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After Barack Obama recently clarified his comments about aliens, UFOs, UAPs, and Area 51, the question resurfaced: Are we alone in the universe?
In this episode replay, Aaron shares a strange midnight encounter under the stars that, for a moment, felt like a UFO. Or maybe a UAP? What he and his wife saw in the sky sparked thoughts of alien life, pop culture fascination, and the mathematics of the cosmos before revealing what it actually was.
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The Team:
Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Calafato
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Theme Music: thomas j. duke
Additional Soundscape Design: Isaac Gehring
TRANSCRIPT
Former President Obama was asked in a quick podcast lightning round interview, “Are aliens real?”
His answer? “They’re real, but we haven’t seen ’em.” That’s my terrible impression.
The point is, that line went crazy online. Viral madness. No context.
So he followed up and clarified.
He said that statistically, given how vast the universe is, the odds are good that life exists somewhere out there. But during his presidency, he saw no evidence of extraterrestrials making contact with us.
Basically, two things can be true at once.
The universe is enormous. The math suggests life somewhere is possible. But the physical reality of contact? Extremely unlikely.
That tension between statistical probability and physical reality is fascinating. And I think that’s really all Obama was saying.
Which brings me to the rest of this episode.
This story, which I recorded a couple of years ago, lives right in that space of strange encounters. It exists somewhere between the explainable and the unexplained. It’s like listening to an old Art Bell episode late at night on AM radio.
It felt like the perfect time to share it again.
What the hell was that?
That’s what I asked Cori. My wife was standing across from me. She saw the same thing. We were both looking up into the midnight sky.
We were there for a reason, but we didn’t know what we had just seen. We couldn’t believe it.
We were standing in a park with an observatory space for stargazing. From time to time, astronomical societies and hobbyists gather there on clear nights when you can see the Milky Way overhead because there’s little to no light pollution.
Cori and I were there because the Cleveland weatherman that Cori loves said the Aurora Borealis would be visible that weekend.
Now here’s the thing. In Northeast Ohio, we treat our weather people like celebrities. If they say something, it’s gospel.
So Cori said we had to go. Midnight to 2:00 a.m. That was the window.
It was the weekend, so I packed a shortwave radio because I wanted to pick up some strange late-night stations. We drove out there.
When we arrived, there was just one van. Which is slightly alarming at night. But it was just a guy with a telescope. He was actually packing up for the night, putting his telescope in the trunk.
He missed the whole thing.
He must have been out there for hours. We show up out of the blue, look up, and…
It wasn’t the Aurora Borealis. We couldn’t see it anywhere. Thanks, Mr. Weatherman.
But instead, we saw something even more stunning.
A giant light with blue flames trailing behind it. It came from high above and streaked across the sky. It felt like it was only three houses above us. That’s how close it seemed.
And you could hear it. It sounded like an airplane descending.
I grew up in the ’90s as a latchkey kid. Which meant I watched a lot of television.
So after ruling out fireworks, my next thought was obvious.
UFO.
Here’s why.
I grew up on The X-Files. Roswell documentaries. Area 51 specials. Movies like Fire in the Sky. Late-night AM radio with Art Bell and George Noory talking about alien encounters.
My imagination was shaped by pop culture.
But curiosity itself isn’t crazy.
Is there life beyond Earth?
You can look at it two ways.
On one hand, Earth is tiny. As Carl Sagan said, a pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam. There are billions of stars, solar systems, maybe billions of galaxies. With those numbers, is it unreasonable to think life might exist somewhere else?
It’s a numbers game.
On the other hand, life is fragile. In our observable neighborhood, it’s rare. We’re not bumping elbows with people from Neptune. We haven’t found Martians on Mars.
Maybe life is extraordinarily rare.
Things have shifted since the ’90s. Back then, talking about this stuff got you dismissed as silly.
Now there are Harvard studies proposing the possibility of advanced civilizations hiding in extreme environments. Deep underground. Even on the moon.
It sounds surreal.
It’s speculative. And it should be met with skepticism.
But researchers argue that unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, deserve investigation.
And here I am, witnessing what, in that moment, felt like a UAP.
All of this is running through my head in seconds while Cori and I are just staring at the sky.
Meanwhile, telescope guy drives away.
On the way home, we barely spoke.
Right before bed, Cori showed me an article from a scientific journal with videos of people seeing the same blue streak we saw.
What was it?
A meteor.
Part of the Draconid meteor shower. Hundreds of meteors were falling over those few nights. We just happened to be directly beneath one.
And for some reason, it reminded me of a scene from Contact.
Reverend Joss, played by Matthew McConaughey, is asked what he believes after Dr. Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, describes her extraterrestrial experience.
He says, as a person of faith, I’m bound by a different covenant than Dr. Arroway. But our goal is one and the same.
The pursuit of truth.
And that’s the key.
No matter where the curiosity begins, we can all respect the nobility of pursuing truth.
But I have to admit something.
Right before I closed my eyes that night, I could almost hear The X-Files theme music in my head.
And I thought to myself…
If you were an alien, wouldn’t you disguise your ship as a meteor during a meteor shower…
Just in case you wanted to pay us a visit?
