Few shows in the entire history of television have worked so aggressively to de-educate the

population and promote misinformation as history's ancient aliens, featuring the delusions

of discredited crackpots as if they represent some valid historical perspective.

Today, Scaptoid is going to get back to its core mission of correcting pop misinformation

and will take a crack the first in a three-part series at debunking ancient aliens.

That's coming right up on Scaptoid.

You're listening to Scaptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Scaptoid.com.

Debunking Ancient Aliens, Part 1.

Long time Scaptoid listeners have for many years heard me and many others condemn the way

the cable networks that build themselves as presenting science or history, quickly transitioned

into the outright promotion of pseudoscience and pseudohistory. Such that by the year 2000,

the amount of anti-intellectual content has far outweighed the amount of factual content.

One series stands alone as being most emblematic of this trend, Ancient Aliens, on the air

constantly since 2009, on history, formerly the History Channel, an A&E Networks Channel.

From its inception, Ancient Aliens has promoted the most flagrant misinformation in what

can only be reasonably described as a deliberate attack on science and history, a coordinated

assault against the public intellect, a reckless scheme to de-educate anyone who has an

honest curiosity about humanity's ancient past.

Ancient Aliens got its start as an unveiled promotion of the claims presented in Eric

Fondanikin's book, Chariots of the Gods, which asserted that virtually every ancient civilization

was built or strongly influenced by literal space aliens who came down in flying saucers.

Fondanikin himself was a guest on the pilot episode, along with other proponents of the

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