As the world continues to be engulfed in metaphorical and literal flames, today’s newsletter focuses on something that is potentially a little more unearthly.

Unidentified flying objects, or unidentified anomalous phenomena (try saying that three times very quickly), are a gateway into a topic that has for decades been characterised by grainy footage and tinfoil hats. That is changing.

A little known website called the Debrief reported that a former intelligence official named David Grusch said that the US government has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles. Unlike previous whistleblowers who have been dismissed as unhinged or conspiracy theorists, Grusch has impressive credentials: he was a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office and led analysis on unidentified anomalous phenomena (the official term for UFOs). His claims were also supported by Jonathan Grey, a current US intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, who confirmed the existence of “exotic materials” to the Debrief.

At first, the revelations seemed pretty extraordinary. But in the week after the initial report, Grusch offered up more interviews in which he continued to make astonishing claims with no evidence, beyond that this information had come from “several sources”. Even though many are skeptical, the US congress is interested in hearing what Grusch has to say.

For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Greg Eghigian, a historian at Penn State University, who is writing a book on the history of UFO culture, to sort fact from science fiction.