This week on The Gralien Report, as we look ahead at an all new year, Micah begins by discussing what he was reading over the holidays, and why one man on the other side of the United States doesn’t think Micah’s hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, actually doesn’t exist. Are the Graliens part of a broad-reaching conspiracy to conceal the truth about the mountain town’s role in a broad reaching deception, and what does this have to do with an earlier online conspiracy about a similar German town-of-nonexistence?

Finally, in an odd twist, we’ll learn how yet another “non-place” and its relation to a pre-Internet Alternative Reality Game led Micah to think he was once the target of a strange high-IQ society, as a strange story from the early days of The Gralien Report comes full-circle.

Then getting to news, we’ll take time to examine Hillary Clinton’s latest stated interest in “getting to the bottom” of UFOs, and what kinds of implications this might have for the 2016 election. After all, Clinton has said her administration, if elected, would seek greater transparency with the UFO subject (at the urging of her campaign head John Podesta)… but how could presidential politics in relation to the UFO question help shape the 2016 election?

Shifting from presidential politics to the subject of future technology, we look at a recent list of possible 2016 scientific discoveries… one of which we were very surprised to see included, although it’s a subject we’ve addressed recently on the program (here’s a hint: it involves drones). And finally, in an unsettling turn of events that occurred in conjunction with the New Year, the death of Linux icon and Debian founder Ian Murdock has captured our attention… and the reason involves certain conspiratorial undertones.

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This holiday season, in the tradition of old European readings of ghost stories the night before Christmas, Gralien X subscribers were treated to a reading of M.R. James’ classic eerie tale of witchcraft and the otherworldly, The Ash Tree, marking our 22nd edition of this special series exclusive to Gralien X subscribers. Sign up today and get access to the entire back catalogue of Gralien Enigmas, in addition to weekly installments of the “additional edition”, the Gralien X Podcast.