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Why We Want to Believe in Aliens and Why We Still Haven't Found Them
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UFOs were once the stuff of tabloids and conspiracy theories. Today they're the subject of congressional hearings, Pentagon investigations, mainstream news coverage, and a new wave of claims about government cover-ups and alien technology. Adam Kirsch, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of We Want to Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstream and Why It Matters , joins Michael Shermer to ask what changed—and why the idea of extraterrestrial visitors has such a powerful hold on us. They discuss Roswell, UFO "disclosure," eyewitness testimony, government secrecy, alien abductions, Carl Sagan and Contact , the religious impulse behind UFO belief, and the difference between testimony and…