A viral podcast moment last month reignited speculation about extraterrestrials and prompted President Donald Trump’s commitment to kick-starting the release of government files on flying saucers. But neither records nor details about their release have surfaced, underscoring how complicated such disclosures can be.
Trump’s promise came after former President Barack Obama appeared to confirm the existence of aliens on a podcast: “They’re real but I haven’t seen them,” Obama said when asked by host Brian Tyler Cohen about aliens, later clarifying after the episode went viral that he was only referring to the statistical likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe.
The surge of public interest is the latest chapter in a decades-long fascination with unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, the modern term for UFOs. In recent years, believers and skeptics alike have been captivated by striking reports and military footage of unexplained aerial encounters released by the government, and tense congressional hearings featuring self-described UAP whistleblowers — though some experts predict the latest potential release could be full of boring administrative records.
Trump, in a post on social media, cited the “tremendous interest” in “extremely interesting and important” extraterrestrial matters following Obama’s comments as the reason for his fresh directive for the Pentagon and other federal agencies to identify and release such records.
The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Offic
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