Richard C. Hoagland is the principal investigator and founder of the Enterprise Mission, as well as the vision and the voice of The Other Side of Midnight. In the first half, he discussed NASA's planned launch of the Artemis I mission and liftoff of the Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion (see related materials). Hoagland expressed his skepticism toward the government's stated purpose for the mission: to send an uncrewed craft to orbit the moon in order to test its systems before sending astronauts. Citing the launch's repeated delays and what he sees as clues that NASA's leadership is misleading the organization, he argued that the government is intentionally concealing the facts that the project's true purpose is to prepare for human habitation on the moon—and that glass pyramids constructed by ancient extraterrestrials cover the moon's surface.

Such obfuscation of the truth, Hoagland continued, has been employed by the government since the earliest days of the American space program. He claimed that astronaut Buzz Aldrin is one of those who refuses to publicly acknowledge the glass pyramids, for example. More recently, masquerading as less nefarious missions are projects like South Korea's Nuri satellite-launching rocket and the American CAPSTONE CubeSat, which are actually surveying the moon's surface to identify a place for landing among the ancient pyramids, asserted Hoagland.

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Charles Reichblum, aka "Dr. Knowledge," has built one of the largest collections in the world of fascinating facts and stories that serve as a source for his Knowledge in a Nutshell book series. He joined the show's latter half to share little-known facts, disasters and weird occurrences, and bizarre stories about the holidays and traditions. Three of the first five US presidents, for example, died on July 4; one of the worst disasters in American history took place in Boston in 1919, in which over 100 people were killed in a flood of molasses that had escaped from a ruptured storage facility; and although turkeys are exclusively native to North America, they were so named because they reminded early settlers of birds found in the country of Turkey.

Reichblum explained that providing such obscure information in his books involves careful research and a commitment to accuracy. This, he noted, is perhaps what sets his work apart from that of Robert Ripley, whose accuracy he sometimes questions. He also agreed with a caller who suggested that schools and universities should build more obscure knowledge and trivia into their curricula. Such a move would make learning more interesting and lead to more intellectual curiosity, Reichblum said.

News Segment guests: Lauren Weinstein / Steve Kates