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Are you suggesting that there aren't lots of astrophysicists (and, ffs, astrobiologists) studying this already? SETI is a thing!
He's the face of the question because of his active pragmatism for an answer -however grandiose or queer - is magnitudes more vocal and free-thinking relative to the passive and resigned attempts of his cohorts at the institutions. It's sad to see his epic tainted with dismissal so shallowly here. If, as a certain admired man once said, "“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”", then surely extraordinar…
But the progress is actually tremendous. With the JWST we've been able to identify a chemical reaction in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system for the first time. We've recently "mapped" a planet outside our solar system for the first time (granted, the map was 1 pixel, identifying one part of the planet as darker than another).
This is the kind of work that could potentially identify extraterrestrial life. It's entirely possible (dare I say likely? That's a lay opinion to be clear) that we are, right now, gathering the data that will result in the first detection of extraterrestrial life (to be clear, I mean more along the lines of "extraterrestrial trees" than "little green men"). But it's slow, methodical work. And it could easily take several more decades.