In early 2017, The New York Times uncovered a program at the Defense Department which investigated unidentified flying objects. Then, at the end of May, the reporters published another article, getting navy pilots to talk on the record about their encounters with unidentified flying objects.

In November 2018, the chair of Harvard's Astronomy Department, Avi Loeb, co-wrote a paper about an interestellar object, 'Oumuamua, writing, "Alternatively, a more exotic scenario is that 'Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."

What does this all mean? And does it matter that these aknowledgements are coming from a paper like The New York Times, or a scientist from Harvard?

This hour, we'll talk to Leslie Kean and Avi Loeb about their research, and we'll hear from people who have believed in extraterrestrial life all along about what it's like to see this news.

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Colin McEnroe, Betsy Kaplan, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.