12 Complexly Employees React to the Worst Pseudo-Archaeology Film Ever Made

What happens when you lock 12 members of the Complexly team in a dark hotel boardroom at 10 PM to celebrate an in-person retreat? You get a chaotic, skeptical roast of 1970s pseudo-archaeology. In this video, we’re dunking on the 1973 documentary In Search of Ancient Astronauts. Produced by Alan Landsburg and based on Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods, this film is a collage of every "ancient mystery" trope that eventually birthed the modern Ancient Aliens industry. Turns out, ancient technology didn't actually require aliens, and also ancient nonwhite cultures made a lot of cool art on their own! Watch us roast this film’s depiction of the Baghdad Battery, the Pyramids, the temples of Ramses II, Easter Island (Rapa Nui), the Nazca Lines, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu and literally so much more. Thanks to everybody for being in it: Laser Webber Jess Stempert Meghan Modafferi Hank Green Alex Billow Mackenna Goodrich - @mack3nna, pod: ‪@InformedAttraction‬ https://informedattraction.podbean.com/ John Samuel Brown - insta: @samjohnuelbrown Jada Ashton Trevor Knapp Jones - YT: ‪@yebkamin‬, insta: @Trevor_knapp_jones, TT: @trevorknappjones Claire - @clairevanryzin 00:00 Intro and Context 03:12 Unhinged Commentary WHERE ELSE CAN YOU FIND ME? Beacons: https://beacons.ai/yourlocallibrary TikTok:   / yourlocallibrary   BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/yourlocallib... LinkedIn:   / yourlocallibrary   Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/savannahgeary SciShow:    / @scishow   ABOUT ME I'm a producer and host on @SciShow. Here's where I make my own stuff. Theoretically I'm making content about science and science-adjacent topics, media literacy, or pop culture analysis. In reality, I'm yelling about whatever I want. — AI DISCLOSURE For this video, I used Google Gemini for some limited writing help, described below. The words and ideas in this video are all mine or my coworkers', and come from our own brains. Writing some SEO-type words/sentences for this YouTube description Brainstorming for YouTube-optimized titles/thumbnails Firecut also helped create my initial video captions, which I checked and corrected myself.