of the best ways of going forward,

like looking at the history of these concepts and all that.

That said, the sort of thing in our we love genetics,

we love AI machine learning culture that often seems

to have more gravitas for the larger public is DNA.

Yeah, or scanning electron microscopy.

So in the case of the crystal skulls,

there's been a really I want to just show this off.

The only relationship I have is that I reviewed it,

not peer reviewed it, but book review that this is a fantastic book

and I believe it is either out or coming out in paperback

of the man who invented as the Crystal Skulls is about using.

It is basically a biography of Eugene Boban.

It is by Jane McLaren. Walsh and Brett Topping.

They solve the mystery.

Oh, they're like, This is where they came from.

Yeah, this was their inspiration.

It is a really important book.

If you're interested in these sorts of topics.

Yeah, that's a great book recommendation right there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that kind of study, like actually looking at these things.

Before, I will let you go to work,

you have a brought up and Hancock talks about this to cook.

Okay.

And then Quetzalcoatl as being white and I know that you are specialized in I have.

Studied both colonial like 16th century colonial Spanish, which mostly wasn't

Spanish, was indigenous people archeology in Mesoamerica,

as well as classic Maya archeology.

And I've contributed in in things where the pig Raphe, which is inscriptions

working on some of the few inscriptions in El Salvador, that sort of thing.

Because on the edge of that world, that topic, it is complicated.

It's not complicated.

Like, well, it's parts like,

no, no, it's complicated only because you have to dig into the history.

But no, that seems to largely be a creation of the Spaniards.

Yeah, from the Spanish colonial.

And there are people who have written more on this.

There's actually a pretty good discussion of this as a good website.

Shouldn't say there's actually there's a good discussion.

There's a really cool website

that's meant for public consumption, but it's detailed called Mexico Lore.

Okay.

I think it's just I mean mexicolore and I think it's co dot UK.

I know they're based out of the UK.

It is got a lot.

I just was listening to their new podcast talking about Aztec music

and the first ones on the Aztec death whistle thing, which is fascinating.

Mine is at work otherwise I'd blow it and blow out your speakers, but terrifying.

But they have a really solid.

I actually pulled it up for something else the other day.

Discussion of this but yeah that's that's not a thing.

Yeah I mean you can fly people say it's a thing, but it's, it's not.

And also the whole bearded business.

So like, oh they, yeah, there are totally people in the Americas

that, you know, have beards

and there are whether they're today or depictions of them.

Yeah.

It's not as common you know I will agree with that, but it's not a thing.

All right.

Thank you very much for your time.

And I will put some links to your podcast and your books recommend to buy them all.

Thank you.

And in the show notes, anything else you want to add before we.

I just would

say my message is don't go with your preconceptions.

I again, I am going through some material right now that is often spoken about.

I'm like,

Why do you think this is about is not what it's about?

And, you know, as I say, at the end of Spooky, I'm like,

my job is literally to, you know, turn over rocks and dig

in the things that uncover formerly secret things, hidden things.

We should absolutely be doing the same thing with these topics

instead of just going with what our first like.

Well, this is how things are is like, Well, maybe you should dig.

Yeah. If you want to engage.

You know there's that that term engage that term

in English can be I decided to marry a person.

It can be we're going to have foreign relations.

There's also engaging the enemy.

It can mean a number of things.

And if you don't know who that person or that corporation or that army

is in any of those cases, it's probably not going to go well.

You probably need to know who you are engaging with.

Links to spook spooky archeology and Lost city

found pyramids will be found in these episodes shown up.

And of course, you should go and listen to his podcast.

In the research of hosted with Blake Smith,

who has been a guest on the show previously.

Now, to paraphrase Dr.

Ken Fader, according to alternative historians or alternative history

theorist, archeologists and historians constantly seems to lose civilizations.

And I would argue that losing track of an abandoned site might be natural.

But what differentiates a lost real site from a made up lost site

is that we usually find the real ones sooner or later,

and we also uncover them and where we expect them to kind of be.

Take, for example, the most known example may be Troy.

Now Heinrich Schliemann is attributed

as the discoverer, and they do that in 1873.

But people have suggested the site of Hisarlik since at least 1822.

And to be honest, Schliemann probably made the site

a big disservice by excavating it by himself.

It's been discovered that he has faked quite a lot of artifacts.

For example, Priams treasure and a led figurine that had a swastika

scratched into it.

Another place that was lost and found is the town

or little village of Truso described by Wulfstan.

Now, compare this to more fabled civilization like Lemuria Move

and, well, Atlantis or Eldorado or the Lost City of Z

or any other location that's been lost.

And the mother of these are, of course, the city and story of Atlantis

originating as a rhetorical device by Plato,

by this fabled city, only gets a smaller role in the ancient apocalypse.

I think you mention it's like 17 times throughout the show.

Hancock's idea would not be much without Atlantis,

to be honest, and to truly understand the hypothesis of the Graham,

we need to understand Atlantis and what this legend birthed in a sentence

in this examination that we're starting on is just one of very, very many.

De Camp wrote back in 1950 that's thousands of articles have been

written ranging in tone from the sobre science to the wildest fantasy,

and the amount has not become less since they wrote this book

that was really released in 1970s.

Still true back then.

Now Plato was born in 429 or 428 BCE.

This date isn't too important, but it means that he was about 18 or 19

when he first became a student with Socrates, while Socrates

never really bothered to write something down that survived to our day.

He was fortunate enough to have quite ambitious pupils

like Plato and other famous philosophers.

And as we know, Plato.

Yes, as Cher and Prince went by

his mononym for most of the time and was a star in his time.

I have no idea why I went with Cher and Prince there,

but I am younger than you might think.

Now. Plato is also known for using dialogs to teach,

but they were never intended to be taken as records of real conversation.

These dialogs usually include his old teacher

and his friends and other real people,

but they were intended as literary devices

to represent Plato's ideas.

Plato describe Atlantis in two work time Timeaus and Critias,

which was left unfinished.

Timeaus was, of course, completed, but there would also have been

a third one called Hermocrates.

Now, these books were to elaborate on Plato's The Republic.

They even took place the night after the discussion,

and this was in 421 BCE So that means that Plata

was about eight years old at the time when this took place.

So he probably wasn't in participant and the books was written

in 355 BCE, putting Plato's in his seventies.

And if you read time years, we learn that Socrates

wants to continue discussing the perfect society.

While we today might see Socrates ideal societies rather fascist,

Nonetheless, he gives his pupils

the task of describing an ideal society

and how it would perform against Athens

Hermocrates proceed to throw Critias under the bus

by volunteering him to Socrates, most presumably steaming

with fury and planning his revenge on Hermocrates

Critias go on and start to tell a story to to Socrates

and the gathered people that was told to him by his grandfather.

He claim at least now the grandfather has first conveyed this story during

a festival called up Apaturia, during which young lads

would could win prizes

for their literary inventions.

So everybody told the story

during this festival, but it was not Cretaceous to older.

It's of course, truth.

Yes, Grandfather was also known critics.

Now it was told to Critias grandfather by drop this.

Of course this is not the original source for death and the story either.

No, that was a Greek sage named, Solon,

who in turn had heard about this from Egyptian priest in the 590 BCE.

And if they plot out all these people involved in this story,

it means that we are.

Plato is retelling a 235 year old fictional story at this point.

Now, if you start to read the book of Timeaus

we will learn that it contains a introduction to Atlantis.

And as we learned in a previous episode, it's located

outside the Strait of Gibraltar

or outside a pillar of Hercules.

And the Egyptian priest stresses that the Atlanteans

made an unprovoked attack against Europe and Asia.

And if we read a book, we see that the Critias is trying his best to paint

the atlanteans as quite evil enemies to Athens,

the floor is left to Timeaus

who will then go on and speak a little bit

about the universe, origin and the origin of everything.

Now, if we head over to critics of books, we learn that the first ship jets

about how ancient Athens and how it was in there 9000 years before.

And just by coincidence, Athens back then.

The match on the letter Plato's

idea of a perfect republic, so to say,

isn't it

a bit mysteries that it just happens to line up.

We we then learn that the

decadent Atlanteans started as a noble people

with a godly pedigree.

But they would turn corrupt as ages went on.

So debase actually that Zeus decided that something needs to be done.

And he is going to teach them atlanteans a serious lesson.

And just as Zeus is about to regain his plan

to his collected gods, the story ends mid-sentence.

Plato seems to have abandoned it there and never went back to finish it,

and unfortunately he would go on and die just a few years later.

Luckily, or maybe unluckily for us, we learned in time use that Atlantis

would go under in a large cataclysm

that would end and also ancient Athens.

Now I challenge you to find another ancient source that also mentioned

Atlantis, or a similar myth.

So far, none have really been able to locate this.

And trust me, there are several who has made a pretty good attempts there.

Isn't this a little bit strange? Sure.

We haven't found every little bit and piece of the ancient literature,

but if you combine the sources from Egypt, from Babylon, from Sumer,

from Phoenicians, we don't see a single mention of either

Atlantis or another story similar to it, really.

And Herodotus lived only a century before Plato,

and he never mentioned Atlantis or a story similar to this.

And you know, he's the father of history or father, although he was known

to, you know, write about stuff that maybe wasn't really entirely true.

But we don't see in mention in other historians work that specifically

you write about the military conquest

and the strike of the Athenians military power.

Isn't it a little bit strange that they leave out this Athenian victory

over this great evil empire? I feel so.

But the warrior will be

well, most likely is because they knew that plot.

I wasn't, you know, describing real history.

He was using this as an allegory, so to say.

And we look at this altogether, it becomes clear that the Greeks and other

that came after Plato saw this as a fictional invention

by Plato, as it was intended to put the story.

And what to the Greek was a mysterious ancient times.

Yes, this author today

do similar things, saying Atlantis is really is like claiming

Middle Earth is real and that the shire

it was located in the Flen in Sweden.

You might object and say that the creatures explain

that the story is true, but still Tolkien does a similar thing.

If we look in the fellowship of the Ring in the prolog,

we learn that this book is largely concerned with hobbits

and from its page, a reader may discover

much of their character and a little bit of their history.

Does it mean that Hobbits were real, that Tolkien

had access to real historic?

It texts about hobbits?

Probably not, and sometimes author claim the story is real to,

you know, make it more interesting for the reader.

And for Century, the story about Atlantis was just a story.

But it will not stay like that forever, because sometimes stories has,

other plans.

Now, before we get deeper into what Atlantis has to do with everything

and we have a more in-depth discussion

of the topics we brought up with you have card.

I need to explain the base

of some of the parts of Hancock's argument here.

We need to talk hyper diffusion.

What is hyper diffusion and what makes it more excited than normal diffusion?

When archaeologist gab about diffusion, we usually mean this

in the sense that we trace how and where artifacts unfurl.

Diffusion is not just used in archaeology,

but also in history and geography and even economy.

And we can observe how what type of object

or information spreads from a culture to another.

And we know that our ancestors traveled far and wide and encountered

different people on their journeys,

which led to imitation and most importantly, trade.

And we often see a single trait diffusion

that a smaller item is traded or gifted between cultures does not mean

that the different cultures even had to be in contact with each other.

Many cases, artifacts passes through several cultures

and people before they travel is over,

and we find it in a cultural layer when we excavate a site.

Note that this process rarely is

just a one sided trade went two ways,

so different items went back and forth between the civilization.

And we also see a lot of imitations in an area where maybe

the resources that are used to create this item is scarce.

So for example, in late Neolithic Scandinavia,

the import of copper was relatively late in our history,

but the concept of these very beautiful

daggers was known and people wanted it.

So they started to make Copper dagger imitation

from Flint that was, you know, available to the people in Scandinavia.

The replicas was so detailed that you can see the little stitching

where the leather on the handle goes and archeologists

can sometimes talk about the complex diffusion.

And this is when a culture imprints itself on another culture

in this cases are quite rare and far in between.

It's usually the result of either war or colonization.

And if we turn the volume up to 11, we get hyper diffusion.

That's that all cultures and techniques can be traced

to a single origin for example, W. Perry and Smith argue that ancient Egypt

was the penultimate source of all civilization, technology, building.

Everything came from Egypt.

Hyper diffusion was also used in a new world, trying to explain how these what was,

you know, saw by the people back

then as primitive people could build these marvelous monuments.

And this view is very colonial

in a sense, and has been used to defend scientific racism and,

you know, include a lot of white race mythologies, for example.

Now, diffuison is, one of these 19th century ideas

that's been replaced by a post processional argument,

Gordon Child and other were using diffusion mechanism,

but the started to implement the more Marxist approach to them.

The focus became more how diffusion work in a economic environment.

But it wasn't until 1970 and the publication of Colin Renfrew's

book Before Civilization, we start to see

a shift towards post processional approach.

Renfrew used for example, the radiocarbon dating to show

that megalithic structures in Europe were

independently invented in areas

and different times, while diffusion was used before

to explain the rise of megalithic structures in Europe. It

was weird

the random few study discarded mostly, but it still has its place

within our challenge today on smaller concepts, ceramics and the ideas.

But it's more on the local with a certain area.

For example, within in Sweden we can look at how ceramics spreads

between different sites, but

it doesn't really work on larger concept.

That's a pyramids, for example, and we have started to learn

and maybe accept that humans are a bit more complex and imaginative

and that we might give ourselves credit for sometimes.

Now, hyper diffusion has found itself a new home within the alternative

history sphere and we see this frequently in ancient aliens.

The idea that things resemble each other is due to any invention

or alien tools, for example.

But note that hyper diffusion carries a darker past, and neither Von Däniken

or Graham Hancock really deals with when applying the idea

of hyper diffusion on their hypothesis.

The idea of hyper diffusion has usually been used to

present a race and nation or religion as superior to other.

And you really need to first understand this and deal with it

before you start to apply it in your well literary work, basically.

Now, let's get back to Atlantis, the story that didn't really want to stay, a story

almost a millennium went by with no claims towards Atlantis

reality, but it would change where Lopez

De Gomorras account in historias general de las Indias

that was published in 1552 in it, you know, to quote.

But there is no reason to dispute or doubt the island of Atlantis

since the discovery and conquest of the in this plainly demonstrate

that Plato wrote about these and we are no strangers to Spaniards

making things up to justify or try to finance their expedition.

Pedro Sarmiento

De Gamboa also thought Atlantis was located,

in the indies just before he in his book started to talk about how,

as he put it, to the Barbarians of Peru was

a blind opinion to own origin.

Now, it's not only Spanish people we should blame here.

Other nations also contributed to these ideas, John Josselyn, Abbé

Charles-Étienne Brasseur and Augustus Le Plongeon,

where a few who contributed to the Atlantis myth,

the two latter even translated the Madrid Codex

or the Torano Codex in late 1800s, getting wildly

different translation from each other and what is actually says in the

Madrid Codex

Remember, we did not rediscover

the Mayan script or rediscovered

how to translate the Mayan script until 1973.

Now Abbé saw a story of Atlantis in the text.

While Le Plongeon read that the Mayans originated from the ancient

Egyptians, but Atlantis was on the way out in the late 19th century.

But the story would not be ready to be forgotten.

Let's reintroduce Ignatius Donnelly, the man we talked about in the opening

who told us a tale eerily similar to

these ideas presented by Graham Hancock.

Donnelly was an American who became a lieutenant

governor at the remarkable young age of 28.

Now Donnelly would move on and hold political office as a radical Republican.

And as for the time, he was quite the progressive, actually,

he supported the suffrage movement, was against child labor,

and was a proponent of, well, somewhat racial justice, at least

even if the later part was hugely caused by racists.

The bigotry and this may be best

shown in his later novel Dr.

Huguet

Which deals with them well, rather brutal situation

for formerly enslaved people.

While he discussed this in a rather progressive manner,

we see how racial science of the time machine shines through,

and they tell us that the people of color can't learn when they get older

due to the thickness of their skulls and rather horrific ideas.

That was quite common back then.

And this raises ideas echoed through the novel.

And we even see this in Atlantis, the antediluvian world.

White people in the Atlantis books is portrayed

as the rightful ruling class of Atlantis.

Why all the color exists in this Atlantean place

where barbarians first became civilized and the hyper diffusion in Donnelly's

The Antediluvian World"

nothing The author is really trying to conceal

Here at the book's opening, we get 13 points

that he will try to prove in the book.

And number three is that all the civilization we know

is originating from Atlantis.

Later, he expand that.

It appears that all cultures must have been derived from some common source.

Now, while Donnelly might have been progressive for

his time, is still far from our current ideas

and to explain the complex of buildings of Mayans and Native American,

he insisted that a race of pure blood lived there before.

I meant well.

Europeans started to come to the New world.

The base of this claim isn't new

or just thought by Ignatius Donnelly, for example, We as we talked about

in a previous episode, the president of the Chicago Academy of Science, J.W.

Foster, spoke in similar terms and ideas.

And even if this racist idea was about to be is starting to be thrown out

and it was and still is to some extent, a long road to walk down there.

Now serious Thomas careful investigation and debunking of the mound building

myth will not be released for another 12 years now Donnallys

evidence for diffusion range far and wide and nothing is too big or too small

to include one party claims to be evidence is that Atlantis had art

and so though everybody else all other culture has art

while is a true statement, it does not really account

for the differences in between the art in different cultures.

If the origin of the art were a single source,

wouldn't it be more similar and not show

signs of evolution and adaptions?

If we look at my angry Egyptians or Indian art,

we we can clearly this thing is between them.

Even if we look at petroglyphs, they look really different than most used

with different methods between different cultures and times,

except for, you know, art being made with tools and being pretty to look at

is not that much too pointed to a single source of origin.

Now, another point that Donald brings up in the book

is that the New and Old World both had the bronze,

but that's Professor Ken Fader points out

he does not really account for the diverse ingredients

in the alloy in comparison Old world Bronze is made with copper and tin,

while New World Bronze is made with combining copper and arsenic.

There it is again a clear indication that this technology is evolved separately.

Same with agriculture.

While the concept can be found across the globe,

the technology and the approach to it differs

widely between the different cultures and regions.

For example, in Europe, it's heavily dominated by wheat and barley.

In it's grown in separate fields.

But if we look at Mesoamerica, for example, we have maise, beans and squash

that's grown in the sort of prior that together in the same field

and things does not get better in the sequel or semi sequel.

Ragnarök, where Donnelly argues that the meteoric impact

caused the continental drift of Earth

and the evidence for this, according to the book's narrative, is preserved

within our mythology, shared through generation as a warning.

If it happened once, it can happens again and again.

You recognize this narrative.

If you have seen the the show Ancient Apocalypse,

or rather Graham's works and Donnelly is

in the his books

relying heavily on the flood myth or deluge myth.

If you want to be fancy,

you've probably heard the idea

that the flood myth across the world is eerily similar,

and you can find it in every culture across the world, basically.

And Hancock also spread this idea.

But is it any truth to this?

Now, if we look into, for example, Sir James Fraser's

extensive compilations of all the myths in the book,

The Great Flood, we quickly realized that that's not the case.

They differ widely and there's little they really have in common.

When we start to examine them properly through the eyes, obviously

basically reading them, but them is like, you know, saying that

the Egyptian pyramid and the Mesoamerican pyramids are identical.

And in Donnelly's

later book, Ragnarök focused more on the end of time myth.

You know, Ragnarök, the Apocalypse, and that they all are the same in a sense.

And that's why we get the comet hitting the earth and the warning.

So again, we see a repetition of Graham's claims

in a lot earlier work of literature now, and I doubt that Ignatius Donnelly

would describe himself as an archeologist or an historian.

His approach is more of a lawyer than an scientist.

As you have mentioned in this article America

before, we should not view Hancock as an archeologist.

But mythisist.

Even Graham Hancock agree with Card in his response

to the special edition of a magazine that's covered.

He is a book so approaching Hancock as a person who wants to be an historian

or geologist is to miss Graham's goal altogether.

But to truly understand Graham's ideal,

what a paradigm shifts would mean.

As he mentioned, we we need to look a little bit more

on this esoteric inspiration.

So the last piece of the puzzle to understand the Hancock's sources

and paragigm shift can be found in the books on Esoterism,

on Theosophy, on Anthroposophy,

and these connections are familiar to us.

We can see them among the ancient astronaut proponents

Jeb Card mention that ancient aliens

people have shifted towards a more perennial philosophy.

And I kind of disagree with this statement,

at least for many of the more prominent names.

What comes to mind is, for example, maybe Philip Coppens and Robert Schoch putting

this more esoteric approach to the ideas,

but it's more than perfectly visible.

On the other hand, in Graham Hancock's writings now, I would argue that Helena

and Rudolf Steiner are somewhat the foundation on how Graham

approach approach these mythical stories

within theosophy, you collect all myths

and put them in a barrel, and the ones with the most similarities

are supposed to be taken as literal accounts at the end of the day,

it sounds like diffusion with maybe some more magical steps involved.

Just because something is similar,

it doesn't really affect the truthful this of them statement.

To be honest, they might have helped this blow out scare

and there's some more criteria on how the difference between true accounts.

But yeah she never really did death to be honest.

No one core thought in philosophy is that all

philosophy and religion originate from one source.

Does it again sound a little bit familiar?

Now, here's a quote No one can study ancient philosophy

seriously without perceiving that a striking similitude of conception

between all and then she goes on during the youth of mankind, one language,

one knowledge, one universal religion.

And we've seen this before.

Now, Blavatsky also cover Atlantis in her writings

since she puts the origin of the fourth root race in there.

In her writings, she she had this concept called Root Rases,

and she isn't really talking about human races.

Maybe.

Luckily for us, for the most part, it is about esoteric, proto humans.

And the first version of this root

race is more or less basic energy.

And as it evolves, we come to the fourth race that would become humans.

And we originated in Atlantis.

The third

race that was before us was also more flesh and blood.

And they also laid eggs.

So we evolved above the eggs at least,

but we also had psychic powers in the beginning.

But this has faded for most of us.

But Helena, of course, believe that some people do have the higher power.

But there's a common idea in selflessly that we can somewhat communicate with the,

you know, esoteric of being a spirit or,

you know, a global universal sentence.

And Hancock speaks about this to the sea, for example,

this in his approach to aliens.

Now, he don't believe that

ancient aliens came here and built the pyramids.

No, but they are here on Earth

in the sense of higher form, that there's a consciousness connection

among people who have been abducted or had an encounter of the third kind.

So they are here in a more magical sounds, esoteric sense.

But we also see the ideas of Rudolf Steiner in Hancock's writings,

but not so much in the ancient apocalypse areas.

But it's more apparent if you go and read a 2006 book, Supernatural, not connected

to the TV show, which was rereleased with a new title Visionary last year.

And while Steiner was influenced by Theosophy,

he tried to have a more scientific approach to these ideas.

We also have the notion of subspace.

But Steiner also incorporates the more racist, nationalist

and anti-Semitic ideas from his time, and also was highly influential

in the Nazi movement their approach to race

and race theory and race sciences.

But the Steiner talks a lot about science and how access the spiritual world

from a predominant scientific approach.

We should not forget Edgar Cayce

and his influence on Hancock's work case

is maybe more known as the sleeping prophet,

the source of some

jealousy because he was able to sleep on the job.

And this prophecy is one of the original sources

for the idea of the much, much older springs, for example.

And he came to this realization through his visions.

Many of them were about now.

Cayce claimed to have lived some 700 lives

in this allegorical city of Atlantis

in one of his vision, he saw the survivors from Atlantis were traveling to Egypt

and started their civilization there again.

And for example, they started to build the Hall of Record,

which Casey claimed would be beneath the swings.

And what time did this happen?

Well, 10,000 B.C., of course.

And we saw Casey's influence

on, for example, the Robert Schoch in the earlier episode.

But I think it's important to note here that Cayce wasn't

too familiar with the original material.

He was illiterate, for example,

which made it quite hard for him to read Plato from the start.

But many of his ideas from Atlantis and their connections

to the global consciousness stems mainly from his client

that took part in his two faith healing sessions.

And they were more often the three offices.

So they talked about the Blavatsky’s

work with him, for example,

and that is to this sphere of magic that Hancock and want to bring science.

It's not really to overthrow post-processualism, or even Clovis

or, you know, revert to diffusion

It's all again that Hancock says really after.

No, it's to get back to the time where university was part

science and part magical show as Card put it.

He wants to become Newton kind of.

He wants to have an esoteric approach to science

and the myths that he talks about, and he applies a philosophic

and untruthful fake ideas when he examined them.

And the sooner we understand this, not trying to be an historian

or archeologist, we can start to stamp out these ideas for real.

I know that we want to believe that everyone wants to be an archeologist,

but we need to stop imprinting this idea.

On Graham Hancock.

We need to accept that we need more than material evidence.

If we want to understand

his ideas and to confront them properly.

And I want to finish like you have Card did in his article.

Yeah, Hancock is not a failed version of an archeologist.

He's a successful mythographer or in the post science age.

And I think you have a better understanding now of the origin

and the foundation of Hancock's ideas.

And before we move on to the actual claims in this show,

we should bring forth that, well, it's

a documentary that of course uses clever

editing tricks to get people to say things they didn't really say.

And we see this a lot in ancient aliens, for example.

And this is so common that experts aren't really surprised.

We have reports coming

that the experts will agree to appear on the show have been edited out of context.

For example, Katya Stroud from Heritage Malta wrote online that she had been

heavily edited and quoted out of context and ancient apocalypse and ancient

are not the only shows and documents that use this clever editing tricks.

It's so common that there's actually a documentary about the phenomenon.

And to help us with some tips and tricks

to spot pseudoscience and talk a little bit more about this

clever edit, then I want to introduce our next guest on the show.

So I would like to welcome Brian Dunning to the show.

Welcome. Thank you.

Thank you. A lot of fun to be here.

You have been hosting Skeptoid for what

it 17 years now since 2006? Yes.

2006 really some 860 episode in total.

I think about that.

That's right yeah closing in on 900.

So during all of your time about this

skeptic work, have you seen any sort of unified theory regarding

all these strange claims that sort of you, you know, similar between them?

That's a that's a really interesting question,

like a unified field theory for paranormal beliefs.

But I haven't I mean, there's there's a lot of reasons that

that people believe strange things, but You know, the really interesting

research is in finding the the groupings and the correlations.

People who believe one thing are more likely to believe another.

Strange things.

You know, everyone tends to have their threshold

and they tend to believe

all the weird things below that threshold and they tend to reject the weird things

above that threshold for how far out there those things are.

And everyone is somewhere on that spectrum.

We all have some beliefs that are true.

Yeah, that's very true.

And you don't like that term debunking, right?

As I understood from your show. Why is that?

Debunking is just a very dismissive term.

You know, it suggests that you

automatically don't believe anything and you're just going to reveal

what's wrong with this, with this idea or this belief system.

And to me, that's a that's an inherently negative process.

You're only out there to take people's cherished beliefs away,

which is never it's that's never my intent.

It's often part of the process when you're when you're trying to show

what's amazing and what's interesting about a strange building

and whatever it is it might be how and why this belief exists,

how and why it's spread.

What were the causes of that?

You're trying to provide a positive experience,

something you can give to everyone.

So everyone comes walking away saying, Wow,

that's really need to learn something new.

And just unfortunately, along the way you have to say, well,

the popular version of the story isn't true.

But here's why we know that.

And here's a more interesting part of it. That is true.

So I try to find the positive aspects.

Do you think people react more positively when you put it

like offering them a new way to look at these things?

Is it easier to get them to listen?

I do get positive feedback for that.

I do get I do get positive feedback.

I get feedbacks for the kind of a lot of times people will say things like,

you know, hey, I really respect that you didn't make fun of my bully

or whatever it is.

You know, I try to have I try to always keep in mind

who is the

person who is least likely to want to listen to this show?

And I try and put something in there that will make that person want to let

some. That's a good approach towards this.

During all of this, these episodes, I think of stumble upon the Graham Hancock

at least five times, maybe more from your show notes.

Sounds about right. Yeah.

Do you feel that you're familiar with his work

or he is and name floating out there?

Well, I I'm not I certainly don't study his work.

I don't read his books.

I know who he is, obviously, because he comes up in so many different

in so many different episodes.

I, I tend to not spend a lot of time

studying or engaging with the people who are promoting

an unscientific perspective on whatever it is.

I focus my time on doing the good work.

Yeah, and less time on, you know, tearing down the bad work.

There's also a good approach towards this end.

He has his new Netflix special that is very well done.

And when you watch it, you can see that people might come away from it

more interested in these ideas.

But from your experience, you have some tips that's easy

to use at home when you're looking at documentaries or go online

to spot pseudoscience or sort out fringe theories that you could share.

Yeah, you're not.

You know, the number one thing is when these people on television

claim that the mainstream accept their ideas or mainstream

science is afraid of this, any kind of claims like that.

Graham Handcock is notorious for saying that kind of thing all the time.

You know, in ancient aliens, the Giorgio to and all of those guys,

they also say these these same things all the time.

So yeah, watch out for anyone who's claiming to be,

you know, he's being marginalized, he's being suppressed.

Any that doesn't happen in real science.

Scientists are always trying

to prove each other wrong, of course,

because we're always trying to improve our theories.

But they certainly have to engage with

and have to work them, too, in order to do that.

And so it's always the people who are far outside the actual scientific field

who are ever making those sort of conspiratorial claims.

So watch out for the sort.

Of people that wants to be a maverick and stand out side

is someone we should avoid taking face value.

Definitely real scientists do not work in isolation from other real scientists.

They have to work very closely with them.

And I've seen you mentioned that we need to have a high bar

for the standard of evidence.

Do you wish to elaborate a little bit on what the high bar is

and how you can look for that in your day to day life?

Hard to hard to look for in your day to day life?

What what that basically talks about.

I was just just to pick an example, let's say these TV shows that

promote particular UFO stories

and these UFO stories are supported

by very poor evidence, which is basically verbal

anecdotes, people who tell you what they what, what happened.

And a lot of times these stories will grow and change over time.

The one out of the U.K.

called the Rendlesham Forest UFO is a perfect example of a story

that's grown enormously since since it first came out.

You know, initially there was a police report that says

not that interesting happened into the story.

And then over the years over these different TV shows coming out,

they added more and more fictional elements.

One guy said he, you know, found a UFO in the forest and looked at it.

I mean, there's all of these story elements that get added there

purely, fictional, and they are supported by no evidence at all.

So if you're accepting evidence that's based purely on people's

verbal accounts, that is a very low bar for the standard about

we know that that kind of evidence leads to false conclusions.

So you just have to have if all of

the relevant experts in the field or most of them are

generally publishing papers about a topic and agreeing with a topic,

that's a pretty good standard for evidence.

You won't find any scientific papers being written

finding that in a UFO stories or True.

Yeah. Or pardon me, I misspoke.

Finding that aliens are actively visiting the earth

because we don't have any good evidence of that.

We have a lot of anecdotal evidence, which is all bad evidence

and you know, the old saying,

the plural of anecdote is not evidence.

I like to say you can stack cow pies as high as you want.

They won't turn into a bar of gold.

Yeah, that's true.

But when you're starting to think about verbal evidence,

how do you feel about the A in the rate?

The images are starting to come in.

Can they become a problem when we want to explore different stories and claims?

Or do you feel that they will be easy to sort out from real photos?

That's a that's a good question.

And I don't have a crystal

ball on how that's going to work out any more than anyone else does.

I don't think that they're likely to be a problem in the sciences.

It's not like we're going to have

fake evidence created.

You know, evidence is created under controlled circumstances,

and controlled circumstances means, hey, I generated

comments, doesn't content doesn't make it through.

So I'm not too worried about it from the field of science,

but from the field of, you know, pop culture and even news.

Yeah, I expect there's going to be some issues

and we'll probably see some high profile cases of that.

Going to be interesting to watch for sure.

And last year we saw the release of Science

Friction, a full length documentary produced by you.

Would you mind telling us a little bit about it and how it came to be?

Science Fiction is a documentary about scientists who have been

deceptively edited by these TV shows.

You know, the TV shows always want a scientist to come on and say,

yes, scientists do think that aliens built the pyramids.

Well, no, real scientists are going to say that.

So they get real scientists and they edit their words, in some cases

literally cutting apart sentences and rearranging words.

And that is a terrible, terrible practice.

And so we made this film calling out the practice.

We had about 20 people in the movie to whom this happened

or who can speak intelligently about cases.

And I'll tell you, we had many, many more people that we either

interviewed or spoke with and who elected not to remit, not to appear in the film.

And that's really interesting.

And the reason was they just didn't want to burn their bridges with these TV shows.

Let's, you know, on the one hand, I'm tempted to ask them,

So you're trying to preserve a relationship with someone

who is deceptively editing you and, you know,

the fact is these are these are scientists who usually work in obscurity.

They're not going to get a lot of publicity.

Being on TV show is likely to be the highlight of their career.

So I don't argue with them, but it is it is a real problem

and it's part of why people tend to believe the things that are wrong.

These terrible TV shows.

Do you think there's a way to participate in these shows, the type of shows

and still come out on top while participating in them?

Well, yes and no.

I mean, you could be very careful about what you say.

These shows all give you a release form that gives them the right to do anything

and everything with your footage now, they have to have that right.

They have to be able to make trailers.

They have to be able to provide press clippings.

They have to do lots of stuff over, potentially several years

the films released, they need to have those level of rights.

So you do have to sign the release.

And if you don't sign it, they're just simply not going to have you the show.

Yeah.

So all you can do is just watch your words very, very, very carefully.

You can try to get some writer on the release.

You know, I get to approve my appearance on the final show, but if you do that,

they're just simply not going to use you.

They're going to move on to the next person.

So it's a difficult problem.

It's a difficult problem indeed.

And is there any advice that you would give to experts

that's approached by these type of filmmakers and shows

when they try to decide, you know, if they should participate or not.

Research them, research who they are, research what the show

is, find out what kind of a show it's likely to be.

And that's usually pretty easy to tell.

And if it's if it's a questionable program, don't appear in it,

you just wait until a better show comes along.

That's really the best advice I can give, which is most of the time,

don't do it at all.

That's actually sounds very reasonable, but

it's a documentary and they recommend highly to see it.

I enjoyed it a lot in I saw it on release

and I also think I'll talk with a few that's been on Ancient aliens.

So Sarah Seager, for example, who also mentioned that you point out that

even if you choose your words carefully, they will find a way to put it

in a different context sooner or later, but they sure.

Will. To come back.

HANCOCK There there's been a lot of Ravel

or roughing in the at least geologist

who has recently discovered his pseudo astrological sphere.

And is there should we debate pseudo scientist

in, you know, the traditional debates type of arena, you know,

born versus one talking on stage?

Do you have any insights on that type of approach?

Yes, I do.

This is a point that I've been making for a long time.

I think you should basically never do that.

Scientists should not debate pseudo scientists,

because when you have a debate at all, you are telling the public that there is

a debatable subject here, that there's something worthy of conversation.

That's something that can be hashed out.

And so if you've got a legitimate

Egyptologists debating Graham and Clark or something, anyone who sees

the poster for that is going to say, Oh, there must be some of these big questions.

Maybe there were in ancient Atlantis culture

before the Egyptians or whatever it is that they're trying to believe.

Second of all, you're always going to lose the debate.

And the reason you're going to lose the debate is that you, as the scientist,

are constrained by the facts, what's real.

And so you have a very limited amount of information you can present.

The person you're debating is not restrained by anything at all.

He's got tons and tons of manufactured false history,

and you can just continue making it up as he goes.

And he's got so much false history behind him

that is no way you could be prepared to address all all of those points.

So it's very, very difficult for a scientist

to win a debate against a pseudo scientist

and you shouldn't have it anyway.

So I just think it's a bad idea all around.

There's also been talk about having a dialog,

for example, on Joe Rogan and similar talk shows.

Is that also something we should avoid or would a discussion be like a debate?

I mean, it's basically the same situation if,

if it's if it's on.

Joe Rogan Yeah, there are no rules, you know?

ROGAN is notorious for bringing on people who just

who are complete pseudo scientists from beginning to end.

And it gives them credibility because the show is popular. Now,

if this is in front of Congress or something

like that, well, the people are under oath.

And now all of a sudden the pseudo scientist has a lot less that you can say.

But that's not really the the way most debates work.

So I'm not a fan of the discussions any more of them than the debates.

Yeah.

So you're saying that we should have this in Congress, these type of debates?

If it has to happen at all, then that's those are the kind of conditions it needs.

You've got to have some accountability for people to step to real facts.

Now, I don't world there is no accountability.

I don't want to keep you too long.

But you also have a new product that kind of ties in to this show,

the UFO movie. They don't want you to see.

Well, do you mind to expand?

Who are day and why should we see it?

Yes, thank you.

Yeah.

So the UFO movie they don't want you to see.

That's my new my new film project.

It's in post-production right now.

I'm hoping it's going to come out here in Q1 of 2023.

That's been the plan anyway. At who is they?

That's the question everyone asks. Who is it?

Who is the baby that they don't want to do?

Well, obviously, the title is kind of just a fun play on words.

It's kind of you know, it gets attention.

And we started calling that as calling it that as a joke.

And eventually it just stuck as the real title.

And when we started talking about what should we actually title it

this is still the one that got that platform

and so are

using the UFO movie they don't want you to see.

But interestingly, during production of the film, a good definition for that.

They kind of kind of became apparent.

And it is true that there is segment of people out there

who do not want audiences to have a science informed

opinion of the UFO phenomenon,

namely the producers of all of these TV shows.

They want people to be open to anything.

And having a science informed

audience is, you know, counter counter to that goal.

So there is a very it's the UFO movie

that the TV shows don't want you to see. It's

And where can people go to find more about the movie?

You have a Web site.

The website is the UFO dot movie.

And yes, that's a real URL, which I didn't know before.

Before I did this, the UFO dot movie, we're sending out a little film

clips on a weekly basis.

So there's a little mailing list you can get on to receive

those film clips and there's no spam and you can unsubscribe.

But yeah, it's it's a lot of fun.

I'm having a lot of fun editing it and looking forward to getting the

the scoring and the

all of the other post-production stuff done as quickly as possible.

Yeah, it sounds really amazing.

And its release, hopefully.

Q1 that's the plan the of the black box for that is the color grading

the companies that do the color processing for a film.

I have not been able to get on anyone's schedule yet.

Everyone's very, very busy right now.

So that might be the only thing if it doesn't make it into Q1,

it would be for that reason.

I'm just trying to get the color schedule as quickly as I can.

All right.

Let's hold our phones that it's quick and easy.

Yes, thank you.

I'll I'll take that Paranormal Assistance.

Well, thank you for your time, Brian. Well, thank you for having me.

It's always a lot of fun to talk about this stuff.

And you give me a chance to promote my projects.

So I really appreciate.

You're very, very welcome.

You will find links to Brian's podcast captain

and the documentary Science Friction and the UFO movie

they don't want you to see in the show notes

below this episode.

Before we close out for tonight or today or whenever you watch this,

I want you to know that there's a more extensive list on how to spot

and identify pseudoscience on the website for this episode

next time we will have a closer look at the claims in each episode

and we will again have a couple of guests with us to help us with this.

But till then, remember to leave a positive review everywhere

you can, such as iTunes, Spotify or to your friends at the trends.

I would also recommend visiting, digging up ancient aliens dot

com to find more info about me on the podcast.

You can also find me on most social media sites

and if you have comments or suggestions

or want to write an all caps email, you can find my contact

info on the websites you should also go to to

ancientapocalypse.net to find some more info on

the criticism of this Netflix show

and you'll find all sources and resources that they used to make this episode

in the show notes where you also find further reading suggestions.

If you want to learn more about these different topics.

We brought up some grammar, Sandra Marteleur created the intro music (podcast only)

and or outro is made by a band called Trallskruv.

This is their song Tinfoil hat links to

both of these artists will be found in the show notes.

Until next time, keep shoveling that science.