Pseudo-Archaeology · The Archaeology Podcast Network

2025 Year in Review - Ep 177

·48 min·3 clips

The big archaeology conference takeaway was that archaeologists should post more on LinkedIn.

Episode 177 is the show's 2025 year-in-review. Andrew Kinkella looks back on the stories he told, the reactions they sparked, and the bits that still make him laugh or grumble. He opens from a warm Southern California December and quickly turns the whole thing into a loose, familiar check-in. The first stop is a self-aware look at kicking off the year with an encore episode. He jokes that it sounds lazy, while still treating it as part of the real rhythm of making a weekly show. From there he moves into the archaeology outreach conversation that left him discouraged. He says too many archaeologists still seem far behind ordinary people in how they talk, and he mocks the idea that LinkedIn is the bridge to the public. He also remembers meeting Milo Rossi and Flint and calls both of them genuinely kind. Those details matter because the episode is not only complaint; it is also a record of who helped and where the field still feels stuck. Later he returns to an episode about *Fountain of Youth* and makes clear that his problem was the movie itself, not the fact that it borrowed pseudo-archaeology. That distinction is classic Kinkella. Fake archaeology can be fun when the storytelling is sharp, but a bad script is still a bad script, and he does not excuse modern movie sludge just because it has ancient ruins in it. He calls the film forgettable and uses it as a symptom of a bigger problem with contemporary movies. The rant gets blunt, but it stays easy to follow. He keeps circling back to whether the thing in front of you is actually doing its job, and the episode ends up feeling less like a formal retrospective and more like a conversation with a regular listener who already knows the terrain. It has jokes, side comments, and a few gripes, but it never loses the skeptical through-line. If you want a candid tour through one host's 2025 from inside the pseudo-archaeology lane, this is the one.

As heard by us

A blunt year-end recap that keeps asking what good evidence actually looks like.

Episode 177 is a year-end review from Andrew Kinkella that looks back at the stories he covered in 2025 and the reactions they drew. The strongest thread is his steady return to a plain test: what counts as evidence, what counts as outreach, and what only sounds convincing until…

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You want a blunt year-end recap with some bite.

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