In an Instagram post on Sunday, Obama said he had been trying to “stick with the spirit” of his interviewer, political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen, during a wide-ranging podcast released Saturday. During a speed round, Obama told Cohen that aliens are real.

The mysterious phenomenon of UFOs or UAPs inevitably touches on matters of religion, spirituality, morality, and psychology, including our innate quest for meaning and, especially, on the perennial problem of evil. We humans possess a primal, perhaps ...