Adam Kirsch at the Brooklyn Public Library

Why We Want to Believe: UFOs, Aliens, and Us

For decades, UFOs belonged to the fringes: conspiracy theories, late-night radio, blurry photographs, and tales of alien abduction. Then something changed. The Pentagon released videos of objects it could not explain. Navy pilots testified before Congress about mysterious encounters. Intelligence agencies began speaking publicly about “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” UFOs, once routinely dismissed, had gone mainstream.

But after decades of searching, we still have no conclusive evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth. So why do we want to believe?

In his new book, We Want to Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstream and Why It Matters, Adam Kirsch turns his attention to our enduring fascination with extraterrestrial life. Led in conversation by former Harper’s editor-in-chief Christopher Beha, author of Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer, the discussion will take up the wide-ranging topics of UFOs and science, belief and meaning, conspiracy and faith, and why, at a time of declining trust in traditional sources of authority, we may be looking to the skies for answers.

Center for Brooklyn History
128 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Why do we still believe in UFOs, despite repeated efforts to dismiss them? In We Want to Believe, acclaimed literary critic Adam Kirsch draws on a wide literature of belief and skepticism to examine them not as fantasies but as a mystery closer to home: why some questions endure, and what it means for society when certainty fails and curiosity persists.

“[We Want to Believe] offers a fresh perspective on the narrative of UFO (unidentified flying object, now called UAP—unidentified anomalous phenomena) believers and the concept of disclosure.” —Cybernews

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