Author Donald Jeffries joined host Richard Syrett (Twitter) in the first half of the show to discuss his book, On Borrowed Fame, which explores the darker side of fame, as well as the numerous untimely deaths which have plagued the entertainment industry. Jeffries provided a simple definition of fame: "If there are lots of people that know you that you don't know, then you have some kind of fame." He revealed his fascination with how often fame does not equate to legacy, noting many actors and musicians of yesteryear have been completely forgotten. John Wilkes Booth, for example, was a prominent actor of his day but is only famous because of his assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
According to Jeffries, fame is also not necessarily linked to wealth as many famous actors and musicians never received royalties from their work. He pointed to George McFarland who played "Spanky" in the Our Gang series. Despite millions of people knowing his work on The Little Rascals, "he was frustrated to no end that he wasn't getting any money," Jeffries explained. Typically, the producers made most of the income generated by these shows, he added. Jeffries pointed out musician Stephen Foster and author Bram Stoker died penniless. Bela Lugosi, whose iconic portrayal brought Dracula to life on the big screen, never received "a really good paycheck," he continued. Jeffries also pointed out Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster died with relatively nothing. For many creators, the royalty rate was always really small, he lamented.
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During the latter half of the program, researcher Micah Hanks provided an update on a recent proposal to setup a U.S. government office, the Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office, to investigate sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). In June of 2021 the UAP Task Force delivered a 9-page report summarizing their findings to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "This is incredible, maybe unprecedented, to see a government report saying we've got 144 instances of aerial phenomena that we can't identify," Hanks said. More than 80 of the cases were detected by multiple systems, and the FAA supplied information to the task force, he added. Shortly after the report's release Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York proposed an amendment to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act that would establish the Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office (ASRO) in the Department of Defense to study UAPs.
"The DoD's new group would actually take over for the UAP Task Force," Hanks revealed. The amendment calls for the designation of organizations within the DoD and intelligence community that possess appropriate expertise to rapidly respond to and conduct field investigations of incidents involving UAP, he continued. Just before Thanksgiving the DoD announced the establishment of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), so "it appears that the Department of Defense has lost its own new UAP investigative element... we've got one but it's not quite the one that was proposed in the legislation," Hanks reported. AOIMSG is more limited in scope from what ASRO would have done, he noted.