Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk are two of my favorite actors. They are both funny, personable, talented, and seem like genuinely good humans. I have seen most of the movies and shows they have each been in. Of course Firefly is one of the best things they have done together. We often binge the whole series in a single day.

Late in 2025 they announced they we starting a podcast together called Once We Were Spacemen. I was very excited to say the least. I rushed to my computer and went to oncewewerespacemen.com to learn more. There was nothing there. In fact the domain was available for purchase. I panicked. My first thought was that I should buy it to keep it safe from a squatter or poacher. But what if the OWWS team takes that as an offense and sics the law on me. I called out to my amazing wife for advice. She said, just buy it. It will be fine. So I did. I put this up at the domain.

Time passes and I get a message on the site from Siobhan on the production team. I went to LinkedIn did some digging. Everything seemed legit so I transferred ownership of the site over. A little white later they contact me saying they want to send me some swag and if I could wait until after the first of the year. “Of course” I reply. They wanted to make sure I got some cool stuff and Nathan was going to pick something special out. I may have squeed. You probably heard it. Time passes and I get an email saying to expect a package (more squeeing).

Here is what I received. I was gobsmacked. Floored. Grateful. Stunned even. I had the Mrs take pictures as I unboxed the goodies.

WOW!!! I was floored and blown away by the generosity.

But wait there is more. I had shared the story up to this point with my friends. On Feb 26, 2026, my friend Laura sent me a link to this podcast called Dropping Names with Brent and Johnny. They being Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes. She told me I should listen because I got a shout out. I was baffled. It turns out Nathan and Alan were the guests, and I did in fact get a shout out.
I was giddy and squealing. These four actors and good humans were talking about me (mostly).

Here is the full podcast episode. My shout-out is in the first 4 minutes.

Then just when I thought it couldn’t get better, they released this short…

I truly feel like I leveled up.

I will update this after Awesome Con…