John Oliver spends most of his time diving into serious (and often fairly grim) subjects, but on Sunday he turned his attention to an age-old mystery: UFOs.
In the clip above the Last Week Tonight host breaks down the history of UFO sightings in the U.S., from the origin of the term “flying saucer” to people’s (understandable) mistrust of the government on the issue, and finally to NASA’s recent decision to start talking about sightings and digging through unclassified reports in an effort to explain them.
“It’s both promising and long overdue to see people approaching this issue soberly and scientifically and, perhaps most importantly, boringly,” Oliver concludes. “And I know that is hard — this is an area where it’s easy to fall into one of two camps: hardcore sceptics who roll their eyes at the whole subject, and true believers who are convinced everything has a fantastical explanation the government is keeping from us. You will see, in comments below this piece on YouTube, those two groups fighting it out over everything I’ve said here, and only agreeing on the fact that I am a fucking idiot.”
“There needs to be room for honest enquiry, because science is all about collecting small answers that eventually help us address big questions.”
