Are We the Indigenous Intelligent Species in Our Cosmic Neighborhood?

(Image credit: NewsNation)Below is a transcript of my interview with Jesse Weber on NewsNation last night. Jesse’s questions are marked with JW and my answers with AL. The video recording is available here.***JW: We at News Nation have been at the forefront in the fight for full transparency on life beyond Earth. And while the Pentagon is slowly releasing newly declassified UFO files, we have seen some wild headlines and claims surrounding aliens lately. First, there was whistleblower David Grush telling Joe Rogan he’s not only seen video of aliens at UFO crash sites, but described some of them as looking like Greek gods or gorilla lizards. One social media post claimed that Harvard professor and head of the UAP Science Advisory Council, Avi Loeb, thinks aliens could reveal themselves within the next 16 days. Buzzy, scary, great to share across the social media feed. How true is it? Turns out, not at all.Avi Loeb is calling out the post in an article earlier today, calling that claim false, saying this does not accurately represent his views or scientific research. Avi Loeb, Harvard professor, an astrophysicist, head of the UAP Science Advisory Council, is joining us. Thank you so much for taking the time.You read this, your reaction to it. Did they get like two theories combined? What happened here?AL: Thanks for having me. It’s obvious that there are people who want to get attention by ascribing things that I don’t say. And in this case, they wanted to get clickbait. This post here got more than 120,000 views. That’s 10 times more than any other post from this particular account on X, where they just are trying to attract attention. They are welcome to do that, but not to misquote me. When they say something that is not true, that is a lie, that is actually quite dangerous, because some people may believe it.JW: People believe that they saw the headline. They think aliens are coming in 16 days. Where did they get that from?AL: Time in the universe is measured in u