The UFO Encounter that ALTERED My Reality| The Origin Story| Total Disclosure

0:02 Speaker 1: Today, I decided I wanted to do something well, a bit different. I realized recently in an interview with Connecticut State Representative Joe Hawk so that I had actually never told my story quote unquote from start to finish all the way through it. And it got me thinking, Easter just passed. That was when my mom had passed away, and it got me just reminiscing on my own experiences, internalizing those and trying to distrapolate as much as I could from it to inform my next couple moves. There's a lot of changes happening, whether it's you know, the studio or trying to go bigger and boulder with certain guests and getting them in here.

0:48 Speaker 1: A lot's been on my plate. The team's growing, and I thought, you know what, let's take it back to basics. Why do I do what I do? I hope you enjoy this, and I hope it gives you some person perspective on the conversations I have, why I do interview people the way I do, why I have the energy I have, and what it all really means. Why do I search for answers? And we definitely are standing on the shoulders of giants but the world has never been so connected yet felt so isolated, alone and cold. So let's take a moment, and I'm going to let you in.

1:27 Speaker 1: I'm going to let you into my head, to my experiences, and I'm going to show you a little bit of warmth step. The day started like any other. I woke up in the basement, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and started getting ready for school like I had a thousand mornings before. But when I climbed those stairs that day, my mother was waiting at the top with that look in her eyes, the one that meant today was different. Every once in a while she'd pull one of us kids aside and offered the golden ticket stay home with me.

3:36 Speaker 1: No questions asked, and we never pushed for reasons we didn't want to jinx it. That day, that ticket was mine. She was a creature of habit, my mom, a stay at home warrior, queen of routines. Don't get donuts, coffee, hot rice depending on the season. Of course. Now I can't pin the exact date or time of year, but I remember that it was nice outside. I'd already watched Live with Ritis and Kelly at nine am, and with no phone, no Internet, and everyone else stuck at school. Boredom hit fast. Mom got bored too, so I grabbed the tennis ball and headed out back for the only game that ever worked alone.

4:21 Speaker 1: Off the wall, you threw the ball against either a wall or a steep roof, in my case, watched it pop off the gutter and caught it on the bounce. Simple, mindless mine. I wound up, eyes locked on the clear blue sky above, reared back with my left hand, and launched that ball skyward. The ball hung for a second, then something else caught the corner of my eye, a glint, a silver gun, metal gray. It snapped into focus at treetop level, oscillating, drifting straight over my head. Three circular protrusions jutted out, forming a perfect triangle.

5:05 Speaker 1: If you had connected them with a straight line each. The whole thing was a disk. It was flat, silent, and even at my young age, I knew impossible. No engine, roar, no wind, nothing. I grew up next to Hanscomb Air Force Base, and for the most part, I knew planes, I knew jets. I also lived through nine to eleven in the shadow of Boston, close enough to New York to feel that fear wholeheartedly. I knew what belonged in the sky and what didn't. This didn't. It glided over me like it had all the time in the world.

5:47 Speaker 1: My jaw dropped, the tennis ball, rolled off the roof, and thumped onto the grass. I didn't care. Time stretched thick and slow. I could have read symbols on it's hull if there were any. That's how close this thing was. And it passed directly over the house, over the exact spot where I'd been standing seconds earlier. I snapped out of it and sprinted around to the backyard, desperate for one more second. By the time I rounded the corner, it was gone, vanished into the canopy of trees, or simply blinked out.

6:23 Speaker 1: I stood there, chest heaving, scanning that empty sky for minutes, but those minutes felt like hours. It never came back, but it also never left me. I bolted inside, out of breath, words tumbling over each other. Mom calmed me, looked me dead in the eyes, and said the words that rewired my entire life. Tyler, what you saw was special. Not many get to see what you just did. She didn't dismiss it, but she also didn't force it into a box. She told me her truth. She said, you saw a UFO identified buying object, and humanity didn't have all the answers, and we barely had any when it came to the universe.

7:08 Speaker 1: I was ten or eleven, but young enough to believe her with our argument. I just asked, will you teach me? She smiled and said, let's do one better. We're gonna go to the library. You're getting books. That was the pivot, the day curiosity cracked me open, the day the world stopped being black and white and started living in the gray. And I've never left girls, friends life. Yeah, they did take the front seat as I grew up, but in the back of my mind, that silver dish never stopped hovering. I got back into it hard as an adult, at least by the state's definition, eighteen, devouring documentaries, books, every scrap of information I could find.

7:52 Speaker 1: But the stigma was still thick. You didn't talk about it out loud in real life. You whispered it at parties while passing the joint, staring up at the stars, hoping for one more glimpse. Mine didn't come for years, not until the worst day of my life twenty twenty. I was one year sober, one year clean after alcohol had owned me, and then pills and whatever else helped numb the anxiety and depression. I'd been drinking to function, not to feel good, and the shakes were real. The people around me were poison.

8:31 Speaker 1: Then the phone rang. My brother never called texts only I knew something was wrong before I had even answered the phone. And then I heard the words that I hope you'll never have to hear. He said, Mom was just diagnosed with late stage breast cancer. The world stopped. Every second stretched like the afternoon on the roof. I hung up and stared at the wall for ten minutes, maybe floridy, I'm not sure. A friend snapped me out of it because we had to record an episode, actually, our first episode of the Pop Culture Corner.

9:04 Speaker 1: What was weird was I said nothing. I shoved it down deep, the way I'd always done. You can still watch that episode. Actually, my eyes tell the whole story, even if my mouth never did. Thirteen months earlier, thirteen months later, April third, twenty twenty one, the day before Easter, I was in the middle of an interview with Owen Gleiberman, chief film critic of Variety. I'd spoken to Mom days earlier, promised i'd be by her side twenty four seven and just two hours for this one interview I needed now taking a mine and into consideration that they told us weeks not days.

9:43 Speaker 1: I was wrong, and if I could go back, I would have never left her side. But my phone started buzzing during the show. My sister first call Politico. She'd been calling a lot for miss calls in a row. Later, that's what I knew. I ended the interview mid sentence, told my co host keep rowing and ran. Those episodes still exist. I can't bring myself to delete them. For some reason. I see my own face in them, and I want to scream. When I spoke to my sister finally, I had told her that I was already waiting on the uber.

10:26 Speaker 1: When the uber got there, I begged the driver like my life depended on it. Logan, my service dog, my best friend was in the back with me. I was praying out loud the whole ride, you know, please wait, Mom, please, but if you have to go, I understand, but please please, if you can wait for me. A twenty eight minute ride and that driver turned it into seventeen wherever he is out there, Thank you so much. You're a legend, and I still owe you. I burst through the door at my parents' house. Hospice nurses said it could be ours or minutes.

11:14 Speaker 1: They'd lower her pain meds so we could each have one last moment while she was still loose it. One by one, my siblings went in. Then it was my turn. The room felt like a hospital hospital bed in the middle of the room. Logan, my pop, the dog, who had jumped into that bed with her for weeks at her own request, did something different that day. He laid down parallel to the bed, as close as he could get without being in the way, like he knew, he always knew. I sat down. I took her hand, and she was warmer than I expected.

11:56 Speaker 1: Her eyes opened and she spoke softfully words just for us, and she asked for a Logan. I lifted him into the chair beside me. He sat there, staring at her with those eyes on carried to my grave. The nurse came back. The time was up. There had to raise the meds again. She started slipping back. I stayed right there, holding her hand, and then it happened. I was looking at her face when my pocket started to buzz, and I glanced down for what could have only been in micro second, maybe less. When I looked back up, a ball of pure light streaked across my vision and hooked a sharp left and vanished straight out the window.

12:50 Speaker 1: And when I looked back at my mother, she was gone. Now I don't know if it was real. I don't know if it was grief, a fever dream, or the most beautiful goodbye ever given. But in that exact moment, total disclosure was born. She was the common thread in both of my experiences or sightings, whatever you want to call them, the one that opened my eyes as a boy, and the one that closed hers as she left this world. And I couldn't help but feel like it was her final nudge, this is your path, walk it. I was sober, but I had no purpose.

13:31 Speaker 1: Now I did every interview, every conversation, every stage I've stood on, every time I've walked her memory into the halls of Congress. It's not just for me, It's for her. All of it. The show, the mission, the fight for answers, the refusal to live in the black and white when the truth is gray and beautiful and terrifying. I haven't stopped, sir, I never will, not until I see her again, somewhere out there. I hope she knows and I do that. Everything I've built i've built for you. Mom. Thank you for the disc in the sky, thank you for the books, thank you for believing in me, and most importantly, thank you for the light that showed me the way home.

14:21 Speaker 1: The reason I wanted to tell this story is because I thought it was important for once for all to tell it start to finish. It's, of course a sad one in some ways, but it also is a happy one one that's filled with mystery, and maybe that will help some people understand why I choose to do what I do, why I interview a certain way. I'm looking, I'm searching, and I represent you because I am you. I want to know just as bad. I've seen things that I can't explain, and I don't try to. I saw a disc and a ball, but it's led me down a path that I can't I just can't even fathom.

15:05 Speaker 1: I can't believe. Some days I forget, I think we all do. How beautiful this world truly is, heaven hell, all of it? Does it matter? Right? Now we've got a paradise. Too many people spend their times looking ahead or over analyzing their past, and they forget all we have is the present. Stay humble, stay kind. We'll see you on the other side. Like that old and be nice.

16:09 Speaker 2: Shop me in his my head, Yeah, I thought it was gonna take you, you know, wear out, knocking you, riding with or something, just will wear money then more.

16:19 Speaker 1: W he's worked. I knocker. Oh him just laying the mouth. He sucks. He was face like a ship. He's trying to get away from you. Doesn't that tea you know or something? Buddy ouldn't have such an ugly playface. You guys have an ugly play face.

16:38 Speaker 2: I'm like Odin, I think I c a cry.

16:53 Speaker 1: Growers expect him