Former US president Barack Obama stated that he believes in the existence of aliens but admitted he does not know where such life might be, during a podcast interview released on Saturday.“They’re real,” Obama said when asked about the existence of extraterrestrial life, in an interview with YouTuber Brian Tyler Cowen.“But I haven’t seen them. They’re not being kept at Area 51. There’s no underground facility — unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States,” the former president added. Area 51 is a highly secretive US Air Force base located in Groom Lake, Nevada, long surrounded by speculation and conspiracy theories suggesting the government may be concealing alien technology or remains.Interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial contact has increased in recent years, following the release of government documents detailing unexplained aircraft sightings. Among these are leaked radar recordings from US Air Force Reaper drones, captured 13 years ago, which reportedly show Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), the government’s current term for UFOs, operating over the Middle East, as cited by the New York Post.This is not the first occasion on which Obama has spoken about UFOs and extraterrestrial life.“When it comes to aliens, there are some things I just can’t tell you on air,” he told The Late Late Show host James Corden in a 2021 interview.He also acknowledged that sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) were real, adding that the government has been unable to determine the origin of the aircraft or explain their unusual flight patterns.“But what is true — and I’m actually being serious here — is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,” Obama had said.