The Summer of UFO disclosure!

                                                        
With all the excitement of the 4^th of July, some traveling I needed to do, and a great deal of writing on not one but two major book projects, getting back to my planned revitalizing of the blog has fallen by the wayside. However, I wanted to update it right now with a link to my recent guest turn on the Persuasion by the Pint podcast about the new Steven Spielberg UFO film, Disclosure Day. You can listen to our very in-depth discussion of cinematic aliens and allegedly real aliens right here.

 

As a little sneak peak of the episode, we look at the way the term “disclosure” seems to have entered the national lexicon and how mainstream news organizations are given to more and more coverage of the UFO phenomenon. This turn of events, we discuss, is overall positive. This is a decades-long mystery (maybe centuries-long if we consider the claims of the ancient astronaut proponents) that could possibly turn out to be the most significant event in human history. But, then again, the skeptics could turn out to be right and we have nothing more than misidentifications, hallucinations, unusual weather phenomena, and liars and hoaxes. I personally don’t think that the phenomenon comes down to misidentification and lies. I think there is a preponderance of evidence that the unidentified flying objects are something from outside of our world, but preponderance of evidence does not constitute proof that we are looking at extraterrestrial craft or interdimensional beings. The skeptical insistence that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is absolutely true. However, extraordinary proof will only be found through extraordinary research and investigation. With the government’s recent release of several batches of reports, videos, and photos of UFO sightings since the end of World War II, hopefully the extraordinary research will commence.

 

But we also talk about the worrisome problem of too many so-called whistleblowers presenting testimony after testimony of having seen that extraordinary proof of an alien presence on Earth, yet being unable to actually show the world that evidence. The whistleblower’s word alone, unfortunately, does not constitute proof. The whistleblower telling us that he heard from yet another whistleblower whose identity he can not reveal does not constitute proof either. But could all of these whistleblowers and mysterious insiders be a part of a much more complicated agenda. If none of these whistleblowers ever wind up producing anything significant, will the public interest in UFO investigations fade away again? And would that really be the best way to discredit and silence a movement?

 

But check out our discussion of these big questions and our analysis of Disclosure Day!

 

UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and when a Conspiracy Theory is a Conspiracy Fact

While I am swamped much more than usual, I'm happy to share this link to my appearance on Christopher Dessi's The Quantum Shift podcast. It was a fantastic way to discuss for an hour and a half the dividing lines between healthy skepticism and paranoia, real criminality and the abuse of power and privilege versus creative fantasies about the Illuminati and the New World Order. Moreover, it was great taking a deep dive into the UFO phenomenon that is dominating headlines again while remaining as baffling as it ever was.

So watch our discussion as we try and navigate our way through UFO sightings, alien cults, secret societies, government  misinformation, and I even give you a quick tutorial on how to create your own Do It Yourself Conspiracy where you, too, can build narratives about your "mysterious connections" to the Antichrist, aliens, the CIA, and ancient secret societies. 

You will never look at the conspiracy culture the same way again!

What is the future of cinema? Dead? Dying? Something else?

Is cinema dying? Evolving? Something in between? I was the guest on the Uncommon Conversations podcast over the summer and the episode just dropped. Grab a big collectors' popcorn bucket and listen to us talk about everything from streaming to spinoffs, sequels, prequels, reimaginings, and all the totally uninteresting Marvel post-credit sneak peeks.

Check right here for a link to the podcast.

Examining "Shattered Glass" on CineVerse

I show Shattered Glass in my media ethics class every year, but is it also great cinema? This compelling film just keeps getting more and more relevant with every passing year. As trust in mainstream journalism keeps eroding, this underrated, but excellent, film shows some of the reasons why. Check out our CineVerse discussion of what makes this one of the best journalism films ever made right here.

"Jaws" never jumped the shark!

Remember back when big summer movies used to be...what's the word I'm looking for? GOOD! When they used to be good! And "Jaws" is one of the best ones. Today is the 50th anniversary of the original summer blockbuster and we recently discussed it of the CineVerse show. Check it out at the link below.

https://www.cineversegroup.com/2025/06/across-half-century-jaws-never-jumped.html

What happens to UFOlogy in the world of AI?

The impact of Artificial Intelligence is now an issue that is turning up in the cultural conversation virtually every day and more and more industries are grappling with the implications of this technology every day. Education is certainly wrestling with it, trying to figure out how to deal with cheating machines…I mean ChatGPT AI programs that write flawless papers for students. So, basically, cheating machines. Film industry professionals, critics and analysts as well as fans are likewise leery of the way this technology can upend all filmic storytelling and render scores of jobs in Hollywood obsolete once AI can create images and scenes that in the past used to take multiple teams of people to accomplish. 

 

And recently, I was interviewed for this Cybernews article about AI’s impact on something much more fantastic: UFOlogy and the search for signs of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. If we consider the rise of ever more sophisticated and perfect-looking AI videos can have a major impact on the UFO phenomenon and the public’s desire to know the truth about what these mysterious objects in the sky might be. Knowing how perfect-looking images can be created by AI, the technology could either inspire a more precise and scientific examination of alleged alien sightings and contact, or it could completely damage the field of UFOlogy.  

 

For one, being aware of how easily fraudsters can create AI videos of virtually anything, those who are open minded to the possibility of UFOs being some kind of extraterrestrial, or interdimensional phenomenon, could be dissuaded from their beliefs more than they ever would by the arguments of skeptics from the worlds of science and academia. If enough UFO videos are exposed as hoaxes, if the public becomes just cynical enough about video evidence of any sort, the interest in trying to figure out the truth behind this phenomenon could fade. If we assume that anything could be faked, then the claim of something as extraordinary as UFOs will just automatically be assumed to be a hoax and visual evidence will automatically be discounted as anything worthy of further investigation.

 

However, I would add that the impact of cynicism on UFOlogy by AI is should not necessarily be seen as something negative. Even those who are open minded to the possibility or otherworldly visitation to the Earth should admit that our suspicion of AI trickery would merely demand absolutely solid, incontrovertible proof of the existence of UFOs. Disclosure will be accepted as being a real once someone can produce evidence better than just videos. The standard of proof for extraterrestrial visitation will just be raised. We would need to see actual alien aircraft or extraterrestrials themselves before we can believe in their existence. So, people like Lue Elizondo and Ross Coulthart and David Grusch would need to go beyond merely making claims about being given inside information by their unnamed sources—people who keep claiming to have seen crashed alien craft, alien creatures, and back-engineered technology but can never produce any actual physical evidence. 

 

Governments might actually be able to use our growing suspicions over AI to further deny and obfuscate the UFO issue. Rather than just merely giving the official denials of the existence of extraterrestrial craft in the skies, as the government has been doing for decades, the best debunking effort could actually use deepfake AI videos to do the job. This could involve the government’s creation of debunkable AI-created UFO videos and flood the Internet and social media with them. After enough of the “shocking” UFO videos would be exposed as hoaxes, the general public’s interest in the topic would fade and so would calls for further investigations. In the public’s mind, there really would be no need for any disclosure, or costly investigations, into something that does not exist. 

 

Furthermore, another purpose intelligence agencies could have to create AI-generated UFO videos would be as a part of a social/psychological experiment. There would be a lot of value in understanding how the modern world reacts to claims of the fantastic. It could lead to a more nuanced understanding of how people react to the unknown, to what extent they are afraid of the unknown, and how they form new belief systems in the new world of synthetic media.

 

This is perhaps among the greatest dangers AI could pose for the social fabric. Questionable videos and images all around us will ultimately erode consensus reality. It will erode a collective experience of reality and the objective world. Moreover, perfectly lifelike AI images flooding cyberspace will also dissuade people from believing any information that is not in line with their existing dogmas. People could say something to the effect that “I don’t care that the news showed me images of a war zone or a natural disaster or a crime being committed somewhere. Those images are probably AI fakes and I don’t believe that war actually happened or that a hurricane struck somewhere.” In 1993 the satirical novel “Wag the Dog,” by Larry Beinhart used a plot of the first Gulf War being nothing more than a hoax orchestrated by the government and Hollywood producers. Very soon, thanks to AI, we might actually wind up in the world of “Wag the Dog.” 

 

New communication technology has always had profound impacts on people’s perceptions of reality. In the case of alien contact, we saw the kind of panic that could be created by a real-sounding radio broadcast in 1938 when Orson Welles famously touched off a panic among some listeners with his “War of the Worlds” broadcast. Although radio was not a new medium at the time, Welles’ adaptation of a news-broadcast-format for his dramatization of the H.G. Wells novel was unique. Some people in the audience simply could not believe that something presented on the radio could possibly be a hoax. Welles’ audience was given perhaps the same kind of shock as the kind we are feeling today in the age of AI: how can we possibly believe what’s real or not if it sounds so real? 

 

Was Annabelle on the loose??

Well, click on this link and take a listen on WABC New Radio from this weekend. At 45 minutes and twenty eight seconds, host Liz Rattoballi and I discuss the interesting phenomenon of how a rumor about a demonic doll on the loose went instantly viral. 

People who have excellent taste in entertainment and are, therefore, fans of horror films, novels, and TV shows, and they're familiar with the possessed and homicidal doll from the “Conjuring” universe. I enjoy the films quite a bit and have been impressed by the consistently high quality of the writing, performances, and overall skilled construction of an ongoing franchise whose numerous entries don’t yet look like contrived products of a film-conveyor-belt.  

 

“The Conjuring” films are a highly fictionalized adaptation of various investigations by self-described demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. The evil doll that shows up in several of the “Conjuring” films, and even got her own spin-off series of (so far) three films, is a very real doll and has been alleged to be possessed by a demonic entity. The Warrens had claimed that Annabelle came into their possession in 1970 after being contacted by two young nurses who had witnessed unnatural phenomena around Annabelle. The doll, given to one of the women as a gift, was supposed to have moved on its own, left written notes for them, and even attacked some of their acquaintances. At that point the nurses contacted the Warrens, who determined that the doll was possessed by a demon. Ed and Lorraine placed Annabelle in a case in their museum, stocked with a collection of similarly haunted objects, where the doll is still kept today. 

 

Controversy, however, has always surrounded the Warrens’ paranormal claims. Their various paranormal investigations and conclusions about otherworldly manifestations had repeatedly been put to scrutiny by skeptics, and the couple have been accused of either being too eager to believe in the paranormal or knowingly embellishing the claims of supernatural events. They had, for example, staunchly argued that the Amityville haunting was a clear case of a demonic entity terrifying a family in 1976. The case and a bestselling book about it, the various skeptical examinations concurred, was an amalgamation of exaggerations and outright lies. Similarly, skeptics have pointed out that the stories of the supernatural manifestations around Annabelle had only been forwarded by the Warrens with no other testimony supporting the veracity of those claims. Overall, the Warrens’ claims of the paranormal have been dismissed by skeptics because the couple could never present any valid, incontrovertible scientific proof of the paranormal. Essentially, they have been repeatedly accused of telling sensationalistic tall tales in order to sell books and capitalize on their Occult Museum.

 

But last week a rumor circulated online about Annabelle supposedly having vanished while on a tour of haunted objects. The demon doll was said to have disappeared from the tour while it was in Louisiana, and mayhem followed in her wake. Annabelle had been blamed, for instance, on the escape of a group of convicts from a New Orleans prison as well as the outbreak of a fire at a resort in White Castle, LA. 

 

Except Annabelle was not missing at all. While the rumors circulated online, Annabelle was back in her case in the Occult Museum. A spokesman for the museum confirmed this with a TikTok video.

 

The sudden spread of all this speculation is what we discussed on the show and the pleasure we get from being scared and the need to entertain the possibility of the supernatural.