9/11 Victims Kids UNLOAD on Coverup & Tell Most GUT-WRENCHING Story You’ll Ever Hear…

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That's TakeUltra.com, link in my description below, for 15% off with code JULIAN. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them I sent you. I'm rubbing off on you, huh? Yeah, what the hell, man? I wore sleeves specially for you today. After last time. What does that mean? Why would you do that? Because, you know, last time I was like, well, you know, I, you showed up, no one was here because Deef was out of town, and, you know, that was a memorable experience for you. So I'm like, this time I'll be classy, I'll have sleeves on, we'll do it right, and you show up looking like Julian Dory. This is so intentional. I mean, jumping from no shirt to sleeves, like, he's on middle ground. Listen, there's some middle ground. You're not there. That works, but it's great to have you back, David. Glad we could do this. I'm really honored we could do this today as well, and welcome to the show, Matt. It's great to have you. Thank you for having me on. Of course, of course. So we are here, we're recording this a couple days. Before crazy, the 25th anniversary of 9-11, which has just been like, holy shit, I'm getting old thinking about that. But, you know, it is a seminal moment that changed the country for sure, definitely changed the world. And it also was a tragic day where just under 3,000 people lost their lives, and both of you did lose your fathers that day. So, you know, I can't even fathom that. All the years I've been talking to you, I've been talking to you, I've been talking to you, I've been talking about this on the show all the years I've talked about it before. It's just like unbelievable to me that there were two buildings that used to stand right there and now aren't. And, you know, people had family members that just went to work on a normal day and never came home. But David, you and I last year had a chance to go through some of your story. I'm going to have you do some of that again today, because that was just one piece of that podcast last year, just for people who didn't hear it. But Matt, for people that aren't aware of your story and your dad, how old were you on 9-11? I was nine years old. My dad was 38 years old. I'm the oldest of four boys. My youngest brother was born June 2001. So, yeah, dude, just went to work like it was a normal day. And what's crazy is that my dad would go into the city super early in the morning to work out at the gym in the Marriott Hotel. Missed that, slept in, missed the morning workout. And I mean, for him, sleeping in the morning, he was like, I'm going to sleep in the morning. I'm going to sleep in the morning. And I mean, for him, sleeping in didn't mean shit, right? Like it was just he got to the city at, I don't know, probably 7am. So as I remember, and David, I know remembers too, like it was just such a perfect day. Crystal clear blue sky. Like the way I describe it, because if you only know the feeling if you're in the Northeast, that transition from summer to fall, like you could feel it in the air was like palpable, you could feel it. Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. And I got pulled out of class at about nine o'clock in the morning. And I walked into the hallway with a classmate of mine, superintendent of my school walked into the class. Where'd you live? I lived in Maristown, New Jersey, went to a small school in New Vernon called Harding Township Middle School. Okay, like maybe 300 kids total in the whole school k through eight. My class was considered big. I had 50 kids. And very sheltered community, I feel. And the teachers were young, they didn't know what to say or what to do. I don't even know if there was a TV in the office. Like, I really don't know if they were watching this unfold. I can't remember. I never saw the footage in school. So I walk into the hallway with my classmate. And my brother, Nick, who was seven, was standing in the hallway with his teacher and my classmate's brother. And they huddled us together. And they were like, small, we think a small point at your dad's building. They're both safe. There's nothing to worry about. And they're both safe. And they're out. They're evacuating the tower. And that was that. My classmate's dad worked on the 33rd floor, I had no problem getting out. And then they took us and brought us to this room we call the computer room. It was like the luxury, playing computer gizmos and gadgets and like games like that, right. And it was so what was bizarre to me was watching the kids get pulled out of class. And it was like every 20 minutes, you'd see moms and dads running down the hallway pulling kids out. And my mom didn't come to school to get us. Oh, it was moms and dads. Moms and dads. There were dads too. Yeah. So a lot of people who either weren't in the city yet or were on their way in turned around came like everyone was freaking out. And so I sat in this classroom. No one in the school knew that my dad had called my mom. And so I can kind of backtrack. So leading up to 9-11, my dad had what I consider a spiritual premonition. My dad came from very humble beginnings. My grandparents came here right after the war, World War II, from Italy. Barely spoke English when they came here. Where in Italy? My grandfather was from Parma. My, hold on, my, yeah. Grandfather was from Parma. My nun was from Napoli. And so came here after the war and lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey. And my dad had a sister who died as an infant. He also had an aunt who died of ALS. So about two weeks before 9-11, he woke up in the middle of the night screaming, pointing to the foot of his bed. My mom woke up with him and he was like insisting that his late aunt was standing there healthy, holding his infant sister. And like, that was his, they were like telling him to come. Some crazy shit. Now, did you know, I mean, you were young. I didn't know this at the time. He didn't tell you? No, I didn't know this at the time. But your mom, obviously. And he was insisting that it was not a dream, like that they were there. So for the two weeks leading up to 9-11, after that night, he was just going on and on and on about like, I feel like I'm going to die young. Like, I want to be cremated when I die. Like all these crazy things. And the weekend before, he said to my mom, like, I'm going to quit. Like, I'm not happy. He was having some issues at work. Wait, he worked at Cantor? He worked at Cantor. What did he do? He was the managing director of interest rate options. He worked on the 150th floor. Oh, at age 38. Age 38. Oh, he was very successful. He worked very, very hard. Yeah. And he was like, I'm going to quit. I'm not happy. So that morning, 849, three minutes after the plane hit, he called her from his cell phone. And that was what was kind of rare is that what people don't always really know is it was really hard to actually get cell phone service in those offices, even though there was the antenna. So he got through. And all the stories of the people getting through on their cell phones, because the office was full of people. Signs were all dead, is miraculous. It's so, that's a strange thing that gets ignored. Gets ignored. Yeah. So. Even today, you have problems in those buildings. Yeah. Getting service. Yeah. So he gets through to her, picks up the phone. My mom picks up the phone. She's like, what's going on? He's like, hey, she thought seeing his cell phone pop up on the house phone caller ID that he walked out because he never would call her during the day. So did she already know the tower was hit? No idea. Because you can only call her three minutes after. No idea. Yeah. So he liked to pull pranks and jokes. So my mom answers and she's like, he's like, Michelle, do you have the TV on? We think of a small plane hit. I'm gathering my stuff, beginning to evacuate. And my mom was like, this, John, this better not be some sort of sick joke. And when she said those words, the line cut off. He had actually said to her too, do you have the TV on? So line cuts off. She turns the TV on and they just now are covering it. Right. It's three minutes later. And all these, like, we don't know what happened. Like, all the reports of, we think a small plane hit. They didn't know at that time. They were saying like a Cessna or something. Yeah, exactly. So she sees a smoke billowing out of the building and back and forth. They were calling each other and she would answer and just hear static. And when she kept calling his cell phone, because the office line was dead, he'd answer and there was static. And finally he got through to her one last time and basically just told her that he loved her and goodbye. What time was that? Probably, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. if she ever pulled the logs from like Verizon. She never did, but she wrote a letter to him We buried him, and 849 was the number she wrote for the first call. It didn't say the second call. It had to have been right before 9 o'clock because my dad's brother, my uncle, was the last one to get through to him right at 9 o'clock in the morning, and no one spoke to him again after that. Whoa. What floor was he on? 105. 105. Yeah. So it hit at 846, and it's unfortunately a very famous story that Cantor, and particularly where both of your fathers worked, lost everybody because they were all above the hit zone at that point. 101 to 105. Yeah. So the smoke and the temperatures, as far as I've been told, in the first 10 minutes just got to insane levels, like almost unsurvivable levels right there, even before the second plane hit the other tower, and that kind of lines up with the last time your dad talked to your uncle was 9 o'clock. That's not that long after. So. What's interesting is I've done a lot of extensive research over the years. That was where my first obsession regarding addiction that I dealt with was 9-11, and it stems from when I came home from school later that day and I saw the footage, and then when the footage was being played on that TV, there was a family friend sitting on the couch who changed the channel when the buildings come down on this TV replay, and she went over to a Spanish news station, and the first thing I saw was someone jumping. Oh. That fucked me up. And it changed me. I was 9 years old. That is what affected me tremendously. So that led me down this road of research, and then these documentaries started coming out, and these families from Canter were being interviewed, and they were like, oh, I was, you know, looking at these photos of all the people in the windows, and I was zooming in, and I was enhancing them, enlarging them, and they would say how they had contacted photographers, so I started emailing the photographers. When I went to high school, I took the train to school, same train that would go into New York City. So I emailed these guys, and I was like, hey, can I come to your galleries and see these photos? None of them responded to me. None of them responded? I think they just were like, you know, this is some grieving kid. Like, what do you say? Like, how do you do this? Right? I would think that if you wanted to come see the pictures that they took, though, if they saw the emails, I kind of assume someone did, that you would respond to that, though. That's a little strange. At least a response. Right? Yeah, nothing. Yeah. That's kind of weird to you, right? It's kind of weird not to get a response. Nothing. Nothing, yeah. The photographer, one that I reached out to in particular, was known to be sort of a, like, obviously he's an artist, if you will. So he viewed it as, like, I think he only was selected with the families that he met with in the beginning. I want to say he only did that in the early years. I reached out to him probably five years later. So, like, I think a lot of them were, like, out of sight, out of mind type of thing. Yeah, I feel like this kind of transcends art, though. I agree with you. Listen, I agree with you. I look back. I look back, like, years later, and I was like, did he ever respond? And he never did. Summer's officially over, which means back to reality for most of us. And there's a real window right now for your fully in winter mode to fix your sleep instead of just pushing through another season on a bad mattress. 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And his son described how his father was very traumatized, obviously, by what he saw and what he photographed. And he said he would look into some stuff for me, and it just has been hard for him to get his dad to agree to look at certain things. And I described what my dad was wearing and asked him if he could look through it, and he said that he would. He at least got back. And this was, honestly, this was recent. This was over the last few years that I contacted him. I saw him post something. I saw him post something on this Reddit page, and I personally reached out to him. There are a lot of people I talked to who were there that day, whether they worked in the buildings or, more likely, were right by there and were looking up when this was happening and were escaping the dust cloud when everything fell, who will not talk about it. And I fully understand that because it was just every single beat of that day from the things they had to immediately accept were happening, which is like watching people make the decision of do I wait here and die or do I jump to my death, all the way to thinking the world's ending when it comes down. It's just the post-traumatic stress of that is so insane that I totally get it. Well, what I was going to say before is that there were reports that the 100th floor and the 101st floor, how the smoke went, hit those floors harder at first. Why did they say that? I don't know exactly. There are pockets of floors, the canner offices that were actually immune to the smoke and the fire, mostly the smoke, hitting them until later. That's why as you look at some of the photos, right as the building's coming down, the smoke is dark and arid, but you could see people in the windows still. There were still hundreds of people standing in the windows. People don't realize that. And now it makes you wonder how many people are behind them. That's what's hard to think about. And then another thing too is the windows on the World Restaurant, which was above the canner floors, also, for whatever reason, got hit harder by the smoke sooner than some of the pockets of the offices. And wasn't it, it's been a while, but people, they couldn't access the roof either? It was locked. It was locked. There's a kid that worked at my dad. He was 23 years old. And my dad was his boss. And he made a call to his parents. And the rumor was that he said, we're going to try to get to the roof. I believe that my dad, they tried to go up. Now, I don't know. Like, did they get up there and it was locked? Like, by that point, like, there was no. And they couldn't, that was the other thing, the helicopter pilots there, like some of the guys who were flying around, there were news pilots. I think there were other types of pilots as well. They were making attempts to get even anywhere near the roof. And scientifically, it was not possible. There was only one pocket on, like, the northwest corner. I think it was. It's in the Nat Geo documentary. Where they can literally, you see how close they get. And you could see the people in the windows, like, waving at them. Standing in the windows, waving at them. And the pilot said, you know, we tried to get there, but there was no one there. There was no one on the roof. Like, that's wild. You know? So you're in school, though. Nine o'clock, you remember seeing your seven-year-old brother pulled out of class. And you're seeing a bunch of moms and dads come and pick up. They're kids, but your mom's not there. So did the teachers just, like, take you to the principal's office? What happened? We sat in that computer room for the rest of the day, basically, and then went back to class and then got on the bus and went home. And when I got home. You went back to class? Like, for, like, maybe a little bit. And then we were, like, it was a very. No one knew what to do. Right. You know? I think most of the afternoon was in that computer room. You know? We might have been in the principal's office for a little bit, too. Did you. Did you have any concept at that point that your dad might not be getting out of those buildings? No, I had no idea. No clue. No idea. The teachers didn't even know about the phone calls. So I think that no one. I don't think people realized the severity. I think people thought that those people were going to be able to get out. Yeah. You know? Now, who. You took the bus home from school. So when you got home, was your mom there? Oh, yeah. There was probably. There was, like, 30 or 40 cars parked in the driveway. And I really. I kind of struggled for a long time with why my mom kept me in school. And then I understood when I got home why she decided to do it. And I can understand it. And I've done a lot of interviews and things over the years where people. I've seen people, like, say, like, how could she do that and all that stuff? But it's, like, for us to go home and then see the TV footage and then to try to pretend like things are normal. Like, she was trying to preserve it. our last chance of normalcy. right because it was fucked from there on out i mean we didn't go back to school for three weeks um it's like how do you describe the commotion people running to the house in the days after and i'm sure you remember this too like bringing food like trays of food and there's nowhere else to put the food like you can't even fit it in the fridge anymore like no one knew what to do and you know again she's a three-month-old at the house too oh shit the youngest my youngest three months old my oldest brother my other brother michael was three years old so you got a seven a three and an infant and an infant so it's you know they just didn't know i i take issue with people who play the hindsight 2020 game on something like that right you're reacting moment by moment right like we know all about this now yeah but i remember that day i was seven eight years old and it's one of the first things i can viscerally remember every single part of this day in my life like there's things i can remember from before i was eight but not like every single piece that day i know every minute of it and it was so chaotic and i was in south jersey so there's fewer people who have exposure to people in the towers there were some but you know for people to like try to determine how you're going to respond in the instant to that when you're also watching on tv just like everyone else wondering if your loved one is going down with those buildings like come on that's crazy also too i think people don't understand how different the world was back then oh yeah you know like you would i don't know if you could still smoke on planes at the time maybe god it was a better time for that yeah still smoke on planes maybe but like the security there was no security amanda were you alive no you weren't alive you're post 9-11 wow that's wow yeah there you go it's just different it's different time it's different same thing with like how the hijackers got their stuff on the plane like yeah it just it was just different yeah you book a flight now you yeah you book a flight now you it's just different it's just different it's just different it's just different and you look down the receipt of all the taxes and there's a september 11th tax like people don't look at that probably and like know what that is right but it's there we can talk about that today too obviously there's a lot there's still an ongoing lawsuit yeah and everything yeah kind of wild so we're going to get to a lot today people but i want to make sure we get through the starts of some of those stories here so when when was when you got home and saw the 30 to 40 cars in the driveway and you went inside did your mom at that point like you know because you're old enough you're not like three did she pull you aside and say like hey we haven't been able to reach your father or did that come later that came later i walked through the through the hallway through the kitchen and as i kind of entered the kitchen area there was like family members cell phones weren't as much of a common thing back then right so but you still had people on cell phones and there was these newly established um hotlines and hospitals obviously but there was hotlines for the hospitals as well people were calling in to see if you'd heard anything or person was there so i kept walking and there were so many people crying and then um as i turned the corner that's when i saw the footage and then when i saw the other piece that i talked about before uh i that's i physically reacted to that you know that's when i started i was like i was extremely upset my grandmother saw that and grabbed me and kind of brought me outside and said go you know to go play with my friend who was my neighbor was that your father's mother my mom's your mom's mom and i was like i'm gonna go play with my friend who was my neighbor and i was like i'm gonna go play with my friend and uh you know at that point i it was you know it was too late and then i just remember how people were coming in and out of the house all day long um over the next two days that we had like a memorial at our house like a not a memorial but like a prayer service um and then a week later they came to the house to tell us that they found him oh they found him they found him so it's crazy because david and i started talking about this so all these years i thought that i was going to be able to do this and i was going to do this and i was going to be able to do this and i was going to be able to do this and i was going to they found my father three days later that was for whatever reason that was the day that i thought he was found he was found basically two days later and he was identified by his wallet that was in his pocket so um um i went to the memorial and i met with the chief medical examiner the doctor over there and i looked at his file and his report and everything like that and so basically he was mostly found two days later he wasn't identified fully um i should say he was identified by the wallet and then the rest of the remains weren't confirmed until different points right so they came to the house to tell us that they found him due to the wallet and then as time went by we you know we buried him we buried him 10 days later but we we continued to get remains that were cremated um per his wishes for his wishes yeah that's pretty what that premonition too is pretty insane yeah it's crazy you wonder that that's the kind of shit that makes me just be like what type of dimension are we tapped into here you want to hear a crazier dimension sure my dad's father was 16 years old ish maybe a little bit older i i always mess this up he was taken him and his father were taken during world war ii after the germans and the italians broke off the axis okay so now the nazis invaded various parts of italy they also we were not jewish but we they captured non-jewish people italians and made them essentially their prisoners of war right and they were brought to forced labor camps they were not killed by gas and all the other things that the camps but they were basically worked to death my grandfather's pow number was 9 11. i'll pull the photo we'll get the photo of that that's when i say like dimensional crazy fucking weird shit like so you're saying you had 80 years to prevent 9 11 yeah exactly exactly god damn it yeah so it's like yeah you got that whole like dark comedy thing i love it though yeah i love it i mean he does it for a living i hope he's gonna do it for a living i hope he's gonna do it for a yeah he's got a good he's and he delivers that's crazy isn't that crazy though that's crazy wow so i don't know man it's some weird stuff that is some weird stuff really weird all right so we'll come back on the timeline but let's come over to you david for people that didn't hear our episode last year just pretend no one's heard that obviously because you know we do a lot of episodes here and and that one also i think is one of the more underrated podcasts we've done that was one of my favorite podcasts last year but you you obviously have your own show where you go through all this stuff with all different types of people from all different backgrounds who lose loved ones in different ways and kind of how they deal with their grief how they deal with death and the concept of it and we'll link that down below obviously everyone should go check that out but you lost your father on 9 11 where were you when you found out the towers were hit honestly very similar experience that we've had which is why i'm kind of sitting here locked in i guess dude i got super sorry to i'll get to in a second but i got like super emotional as soon as you said your dad's age because my dad was 46 and also seemed to be applying he might have been more successful at 38 than my father but besides that i'm 37 yeah and so i'm not quite at the age of my father which is a thing you know my sisters are getting closer to 46 and it's just a weird trippy idea and i'm already going to be your dad's age yeah and to think how young that is obviously there are younger people i mean i know that but to like hear it sitting next to me it just like it just hits differently plus we're both baby boys at the time yeah yeah yeah yeah hit me different but um similar to matt's story i was left in school and i had a similar a similar thought process but i i did always sit with the idea it was a better to pull us into the chaos like she didn't know and i watch it a lot if i snuck to the tv watched it live see my mom freak out like i think that would have been a worse decision so i back that decision i think our mom's made yeah but my i feel like you even have a better memory at nine or nine right yeah because i mean that day was like split in two for me where i remember first period came my buddy jeff who was late so he apparently caught the 846 first impact comes up to me knowing my dad works in the trade center and he said yo dave doesn't your dad work in the world trade center i go yep and he says a plane flew into the building and that was just difficult to understand i didn't know what it meant nor did i think it was as serious as i don't think anyone thought it was as serious when they first heard it or saw it perhaps and i didn't know what that meant so i tried going to the main office they didn't let me make a phone call and similar to your place a lot of people were there's a commuter town i believe middletown my town lost the most people outside of the new york jurisdiction like 30 some odd people so a lot of students had families and whatnot that worked there so they're probably trying to keep it under control like you alluded to no one knew what to do yeah didn't allow me to make a phone call my mom left me in school for similar reasons i was safe i was right down the street perhaps it's giving me the rest of that day even though i was so paranoid and didn't know what was going on it was as normal as it could have been as opposed to going home and the bell rang and that was the time to go back and one thing i get tripped up on is while my imagination is running the entire day wondering what was going on knowing something took place it was actually happening so it was my imagination versus this reality that was actually occurring and while i was unsure of what my father did and what happened to him and what was going on it was happening you know what i mean while that wondering was happening that's just something that is kind of going in retrospect but by the time i came to walk home at 2 33 o'clock so it was all done i'm walking with my best friend james and it was quiet from what i remember what he expressed to me and i remember i was like oh my god what's going on what's going on what's going on what's I remember getting around the bend, similar to yours again. I saw cars outside. and that was the moment where i knew shit went down it's like why are there cars outside in my cul-de-sac on tuesday at three o'clock i was like okay like even at 12 i knew something went down and it's always interesting the 9 and 12 it's a small gap now but it's a big gap then yeah you know i mean the level of understanding for better or for worse there is a big developmental aspect there so i just wonder what those feelings were between us as you explain get to the house me and james get separated i don't know who separated us i remember someone trying to keep me away from the tv and i started walking to the living room i wanted to see what was going on and i remember seeing my cousin's face and i see joey's eyes right now and as i'm he's looking at me it was obviously fearful but now looking back again the whole timeline jumping so he just he just knew my life was about to get flipped upside down in about seven paces looked at the tv for the first time that's when i saw the footage and i remember everything just came out of me it just broke down crying but the difference between my experience which i'm for lack of a better word slightly jealous of is everything blacked out yeah i don't remember anything after that obviously that day at a minimum everything else is scattered beyond that but i don't remember anything after three o'clock when i first saw the footage just when did you don't remember a lot like a couple days after there's a yeah that's like i don't i don't remember anything um when i see anything i'm jumping around but i i don't really remember that next day the day after i remember things happening i just can't do the patchwork of when that was right like i know things i was doing i remember the memorial service which i don't know if i've ever done that but i was a couple weeks later we didn't we didn't find anything my dad got identified i think a while after and i went to the 911 where i look at his file i just don't recall the date when they first they first found one piece of them they found one thing one part of them that's it it's they identified him by the one piece that they found but that was a while after and so we didn't get any confirmation it was just a knowing and i remember asking my mom on my podcast when do y'all remember knowing he wasn't coming back and my mom said that next morning of course she wanted to hold hope for her children but she was just trying to put the logistical pieces together the smoke and he was so high up there was no there's almost no shot as much as you wanted to hold on but her waking up she just knew that he wasn't coming back and i don't recall ever having a sit down about this is what happened it was just like we knew just as much as i saw the footage for the first time besides it being violent like you just knew like oh no he's even at 12 like this is he's not coming home yeah you see i i would imagine too like trying to put myself back on that day but like especially the adults that day who have a better concept of life than an eight-year-old would have when you see that come down like that you got to be thinking that's an unsurvivable event it's it's 100 what is it 110 stories you know coming on itself and it was like wasn't long either you had the first one fall the last one fell at 1008 right something 10 29 it was 102 minutes 102 minutes and so the south tower was hit 16 17 minutes after the north tower but fell first yeah right yep when did that fall do we have the time on 59 i think 959 i think so that's damn the south tower was that quick it was that quick yeah wow well it's funny you mentioned about like the was it right 959 so the blackout stuff because i after that piece of the footage that i saw my grandma telling me to leave the rest of the things that i remember are scattered too it was like even i had to like fact check so many people in my family when i was writing my book because i was like did i dream this or did this happen i had to ask questions i was like interviewing everyone i said yeah yeah my mom like my mom wouldn't even remember certain things so i had also realized like okay like she was going through her own grief and trauma interesting though like your mom sent you the next day for us it was two days later the 13th which is eerie to me because that's when he was found that's when we had that prayer service and there's like people sitting in our lawn with candles and then there was like this massive gust of wind apparently which i remember it but vaguely and my mom turned to my grandfather her dad and said he's not coming home she still held on to belief and hope that he might but we had family who worked in the downtown my i had an uncle who worked in the trade center too and one of my uncles my mom's cousin came home he took him hours to get back to new jersey did he like do the whole walk he did a walk and then like had like took like a small boat with someone or something like that it might have taken one of the ferries over it was something like that and then the car like hitched a ride somehow it was some crazy story he told me before but i forget right now when he got to my mom he got to our house that night he said to my mom i hope we find him that's what he said to my mom like he knew like there was no chance he said i hope we find him and so like i hear these stories and i've been told these stories as the years have gone by and like i always will like break down when i hear it but it's i think people don't understand if they weren't in new york city and like so for me where my up brain goes is when i'm there downtown and you see how big those pools are and you have to realize like those were buildings and i don't think people understand how catastrophic it really was that's that's where i kind of wrestle with this thought like they don't people don't realize like this was like a war zone on a beautiful sunny september day downtown and i turned into like a war zone like they don't get that especially after 25 years you see it so much it's almost it's so much in your face that yeah not that it gets numb but i mean like a post the other day just talking whatever comes out of me i don't know what i say sometimes but i was like yeah we can just watch our dad die and obviously other people are too but sometimes we're looking at like this is obviously catastrophic violent event and it's like we're watching this event and it's like everyone knows that we're watching it but it's almost oddly pushed to the side and maybe i'm wrong that is that we're watching this event but we're forgetting that we're watching thousands of people die correct on video one by one i said that this morning i said anyone can access my dad's final moments on youtube like that's where i will never compare my loss our loss with someone else who lost a parent in any way and it's it's what but i think that where it goes over a lot of people's heads is they had maybe they had a goodbye it was private they were able to grieve in private we will never have private grieving never and then you and like i said to my mom the other day from the 20th anniversary to the 25th now like this all feels like one blur to me of like things i've done throughout the years whether it's media things like that and all the calls are coming in on the monumental years but the years in between the days in between are the days that like i get tangled up in it you know i'll be honest like when i went to the memorial to meet with that medical examiner back in june i've been in a really good spot with my descent into looking at the footage and i struggle with that because that's where i wanted to i feel like i looked at that footage so obsessively to connect in a weird way with my dad anyway i've been in a really good place with that and when i went to the memorial and met with that woman she's really sweet and really nice and knowledgeable it it sent me down a little bit of a spiral like in the in the weeks after like i was definitely um i was affected by it i'll be i'll be honest like i was affected by it and we had spoken and when we got off when i got off the phone call with you i called her and set up the appointment and i was like i just got to do this and i knew it would be difficult to do but i was like i have to do it you know i've been saying i'm going to do it for two years i just have to go meet with her and see what this is all about but i see your point completely that like you getting to have that conversation with your mom and your dad and your dad and your mom and your have your private moment to go do that, you're still examining something that's an extremely public event that the entire world gets to examine as well. It's a strange dynamic. You get to the memorial, and it's also the World Cup, so there's a lot of tourists that were in the city. Well, I always wrestle with this because when I go to the memorial and you see people standing there at the pools, and you see, look, it's hot, it's the summer, right? You see kids sitting on the pools, on the names. You see people taking selfies. And it's just, to me, I don't know. I try not to get emotionally attached to it, and I have to understand that people don't have the same connection. But it's still difficult. How many times have you been to the pools, would you say, over the years? Probably maybe less than 10 times total. Less than 10, okay. So, you know, as someone who didn't lose family in the event, even me, every time I go by those things, when I have to be in that part of Manhattan, you cannot not stop. You can't not stop and, like, stand there. And it's never for, like, 30 seconds. You know, you're there for a couple minutes because I really, the way you described it a few minutes ago about how it was a war zone and you realized the scope of the fact that there were two buildings standing right there, it really hits you. But as you were pointing out, for people who haven't been there before, they have all the names pretty beautifully carved in along the edge of every single person that perished in the towers. And on 9-11. And, you know, it's a really solemn thing. And maybe, I'll say this, probably the World Cup wasn't the best time to be going there because you're going to see more of that stuff you don't like. But I will say, most of the times I go there, you know, I think a lot of people, there's something about it when they're there that the majority of people, they get it. And they're like, woo. You know, and I think, I hope people listening to this who maybe have just walked by that before, or not really thought much of it, or, you know, wouldn't think of memorials like this, understand the gravity of that and how it affects, you know, living victims of it. of of that event because it's a serious thing doesn't matter how many years will pass that that's that's you know your guys lives were completely upended yeah in one day yeah how well do you remember your dad I remember him pretty well I mean things have sadly faded as time has gone by you know I have um I have his uh voicemail recording like you know when you'd call a cell phone I have that saved I have like home videos like I I did lose remembering what his voice sounded like for a long time and I have to kind of play that back to remember it do you remember when you started to forget that like how old you were I mean probably early teenage years I would say it's hard to hold on to it like you you don't yeah you lose it you know you lose it um but I do remember him pretty well and it's interesting because I don't have many memories pre-9-11 anymore like I can't think back kids say like oh people say like oh I remember what it was like when I was in kindergarten like I don't remember anything like that not like that I have like the summer before my dad died the last thing I really remember is when I was eight going to the World Trade Center for the Christmas party and from like then to 9-11 is like a blur and then 9-11 it happens and then the days after are a blur weeks after are a blur and it's like I can't remember what Christmas or like any I don't know so then things fade it's just reality do you remember what he was like though like do you remember his personality yeah yeah very charismatic person very happy love love to joke around he just loved life I mean that's like the crazy thing is I hear all the people who die 9-11 it's like they were all described very similarly to me they loved life they appreciated life they were just a joy to be around and and they were taken so soon yeah which is kind of weird so yeah he just had this this this knack about him I don't know he was very approachable and like most people loved him and if you didn't love him he said okay I don't care you know that was his very very North Jersey town yeah exactly spot on yeah yeah I feel like I know flip you the bird at least we do that here in New Jersey as opposed to out in LA they smile at you you walk by and then they say go fuck yourself yeah and they tweet about it yeah actually not x anymore California yeah right that's that's a I've heard a lot of people talk about that though in different contexts at all ages when when they lose people and then you know five six years later you start to you're like wait was a voice like this or was it like that so really it's it's that's a really odd thing to deal with and it's hard also when you're in the middle of growing up as well so then all the experiences that you know you have that you're supposed to have like your dad there to help you with that you did until you were nine and then suddenly you don't have it but what about your brother's brothers because they were younger you know your seven-year-old brother I imagine he remembers your dad a little bit a little bit we you know it's it's interesting because my brother Nick and I approached 9 11 differently for a long time he would feed into a lot of the conspiracy stuff and all the on all the the background stuff um which opened my eyes to a lot of things too he's very research oriented and he's smart he's very smart and so he opened my eyes to a lot of things that I was not aware of I had a different approach to it and I think that um I don't know I don't talk to him about what he remembers I probably should to this day you don't really talk to him no I talked to my brother a lot yeah but I'm saying you don't really talk to him about what he remembers no it's hard I don't know guys can be different yeah I don't have sisters right it's like my my two youngest brothers don't remember anything they will sometimes ask questions but it's hard I think that's hard for them too because they didn't have they don't have a memory they don't remember it so the three-month three-month obviously doesn't at all but the three-year-old doesn't remember your dad at all maybe a little bit maybe small things share they share a very similar path I mean we all share the same passions my dad had but like my brother Michael really my dad was obsessed with cars and Michael was like that too and um like no has very knowledgeable facts about them and all that stuff um can spot what that is when he sees a drive-by whatever um but no he doesn't it's just hard I don't know like my story became very public and I think that was kind of hard for them I'll speak I won't speak for them but I'll I'll assess that I think it was hard for them harder than maybe they let on to believe that your story became yeah my story our family story became public okay you know I don't think to my knowledge any of them have finished my book I think it's very challenging for them to read truthfully my mom read it my stepdad read it but I don't think any of my brothers have finished it wait so did your story really go public like through this book yeah you're saying okay yeah and that you wrote that in 2020. no I actually finished it in 2017. didn't get published until 2020. the long journey what made you want to do that I guess like writing it sub 15 years later well so I journaled since I was 10 years old my mom's brother who I'm very close with my uncle he's my grandfather he gave me a journal for Christmas the year after 9 11. and he described this he wrote this little note and said I have stacks of these journals throughout the years you know try to write in it every night and actually I take that back it was the first Christmas after 9 11. and um he just basically encouraged me to write so I did and I would write every night in that journal period of my life where I stopped and I continued and would stop and continue so I dealt with drug addiction we'll get probably into all that but um I started speaking at schools when I was about nine months sober and I'd go into schools and I would never really go fully into my deep wounds of my story kind of surface level describe what happened to my dad what happened to me getting sober Etc one day I went into a school and I got fully honest and I basically shared everything I didn't plan what I wanted to say I just let it all out and the senior I'll never forget came up to me after and he said I want to let you know I went through something very similar and uh you inspired me and you should consider writing a book that summer I started writing the book oh that's cool and the book changed I mean believe me like it it was a lot we got it right here sway yeah down below for people to check it out it changed a lot I um I cut a lot of stuff I rewrote a lot of stuff my first editor was like you're not getting deep you're kind of just like reflecting too much you need to like really tap back into that nine-year-old and you could say you don't you know you didn't have it all figured out because you didn't right in the 14 year old voice and all that stuff and so it took it was challenging for me and I it opened up a lot of things inside of me that I had suppressed for a long time so my brother is basically there's a lot of stuff about my dad in there that you know now like people who never really knew now they know yeah you know and that was what are what are those things yeah just like for an example when they found my dad like they found you know I guess I just might as well just say like they found his lower half first that's how he was identified like I said his wallet his keys were in his pocket uh his phone and like his wallet was um not burnt or anything like that so I kind of charred but like it it was very waterlogged and there was photos of me and my brothers in the wallet which are stained watermarks like water stains there was money in there um do you guys have that stuff we have it all yeah we have it all his business cards his credit cards all the stuff is in there and so like that type of stuff I think was was hard you know um especially my younger brothers who didn't maybe know my mom sat me and my brother Nick down in my dad's office we called it his little home office and told us that he wasn't coming home like that's she delivered that news when they found it but they didn't tell her until a week later right that's what I'm saying a week later is when she sat us down and said like he's not coming home and you remember that very well that is like the last piece around that and I have like like bits of his funeral and that's it how'd you react like once she finally I broke down immediately crying to give you an example right like Nick me and Nick were different as kids and he said my dad's dead okay and he got up off the chair and he walked out of the room me I started hysterically crying and I think Nick has worked through his you know his grief with it too um it took us years for us to to connect and share tears together over it years yeah I would say I mean it was just traumatic events affect people differently for sure you know and I have like friends who like I've one of my best friends who I've had a lot of time with I've had a lot of time with my parents to this day his dad died at Kenner as well and I told him that I went to the memorial I met with that medical examiner lady and he said he asked me he's like I'm just curious like why he's like why he's like I don't really I don't care to know like I've dealt I've dealt with my own way ways around it and what I think may have happened he didn't tell me what he thinks happened to his dad but um he's like I just I don't know like what do you gain from it and I'm like I don't know but I wanted to do it did you find friction with that between you two and the two of you and noticing how differently you grieved was that yeah is that the friction yeah probably and um I think that's what he struggled with was that so open about it i don't know if you have any similar experiences yourself but like it just people react to it differently i mean especially with in general that's probably one of the hardest dynamics i think in my opinion just from the familial aspect aspect of it yeah but just relationships in general how different everyone handles everything and that could rub people the wrong way for me or the other person sure based on how you're handling it now we are talking different age ranges here with your families respectively but if i remember correctly david you were the youngest right yeah two older sisters are seven years older than me and five and a half okay so two older sisters and you were the oldest yeah and you were about 13 12 yeah 12 and you were nine so again like it's a different spectrum completely but it's interesting like as you grow up you were the young one at that point and you know your sisters are navigating through this but as you're growing up you're the oldest one and you have two siblings who really can't stay too young that's like a these are two very different experiences of how to later deal with it so like david would you say that as once you got past the period where it was just kind of blacked out to you like your sisters were there to really talk with you over the years or was that also a slow process of actually having communication there i think it was a slow process like again a lot of the pieces i had to put together kind of what you said in regards to asking people questions i had to ask my mom my sister's questions and one thing my sister said in our family episode she's like yeah i don't really remember us talking about it for the first few weeks but then there was a point my mom reminded me that she would have give us the opportunity to speak when we were eating dinner and i would just sit there not say anything and observe and that was somehow i took it for a long time which is why i kind of do what i do now because i felt the guilt of not even a guilt a i didn't express much i didn't i didn't get it out but i had i was raised by three women yeah and which i think is a big difference just being raised having men around me or boys around me because obviously we deal with it differently but women are a little bit more expressive for the most part more gentle around these things not to generalize any of it but having the woman's perspective was a big deal for me but a lot of my journey again was forgetting remembering asking questions and as i became a man things started opening up and understanding it and for one of the things i did which seemed like you were doing was i was watching the footage over and over again in the early teens looking for every angle and i wonder if it's partially because we hadn't we didn't have so many we had no answers even 25 years later we still have answers but besides that we just i didn't i wanted to know what he experienced what did what did he suffer it was a pain was he a hero was he scared and i'm answers i'm never gonna get so i just wonder if i wanted to see it to have some control over finding out what's going on getting information everything was already public i wanted to be there so a lot of my process was diving into my own but i had i system it was just different for each of us did you this is like kind of a strange question but when you were going to try to figure that out to see if you could find something that like put you there and figures out what he was feeling what he was thinking if you could even get an answer to that did you feel like going into that that that would change things for you or it was strictly just because you wanted to know honestly i did it because i wanted to make myself cry i think that was the initial thing i knew i wanted to get some shit out of me and i knew that would make me cry and if it didn't that's a whole nother problem but i just wanted to get it out and i wanted to sit in it and then i feel like i defined it later in life as kind of an exposure therapy that i didn't realize i was doing but i kind of did by putting myself there by forcing myself to watch it by letting it come out and not running from it or looking away from the screen and jumping to my mom to hug her it was just sitting in it letting the cry out being scared trying to put myself there because i wanted to be there oddly and by doing this i just forced myself to feel it and let come see what came out and then afterwards i kind of just take a breath and then i realized i'm still here as corny as that sounds i was kind of what it was i just wanted to cry and i wanted to put myself through it and even 25 years later i don't seek the footage as much but when it pops up which is very often it's just like i watch it and then i get that feeling back a little bit but at the same time i kind of want that feeling you know i and i'll say this just being someone from this part of the world you know where you did know people who were in the towers at least like there were a couple guys from my town who died there and like new york's right here and it's somewhere that you know i call home now and everything like we experience thinking about that day in a different way than i mean you you guys in a way different way but i mean like people who didn't personally have family members in their experience thinking about that day in a way different way no disrespect than someone who lives in utah 100 or something like that you know and so that is the one thing because i've had my own journey with going back to that day and trying to piece things together and i still don't know what the fuck happened there i think we would all like to know but you know i would find that when when i would have the conversation over the years of people who were from this part of the world there was i don't want this to come across the wrong way but there was a little bit more of a reverence for the day itself rather than when you're having those conversations about what really happened with someone who's not from this part of the world i'm not blaming those people but like they don't have that emotion and they don't have that emotion and they don't have that emotional attachment to it that even i do yeah to say nothing of what you guys have to it as well like is that frustrating sometimes you know like how people will talk about it yeah i mean i live in south florida i don't even i'm gonna ask david too like what people in la think but like yeah it's two hour flight south and i think the people down there i this is my first time being up north in four years really for the memorial for like this time normally yeah i mean yeah the last time i was up here was i think 2020 like i'm here a lot but for 9-11 the memorial night was 2022 so which was actually probably good for me in a way but um people down there don't get it you know and also too like kids now we're not even born so they don't understand so like when i'm going to schools i'm like yeah like her and uh no when i'm going to schools and these kids are just it's just so foreign to them and they only know they hear things like meme culture and they don't understand it and they don't understand it and they don't have cultures i've had people reach out to me about like lost footage and my knowledge of lost footage and i'm like this didn't exist wait lost but a lot of like people who suspect there's like a lot of lost footage like people who were videoing that day yeah there's like people there there's these these folklore videos that people think are real that occurred that didn't really occur there's one that's very it's all over uh these reddit these 9-11 reddit pages yeah one of them is called what was it called it's not the guy who's watching it's like i was supposed to be there no uh lol superman they call it lsm and it's supposedly a video of someone falling from the building and landing in the plaza never existed but people have reached out to me because they've heard my story about looking at the footage and i'm like i was pulling videos from limewire before youtube was like fully youtube came out limewire that's why i was videos from limewire i don't know you were doing videos on limewire yes music music there's videos too and youtube was what 2006 yes it sounds yes my freshman year of high school and i remember pulling videos and like i never saw anything like that so anyway i've had people who reach out to me about that type of stuff and i'm like if this is what they're pulling from what they're hearing on this podcast or that story or reading this article whatever i feel like they've lost the i don't know they're just not sensitive to what happened right right it's history i mean it it's history but it's also you know you you you go to the memorial it's it's it's people it's obviously like i don't mean to preach you guys but like it it's it's many people who in an instant were gone and so there has to be a way to talk about both things and if you got to put them you even in separate lenses fine but like that's just always that's always been a tough line for me because like i said like i can't imagine it for you guys but like for me it's like my life i can like chart it back yeah to that day well what's interesting too about the pool is that the people's names i'm not sure if you know this people's names are strategically placed around whether canterford jail people as an example are next to people that they worked with that were friends with everyone together and same thing goes for the fire departments and all all of it and they're pieced they're placed on that portion of the pool by the people they were closest with so not everyone knows that that's they did there's so many there's a lot of layers that people don't know stuff they did do i'm not sure how you guys feel overall it seems like you like it but from my perspective like as far as how they did the whole area right there it's pretty amazing like it's beautiful and then uh there's the family room mm-hmm which i didn't know about until 2021 that's like private right private family rooms you can go in there you can write a letter you can leave a photo or whatever which i've gone in there a few times and then obviously the room where the it's behind the the big blue wall um no no day shall erase you from the memory of time that's where the um the repository is and so what i learned was when i went in the room and i looked at the file there's two rows one row is of remains who have that have yet to be identified and the other row is remains that have been identified but the families don't want calls anymore so the families don't do not want want calls because there's more and more research and there's more and more ways that they've identified people like last i think it was last year there was like five new people that were identified how did they do it just new dna testing so like if i'm understanding from something almost microscopic in a way or yeah i don't know yeah i mean they have the whole relic you said of unidentified remains so they just one by one i guess putting in whatever they can we google that deep recent remains identified it's like a year i want to say it was a year ago from 9-11 and how they did it and i think that that's wild i don't know i mean i literally when i went to the same woman i gave her my information yeah yeah i did the same thing abc news 9-11 victim identified using first of its kind genetic genealogy technique an adult female was formally identified using the technique let's go down oh so this was even more recent than i was yes this is august 23rd 2026 it's like two weeks ago 25 years after the september 11 2001 attacks new york city is still working to formally identify all of the nearly 3 000 people killed at the wtc now for the first time the city's office of the chief medical examiner and the mypd detective bureau have identified a 9-11 victim using genetic genealogy which combines dna testing with family tree research the family of the newly identified victim who was an adult female declined to publicly come forward she is the 1654th to be formally identified which means we have over 11 we have over like 1300 isn't it 2977 yeah yeah so like 1300 people still not identified so let's go down deep it's a breakthrough dr jason graham new york city's chief medical examiner told abc news i'm delighted to be able to say that we've now applied new methods to the wtc identification efforts and we have a new identification for the first time in 25 years using new methods forensic investigative genetic genealogy such a breakthrough was unimaginable 25 years ago because the methodology did not work so we're going to have to do a new one in the next couple of years so we're going to have to do a new one in the next couple of years so we're going to have to do a new one in the next the technology really wasn't there there's a lot of good future with genealogy forensics investigative genetic genealogy has helped police solve long-term unidentified cold cases more recently the medical examiner's office and the police department have applied it to the world trade center victim id dr jen jen odian is the woman that we met with oh that's who you met with yeah she's super she's super sweet yeah super sweet so she's is she she's with the she's a forensic anthropologist in new york medical examiner's office so she does other things with the city not just deal with uh i don't know actually but she like literally is the one who's there all the time office and she goes downtown to the memorial and she this is what she does she's been interviewed several times over the years by abc yeah she's a guy she's great she's awesome she's so gentle about it very gentle yeah you sit down one i just one-on-one sit down look at the file and just break she's very patient like she took like i had to take a couple couple breaks and she's very patient and you went alone yeah i went alone you went alone as well right yeah i was by myself yeah so how did in the months afterwards like how do you remember like your mom obviously she had four kids including a literal infant like how how did how did she deal with this i mean my mom was 36 years old so and like you're talking about the age i'm 34 my wife is 37 yeah you should figure that one out but wait a minute make sure we get that real quick i'm 34 my wife is 37 okay all right um so birthday present pretty big this year pal yeah exactly so as i've gotten older i have a son now nine months old congratulations thank you and that's where it's become a little bit more trippy for me as i'm like like my dad was not much older than me and it's just weird so like i look at my mom in a different lens now and my mom grieved like she was going through a hard time you know um there were times that i didn't understand her grief i resented her for it you resented her for it because i just couldn't understand what i was i come home from school and she would be sitting in the same spot every day pretty much crying and it affected me and she knows this but it really affected me because you can't how do you console your mom like you don't know what to say i didn't know what to say to my mom like i would give her a hug and kiss and tell her i loved her and you can't take away the pain like you wish you could and you try everything you can but you just can't and i have my own pain so did you feel like you had to grow up overnight yeah and i was told by my dad's dad my grandfather my nono that i needed to be the man i was 10 years old when he told me that and i felt this he didn't mean harm by it but he did it was just hard to be the oldest of four boys and like feel like you have to be a father figure and a brother and like sort of like a pseudo husband straight like weird no i know what i'm saying like absolutely so i struggled and then when i was going through struggles as i got like a little bit older than that like i felt like i was letting them all down because i couldn't even take care of myself and let alone be a role model um what about your friends like in school you know where i i imagine they were kind of there for you oh yeah my friends are amazing but what do you say what do you say yeah like they i think that they they struggle with what to say because so many people would say like i'm so sorry uh you know they can't say i know what you're going through right but they would try so hard to level with you and there's just no way to do it um so they try to take your mind off of it and things like that but i mean it's just it's hard and so and all my friends knew my dad so yeah i mean i don't know i i it was hard for me to grasp what my mom was going through and as i've gotten older i have an appreciation because i understand that she lost the love of her life suddenly it was fucked was fucked me up a lot over the years my dad had a vacation day scheduled for september 12th oh and then you have like the sleep in thing on that day and and there's a lot of people too who like the washer broke or something happened that day and they happen to be home and it's like yeah and then i think about what would have happened to my father if he was not there i think about that and i and i as crazy as this sounds like i he would never have been the same he would never have been the same i've watched never heard someone say that before yeah i know that's but that's the way i look at it yeah that's the way i try to look at it i guess but it's because i've watched the people that i am close to some of them who worked in the world trade center um but he worked above those floors too where everybody perished and if he was supposed to be wow like my dad had a colleague her name was gloria she was very nice woman and uh she wasn't there and so i remember my mom telling me she got in contact with gloria like soon after the plane hit or gloria called her or something like that and my mom was like you know where is he and she said i wasn't there i was off today so um and i just know that it affected the people who who survived it affected them you know i mean it's just undeniable like you lost the entire firm that was there so how it would have changed him it would have changed them obviously there's a lot of questions around all who was involved that day and where money came from and like we said we're going to talk about that lawsuit in a little bit and all that but do you guys remember the moment when you found out you know who they were saying did this and what it was about and did at nine years old like did you grasp like oh terrorist attack like al-qaeda yeah i mean that's what they were on the newspaper so quickly after um yeah 30 minutes after they were saying exactly yeah i mean i had like my way of dealing with it with my friends like we would take uh we'd have these printouts of osama bin laden and like take airsoft guns and like shoot them like you know just like as the as i got a little bit older when it was probably like your age at the time like 12. i remember doing that like when did i had rob in that chair a couple months ago i don't know my buddy got me a signed bin laden new york times cover with his signature on it with like a big bullet hole through it or some shit really everyone likes to fight over that i i do think rob fired that shot yeah i do think he did yeah it's like an unpopular opinion these days because there's like so much internet drama on that but i really believe he fired that shot out yeah is it just a gut feeling or should he saying i believe him yeah i do i mean you know how it is like you sit across from people for a long time i had a man here for three and a half hours yeah i think he did yeah but you knew so you knew it was the you know this guy throughout bin laden yeah planned it and that was like enemy numero uno for you i mean yeah at the time yeah when did the first was it fahrenheit 9-11 was it the first that like that was a michael moore thing right the first one pretty much yeah or was that do you know yep yeah so i feel like it was around then or a little like whenever i first saw that where i started maybe thinking that makes sense maybe there's more to it more to it the first few years i didn't know my ass from my elbows i wasn't yeah i didn't think that tracks with the age of when we were shooting bb guns at airsoft guns at the song but yeah no exactly um and then obviously there's been so much stuff that's come out over the years then loose change came out i think and which i know there was some 2005 okay yeah i was gonna say 2006 um there were some elements of that that i believe were proven to be false but a lot of it partially true but even just like besides just whatever was true whatever was false just the general idea that people were questioning it oh yeah yeah that's when it was like okay people are asking questions and that was just kind of the river from there there there are a lot of people though too who were there that day or lost people that day who can't even talk about that and i fully understand it because they're like they don't want to think about it they don't know about it i was just talking with a guy last week who is a long-time firefighter in new york he joined after 9-11 and he's like you can't even bring it up in the firehouse and he respects that and understands that but you guys are all so you were young both of you when it happened and then you're growing up you see some of these things come out in the media as well and you're like wait a minute you know saudi arabia had a bunch of people that were maybe funding something and we're not talking about that and then you go and like you're doing your investigations but you know at what point or did you ever find yourself i don't want to go too far with it but like going down the rabbit hole and being like wait a minute or was it more like you're trying to find out more if that makes sense talk about the conspiracy theories yeah i don't believe i don't believe that the government planned 9-11 what i believe is that they could have prevented it and they didn't i don't think that they knew the extent of what was going to happen i think i'm with you that's where i stand now i mean i'll talk to you for hours about saudis and all that stuff and we'll get to that but um and i think that they they use they use 9-11 as a way to of course invade that operation northways yeah that i will say for sure you know never let a good crisis go to waste correct yeah yeah i had a they fear-mongered and they they use that patriotic unity which this country lacks now as a way to like let's get the enemy that's right i had a lawyer on the show it's not i didn't drop the episode yet but one of the guys representing motley rice yeah one of those guys in the show just to chat up with them and one thing he said that i think makes sense he was like i because i started questioning him to see what he wanted to say and he was like you know what they didn't do well then and he's not sure they still do well now is the inner communication where one department communicates with another and they're communicating what information they have yeah it's like one department might want to be a hero and keep certain information either that reason or they just don't do a well job communicating and so i think it's a smorgasbord of that where maybe it was just turning a blind shoulder is also the nuance of maybe they're just up yeah but yeah or maybe they up on purpose i don't know there's a million different angles but that the idea of just not communicating between departments and who knew what right who knew what's that's a real thing for sure if you ever read the looming tower like that's there's regardless of whether you think that's only part of the story of the whole story it's a piece of it for sure and that whole like even just looking at it agency to agency cia and fbi that was a real like chinese wall between them that shouldn't have been there and god i always forget his name john what is it john mclean not john mclean's from fucking that's die hard john the the the man who knew type in the man who knew def and we'll get it about the towers fbi john o'neill john o'neill that's it can you pull up a photo of him yeah so this guy i've seen i've heard about him but i'm trying to picture him well they later made a mini series out of it where fdaniel's played him based on the book but this guy john o'neill he was a controversial guy at fbi people either loved him or hated him he kind of rubbed people the wrong way sometimes because he was a real bulldog and not a perfect guy morally off the court but he was pounding the table about bin laden for years and years and years and then he ends up kind of unceremoniously getting forced into retirement from the fbi in august 2001 and he takes a job i think on august 17 2001 i want to say as the head of security at the world trade center and he died in the towers that he had warned were going to be hit holy and it's an insane story but there's a really sick sick sick testimony line that came out during the hearings of this guy michael shore i believe that's his name who was on the bin laden desk at cia who fucking hated john now john dies in the towers and he's testifying i don't know two years later three years later and you think bygones be bygones you know obviously this is horrible whatever but the guy's being cross-examined by the senator whoever it was and he says you you hated john o'neill or something like that and you know yada yada yada and michael shore leans in and says no i'd like to make a correction i said the only good thing to come out of that day is that those two towers fell on him jesus wow and i'm just like fuck you dude yeah like there's just there there's there's a line with something so that is so far past it but you hear stories like that you talk about like your dad's premonition and stuff like that this guy was also like investigating it right he and he was telling it's on record he was telling people and then there was a guy in the south tower rick uh rescorella i think his last yes yeah i met his wife very sweet lady he knew he suspected it like he was running the whole entire company we're from morgan stanley he was running the whole company through security evacuations he's the head of security over there because he suspected that there was going to be another attack after 93 and he saved all those people because of how prepared they were yeah rick was scoreland yeah i can't believe i just type in rick resk 9-11 it'll come up yeah i want to make sure we get that right too he got a crazy story and um yeah i met his i met his his wife and uh his daughters about five or six years ago um what's that like to meet people that you haven't i wanted a story like that and i'm sure david could attest this too i wanted one of those stories and i got very close with allison crowther too well yeah yeah well it's crowded and uh i wanted a story like that and you're just never gonna get that fucking story and that's like that's the that's the difficult part about what do you mean you wanted this story i wanted like okay i some he i don't know there was some good samaritan yeah exactly some good samaritan act that my dad did or something like some last person he spoke to i don't know just something more you just want to know what the hell you just want to know and that's the and david said earlier which is so true when you see the footage like to understand that there were people that were dying in the building right and then you just don't like it's a public display of death the only actual real death that you see i mean see the buildings hit the building the planes at the building are the people falling right you don't see what's happening inside the building you don't see what all those people are doing in those upper floors and all the commotion and all the chaos that was probably ensuing that's what i really struggled with like wondering what happened in there and then there's all the documentaries that come out and they try to do these depictions and portrayals of you know playing the narrative but like how i don't know how accurate could that really really be i'll tell you what i do know for sure i could go to bed with this and be 100 certain about is that all the floors above there where everyone died there are so many amazing heroic attempts and stories that happen that we will never never know about correct for sure yeah happen and you actually mentioned one earlier i've thought about this a bunch where you talk about you see all the people in the windows right and you don't see people behind them right and the chances are the people behind them in many cases actually i hope this was the case because this would have been the best way to go died of of smoke inhalation right rather than you know the horror of actually falling through the building and you wonder how many of those people said no you take the spot right right little things like that and i'll bet it was a lot of them there's a lot of you know horrible sad stories that i've i've heard over the years and just things like by chance things um you know and pregnant people at canter like things like terrible like just horrible stories you know michael hinkson story right the blind man who survived oh yeah actually it's crazy too like a blind man survived his dog rosalie right right let him out of the building obviously a bunch of people but his dog yeah guided him essentially out of the world trade center survived and he was on the upper floor like the 70s maybe yeah right right yeah yeah and for by the way you mentioned it so we should talk about that too for people who haven't seen that there's an unbelievable feature that espn's done for many years on wells crowder oh yeah yeah and and what he did because he was a he was a really terrific lacrosse player i believe yeah and all that but for people who aren't familiar with that story can you can you tell them what what he did in building that he was a volunteer firefighter as well and so basically he was in the south tower and i think he was in the lobby or he got that i don't know all the ins and outs of it but basically he always had this red bandana in his pocket that his dad gave him and uh when the when the smoke started going he put the bandana over his face and he saved about i don't know 10 or 15 people if you want to look it up but over the few days after um there was all these reports of these survivors saying this man in the red bandana saved me he led me to safety he did this he did that and then his parents showed a photo and it was him and like him he saved like a decent amount of people and and then he just he went back up yeah he went back up yeah people that's unbelievable that they know of and like so that is the one thing about this days like this that are just like such a total loss in every way they also somehow highlight the best of the human spirit too yeah and that's the beauty of like when you see the photos too people leaving the building there's no discrimination there's no color there's no race it's just people helping each other yeah you mentioned this a few minutes ago and unfortunately it's a great point but like there was no more united time than september 12th right 2001 in the country and to think about it there was like the most at the time most contested election of all time right eight months before that that like went to court yeah you know that you would think like things were kind of divided and in an instant everyone came together and the sad part about that to me is it takes like an event like that for people to see each other as humans or be like you know we can disagree on a few things but let's agree on the things that make us human and american right it's that's crazy to me and now 25 years later i'm seeing in the comment section almost the opposite now where people are reminding people of the unitedness but also reminding people of the divisiveness that we're now seeing in the comment section because of the new elected mayor and people having problems with that yeah now they're saying everyone for new york is so sad they forgot 9 11 they forgot 9 11 which is they're pointing to the unitedness that we have but also now creating divisiveness by talking about that exactly yeah which is just yeah interesting and i think that's i feel like the city in many ways like the the they lost the plot like a long time ago in a way but you're right because i think that people highlight things that shouldn't be talked about as much and then it creates that divide right yeah like i literally posted a video i got my sister's permission it's the most emotional emotionally triggering video that i have because there's a video of my sister days after middletown new jersey i guess a news crew came to town and offered families an opportunity to hold signs up and my mom didn't want to go from what she recollects but my sister jacqueline for older sister for whatever reason like no let's just go let's just go and i don't remember this but you see me in the backwards with like my fake ghetto ass slanted backwards and my mom now you got a forward you know i got a phone with the sleeves and thanks to you i was trying to be cool and uh and so it's a video of worst transition to the worst video of all time because it's so emotional but my sister just with a news reporter holding a patch together photos of my dad with his name saying look for the deke chain that he used to wear this that and the other photo of me and my dad on my sister just crying hysterically begging for god for my dad to come home and i just saw you could find it on the internet if you want but it's you posted that on the answer now yeah i posted it again it's it's posting it for many reasons this is a reminder and it was a lot to post but i'm sure we did it and my whole point of telling this story is because the comment section again is just people are just yeah there's a lot of beauty in there and solace that's not the exactly what i'm looking for but i do think the power of sharing that video is hoping to bring the remembrance of that day what it really is the details of it but then there's people just trying to figure out what's going on what's going on what's out there but then there's people just commenting on it just completely yeah deflecting over just it is what it is i'm not like mad just it's outside of me us in many ways because it's a historical event but just shows how like the desensitivity is different you were talking about people in utah it's just different when you're outside of this like talking about world war ii in 1970 like obviously that's a war global different but you're just detached from it in many ways and it's that video in the comments section sometimes just an example of that and it's uh and i again it doesn't it doesn't piss me off i'm just like shaking it because i think humans are idiots it is what but it kind of is what it is but it's just fascinating it's like a big social experiment sometimes when you notice the way people handle it comparatively to maybe us or being local well just this this is the part i always remind myself of first of all half of them aren't real half of the other half are retired and then on top of that you also got to look like unless it's something really bad where someone has like some unhinged opinion and you literally see a big ratio comments are such a small percentage of what's actually there like i'll see some of the nastiest comment sections i'll look at might be you know whatever a thousand comments and they're mostly all attacking something about somebody and then you'll see like the video has 102 000 likes yeah or something like that and you realize most and the like ratio is like 97.8 and you realize most people are like oh yeah no this makes sense and then there's a few people like you die yeah you know and you just gotta sometimes it's hard because you're like jesus christ you know but you've got to put that in perspective all the time i've done i've looked at and i was told long long a long long time ago i'm going to give you this recommendation don't look at reviews of your book ever but i've looked at reviews yeah you got a book that just came out today yeah exactly literally yeah like this is like qvc for 9 11. right that's a great title by the way you're not dead yet i love it beautiful literally today that's crazy that's weird it's very very weird yeah and uh people their comments about the the book and just like their takes on me and then i've looked at articles that i or you know uh did like this fox what's it called fox who's original is like a short thing i did uh a few years ago and reading the comment section and that on that page and it's like yeah like people just say like messed up things dude like i mean one one dude wrote a review on my podcast the one thing that dropped me down to like 4.9 or some and he was and he gave me a one star based on the one episode he listened to i'm like you don't have to like the episode but you're judging 260 episodes the whole show based on one episode yeah i don't know if they know what they're doing like it is what it is but humans are just we're just we're solving yeah you win some you lose someone on the internet yeah this is how you gotta look at it for sure it's just it's harder when you have you know when it when it's something subjectively personal and something like that like that video which do we have that up thief are you on was this on yours or on dead talk i don't think i didn't want it on my page page so it might have been a trial it's on facebook for sure look at my ugly mug oh you did a trial yeah i just i just i was fine not putting it on my main feed i don't know i was fine i haven't done it but no it was on facebook it was posted if you go to dead talks facebook it's it that bangs me up way more than the footage yeah because i've watched the footage so many times my sister letting her soul out it's the rot yeah it's just alive you'll find it on facebook there's a few posts down but um yeah yeah and you guys you were telling me before when we got here this is the first time you two have been in the room together yeah so you've not how long have you known each other now at least it was this year probably a year right yeah wow so even all this years later like you can meet people that experience the same exact thing as you that's such a wild thing and a similar same company same floor same company same same and similar reaction three years apart and like i used to think i was so up and unique in that i looked at the footage and then all these years later i find out like so many people like us that do it that did it too yeah and i became hardened to it where i wouldn't react to it for a long time and now i've reverted back to like if i do see it which i do see it i do have a i don't always cry but i have i feel it for sure or i didn't feel it for a long time well that's the importance of when there are looking yeah but this the whole thing is about sharing stories and stuff like that whether you have a freaking book or not it's just sharing stories of these experiences because outside of even 9 11 you find similarities which is comforting and then you find the differences as well which you learn something from that too because if we could talk to 100 other people that were 9 to 12 yeah they lost their dad we're going to find the similarities but we're going to find the differences too not one it's just a different fingerprint for everyone yeah absolutely how long ago did you get married man almost two years ago okay because i i wonder if uh you know i'm not sure the timeline of like how long it was where it was harder for you to feel things but the fact that like now you've had these and you mentioned something like this earlier but you've had like the last couple years you got married and had your own kid and you're coming up towards the age your dad was right there's something very in like a good way like evolutionary about that where you're like whoa i'm in his shoes now well i also had to like my wife's from miami my wife's actually from cuba but she came here when she was 10 years old a cuban from my cuban from my area yeah exactly yeah i know it doesn't happen that's what i'm saying it doesn't happen revolution um it's like a new yorker in spain island exactly so she her you know she was 12. and uh yeah dude like she has no it's just different for her it's different for her but i'm saying like your dad was he was a he was a young father right coming up in his career and stuff right right 38 years old right 33 34. yeah you know what i was trying to say is that i think it's allowed me to things that used to frustrate me a lot more about people's people in utah and all their like reactions and utah's just getting a lot of utah's getting hate today guys uh but i've learned to appreciate that not everyone had the same experience yes we have a unique experience so i've tried to show my wife through my own journey why it was so different not because i lost my dad but like for all my other friends who were who grew up in the town i grew up in and went through it as well like it changed us for sure you know and that's just what i've tried to i've tried to make sure that that's what i'm trying to make sure that that's what i'm trying to make sure that that's what i'm trying to make sure that that's what i'm appreciated that not everyone has that experience you know but yes i i yeah you're right like as i got to my dad's age i'm sort of filling that role in a sense all right we have this video that david was talking about so here come the tears let's play this real quick this is your sister yeah How many days after? What's that again, David? It was like a day or two, two days or something. But even besides the personal take on that, the impact that you said, that was a town. You know what I mean? Like your town lost people, middle town lost 30-plus people. It was a town. That was a big one. Yeah, a big one, of course. But like every area, people, it's just this. Sometimes I look at it and I'm like, this event is just bigger than me. It's bigger than our experience. But that doesn't dwindle our personal experience and connection. It's not like hurrah, hurrah. It's not like hurrah kind of thing, but it's just bigger. It's just bigger. It's way bigger than that. And it's just something that took me a while to consider. Sometimes I feel like I felt guilty of almost being too honed in on my experience. What was I going to do? We were boys, but it's like my grandmother lost a son when she's in her 70s or whatever, close to 80s at the time if she was. And my aunt lost a brother. Cousins lost an uncle. It's like this onion and web of the experience. And again, that applies to death in general. It's not just the 9-11 experience, but the 9-11 experience is a unique experience. And it's just bigger. It's outside of myself. And I just kind of take it for what it is sometimes. Over the next year, obviously the blur of the few weeks after it is an odyssey that you can't even really put yourself back there. That's just insane to even try to deal with that at the age as you guys were. But over the next year as you tried to return to life, and go to school, have your new normal, obviously it's an extremely difficult time. But like, do you remember that well or is that also kind of a blur? The rest of fourth grade for me was a blur. I remember going to fifth grade. To this day, my favorite teacher was my fifth grade teacher. And it was like my first year trying to be normal. But then it's like you get to the first. Year anniversary. And then it's like, I remember in the first year when I saw in fourth grade, like six months, and then it's like nine months later. And like, you're just like, that was a blur to me. But I remember my mom like saying that, oh, it's been six months or whatever. And then like you get to the first year and then, I don't know, it was, you didn't really go back to normal, I guess. You found a new normal, like that was what it was. Transition to a new normal because life was just different. And at the time, you had explained how you and your next younger brother was that Nick or Michael? Nick. Nick. So you guys obviously like handled grief a little differently. And this was at that time, you guys aren't really talking about it. No, we would talk, but yeah, not that detailed, not that detailed. It's also very fresh. Like, I feel like things really evolved after like four or five years later. The documentary started coming out. Things started coming out. Then the commission report came out. Like those first few years, well, the commission report was what, 2002, I want to say? I think it was like 03/04, like they were doing it. They were doing it in 2002, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get that right. I, I'm trying to remember, when did it come out, Dave? Hearings were throughout 2003 and 2004 and it was released in July of 2004. Okay. So release July, 2004, but the hearings are all in the year building up to that. There's a movie or a documentary? I don't remember. Um, I'm drawing a blank on the name of it now. Um, Michael Keaton. Oh, yeah. With the worth worth. Yeah, that's what it is. That shit's wild. It was a weird, it's a weird thing to watch. That's about a whole nother thing. Looking at what our families. Yeah. Wait, worth. But why do I not know that? I love Michael Keaton. So like, that's what I'm saying. There's like layers to this. There's so many layers. Oh, that's what it really, that was a great movie. Wasn't dope sick. Not that long ago, it was hit all the tender points. Yeah. Yeah. So what was worth about? It's about how the, um, families each had, uh, a value essentially put on their loved one. Um, oh, I did see this. I'm sorry. I now I'm remembering it. Yeah. And there's like intricacies for the people who were like engaged or the people who weren't legal. Like there was like things like that where. I mean, my, my uncle, when he came in the pot, my dad's best friend, he brought it up. Uh, my dad is different than your dad having the vacation in September 12th, but it reminded me of this. My dad was set up for a promotion, like a big promotion where his, he was about to make a massive advance in his career. He's about to have his own desk, I believe a trading desk. And, uh, that was to come. He was told it was going to come in the next few months or end of the year. And then nine 11 happened, but there was no record of that. And then that was like a whole needle in the haystack of when this whole worth thing came out of my mom talking about it. She's like, she looks, she's like, I don't fucking want it. She didn't want to do it then. And she didn't want it. She didn't want the money. And, but that was a whole calculation thing that one of those aftermath, the layers of it, when I, when I was, so my mom keeps a lot of things and I went to look for my dad's signature for something. And then I saw paperwork that she saved and just unleashed this whole thing, kind of with the word thing, just this paperwork to the bureaucracy, the, the, the administrative stuff that comes with death. And of course, nine 11 S extra adds extra layers to it. But just the administration that comes after someone dies in general was something I was so oblivious to. I was, I, I, again, didn't know it asked for my elbow. But it's like, it's kind of like frustrating on my own aspect. When I go down my own path, what did I do? What did I do? Was I a support? And I'm looking at all the things my mom had to do behind the scenes that she kept from us. That was just part of the process. Yeah. And then you got the whole word thing that just added a whole nother thing to it. Yeah. They tried, they, with things, they put a price on life and it's, it's, I think it's one of the just strangest things we do as humans with that, you know? And it's like, so you have all these people die and you're like, well, there were janitors. And there were CEOs. Right, exactly. It's like, but they were all people loved by other people. Like, what the fuck are we talking about? They all died the same way, basically. They all died the same way. It's a, if you want to look at it as just like a class action lawsuit, why is that, if ever you were going to be socialist, this would be the moment. Like. But at the same time, what's the difference between someone that has life insurance? Like, how does that work? Well, I was going to say too, then there was life insurance policies that weren't paying out if there wasn't a body or weren't remains found. There was things like that. Because then you didn't, by proxy, you didn't have a death certificate. So. Oh, that's right. Because we didn't get a death certificate until we was found. And that was much later. That's crazy. That was a weird moment. Looking at the death certificate, like in the last year or two for me for the first time. And it had the reason for murder. I forget. I think it said murder. I don't think it said terrorism. Yeah. But. Multiple. For us, it was homicide caused by multiple blunt force trauma. That's another weird. When you think about it, when you look at our dads. Homicide. Our dads were killed. Yeah. That's just a weird. Again, this is all the layers of just not harping on 9-11. This is just, it could really extrapolate this, but with our personal experience, it's just, okay, man, my dad was, it wasn't straight bing-banging to the head kind of thing, like one personal, but nevertheless, their dads were killed. Right. And that's it. That's one of the things I think about as one of the lessons, if you will, is the absurdity of which happened. One of my biggest things was, okay, so at 12 years old, my closest people could just die in a blink of an eye and in that way. So we're talking about growing up. Whether I grew up quick or not, it was just this ultimate realization that I had to either consciously or subconsciously understand was, oh no, this is, so this is life. This is what can happen in life. And then you have a choice of being paranoid the entire time for the rest of your life, neurotic of my mom could die or this could happen. Everything could go wrong at any second, or you could be aware of that and then think, all right, then I got to squeeze everything out of this. Right. Even when, I'm not saying it's a worthy sacrifice. I don't want to learn. I fucked that lesson. Yeah. But the reality of it is just the absurdity of it. The absurdity of which it happened. And then it could also hit you at home. That directly just opens up the quote unquote reality of what life can hit you with. Yeah. But you can look at the other side too. Just as quickly, shit could be great. Right. But it was just a shitty way to take it and learn it. Matt, had you ever experienced death anywhere close to you before you're dead? No. No. Had you ever thought about it a ton? No. Not until he died. And David was saying like, I had this, I was super neurotic when it came to my mom. I remember when she would. When she started dating. And I would like, I'd freak out. How much, how long after? A few years. Yeah. But I started freaking out thinking like, something bad's gonna happen to her. You know, like something bad's gonna happen to her. And like, bug out and have all this anxiety. Like, it would like, it would ruin me at times. I was super neurotic. Like, anything bad could happen at any point. It's like, you almost become like morbid curious in a sense. Because you've been exposed to death in such a unique and publicized. Way, but also like, an event that completely altered and changed history for all generations. That I think we, at least in my experience, we figured that out more as the years went on. We knew it was going to change everything when it happened. Don't get me wrong. But like, you get to 06, 07, 08, 09. Now, like, it's a new presidency and everything. global financial crisis, 10, 11, you start to see the reverberating effects right that it had and like today it still gets strong like the the echo of that gets stronger and stronger which is a strange thing because you get farther and farther away from the event but you're like whoa everything socially economically culturally within this country and in places around the world just completely changed yeah from that yeah that's why it's bigger than us yeah yeah for sure do you when but that moment like when your mom started dating specifically was like a would you say i was like kind of like a triggering thing to make you think more like the worst is going to happen specifically because i had a lot of fear as a kid a lot of fear i mean i didn't deal with any death um like i had like great aunts or something my great grandmother i remember died in like 2004 uh or 2003 but like my dad was the one and then like i still have both my grand grandmothers my grandfather's passed away and 2013 and 2017 so like no immediate no immediate family like nothing besides my dad so yeah you like just don't know like it's like what could happen next you know yeah had you dealt with it david with anyone really close to you before your dad obviously not that close but the closest was my dad's dad i remember that funeral and seeing my dad crying understanding it and then i guess the notion subconsciously that my mom's dad died a year before i was born so that contemplation someone not being there it was really just my grandfather but obviously that's not that it's nothing but it's it was something i observed and took in because i vividly remember seeing my dad cry for the first time so not really comprehending except i was in single digits at that point i believe but uh other than my hamster stimpy hamsters yeah i mean i yeah i watched that thing die now that i think about it that was a very traumatic event because i was i was watching my hamster breathe and i was crying because my hamster was just dying in front of me and then we tried to bury it and my dad did not want to bury it he was like fucking just shoveling next to my trampoline and it was just that was oddly traumatic watching my hamster die not 9-11 traumatic but it was traumatic hamster it's tough the goldfish too when the goldfish starts to like flip over and go up you're like oh no well they have like a seven second memory so they're probably fine yeah but still if that was your goldfish oh yeah yeah you're right yeah so your your mom ended up remarrying though my mom remarried yeah how was that how old were you when she remarried um 15 yeah i mean it was yeah i have a good relationship with my stepdad now but there was a lot of like 9-11 just it was like a ripple effect for me um um um i went to my mom and my dad's brother ad nauseum asking them the same questions mostly my mom what it was the phone call like what could you hear in the background you know did he sound scared um uh i found this box that my mom put in a in this closet in in my dad's office in the house that had um the stuff that they found on them his wallet all that's stuff had a file the autopsy report um and i found this letter that she wrote that i talked about earlier that she buried with him um and i read that and that described a lot of the stuff that she went through that day things that she didn't even really remember and so she had described it you know she when he when he called her she picked up and she heard like the normal commotion in the background like people yelling i mean he's on a brokerage for so they're always yelling they're on phones like you know the box like and so i had asked her about that and then anyway it got to this point where she was it was just too much it was just too much for and then i had an uncle through marriage uh who was the one who said yeah i'll talk to you about it i'll ask you the questions about it whatever you want to know wait uncle through marriage yeah so he was married to my mom's sister got it okay um and he's dead now actually and uh yeah yeah basically he started feeding me all these fucking lies and telling me all these things that i wanted to hear and he said to me yeah like you know your dad jumped your dad jumped from the building that was my thing like did he fall did he jump like was he in the building when it collapsed like i wanted to know when did you find out these were lies not until years later until i was like 18 years old was he still alive at that time he was still alive he didn't die until literally six months ago whoa so i mean i can't really imagine that what why did he did you ask him why he did that he was praying on me he was praying on me so basically what happened was i had a team of uncles married uncles two blood uncles my mom's brother my dad's brother like all these people who were looking out for me my brother's like you know you have like a lot of people who prey on vulnerable kids in these moments so there's coaches that could potentially be of harm there's counselors camp counselors like you just never know so they all stepped in to like be like protective of me and my brothers right and that one uncle was a predator plain and simple and he he would eventually sexually abuse me and so um that fucked me up obviously and so it was all around 9-11 it was all around like the things he was telling me so when he told me those things i'm thinking finally like as for at 14 years old i'm like well now i'm being told the truth someone's finally looking at me as as the adult that i believe i am as a kid and i'm getting told the truth um i kept that a secret obviously and for years but um so after he was doing those things he abused you or before before my dad no no before he was telling when he was telling you those lies did he abuse you after that or was he already abusing you he abused me he he used it as his entryway he used it as his way to get close to me because my mom and my dad's brother my dad's brother was 23 years old my dad died he's 15 years older than me so he's like an older brother i never had yeah him and my dad were 15 years apart as well right he was grieving he was in law school he was becoming an adult himself like he was finally he's getting into the workforce like and for my mom um she was going through her own life moving forward right and so he was like i'm not gonna let you go i'm not gonna let you go i'm not gonna let you go i'm not gonna let you go and so me like when i tell you like obsessive is one thing like i was addicted to wanting to know what happened like any moment that i had to look at the footage i looked at it like to a point that it was like it was not healthy i'll be honest it was not healthy so i would interrogate my mom like interrogator my dad's brother same thing interrogate him and he was like trying so hard to help me so then that other uncle basically was the one who's like what I remember Fahrenheit 9-11 just came out too. And he was like, he had me watch that. I don't know. I watched that and it didn't show anything to me. But he just knew that there was a way to finally break down that wall. And when you're so vulnerable and you're so effed up, you know? And so that happened. I've never heard a story like that before. It's messed up. It's messed up. I mean, they're all messed up. That's a whole different level. So when I finally came forward about it, so I got sober in 2015. I just celebrated 11 years of sobriety. Congratulations on that. Let me get a timeline here, though. So I was being groomed, if you will, from like 11, 12-ish years old. And then he started to abuse you. And nothing happened for a little while. And then when he found out that I was so enthralled in this 9-11 stuff, the desire to know more. And, like, I'm sort of going through puberty. Like, I'm, you know, sort of becoming a man. Like, my mom didn't know how to handle certain things with me. I was angry at her. I would get pissed off. Like, I just was, I wanted to talk to her and, like, try to know and learn and dissect things and understand it for myself and wanted her to level with me. She didn't know. All she, she told me what she didn't know. I didn't want to hear it. I was convinced otherwise. Like, whatever. Whatever she was withholding from me, which she had nothing that she was withholding. But I was like, there's something that she's not telling me. And, like, when you have a fatherly figure, and I had several of them who are trying to help you in their own various ways, none of them in the ways that I wanted to be helped. Like, I wanted someone to talk to me and tell me what I was perceiving to be the truth that was withheld, right? As if they all knew the answers and were not telling me, right? So he pretended like he knew the answers. And that's what it was. And so there was not, there was, it was all lies. It was all lies. So that happened in, like, 2005 or 2006. And you didn't tell anyone about it? I didn't tell anyone for a long time. How did you, but how, God, that's such a. So it's like when my mom is trying to help me. Yeah. And my dad's brother is also trying to help me, but he's, like, going through his own thing. And he's in law school, and now he's graduating law school. And it's like, this other uncle is close. To home. And, like, we're with them all the time. And seemingly he's a father figure because he was. an approachable person like it's always like the people you least expect and when i ended up coming forward about this years later i mean it took my whole entire family by surprise oh they no one knew you didn't tell anyone even in the intermittent years no no one knew was he still in the picture at that time yeah he was still in the picture and like the craziest thing man is that he had abused like several not family several other kids so like did they get in touch with you after you came forward so what happened was i came forward when i was in my first year of sobriety right uh wasn't planning to ever come forward i came forward and so how'd you do it because my third youngest brother called me and said something on a phone call i was sitting in my sober living in derry new hampshire and i'll never forget and he was like saying these things on this phone call and i was i was scared that he was going to be abused or that he had been you he was just saying things about my uncle that i was like did something happen to you about the same same uncle did something happen to you and he said no but like it scared me and i was like at that point i was like i'm 23 years old if i don't do anything and or say anything and as a result my brother something happens to one of them then i had to live with that so i came forward and um i ended up getting him on a recorded line admitting to everything um and so when we went to court and he was facing he was facing a long long time in prison he got a plea deal and when we went to court um that was the argument was the fact that not only did he abuse me after my dad died like that's sick but he literally and specifically used 9-11 as his way to do it and so like look yeah that's it's it's tragic it's fucked up and it screwed me up for a long long time and i'm not saying any of this to for for sympathy or anything like that i'm saying this because like there are so many other stories of other kids 9-11 kids too that were abused so that's like the sickening thing about it like someone used an event so tragic losing a parent so tragically so publicly for their own you know sexual deviances and so as messed up as it is i've used it as a sort of way to i mean obviously it takes vulnerability to talk about it but um i have yet to go to a school especially in the last few years that there's not at least one kid who's who hasn't been abused like this shit and like what's fucked up is i don't even live in new jersey anymore and yet i go on facebook and i get all these feeds on my on my on my on my uh what do you call it home page this coach this teacher it's like all and it's not just new jersey but it's like this new jersey there's all this recent stuff and i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god in the last like three weeks i'm like what the fuck is going on in new jersey like coach this coach that like guy filming a girl under these kids under their skirts like all these things and i'm like it's just it's bad you know and so and it's and it's and it and it and it can ruin someone and it can ruin someone so like yeah i mean look i'm not any more unique or or stronger than anyone else but i i was i was dealt the cards i was dealt you know plain and simple that's i i've really i seriously i've never heard anything like that that's yeah i've heard some crazy ones that's a whole to prey on 9-11 itself when you were a victim of it yeah he was close to my dad too that's like the thing that's insane and like and then i find out years later like my dad wasn't super fond of him but like he like made it seem like they were super close right um so he was he was married but he was married to the sister of your mom yeah i don't know i i like strategically wrote it in the book where it wasn't like that oh okay i don't give a flying fuck anymore truthfully like you know it's the guy's six feet under and uh what i don't have anything to be scared of in that regard yeah i was scared for a long time believe me i don't know why i was but i was and um yeah like i changed his name in the book like i changed a lot of names in the book and uh i had some family who were like you know you changed all these other people like like drug dealers and people like that well like i should have fucking blasted his name i mean he was all it's all over like i can we could talk about it but like can i ask you a question yeah you mentioned earlier about how you go in public well there's some i want to say friction for a lack of better words that your family had a different approach on it was this story oh yeah friction about you sharing it like was there more proud of you as they should be for opening up no they were proud about that um my cousins his kids do not talk to me they hate me they hate my mom they believe that i should have kept this within the family so to answer your question i come forward they believe you should have kept that they didn't believe me they didn't believe they didn't believe you so i had i was facing um i had three felony drug charges so i'll come back to that i'm just yeah let's stay with this so i had three felony drug charges and um and basically he was telling his family that i was doing all of this that i was making up this whole elaborate thing to get off of these drug charges as if they're like the two are correlated in any capacity so anyway i come forward the prosecutor's office in morris county sends out a thing um i was so i couldn't definitively tell them my age i couldn't like this is the power of trauma blacking out like throughout it all right like i knew how old i was i couldn't prove it when i sat in that police station okay i was 14 years old right so when you're at certain gapping of ages it's automatically first first degree sexual assault automatically but when you get a little bit older like as an example 16 years old which i was not 16 years old but because i couldn't prove in that moment when i came forward when i was reporting it that i was 14 they charge them with second degree first so the article comes out then i go back to new hampshire in my sober living and i'm like light bulb clicks i'm like it goes off i'm like yeah i got it i know how i can prove it now go back to new jersey sit in the morris county prosecutor's office the victim's unit and i tell them how i can prove it and i prove it and then i get him on a recorded line and he admits to everything and like the sickness about this guy man like predator and his kids still don't talk to you even though he admitted to all of it on a recorded line yes and i don't even know if they know they i don't know if they've ever read my book it's all in the book i don't know if they've ever read it yeah but that's also like a case that their dad was involved in presented in court right they didn't go they didn't go to the sentencing my aunt didn't go so but during the case like when so it wasn't like a it wasn't like a trial so he did a plea deal he did a plea deal so after the second uh report they charge him with first degree so now he's facing 20 plus years in prison and here's the problem the state of new jersey had just changed the statute limitations literally that's the reason why i was able to come forward so it was just under 10 years that it occurred so i was able to come forward so i come forward they felt like they didn't have sustainable evidence so they just said hey we're gonna give him a plea deal we're gonna give him this plea deal he'll be facing 10 to 15 years guaranteed he will go to prison for 10 to 15 years are you okay with us giving him this plea deal and i was like yeah sure i was like newly sober definitely vulnerable sort of like reverted back to like a childhood like mindset in a sense because i was like it's really just like living and re-feeling all these things i had suppressed for a long time and um i said yeah sure right yeah let's do it he's going to go away we don't have to do trial and nothing like that well they remove the first degree charge and only give him the second degree charge as part of the plea the max he's facing is seven years in prison and he gets sentenced to those seven years and he serves four of the seven years literally my book came out six years ago to the day today he got out one week before it came out oh man dude so like during it was coveted right he was supposed to get out in december of 2020 and like he kept getting all this like good time applied then it was like thanksgiving and then it was like october and then like boom september and then boom last week of august he got out in 2020 and um he was on lifetime parole megan's loss registered sex offender all that stuff um and he literally died 10 years in prison for 10 years and he died in two years pretty much 10 years to the day which is the craziest part that i came forward i came forward in february 2016 he died in february 2026 and like the day it's like it was did he remain married no my aunt divorced him my aunt divorced him but i mean like the relationship was severed between me and her and i've tried you know to put to be at peace and to to free to try to forgive i don't forget but i try to forgive that's as corny as it might sound like that's what i've learned to do in recovery because look i carried that resentment i harbor that resentment who's affected affects me that's um you know i've covered a lot of hard stories in here seriously like i've and and on that topic i've had some tough ones in here where people talk about that and that just gave me like a feeling in my gut i've never had i didn't know if i was gonna even talk about it with you but um that's like insane that's just like wow i'm sorry so i go back and like look at the at those years and then i look at my relationship with my mom and like he had essentially severed all my connections he had broken the connection i have my dad's brother at that point he broke it he used all this is what i'm telling you man like predators are sick people they're manipulative people they know how to manipulate and they know how to take advantage so it's one thing to do the act it's it's another thing to essentially cut off all mechanisms of escape and help so like the relationship with my mom well i strongly resented my mom for a block of years because she had remarried and the remarrying piece was one thing but it was like all these lies that he told me about my mom and about my stepdad all things that were just bullshit and um that's and that's so hard because he he was in a position of trust and that made you believe things and now you probably feel bad that you believe those things that's not your fault yeah like but that's so that was part of the uh the sentencing was like the power right because there's the there's a clause when a person is in a position of power usually family or some examples teacher student or coach student etc those get looked at in a more severe light when it comes to the courts obviously this was family and i mean the 9-11 piece of it didn't add to it obviously he didn't get sentenced to the rest of his life he should have never seen the light of day ever again i agree what i was going to say before is uh after the second arrest they put out a a tip line and basically said if anyone comes forward with any news anything about this guy any anything about if he did anything to you come forward type thing and there's a lot of anonymous tips that were sent in to the local police departments no one no one came forward but both of those police departments in these neighboring towns in new jersey came to me and said like yeah we had these reports and these cases of he did this to other kids we can't do anything about it because they won't tell us what their age was at the time we they won't come forward and tell their story if one other person had he would have never gotten out yeah you know but at the end of the day man it gave me a voice and i you know i ran with it were you it's such a hard place for anyone to be and the people around you to be too because he's like a trusted person in the family and there's no reason to think like correct obviously something like that but were you pissed at people in your family for no no no i wasn't pissed at people my family but like the first um you know there were slight things that occurred right his passes if you will the the icing on the cake was one night i had seen some very graphic 9 11 footage no one was at my house my mom wasn't home and i called him and he asked me to send him the link to what i saw which the the thing that i saw actually wasn't even 9 11 footage it was just um there was a thing you could do back then on google where you could tag things on a google image search so people were putting out images that were graphic and saying it was something related to 9 11 when it wasn't and i saw this and i sent it to him and then within a matter of probably 30 45 minutes he came to my house to console me right and then that's so that's that was his way and he would talk to me about it he would show me things that he would find like and so i was just trying so hard to navigate this as a kid and then young adult and like try to understand and like no one felt like i had no one to go to obviously and like it's like you're already dealing with the grief you're already dealing with this feeling of being isolated and looked at differently and feeling differently and then you have this occur and it's like i already i went to a high school that i i was the only kid who lost a father on 9 11. there was one kid in my grade who lost his brother where'd you go to high school i went to scene hall prep oh really yeah yeah yeah and a school of 1200 kids and there's two of us and the other kid and he's a friend of mine now but he didn't want to talk about it that much he he was at the time it was just different for him i wore this bracelet i still wear it i've worn like four of them at this point because i've broken them it says my dad's name in world trade center just to give you an idea like kids would make fun of me for wearing the bracelet you know what i mean like because kids just didn't know like it's like this is what kids do that's kind of crazy you know what i'm saying so like like that age it's just because like all boys school kids want to be funny or whatever i don't know but like i already felt spotlighted is what i'm trying to insinuate here i already felt like uh different and i was like there's just no way i could say anything because i'm just going to be made fun of and ridiculed and there's just no possible way is that what what made you want to try substances to get away from it to escape yeah it was the first time i felt normal i started smoking and drinking when i was 14 years old 13 years old it didn't become a problem overnight i would smoke weed and drink every weekend um my friends parties whatever never had a problem really until like my junior year of high school i was smoking a lot more senior year i was smoking pretty bad i was smoking pretty bad i was smoking pretty bad i was smoking pretty frequently um when i got to college i went to villanova and there was a lot of kids who were doing pills oxys were huge and cocaine was huge and i started doing coke and adderall my freshman year it didn't hit me it didn't have the hold on me and my sophomore year of college i i was 19 years old i was sitting in my dorm room i just smoked up with my friends fucking stone sitting there playing fifa and like one of my friends walks into the dorm room pulls out a baggie of pills from his pocket a bunch of baby blue pills little ones and he pulls out a baggie of pills and he pulls it out and he like holds it up and i'm like looking at it and he was like have you ever done these before i was like no what is it he's like they're called blues it's like you're stoned but better i'm like all right fuck it let's do it and he breaks the 30 milligram oxy in half slides me 15 milligrams i snored it and i was off dude that 15 milligrams eventually would be 900 milligrams a day it's fucking sickening man it breaks literally sickens me 900 i snored 30 of those pills a day 30 it's disgusting and it sounds crazy but if you you know anyone who was done in that world yeah knows the progression man you just don't feel it like you're just chasing and chasing and chasing and chasing so yeah everything i said i wouldn't do man i did you know and uh most importantly right like lied and robbed and cheated and stole from my mom and broke her heart a million times like put her through the ringer um you know it's like i think back on like 9-11 when i was in college and like i would be getting fucking so high and like watching the footage just to try to feel something and like i'm already like numbing myself but i need to feel something so i like look at the footage like i was just so lost man like just so desperate to i don't know heal that's like the best way i could put it like i wanted to heal so badly but i couldn't you had to heal in a lot of more ways than one yeah i mean it was like life really threw the kitchen sink out yeah yeah every possible way and that you had to heal in a lot of more ways than one yeah i mean it was like life really threw the kitchen sink out yeah yeah every possible way and that that's why like you know and i hear how you talk about it and there seems to be like regret at some of the things that happen and things like that i'm not like saying like oh it's fine you're robbed from your mom or shit like that but people get pushed to things yeah some people really get pushed to things yeah and uh i'm no doctor here but i would say you were quite pushed in the direction of just get me out of whatever the fuck this is i'm feeling yeah and i got more than a lot of empathy for that man i mean i i don't there's no excuse right like i don't take any i'm not a victim and i i i appreciate you saying that because you're a stand-up guy and everything but i uh i just i can't imagine growing up how you grew up and then having the very thing that was already the most traumatic thing used against you in the way it was yeah and possibly not wanting to get yeah i i don't yeah i mean but you know what like that's the baffling part about it man is that the book comes out and you're gonna see this i promise you i don't know you're gonna see it there are so many other 9-11 kids now adults who were dealt hands too yeah you know um and there's a lot of kids who who went through worse things than me as crazy as worse than you yeah i don't know all their stories but i've heard bits and pieces and like those stories aren't always publicized you know um but a lot of people reached out to me and i immediately found solace and knowing like maybe i gave them some sort of hope to speak up that's right absolutely and it's more and it's more than it's more than just that too it's more than just that community which of course can yeah with you but like whenever people are brave enough to tell these kinds of stories and how it happened it those are the coolest messages i get from the podcast when people are like hey i saw that podcast with so-and-so i just want to let you know like that was six months ago and now i'm clean right like you get messages like that and i look at it i'm like holy shit dude i'm doing this in my second bedroom right here you know but people like you come in here and do that and it never not only does it never get old i never lose the gravity and appreciation for yeah you know you being vulnerable like that because it it really does make a difference for a lot of people i just know because someone did it for me and a person who had no no we did it for you no connection to my story i was in my sober living and i was it was like i'm telling you man god my dad like everything intervened and was looking out for me at one time i got the phone call well this part and this is the thing i was sober and it's still hazy um it's the power of trauma truthfully it just blacks you out um i was in a sober living with about 45 men and there was a guy who was in there who had um basically been gifted a second chance because he was in prison for some very bad things and the court went a little easier on him and let him go to treatment and when he was in this treatment center he spoke in front of all these guys we were in like a big you and uh he talked about being sexually abused this guy was big and tough and tatted up and all that stuff and i'm like maybe everyone's intimidated by this guy but no one was like laughing and i was looking around the room like no one's laughing at this like hearing these words no one's like snickering or there's nothing you so what's going on here so i walked up to him after and i will never ever forget it and i said listen i just want to let you know i went through something very similar and you really inspire me to speak up dude and he was like you and i are not the only ones who went through it we're the ones who have the courage right now to speak about it and i literally have taken his words and applied it to my life he had such a different story than me very bad story you still talk to him today yeah you know he wasn't he he wasn't sober for a little while he didn't stay sober but he's he's back and uh i told i told him that i talked about that story because it changed me it changed me fundamentally man like then i get the call from my brother did i do my fifth step my first fifth step in aa how do can i back up for once again yeah how did you how did you even go to get clean from this because that that's i mean 900 milligrams a day is uh i was in my first detox at 20 years old and what caused that like what got you there so march 2013 i was doing 10 oxys a day 300 milligrams cry for help i stole from my mom took her debit card went to the atm guessed her pin i knew that she'd always pull out 200 every week for groceries and for this i'm gonna a little spending whatever so i pulled out 200 dollars she didn't notice the next day i did it again 200 she didn't notice the next day 60 dollars for whatever reason the 60 dollars was like the trigger and 60 dollars would get me about two pills so she calls me into the my dad's office this infamous room that like all these things have occurred in and she sits me down she goes she has her statement highlighted and she's like what are all these charges i didn't take out this money did she know you had it some time ago she suspected and she said what's going on and uh like i i broke down i said mom you know i'm addicted to painkillers i think i need help i think i need some fucking help it's first time i admitted it at that point i've been using for i've been doing pills for six months maybe eight months the most doesn't take much man doesn't take much it doesn't take much and i'll tell you like i went to that detox while i'm in that detox they're giving me a medication called suboxone which is what they give you for withdrawal but it blocks the opioid receptors in your brain that's right you cannot physically get high after while it's in your system you need to wait at least 72 hours i think it is something like that otherwise it does nothing and you also can't take suboxone too soon after using because it'll put you into precipitated withdrawal which is like the worst withdrawal ever times a million so anyway i'm in there counselor calls me into her office on day five of being in detox i was going to be there for like seven or eight days and she sits me down she's your mom's on the phone hands me the phone i'm like hello and my dad's dad died of a heart attack so i was very close to my grandfather and um i hung up with my mom i walked out i walked up to the nurse and i said i'm not taking the suboxone anymore and she's looked at me she's you know you're going to be in withdrawal right i'm like yeah i know i planned it the moment i got out of that detox three days later i left and i got high went to my grandfather's funeral this is one thing you know i talk about regret like i don't have a lot of regret i've made my immense i've made a living immense to my father graveside immense to my father i mean living immense to my mom um you know my dad wasn't even alive for all of this obviously but like i've made my immense to him and um i went to my grandfather's waken funeral i had uh i had a baggie full of pills in my suit jacket pocket right and i'm sitting with my grandmother um and my dad's brother asked me to speak on behalf of my father my dad was the oldest and i'm the oldest i was the first bocce grandson so i was the first name first continuation of the name right and uh he asked me to speak on behalf of my dad and being the oldest grandson and i said okay yeah i'll do it right and i'm texting my dealer the whole time texting my dealer like when can i meet you when can i meet you because i was so afraid of not having pills to get me through this and i had enough in my pocket to get me through the night into the morning which is what like every addict's thing is that get to the morning wake up you're in you're dope sick you get high you figure out the way you're gonna get more money to get to keep it going and my dealer hits me as i'm sitting in that front row about to go up and speak she hits me she goes if you want to come through and cop you got to come now i walk up i walk i get up and i walk out and i never i didn't say a word and my whole family just watched me leave and that is something that i that really bothered me for a long time i may my i made a grave side of meds to my grandfather but it really affected me i mean i i was so powerless in that moment that run continues for a few more months that summer i go to my second detox and while i'm there i'm getting high in detox i get out how do you even because i was at a place that i wasn't staying at it was like a weird like intensive outpatient place so they're giving me suboxone right but as i they give it to me i put it under my tongue i'd walk away from the counter and throw it out and i'd get high and um that run then continued for two and a half years and um i graduated from villanova i work in you graduated from villanova during this whole graduate from villanova you're a fucking galaxy brain bro not even man i you know just like i just kept it going man i don't know um like like holy shit i don't know how i kept it afloat truthfully i mean i i struggled believe me i i was this close to withdrawing going on a medical leave like but they were encouraging me to go so i was failing classes like i didn't have a good gpa but you still but i graduated ended up passing yeah i gotta have huberman study you so wow damn so i graduated living like that for two and a half years two and a half years straight i mean i total of four years of of active use with with oxys and heroin and xanax i'm glad you're still here man i shouldn't be truthful i should not be it's funny like reading that because it's like the amount of close calls like when there's no doubt in my mind that there was something looking out for me i know it was my dad but like there was something there because like there were a lot of close calls in the end like may 2015 i was supposed to get high with a friend of mine from college we were both in new york city he you're working at this worked in new york city i was working i worked at three different firms in one year out of college i couldn't keep a job yeah but what what what type of work finance i was trying to be like my dad so this is like you know it's crazy because i never wanted to be in that field my dad hated his job but i was like i'm gonna do it right i want to do it to be like him i want to do it to keep his name alive and like i get my first job out of school i worked at rbc can you name me yep yeah um i was on a bond desk and great opportunity that i ruined and um i had some crazy stories about that but like yeah i ruined it and i failed my series seven and i had walked into the exam blitzed in my mind and they tell you to write this like t chart for the options table the options portion of the exam was heavy back then it was like about 50 55 60 percent of the exam and if you're right put call buy sell the right way it's your cheat sheet well three it's a six hour exam three hours into the exam you get your break i walk out my little pink sheet because you're allowed to leave with it and i walk into the bathroom and i realize i flipped the fucking thing right and i failed by like three points so if i had gotten that right and they give you they give you the result like right there you submit it and it's right there and it's immediate it's immediate yeah and so i had fit this is where again like it's a gift from god because if i had passed that exam who knows where i would have been right like i was going to get a promotion i was going to get a big commission promotion doing 900 milligrams yeah and like dude i was so you're making me second guess everything i've done sober yeah you are i can't do half the things you've done like i never met someone that productive who did a lot of oxy i'm just letting you know i think that i just had this way of i'm not a genius believe me i am not a genius um might be a little smarter give yourself credit for it maybe maybe but dude honestly uh oh you you want a break for one second let's take a break let's take a break for the better we'll be right i got a pizza all right we're back your bladder's okay now crazy it's not the post office you don't have to like clock out you're like like i just said though after what you went through and me complaining about a piss all right He's like, I'll take this pain. Hold it, hold it, hold it. That's it. But you were just saying, so you didn't pass the Series 7, and you're grateful now that that happened because you're like, who knows where I would have been because obviously I guess after that. I was making good money out of college too, and I had no money to my name. So I think that if I hit those goals and then continued in that field, then I don't know what would have happened. But anyway, I remember I was going. A friend of mine from college, we were supposed to get together and get high, and he bailed on me. And he went home to New Jersey, and he died of an overdose. Oh, man. And I found out soon thereafter that he only left because he basically got evicted from his apartment and all these things happened, and I just don't know. If I was with him that day. If I was with him that day, that night, like we were planning, like what would have happened? Fentanyl was just becoming a thing, right? So when I first went to detox in 2013, there was guys in there that were in there for fentanyl patches that were like, they were severe pain management cases, but there was not pills laced with fentanyl. And then like when I get heroin in New Jersey, it's by the bundle, the little wax paper baggies, and they have a stamp on them, right? So I don't know how much was in each bag, but in other states, they do them by the gram. And then it gets to a point, like when I went to Derry, New Hampshire, like all these kids from Boston and Mass are coming into the sober living, and they were telling me like, there's no dope anymore. Like, so the heroin I did was brown. They were like, this is, it's like white powder. Like they know it's fentanyl, and they're purposely wanting to get it. And that's like the sickness of addiction, man. Like people die from a bag, and like the addict wants that back. They want to feel that. And like, so yeah, God intervened several times. My dad intervened several times. I had a sign from my father ultimately. So- Well, your friend passes away. My friend passes away. So my friend passes away. A month prior to that, I get put on probation for one year in the state of New Jersey for my felony charges. So you already had felony charges from college. I got arrested. I got, no, no. So I graduated from Villanova in 2014. In November 2014, I get arrested for speeding. I get pulled over for speeding. I have three ounces of weed and 50 oxys on me. And you were, with pending charges, you were able to work at the bank? I was able to keep it going. So here's what happened. God, I wasn't allowed to work at a bank because I had a fake ID. Hold on, hold on. Wait, what bank is this? So, so, so. It's fucking Canada, bro. So we're going to talk about, like, you think I'm a genius. Well, here's where I'm not a genius. So I get arrested, okay? I get arrested, and I get a lawyer, and he's like, here, here's my retainer. Like, here's my, you have to sign this agreement, and here's my retainer. So I'm still high. I'm at work, and I print the fucking retainer. Oh, no. From the work comprenter, fill it all out, scan it, and send it to my attorney. I get called into HR, and they're like, we saw this. This got flagged. What happened here? And I don't know what I said. I'm just like a, I'm not a con artist, but, like, I'm like a talker. Oh, no. And I said whatever I said. I said whatever I said to, like, sort of get around it, and, like, I was good. Like, I didn't get let go because of this. Now, mind you, nothing happened yet. I wasn't sentenced to anything. This was November 2014. And he was like, don't worry about it. Hey, we'll figure it out. We're in New Jersey. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know what I said. I schmoozed it. I don't know what I said. Like, I think I said I got, like, pulled over. I don't know. Honestly, they didn't drug test me, nothing, after the, like, when I was, when they caught this. So I don't know how I got around it. So then April 2nd. 2015, after, like, all these little things that I did manipulate the system a little bit, my lawyer worked in my favor, and he was like, look, we're going to get you dropped down on these felonies, and they're going to be misdemeanors. Some of them are misdemeanors, but if you screw up and you get drug tested and you fail, they will send you, they could potentially send you to jail that day. Right. And there's no, you know, three strikes. You get lucky if they give you a second chance, but this is what it's going to be. Yeah. So I get sentenced. It's a one-year probation, and he tells me the first letter is going to come probably in, like, two months. And my friend dies in May. In June, I get the letter. Early June. The letter? A letter in the mail from my probation, from Morris County Probation Services or whatever it was, and it was like, your first drug test. On the bottom, it's bolded, July 22nd, 2015, at 10 a.m. in Dover, New Jersey. So I'm like, all right, I got, like, two months to get sober, two months to figure this out. I called up one of my dealers, who I knew. He was on what's called drug, was called Drug Court in New Jersey, where he'd have to call in a number, a phone number every day. They would read off his number or color, depending on the day, and if it was picked, he'd have to go in and test. He told me he'd get mouth swapped. So what he would do is drink this mouthwash and, like, swallow it, and it would give you clean saliva for, like, 30 minutes. So I went to a smoke shop in Patterson, New Jersey, and I bought two vials. Two little bottles of this mouthwash and two bags of synthetic urine, fake urine. And I was staying with my grandma for a couple weeks. My mom was, like, afraid something was going to happen. Like, she, like, was really worried, obviously. I was, like, it didn't look the way I look today. I was extremely overweight. I had no color in my face. My body was shutting down on me. You were overweight? So I was addicted to opiates and benzos. That combination completely messes with your metabolism. Like, I was eating junk food left over. I was eating junk food left over. Fast and right, fast food, all that stuff. But, like, I couldn't go to the bathroom, you know, because the opiates, they make you constipated. So, like, I couldn't go to the bathroom. So, like, I just, you know, I was in horrible shape. I didn't take care of myself physically. I didn't eat healthy, nothing. I didn't drink water. So, anyway, the morning of that drug test, I go to the testing center. I pull into my spot, and I get high. I start drinking the mouthwash, and I go inside, and I sit down in the waiting room. It's, like, a kind of, like, another, like, square room, and there's, like, a guy in one corner in a gray sweatsuit. It's the middle of the summer, and another guy in another corner, and they're both, like, chugging water, doing jumping jacks. And I'm, like, sitting there, like, with this complete ego in a suit and tie, and I'm, like, these fucking guys, man. Like, I drank my mouthwash. I'm going to go in there. I'm going to swab clean. I'm going to walk out, and I'm going to keep going. My lawyer told me if I pass the first drug test, like, they might not call me again for the rest of the year. Like, you might get lucky. You might never get called again. He knew, though. He's, like, something. Like, you're not sober. Like, he knew I wasn't sober. So I'm looking at my wash. I'm, like, okay, I got, like, 20 minutes left to clean saliva. And I get called into my PO's office. I sit at her desk, and on the keyboard is the mouth swab in the packaging. I'm, like, looking at the mouth swab, and I'm, like, holy shit. Like, this is it. I'm going to. She's going to swab me. I'm going to pass. I'm out of here. And she has, like, a stack of papers, and she's going through all the papers, asking me all these questions. And, like, my youngest brother, I was at my mom's house, and she was, like, your youngest brother's under the age of 18, so if you fail this test, we can call Dyfus and all this thing. I'm, like, okay, yeah, sure, whatever. And she looks at me, and she's, like, are you going to pass? I said, yeah, I'm going to pass. Are you sure? I was, like, yeah, I'm going to pass. And she, like, bends down, grabs a cup, hands it to me, and I stand up, and I'm, like, and it hit me, and I'm, like, the fake urine was not trapped in my leg. Grab the cup, go into the bathroom. When I get into the bathroom, it's, like, an angled mirror. So in these centers, like, a guy walks in with you or a woman walks in with a female, and they watch you. They watch you pee. And so, like, I go in, I walk up to the urinal, and the angled mirror is there. The guy is not watching me pee. I'm peeing into this cup. And I look, and he's looking at the door, literally like this, and he's standing, staring at the door. And I'm, like, if only I brought that fake urine. And so another moment, right? And so I walk back into her office. I sit back down at her desk. I'm waiting for her to come in, and she comes in. And she starts spinning the cup in a circle and showing me everything that I failed for. Like, things that I had no idea, still to this day, how I ingested them. Like, what pill I did or what powder I snorted. Whatever I did that was leased, I don't know. And she sits down, and she's, like, look, you had two months' notice of this test. Like, you had literally two months' notice. Like, I don't know if this is a cry for help, but you genuinely can't stop. And I cut her off, and I was, like, ma'am, like, sincerely, like, I want to get sober. Like, I want to stop. I really want to stop. I can't stop, but I want to. And she's, like, look, I'll give you one more chance. You come back in one month, and you're clean and sober. I will drop all these charges down to misdemeanors. If you stay sober for one year, you'll finish this probation, and you will not go to jail. If you come back in one month, and you fail that test, there's no more second chances. You're going to jail that day. I stood up, and I shook her hand. I said, okay, deal. I left, called out of work, went back to my mom's house. No one was at my mom's house. And this is where it's, like, it gets emotional for me. It's, I will never, I will never forget, like, that day. And I got home. I paced back and forth that same kitchen hallway I walked through on 9-11, back and forth, back and forth, debating what to do. Go back in one month. Bring the fake urine. Bring the mouthwash again. And maybe con the system and pass the test. Or maybe just wave the white flag and surrender and say, I need some help. I made myself a drink. Roll myself up a joint. Call on one friend. He's, like. "Dude, just go back in a month and bring the fake ear and you're good." friend's like just go to treatment why don't you just go to treatment finally get go to rehab for real i walk outside to the backyard and i spark up the joint and i look up and it's like so vividly crystal clear blue sky just like 9-11 and i'm like fucking done done i'm so stoned and i just started hysterically crying hysterically crying and i'm like dad please please give me a sign i need help so i talked about my dad's premonition that same timeline the two weeks before i don't know why or how this even came about but my dad said to my mom how he wanted to be cremated which i mentioned but he talked about when he died he was going to come back as a fly don't know why he said it i don't know why and my mom on september 12th was told to look for the signs from a family friend she said michelle look for the signs and that night this fly lands my mom my mom's nightstand and like that was like i talked about like the memorial service the candlelit service with the with the wind and all that that was her moment where she was like that's it like that's her sign when i say that i've had i had visits still to this day i do but then visits from this very specific type of fly um in moments that i can't explain you know dead of winter side street in philly getting high in my car windows up flies in the car like all these all these other random moments and on that sunny day in july 2015 i'm leaning on this railing and this fly lands on the railing and it just sits there and i'm staring at it and i'm like looking at the joy and i'm like i'm so fucking stoned like what is going on here and i'm crying hysterically and i'm like going like this to make it go away fly away and it won't go won't go it's spinning in a circle i pull out my phone and i start recording it i still have the video start recording it me you hear me you know sniffling and this fly is just sitting on the railing and i put out the joint and i said i'm done i'm done i walked inside i called up a detox this lady picks up and i said ma'am i'm not sober right now please get me in tonight i need to bed i need to bed tonight and she said i can't get you in until friday morning i said okay fine i gave her all my information my insurance all this stuff i'm like i need the bed please reserve the bed for me and i wrote my mom this long letter i had committed credit card fraud on my mom's accounts like she was dealing with all this stuff with american express and chase and all these things like all these things that she knew i did but she couldn't prove it and i admitted to all of it and i was like mom like i'm going to treatment i'm going to get help friday morning i'm going to detox and i've been sober since that was july 24 2015 and man i'm like i'm not sober man like you know six months into sobriety and all that stuff i come forward about the abuse like dude like i did my first fourth and fifth step and i had like signed from the fly you know i had all these other moments in that first year of sobriety where like i felt my dad's presence felt it knew it he was there and like you know it's like these moments these things you just cannot explain um and that's kept me through it's kept me sober i i had a really strong resentment towards god for a long time my dad was a strong man of faith i had a really strong resentment against god and um i was told that i needed a higher power i needed to pick something greater than myself my first sponsor said it doesn't matter what it is i said i'm gonna make it my dad that's it and i've realm with that for 11 years you know and like so there's a lot of young guys who struggle when they get sober like oh like i don't want to pick you know i need to make it my dad that's it and i've realm with that for 11 years you know and like so there's a higher power like what is that going to be for me and i'm like well i tell them my story i'm like this is my this is my higher power and so we have this like little cutout thing that someone made my mom had made um of a fly and like i talked to some of my dad's colleagues and they can all they all like attest to why he would like fly on the wall like that type of thing and like that was like my dad's personality like just this exuberant in your face but in a loving way type of guy you know and um yeah you just quit that day i went to detox and i man i'll tell you like that detox physically was the hardest thing i went through i i had two seizures in a week because of the amount of xanax i was addicted to if i was not under medical supervision i would have died um the opiate withdrawal is you can't die from it but benzos and alcohol you can and it was scary and then i went to i i'd always avoided 30-day treatment that was my thing i was like i'll go to detox but i won't do anything more and i was like i'm gonna die from it and i'm gonna die from it and i'm gonna so i went to detox for it ended up being 10 days then i went from there to 30-day treatment i was there for 34 days and then i went to the sober living thinking i was going there for 90 days i stayed there for nine months good for you and changed my life changed my life you know like i did you totally remove it do you feel like you totally removed the i i don't even know the word here but the feeling of need for that oh yeah substances like like you meaning as someone who was addicted very heavily to things like in the years after that it wasn't like there was a constant demon hanging over you you were like that was an old me i got sober at 23 years old and i was told that i needed to be comfortable to a degree around alcohol like the weeds pub like weeds legal right right i needed to be comfortable doesn't mean i want to put myself in situations i used to be in situations i used to be in so yeah like if i have a problem with someone drinking or smoking a joint at a wedding like whatever walking new york city three hours ago and i'm like you whiff it everywhere you go you know and sometimes i'll be like yeah it smells nice like i'm not i'm not gonna deny it like i am human um i wish there is a part of me that's like yeah if i if i could smoke weed and it would just stay with that yeah i would smoke weed but i know myself i i've i know who i am i tried i tried just drinking i tried just smoking i always went back that's just me the people in my life who can smoke or drink and have a glass of wine at dinner and that's fine like i just know who i am it might not happen right away but it will it'll get me again right um you know that i know really mature that you know that about yourself i just i won't take the risk that's that's and again like also like you were saying like a 23 to kind of make that yeah i did enough i did enough damage in those years to know like okay like it's just not worth for me you know but again like i have friends who drink my wife like she's not an alcoholic or anything like she can have a glass of wine and you live in delray beach i live in delray beach man like you know it's the rehab capital of the world dangerously close to fort lickerdale right there jesus christ you know but um i put myself in situations that would baffle a lot of people i i i've learned how to live my life sober and have fun you forgive yourself though i've forgiven myself i would hope so yeah yeah that's the bottom line you know i don't ever and and good for you for being like so mature about it in every single lens but like you know it's not to say like oh it's all excused or something like that you don't want to be like that like people that'll say i don't regret anything i ever did because it made me who i am today that's a dangerous thing if you're not learning moving forward which clearly you don't have a problem with but you know i would like to think that like people who go through the kinds of things that you did especially after the fact who then are brave enough to like be able to get through it and get yourself on the other side you have the grace for yourself to be like hey you know there's things i regret there but like i understand how i got pushed there and you should be really proud of yourself for pulling yourself out of that i i think i i am and i mean look i've been connected to a lot of people in this 9-11 community as a result of this that's why i say like my story's not unique there have been widows who i've been in contact with who had problems with drinking or whatever the case may be i mean like there are i've been connected to a lot of people um it doesn't excuse and 9-11 was never and i this is where the growth really came from me was like when i came forward about being abused my mom called me when i got back to delray that night she said or excuse me derry that night she said uh this is why this is why you did the things you did like it wasn't just dad it was it was this and this was like the mature moment for me where like i realized like i was actually learning and i said mom like you i'm an alcoholic i'm an addict this is how i am i've been like this since i was a kid like i had the traits i had it addiction i had it before my dad died and i and then his death brought it out his death brought to light sooner and then drugs not look maybe if it wasn't gonna be drugs and alcohol it was gonna be something else i know that and i've seen that in sobriety too like i've had my own you know i had a struggle with gambling for a little while and i haven't gambled in six years like i i like i can't do anything safely right you know so um that that gets me outside of myself um but i told her that and she just couldn't understand it and look there are other 9-11 kids who didn't who don't have a problem with drugs and alcohol like sure you know so it's just it was never an excuse i used it a little bit in the beginning yeah i did but it's just not the reality yeah it's clear like there's a whenever i hear a story like that that firm line in the sand moment it's it's like the biggest growing moment that a human being can have because you just go from this all right i'm at the bottom of the ditch right now i'm gonna have to get out of this like let's not ignore that but it becomes clear and you're finally like oh shit all right right this can't be this way right a lot of people never get to to that moment so good for you that you did thank you and you know i i guess yeah how did how did your siblings like deal with that era too you know your younger brothers yeah that was hard oldest brother that was hard for them i mean you know there's i have videos on my phone that i sometimes will re-watch um from like the last two weeks of my active addiction was very very very bad basically a blackout i tried killing myself that didn't work obviously try to make it look like an accidental overdose um and i there's videos that my brothers filmed um one of which is funny that we'll we laugh at now i had this bad obsession if you will addiction if you with uh with sugar candies and things like that so i used to eat rice crispy cereal yeah and i would put sugar on top and it was like and the way it would like when you put the milk in there it does like this like almost uh pop rock sounding thing yeah and it's amazing and i'm blissed out of my mind i'm eating it in the kitchen with this big bowl and this big like pasta spoon wooden pasta spoon just so my brother's filming me and he's like he doesn't know like he's laughing but like it's like it's bad and i do not look good i do not look good huge belly hanging down um and then the other video which is which saddens me is one of me nodding out outside and my brothers were filming me and they're like they're laughing they didn't understand it because my youngest brother was the one that was laughing so he's like 14 at the time he was no he was um yeah he was like 14 yeah yeah yeah and uh but he's so immature for his age right and he just didn't understand it um the things that they had seen with my mom and me like my mom having to like you know try to wake me up and you know a lot of arguments and things like that like her taking stuff from me like just a lot of things that i put them all through you know so i had to make my amends um and i had to forgive myself you know my youngest brother i really i brought him on a drug run with me um i left the kid in the car to go get high and so yeah that messed me up for a while and it was hard for him to hear it he knew you know he was young when it happened but like when i made the amends to him he was like just i'm glad that you're doing better and um you know it's like you have to live with that but you have to forgive yourself too oh yeah you know so it seems like yeah you have a great mom too who no she's amazing support you throw it and then yeah you know she knows you're under the influence when you're doing those things too people do things that they don't yeah they would not normally do that's right yeah yeah so what about your stepdad was that tough like that relationship during that time or he didn't know how to approach certain things it was hard for him um no one's ever going to be your dad so it's he tried it's a it's a hard line a lot of baggage to walk into oh yeah believe me a widow is one thing 9-11 four boys who are can be a little rough you know friend of mine married in 9-11 yeah widow with uh i don't know i don't know if i'm gonna be able to do that but i'm gonna uh three boys yeah it's tough it's hard yeah it's hard i don't i don't blame the kids at all it's it's a very difficult dynamic yeah it is and and always the remarrying no matter what is always hard but but he's you know my mom and him are so happily married and you have a good relationship we have a really good relationship yeah yeah so um you know it's it's it's hard and as i become a father too it's been hard because i i think about things i reflect on things and i wonder what it would what it would be like my dad was here and you know i i feel him don't get me wrong i feel his presence um but it's hard we named my son after him that's cool my dad wanted to name me after him being the first the last second he pivoted your name after your dad right yeah just like a middleman yeah so he pivoted and he said i'm going to give him his own identity that was his thing okay so he named me matthew john his name was john um then as we you know kept going he same thing and my youngest brother who never knew my father really he was going to name him john paul and uh i as a nine-year-old was like that's not fair like you're gonna name me after you yeah like i'm the oldest and i felt like kind of guilty about that for a second but then he was like you know what yeah he should have his own identity he should have his own identity too so he named him paul which is his middle name so then as like a nice homage to my father we named him my son paul and then i was like oh my god i'm gonna name him john paul and then i was like oh my god i'm gonna name him john paul and then i was like oh my god i'm gonna name him john john paul and then i was like oh my god i'm gonna name him john john and um you know it's it's been a and um you know it's it's been a and um you know it's it's been a beautiful gift beautiful blessing circle beautiful gift beautiful blessing circle beautiful gift beautiful blessing circle of life circle of life yeah and he's of life circle of life yeah and he's of life circle of life yeah and he's like the next generation 100 so it's like the next generation 100 so it's like the next generation 100 so it's cool man that's cool man that's cool man that's yeah i often say like to think i could yeah i often say like to think i could yeah i often say like to think i could have missed it you know have missed it you know have missed it you know right but now you're here i'm here now right but now you're here i'm here now right but now you're here now appreciation for that that even like appreciation for that that even like appreciation for that that even like very excited fathers out there can't very excited fathers out there can't very excited fathers out there can't possibly have yeah which is that's kind possibly have yeah which is that's kind possibly have yeah which is that's kind of cool yeah absolutely dude this of cool yeah absolutely dude this of cool yeah absolutely dude this good call good call good call edit me out of this episode please no edit me out of this episode please no edit me out of this episode please no not at all this is great you told me not at all this is great you told me not at all this is great you told me this was gonna be something i know we this was gonna be something i know we this was gonna be something i know we just met this year but dude proud of just met this year but dude proud of you dude yeah likewise especially you dude yeah likewise especially you dude yeah likewise especially especially here but especially here but especially here but you know you don't have to give me the you know you don't have to give me the you know you don't have to give me the likewise i appreciate that but it's like likewise i appreciate that but it's like likewise i appreciate that but it's like this is your story is incredible yeah i this is your story is incredible yeah i this is your story is incredible yeah i got all the details it's just got all the details it's just got all the details it's just proud man it's great yeah a lot of proud man it's great yeah a lot of proud man it's great yeah a lot of resiliency like i mean i i at every step resiliency like i mean i at every step for sure and i i just i don't know podcasts like this are my favorite just because it's like like i was saying earlier it just gives an example for people out there to see like there's someone that's going to hear this right now and just be like whoa i see myself in that yeah i hope so yeah that's so cool well we were going to be talking earlier about some of the stuff around like how you dealt with after 9 11 we just took a crazy yeah amazing tangent right there but that's a perfect example of like the ripple effect of how right different that you know you didn't say you had this stuff before 9 11 but yeah it's afterwards yeah crazy man yeah you can kind of see where it all it's that's that's something but you were before we got all into this in your personal story you were talking about how like the 9 11 commission report came out and there was like okay what the is going on there and david you mentioned some in the years right after that you started obsessively like trying to go look at some of the footage and and find things out but what kind of gets ignored in my opinion in the media is the fact that there has been a literal ongoing legal process if you even want to call it that it's been an embarrassment in some ways as to how this has gone down but like a legal process with the entire 9 11 victims as a class action with the saudi government yeah because the saudi government had all kinds of people that you know definitely knew something or were around something and you guys righteously so and you're righteously so and you're righteously so and you're families are trying to get answers and now there's it's moving something moving forward in court finally yeah um last year the judge federal judge was overseeing the case um essentially ruled that the saudis do not have a position to dismiss the case which they've been trying to do now they i'm sure you heard about the live golf tournament yes but please explain this to people okay so four years ago you have the pga which is you know the biggest golf network of tournaments um and the saudi family the kingdom of saudi arabia has essentially sports washed in many different capacities they they were involved in sports that's what it's called i like that and fact check the soccer team there was a soccer team that they did a big buyout or something and invested a lot of money into so basically what they've done is a big fu to the 911 communities essentially is they've taken their money and they have a lot of it and they put it into all these different pools and just said okay instead of settling this case and being done and taking full culpability we're just going to spend money all in these different places and make ourselves look better so four years ago they established this tournament this this golf league called the live golf league and the idea was to make golf fun and it's like there's these events and golf is you know and i'm a golfer um but golf has this time it has this ability at times to be you know this like almost like snooty kind of sport in a sense right and they want it to be fun and they're playing loud music and all these things and like you know drinking whatever trying to make this whole thing and their idea was to basically poach all the big players so they throw millions of dollars multi-millions of dollars at the biggest players in the game phil mickelson i think he got 200 million dollars yeah didn't they go after like de chambeau i can't stand him um i have i have a very strong vendetta against the guy i do i do i really don't i don't hold strong right roy held strong tiger held strong and basically the players who went over to live could not go back to the pga so then you know there was what pissed me off was that bryson and i actually dm'd him and he never responded um he said this thing on air a few years ago and it was uh basically saying the 911 families it's been what do you say it's been 21 years they need to move on or something something along those lines and it pissed me off it really really said that he really said that when they've had no justice in courts no justice in court so that if we can get the number they spent a lot of money like over a billion dollars easily to get these big players right and so four years ago i started doing a lot of advocacy work and i had to really take a step back because it was draining um but just basically to show and this is the thing like my friends who knew my father all reached out to me and said like i yeah i had no idea that the saudis were involved they didn't they didn't know like because this wasn't listen let's be real this has not been a thing that's been publicized correctly until recently um so that was you were right by the way dave pulled it up 1.3 to 1.6 billion specifically dedicated to signing bonuses and guarantees for poach golfers you , John Rahm got yeah there you go 300 to 350 million and so like i saw i started were you lebron i started seeing some of these people's arguments and saying like oh it's life-changing money and like you know like what would you do and like sure like i could sort of see it but boomer siason love the guy he he plugged my book years ago he actually he referenced my book with the event with the live event so the first event was at trump edminster i remember that yeah it doesn't matter if it's a good event or not it's a good event it's a good event it's a good event it doesn't matter where you stand in the political spectrum but like that was what really bothered a lot of 9-11 families was that the first event's happening in our backyard yeah like ben minster new jersey where there was a lot of families in in the near nearby towns my my town included who lost people families and they're having the first event there and they're you know parading around and meanwhile this is all the saudis so anyway uh that's just to give you some back backstory but yeah october 7th the proceedings are apparently going to be continuing so this also came up in the epstein files too and you were telling me before you you at least saw some of this but there's literally i don't know if we can pull it off jmail deep and he probably already has but there's literally an email where jeffrey epstein's going back and forth and the context this is like maybe 2016 2017. the context is he's explaining legal maneuvers to be able to delay these hearings in court meaning he's working obviously directly against you guys the 9-11 victims families to try to i don't know aid the saudi government right in a way and i you just see stuff like this and it's i mean it's a slap in the face when i read it i can't imagine what it's like for you and the fact that there's been clear protection and there's been clear protection over the years we saw one that really bothers me man muhammad bin salman killed jamal khashoggi ordered the killing of him in the saudi consulate in turkey and there's even evidence this one is not 100 proven but like there's strong evidence that he was on the video monitor in the room while they chopped this guy to pieces and we saved him we let it go we kept all our arms deals in place like so i look at this and i go you know i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm you know everyone talks about the relationship with israel and how messed up some of that is like you also have to talk about this one too because there's something there behind the scenes that like these these guys were also directly involved in some way in 9-11 and then they're also killing journalists while they're living in the u.s by the way operating for u.s companies and they just get away with it i i don't understand what that is well then there was people who reached out to me when this first became a thing and they were like well you know the saudi family is connected to this and that and they have investing in in meta as a facebook as an example and i'm like i'm not denying that they don't have involvement in numerous big companies and organizations in the united states but what the whole point of this tournament was literally to create an event where they were essentially you know money laundering and sports watching their image and for what now the tournaments failed you know it's no longer it's dissolved basically i think um not all the players so that was the whole thing too the players then were able to come back to pga and so there was a whole outcry about that the players who stuck with the pga and said i'm not going to take the saudi money now these guys get to come back they took all that money now they come back and people are like well that's a smart business move like yeah like can i see that side of it sure but at the same time i'm like you're just taking blood money right you're taking blood money and then you know the argument i could see being made like are we taking blood money if there's a you know settlement or whatever which who knows what's going to happen with this right but at the same time it's like these people were culpable we know it's proven and it wasn't until the british government brought that video to justice i think it was a year ago um of what's his name parading around the white house um the capitol building um a video that we had the united states government had and was withheld what video is this i i don't know about this what's his name uh um he's like scouting the area he was scouting the area and he was filming it and he was showing them and it wasn't until the british government this is prior to 9-11 obviously so they have a saudi scouting the area uh what's his name uh omar abayumi i think right am i right i didn't see any shit it's crazy man and it's like then that this is where you can kind of run into this rabbit hole of like what did our government the man new videos of a man in 9-11 lawsuit reveal extremist links thieves get in the video that it's just loading but let's at least read it so we have it so the man at the heart of the 1 trillion dollar lawsuit brought by 9-11 families had extensive links to saudi government officials and went paintballing with one of al-qaeda's future leaders video obtained by the bbc reveals the footage which the fbi had within days of the 2001 attacks stands in contrast to omar al by uni's 25 years of denials that he was an extremist and a saudi spy by yumi who claimed to be a student when he was in the united states is seen in the clip what embracing anwar al-alaki so this was an american citizen that obama drone strike he loved drones the drone striked out in africa which was controversial because he was an american citizen but he was on foreign soil i guess at the time so he's seen in one clip embracing anwar al-alaki and he's seen in one clip embracing anwar al-alaki and he's seen in one clip embracing anwar al-alaki who would go on to lead al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula and another by yumi and al-alaki are paintballing near san diego with an official from saudi arabia's ministry of islamic affairs the videos form part of the 9-11 family's lawsuit against saudi arabia and have never been shown publicly before the lawsuit argues saudi arabia was complicit in the attacks and that by yumi aided two of the 19 hijackers who flew planes into the world trade center and the pentagon with another crashing in pennsylvania by yumi this is the part right here by yumi was arrested in the uk by the metropolitan police days after the attacks and the videos were found among his possessions along with other crucial evidence this included a diagram of a plane with a flight descent equation written alongside i was there they were there for the interview multiple fbi agents received copies of the diagram but it was never shared with the british interrogators even though it had been couriered to the police station where by yumi was being held in custody the diagram was also kept from some of the fbi agents investigating by yumi as well as the 9-11 commission the independent inquiry into the largest mass murder in u.s history in which nearly 3 000 people were killed by yumi was never prosecuted he and the saudi government did not respond to the bbc's request for comment but both have always denied any involvement in or prior knowledge of the attacks the fbi declined to comment wow like what the fuck so the video that i was referring to this is different is one of him and i'm sure we could i'm sure he could find it and it's he's walking around the area so the fourth plane presumably was supposed to be dc yeah and so yeah and that wasn't until they released the british released that video um and i believe it was a year ago and again like we've known about this so how does it make you feel to find stuff out like this so long after i mean it's fucking frustrating yeah i mean it's not shocking at the same time that's the weird part that's the messed up part like how long did it take for the 28 pages to be um released and they were redacted the 28 pages isn't that the i'm pretty sure that was obama that spearheaded that that's the video that i'm referring to what saudi intelligence officer films location in dc two years before 9-11 so it was two okay okay let's play that yeah there you go look up the pages that's like saying hope hello i'm guilty like you can't wow are you talking about epsimo Like the delay tactics, the lawyer I spoke to said something. He's like, yeah, we get these documents, they're redacted, and then we have to go through another process to get the redactions cleared. So this is, Dave just pulled this up. What are the 28 pages? They are redacted, classified, final section of the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks. They detail potential unverified connections and financial support between the 9-11 hijackers and individuals who may have been linked to the Saudi Arabian government. The Obama administration declassified and released the long-hidden 28 pages on July 15, 2016, following years of pressure. What were you going to say? But most of the information that was what we needed was redacted. Yeah. So it's been a lot of fight and pursuit, and there's been a lot of laws and all these things that have been passed recently to help us. But, like, it's – and the frustrating aspect of it is that each administration has promised they were going to do – what they all should have done a long time ago, and they haven't. Yeah. You know, and so it's – why should it be so much effort for us to do this? This is where – That's where people run wild with their conspiracy theories. Dude, I would just love to be a fly on the wall in the rooms where they talk about this. I know you would probably love that even more than me. But, you know, I wonder if there were people in our government, even if it was two or three, who maybe knew it was going to happen and were like, this isn't the worst thing. We can use this. Which would be sick. And then I wonder what foreign governments knew about it. And I'm very – in my opinion, having looked at this case, I'm comfortable that there were elements of the Saudi government who were directly involved. Oh, no, yeah. Let alone knew about it. And there were elements of the Israeli government that knew about it. And I've had Jim DiIorio on here who was in the FBI investigating things around the case. He told a famous story that hadn't been told before back. Told it in episode 48 and then he told the full thing when he came back in like 74 and 75, I think, or 73 and 74. But, you know, he arrested the financial arms in a Jersey shore town on September 15, 2001. And it's an insane, like, hairs on the back of your neck hearing about it. But it's just the tip of the iceberg. These guys were funneling money in for the hijackers and stuff like that. And, you know. He wonders about all the people that they didn't arrest or cases he didn't get to make. You know, I remember a phone call I had about the – with someone at the FBI who was there at that time about the whole guys, the Mossad guys who were filmed in Fort Lee. The quote-unquote dancing Israelis. And I just asked them. I said, what happened there? Because, you know, they had the ABC report 10 days later. Then nothing was heard about it. These guys were sent back. On November 6, 2001 to Israel. They're seen on an Israeli talk show. Never seen again. And there was just a long silence on the phone. And the guy said, brother, I think about that once a day, every day. Wouldn't I like to know? I'm like, wouldn't you like to know? You were in the fucking office that arrested him. What does that say about, you know, how high up the levers go with something like this to just – whatever the truth is. Like, let's say the truth weren't even as bad as we think it was. The cover-up has made it worse. The cover-up has made it way fucking worse. And then when I think about the people like you who lost people in it, and you think about, like, justice. Justice is never going to bring your family members back. No money is ever going to replace the whole loss or anything like that. But the quote-unquote air quotes of, like, closure, you never get the ability to do that. And in some ways, your government, in some ways, in a lot of ways, like, your government, my government is at the top of the process to make sure that that doesn't happen. Yeah. And something about that is just so fucking sick to me. And I can't imagine how that makes you feel every day. There's no closure. I even asked that question. Like, all right, the fucking money they're going after, what does that do? But at the end of the day, it's just the truth. Yeah. It's just the truth. Yeah. And again, the more they cover it up, for whatever reasons, regardless, whatever direction you want to go on the side of the aisle, it's what the fuck is taking so long? And then there's just these nuances, the relationships, the geopolitical issues. Or whatever you want to build it, put another McDonald's there. I don't know. It's just, it's frustrating. It's like, when, how long is this going to keep going on? Yeah. In 25 years, it's going to be JFK all over again. In 25 years, it's going to go by. That's right. And to this day, however many years it's been for JFK, like, has that full story ever been really? No. Not even close. You know? So it's like, and I've had a lot of conversations with people about that, too. But, yeah. What do you do? Right. Like, there's nothing, that's the worst part. There's nothing you can do other than, like, try to yell loud enough that maybe someone will be forced to do something. But like you said, it's been 25 years. You know? Do your families have a, do people within your family or is there a kind of mix have strong issues with the story and think that there's, that it's been a lie? I know you mentioned your brother earlier, but is it rampant across your families or how would you describe that? For me, no. No, actually. My aunts, as an example, they don't bring that type of stuff up. I understand that completely. Yeah, I mean, like, it's also never, I feel like there's never been a time that I could ask them or question them about it. Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm bringing it up in two days now that you bring it up. Yeah. Yeah. Curious. It is just one of those things, like us going to the memorial to get that file. Okay, what does that do for them? It's going to just be necessary from our heads. Yeah. You know, we've sought so much information for whatever reasons. Right. I don't even know what it would do for me. Like, I try to put myself there. Say it is revealed. So let me get all the truth. Right. And then what? What am I, then what? Yeah. I mean, I want it, yes. I think there's power to knowing, but, and then what? Like, I honestly feel like if it was revealed, what's going to change? I still don't think anything changes. That's the thing for you guys. I'm not sure. It doesn't ever bring them back anyway. That's right. Even just in general, like the world. Right, right, right. Obviously, the more truth, the better, and it can inflict more change, but what the fuck do we do? Right. That's not what I said. It's rhetorical, not rhetorical. If people don't see justice for it, then it doesn't, it's like, it's almost in a sick way. It's like, ha-ha, all right, there you have it. That's what would sit wrong with me. But my friend Joseph Scott Morgan, who you should definitely have on your show, by the way, he was a longtime medical death investigator. I've had him on my show a bunch. One of the best storytellers ever. But, you know, when he talks about death and grief and things like that, he takes it so seriously. Because he used to be the guy that had to go notify a family member that, like, you know, we just found your family member murdered or something like that. And it's still, every single one of them gets them to this day. But, you know, he talks about it. He's like, he's got a real problem with the word closure. It's like, it doesn't exist. Because he's like, you know, that's not to be a Debbie Downer or anything, but the fact of the matter is, once it's done, there's nothing that can change it. And you finding out every which way it happened and stuff like that. Yeah, it might help in the grief process, but you don't. He's like, the term closure makes it sound like, all right, we've shut the door and we're moving on with life. He's like, there's not one person I ever talked to who didn't carry that with them for the rest of their life. I carried it with me. I didn't know the people, you know, I don't know if that speaks to kind of how you guys feel about things. But that always stuck with me when he said that. So, yeah, I just think the grief evolves. I don't know. Yeah, I don't think it's closure, but if anything, it's one less box that you can check in a way. I don't know if that makes sense. Where it's, so you harp, we have these conversations constantly over the last 20 years and think about what ifs and what's the truth. And then if it is put to bed, okay, now that's one less thing to constantly contemplate over. But then it's just still left with the truth. And then what the fuck do you do with the truth? Yeah. You know? So it's a never ending cycle. Sometimes I'm like, what am I supposed to do? Like when I was a kid, was I supposed to go to war? Was I supposed to sign up? Maybe I should have. I don't know. Like, well, what would that have done? And then at what point is like, what's my lane? Like I'm doing my work right now and my lane isn't to get all political and push that. It's just not. And that's what, at what point do I just stay in my lane and contemplate it? I think that's important, but I don't want to sit. I can't sit in it forever. Right. But then what gets, what changes from that? You said grief evolves. It evolves over time. Yeah. I just think that it, like there are moments for me where I feel like it was yesterday where I feel like the loss, I'm feeling it heavier in that moment. And then there are times where I feel like it's, yeah, it's been 25 years. However, I still think about it. And that is, it's interesting because I, I'll speak for myself. I think about my dad every day. I do. Whether it's good things or bad things, I think about him every day. And I have friends, you know, who've lost their dad on 9-11 as well. And they, and my one friend said to me, like, I don't think about him every day. And I was like, okay. And I'm like, that's not, that's not me though. And like, no one's right. No one's wrong. It's all different. It's all different. And so for some people, like, yeah, if they can, I don't know. I mean, again, like, It's just different for every single person. I don't know. I haven't asked my brothers. Do you guys think about that every day? i know i do it doesn't make me any better or worse than you right you know it's just it's just it's just how i am and i will say i've come to a better place with it i don't look at the footage the way i used to the times that i'm exposed to the footage or when i do something on tv and they show the footage next to me so in the years prior everything was streamed because it was covid right and you know years after covid and i always did zoom so i'll i'll be watching the interview as i'm giving the interview right and i see what they're showing on tv next to me and it's like picture of my dad and me and then it's like here's the buildings on fire and that it'll that'll hit me yeah it's like such a they just try so hard to like capture the audience with like sensationalized yeah exactly i mean it's and you know it's i i don't know there's a more generational piece of footage than that like if you if you're looking at history 600 years from now and what's the main image of like this era i i don't have a better candidate than that i mean the biggest city in the world just yeah you know so it's but it's a strange thing because like you said every time you're seeing that you're seeing a replay of losing your family right i think it was i hope i don't miss that i misattribute this but i want to say it was andrew garfield i heard him say something recently where he said grief is the price you pay for the love you didn't have a chance to express you agree with that i just simplify and it's a beautiful quote i just think it's just love but it's also it's everything grief is literally everything to me everything is just a smorgasbord of emotions sometimes you don't know what emotions you're feeling sometimes you don't know if the emotions are coming from the grief it's just like it comes it oozes out of you don't know when i mean it's been 25 years i was literally looking at from the view of my hotel looking at the world trade center i just kept like i was playing with the sheer that was in front of it yeah going back and forth to like see it and not see it and i kept like flickering in my imagination seeing the towers there just seeing that they used to be there and i was crying just thinking about i just like 25 years later yeah and i'm still shedding tears right but that's grief again not this is my specific i were a specific experience or 9-11 but it shows up down the road and i'm like oh my god we lost our dad at 9 and 12 so i feel like i'm living in the future that i was grieving as a boy knowing i wasn't going to have and now i'm in these moments i wish i could share with my father and that's the representative of grief too it's like there's new memories i'm not going to get and you're not going to get with your loved one and that's why it just pops up like a groundhog you never know when could be on a tuesday at three o'clock something hits you but i like like that sadness because it is that love that i think he was expressing i sometimes i want to dive into as a reminder not only of what i've been through but also of what i've been through and what i've what we endured but also it's my dad like that pain if grief is love and grief is pain it's all together and that love is that pain and it's pain because of that love yeah and sometimes that's why i want to feel that pain because it's a reminder of the love and i forget so much of my dad and what he felt like and sometimes all i have is that emotion and so i don't i don't want to forget that but at the same time we got to remember it's love because he can't i don't want to dwell on it so much but it is important to sit in it and think about it and think about it and think about it and contemplate it feel it yeah and it sucks yeah but you know it's it's it's what it is and there's a lot there's a lot of shit i would trade for it but there's a lot of good shit that came from it as fucked up as it was there's a lot of beautiful shit i mean i would have never met you yeah exactly granted i would rather not have met you if my dad was still alive but nevertheless you're a great guy you take the kids out of jersey never never never it's true it's true though i too for sure yeah you have to see like the beauty and that silver lining i would imagine as the years go on you know absolutely you have to but yeah it still sucks it does i i genuinely can't imagine but you guys both do an amazing job of of telling your stories and you know david you do it really well through the podcast through other people's stories as well but thank you so much no thank you for doing this thank you for this i mean like what a gift this was you know i've never done this before like i've never never been in a podcast studio like this no i have not like this i've been in a podcast studio before but i'm saying like i've never done a podcast like this with someone like david i'm sorry to listen man yeah no i mean it's just this is this is really really really special for me so well i'm glad to hear that man i'm glad we could all put together and kudos to you david for being able to get this make this possible but what we're recording this a couple days before 9 11 this is going to come out on the 25th anniversary on 9 11 what are you guys sorry my table right here going down but what are you guys going to be doing on on 9 11 we're doing a small family well we have a memorial in the town that i grew up in um in the morning i have one thing i'm doing for media that day that's it and then um spending the afternoon with my family that's nice yeah just simple it's gonna be a beautiful day love that i'll look at the weather it's gonna be a nice day and just try to what we've done differently in the last few years i'm sure you're gonna test this too probably is it's more of like a celebration of my dad not as much of a grieving i still feel the emotional hangover and i'm gonna feel it heavy this year i already know it in the day at the days after like the 12th is always the day you wake up and you're like oh fuck i feel like shit i don't feel it like there's the i have a friend who lost her dad 9 11 as well she describes it as anticipatory anxiety as you lead up to it and it's so true because it's not the day itself for me anymore it's the days leading up to it it's talking about it incessantly for the days leading up to it day comes you feel like shit but you kind of get through it and then it's the days afterwards like you kind of have a relief but you feel it's heavy yeah this is like those anniversaries in general when it comes to grief it's just that's i've talked about that it's amazing you're saying that because it's that september 12th yeah it's a the day after day after day after so it's okay it's like christmas you lead up to christmas terrible christmas but you get to christmas you're hyped they're stressed once it's over like that's it now it's now it's done yeah exactly but it's a reminder of zooming out i think that september 12th is a reminder of zooming out it's just everything else has come before it but this year 25th i'm just gonna be with my family that always gets more emotional when you're with everyone now the grant like niece niece and nephews oh yeah that's a whole nother weird thing and i think they're they know grandpa david from stories they it's just it's just weird man the more time goes by the more it feels like a fuzzy grainy grainy family video and it gets weirder and weirder yeah dude that's so spot on it's fucking weird that's so i'm glad you guys are both gonna be with your family so i think that's pretty cool yeah and nice and low-key as well in that way but thank you guys so much thank you this was awesome and and i know i know people are gonna be really inspired by the story they got to hear today from you so thank you for sharing that yeah of course thank you brother thank you all right everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back to me and by the way books are linked down below check them both out peace what's up guys thanks so much for watching the video if you have not subscribed please hit that subscribe button before you leave as well as leaving the like on the video it's a huge huge help you can join my patreon via the link in the description and you can also join my clipping community via the discord link down below see you for the next episode at harmony bank we believe that better happens together we're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions no big bank you're not going to be able to make quick decisions just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs harmony bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of texas hospitality we're harmony bank where better happens together