Blink-182: Tom Was Right. Aliens Exist. (Rewind)

Everyone thought Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge was a joke, until he proved them all wrong. This is the story of government control, aliens, an arrest, a plane crash, a cancer diagnosis, redemption, and (of course) anti-authority punk rock. Do you believe in Non-Human Intelligence? Have you had an experience with UFOs? Let Jake know and tell your story at 617-906-6638, [email protected], or on socials @disgracelandpod. This episode was originally published on January 28, 2025. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter) ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

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• 2:12Jake Brennan?

  All right, guys. Thanks for checking in here for another rewind episode of DisgraceLand. We're going back to our story on Tom DeLonge from Blink-182 and his efforts around UFO/UAP disclosure. We originally released this story back on January 28, 2025. A lot has gone down since then. Okay, there's been a lot of stories in the news about disclosure around this very topic. I would argue we've seen more disclosure. There's been a pretty incredible documentary that came out called "The Age of Disclosure." There was a Steven Spielberg movie. And I think everything we've seen since we've released this episode, now granted, there's been a lot of noise, but I think on balance, everything we've seen has strengthened the

• 2:55Jake Brennan?

  case this episode makes about Tom DeLonge from Blink-182. Here it is. Check it out. If you heard it back then, listen to it again with fresh ears based on the news that's broken over the last, uh, let's see, almost two years since this was released. And if you've never heard it before, sit back, relax, and enjoy this classic episode of DisgraceLand.

• 3:17Jake Brennan?

  DisgraceLand is a production of Double Elvis.

• 3:28Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about Blink-182, which means it's also a story about dick jokes, about running through the streets of Los Angeles naked, and about simple infectious juvenile pop punk. It's also a story about the truth, about what the government does and does not want us to talk about or even to think about. It's about a plane crash, a cancer diagnosis, and about a snot-nosed punk from Southern California who was expelled from high school but would eventually find himself taking meetings with White House personnel. A snot-nosed punk who, in his band Blink-182, made great music.

• 4:12Jake Brennan?

  Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Husker Du's "Books About UFOs," MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to blinding lights by the weekend. And why would I play you that specific slice of 80's time machine cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on April 27, 2020. And that was the day that the Department of Defense did something it had never done before: disclosed information to the public regarding the likely existence of life from

• 4:56Jake Brennan?

  beyond this planet and/or this dimension.

• 5:01Jake Brennan?

  On this episode, dick jokes, government lies, aliens exist, and Blink-182. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 5:48Jake Brennan?

  Aliens exist, but don't take my word for it, or anybody's word for it for that matter. Look at the evidence: the federal government's actions, to be exact. Look at the front page of the New York Times, where it was reported in 2020 that U.S. intelligence agencies had established a program called "The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force" to, quote, "standardize collection and reporting of sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles," unquote. On the Times' website and across the internet, you can find videos of these so-called "unexplained

• 6:27Jake Brennan?

  aerial vehicles" captured by naval pilots, videos of aircraft moving in unearthly ways that defy physics, video footage the Times calls "mystifying." If you dig an inch deeper, you'll quickly learn about the legitimacy of these videos. You'll find countless military personnel from the last 75 years, many highly decorated, many who put their credibility on the line, credibility they spent their entire careers building, detailing the very real experiences with similar logic-defying aircraft that will lead you to only one possible explanation: aliens exist.

• 7:13Jake Brennan?

  They're real. You know what else is real? What the government does and does not want us to think. Up until about seven years ago, it was very evident that the government did not want us to think that aliens did indeed exist or that they were real. No, that type of thinking was wrong. It was wrong think, very, very bad. That thinking was for crackpots who spent a little too much time believing the headlines they read in the supermarket checkout line. And there was a time back in the 20th century when the government didn't want us thinking or speaking about much more than God, country, and family. And this has all changed, of course. The government doesn't care too much these days about God, country, and family.

• 7:52Jake Brennan?

  But back in 1966, if you used the wrong type of language, language that, of course, encouraged subversive thinking, if you demonstrated "wrong think" by using the wrong language in public, you'd go to jail. Ask comedian Lenny Bruce, who was arrested for saying nine specific words: ass, balls, cocksucker, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, piss shit, and tits. Then, six years later, in 1972, comedian George Carlin had this to say about it.

• 8:24Speaker 06

  In poor taste, unseemly, street talk, gutter talk, locker room language, barracks talk, bawdy, naughty, saucy, raunchy, rude, crude, lewd, lascivious, indecent, profane, obscene, blue, off-color, risque, suggestive, cursing, cussing, swearing, and all I could think of was shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

• 8:56Jake Brennan?

  That bit from Carlin's 1972 album, "Class Clown," was played on WBAI radio in New York in 1973. A complaint was filed against the radio station, and the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, issued a declaration backing the complaint, holding the radio station accountable. The complaint was filed in court, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was found that, yes, under no circumstance does the government want you to say the words "ass, balls, cocksucker, cunt, fuck, motherfucker, piss shit, and tits" on its airwaves. Count the snotty Southern California pop punk band Blink-182 among the innumerable counterculture subversives who didn't get the Supreme Court's memo.

• 9:57Jake Brennan?

  That's Blink-182's live staple, "Family Reunion", which is essentially George Carlin's seven words you can never say on television routine set to music. The Boys in Blink added "fart", "turd" and "twat" for good measure. And that song was released as a promotional single in 1999. Now, there's no telling whether or not those lyrics were swimming through Blink-182 guitarist and co-singer-songwriter Tom DeLonge's head back in 1995 while he sat handcuffed in the back of a Jacksonville, Florida, police cruiser. Busted for wandering the streets of Jacksonville drunk and carrying an open container while on the group's first real tour, Tom was in for a long night in jail.

• 10:39Jake Brennan?

  A night where Tom's imagination would see him through. It was always Tom's ability to dream that delivered him through the tough times. Through the monotony of a bored suburban teenage existence, through the bleakness of a grown-up prescribed adult future in a cubicle or on a construction site, through his parents splitting up, through getting expelled from high school. They could tell him there was no future, but they couldn't make him believe it. The local library back in Powi, California, gave his dreams wings. Books about UFOs and the Kennedy assassination. Punk rock gave him the audacity he needed to question authority.

• 11:23Jake Brennan?

  Chin, have you seen him? Charlie Don't Serve, California Uber Alice. All of the subversiveness that was at the core of the West Coast punk ethos that Tom DeLonge raised himself on made it very easy for him to call bullshit on the official government narratives aimed at explaining away the topics he obsessed over in his local library. The US Air Force's Roswell report on the 1947 New Mexico UFO crash, and the report from the trumped-up Warren Commission on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Please, you had to be a mindless automaton to accept these explanations as anything more than what they obviously were.

• 12:06Jake Brennan?

  Lies from a government hell-bent on bending the public's perception of the truth to its will. On that first Blink-182 tour back in 1995, Tom's bandmates, bassist and fellow singer-songwriter Mark Hoppus, and original drummer Scott Rayner, no doubt had no idea what to think as they drove through Dallas's Dealey Plaza, the site of President Kennedy's assassination 32 years earlier, and listened to their bandmate Tom go on and on over his theory that Kennedy was shot because he had learned the truth about aliens and that JFK was going to disclose to the American public evidence proving aliens exist.

• 12:48Jake Brennan?

  In 1995, this type of thinking seemed hysterical, but to Tom DeLonge, this type of thinking was essential. After bouncing from that Jacksonville jail with a slap on the wrist, after taking in a rocket launch in nearby Cape Canaveral, after wrapping a successful first tour in 95, after breaking through on the 1996 Warped Tour and capitalizing on a major label bidding war, after signing with MCA Records and releasing an album that went gold, after parting ways with their original drummer and replacing him with the percussive juggernaut that is Travis Barker, after casting Alyssa frickin' Milano in their music video and downgrading

• 13:30Jake Brennan?

  America's collective maturity level a couple notches with songs about shitting your pants and getting laid, this type of thinking, this hysterical wrong-think, was absolutely driving Tom DeLonge to write the lyrics for Blink-182's song, "Aliens Exist", a song that nearly everyone laughed off as just another example of Blink-182's staggering level of immaturity. A song with a sentiment that would one day compel the United States government to take Tom DeLonge as nothing less than dead serious.

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• 15:30Jake Brennan?

  The United States government lets you get away with a lot of things. For instance, you can wake up one morning and walk into your recording studio and rant into the microphone about what a bunch of duplicitous controlling autocrats the government is made up of, and depending on the size of your microphone, you can pretty much get away with it as I am right now. What you can't get away with is not forking over to the government its piece, its take. And if you don't pay the government the taxes it demands, a massive percentage of which is exorbitant and unnecessary, the government will apply a vig to the principal amount you owe, which will in turn make your debt nearly impossible to pay off. Does this sound familiar to you? It sounds to me like the mafia.

• 16:15Jake Brennan?

  It's the same tactic gangsters have used for years in their shylock businesses. Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction once said, quote, "The gang and the government are no different." And he wasn't wrong, not in principle. The federal government is, of course, more evolved and more sophisticated than the mafia. If, say, you're a porn star and you owe, oh, I don't know, $300,000 in back taxes, now you know full well, as we all do, that you should have paid those taxes. Making tax payments is not a new concept, but it's easy to see how entertainers, athletes, and those in the workforce who aren't accustomed to coming into massive cash windfalls fail to make payments.

• 16:59Jake Brennan?

  You get paid 600 grand for a couple of skin flicks and all of a sudden you have to fork over 50% to the feds. Now, for a porn star, that's, uh, hard to swallow. Sorry, I couldn't resist. This is, after all, still a Blink-182 episode, even though I'm talking about tax rates at the moment, but I promise this is going somewhere relevant. So, anyway, you're a porn star who owes $300,000 in taxes. Now, the government isn't going to act like the mafia and blow up your place of business with a pipe bomb, but it is going to send agents to your house in those fancy windbreakers at an ungodly early morning hour, raid your place, take you away in handcuffs, and throw you in a federal prison. And that's what happened to Janine Lindemulder in 2009.

• 17:42Jake Brennan?

  And despite the fact that she'd starred in a Blink-182 video 10 years earlier, there was nothing she could do about it. Janine was going to jail. Because, as Tom DeLonge would soon find out, the federal government does not fuck around. But back in 1999, Janine had no way of knowing that. She had other things on her mind, like the three skinny naked punk rock dudes ogling her on a Los Angeles street corner while the cameras rolled. This was a different camera crew than Janine was used to. This wasn't a valley production. This was more Hollywood. The boys in the band were nice enough and funny, despite being wickedly horny.

• 18:26Jake Brennan?

  Janine saw real quick that the Boys in Blink were about to learn the hard truth about a skin flick production, and that's that being naked in front of scores of people in broad daylight, it might be funny or sexy when the finished edit hits screens, but while you're making the thing, being naked on set sucks. Sure, you look all daring and cool, running through the streets of Hollywood, filming your new video for your incredibly catchy song, "What's My Age Again", but then, once they call cut, you're just a schmuck in a skin-colored Speedo and nothing else on, standing on the side of West Third in LA while dudes in Jeep Cherokees drive by and give you the finger and launch homophobic slurs at you. Janine, of course, thought it was hysterical. So did the rest of America.

• 19:11Jake Brennan?

  The video, that is, not the homophobic cutdowns. "What's My Age Again" was a massive hit, both as a video and a single, propelling Blink-182's newest album at the time, "Enema of the State", to sell 15 million copies, probably more by now. "Enema of the State" also featured the song "Aliens Exist", with the lyrics, "Hey Mom, there's something in the back room. Hope it's not the creature from above. You used to read me stories as if my dreams were boring. We all know conspiracies are dumb. And what if people knew that these were real? I'd leave my closet door open all night. I know what the CIA would say. What you hear is all hearsay.

• 19:56Jake Brennan?

  I wish someone would tell me what was right." Tom DeLonge, who wrote those lyrics, though, was wrong about the CIA. Someone was, in fact, about to tell him what exactly was right.

• 20:12Jake Brennan?

  Enema of the state turned Blink 182 into a household name. Their next album, featuring another trademark juvenile Blink title, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, was also a hit. They followed that up with a self-titled full-length in 2003. After that effort, the band entered a phase that is treacherous ground for any group of self-respecting rock stars: adulthood. Life changed for Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker. In 2005, Tom quit the band to be with his family. In 2008, Travis Barker was in a private plane crash in which six people died. He was severely injured, along with his friend and musical collaborator in his group,

• 20:54Jake Brennan?

  Travis DJ AM, Adam Goldstein, aka DJ AM, who was driven back into addiction after the crash and the trauma of it all. He overdosed and died in 2009. And the extremely traumatic event nearly drove Travis to suicide, but ultimately, he recovered, both physically and mentally, from the horrible experience. In 2009, Tom DeLonge rejoined Blink 182, and the group embarked on another chapter, touring and releasing the full-length album Neighborhoods. The album was well-received critically. It was a progression from their more youthful efforts, but was that necessarily a good thing? In the end, the album failed to set the world on fire.

• 21:39Jake Brennan?

  And throughout the early aughts, and after reuniting with Blink 182, Tom DeLonge recorded and toured with a side project known as Angels and Airwaves. And then, in 2014, Tom DeLonge took a trip out to the desert. Area 51, Death Valley. Tom awoke in his tent. The voices outside in the desert were too many to count, too many to comprehend. They woke him up. They weren't human. His fellow campers, one of whom was a prominent ufologist, slept soundly in their tents.

• 22:20Jake Brennan?

  These sounds were unearthly, but still strangely familiar: murmuring, whispering. Tom could hardly understand them. He could scarcely hold on to his awareness of them over the sound of his steadily beating heart, which was now pounding. Those voices, whatever they were, wherever they came from, were there, right there, at the edge of perception. But the words themselves were impossible to comprehend, and whatever message was meant to be translated fell short. Tom couldn't grasp it. It floated away. He was awake now, but he wasn't conscious, so he couldn't possibly understand.

• 23:04Jake Brennan?

  The beings, whether they were extraterrestrials from worlds far away, or ultra-terrestrials from uncharted dimensions here in this world, whether they were angels, or demons, or whatever they were, Tom was told they communicate through consciousness. They speak to us through high consciousness. They compel us. In those moments when our minds disassociate from this world, when we unplug, when we simply are, when we dream, when we pray, perhaps when we ingest psychedelics, however we get there, it's that point when all of our thoughts, actions, and emotions are objectifiable.

• 23:46Jake Brennan?

  When we separate from the subjective and become conscious, that's when their whispers, their murmurs manifest into messages that permeate our own thoughts. Perhaps even their messages present to us as our own thoughts. Perhaps our ideas are, on some quantum level, not ideas at all, but rather the aliens themselves being born out of our own consciousness, pulling us into a higher strangeness and moving us closer toward a greater, universal understanding. But alone, awake, and afraid in a tent in the middle of the desert, consciousness is

• 24:27Jake Brennan?

  unattainable, and therefore, so is extra- or ultra-terrestrial communication. So Tom was out. But Tom was also in. Whatever he did or did not understand out in the desert on that night in 2014 was enough to compel him to dedicate his life to learning more and demanding that the powers that be share with the American public what they did or did not know. And Tom DeLonge knew enough to know that the US government knew a lot more about beings from other worlds and/or other dimensions than they were letting on. In short order, in 2015, Tom DeLonge would quit Blink 182, one of the planet's biggest

• 25:10Jake Brennan?

  rock and roll bands, to go chase UFOs.

• 25:17Jake Brennan?

  We'll be right back after this.

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• 26:26Jake Brennan?

  Blink 182's Tom DeLonge describes alien encounter. Says authorities tapped his phone. Tom DeLonge just proved he's gone completely insane during alien rant. I'm not going to say Tom DeLonge is batshit crazy, but Tom DeLonge wants you to stop calling him crazy for researching aliens. And that's a smattering of what the media had to say about Tom DeLonge's efforts to investigate the legitimacy of alien existence after departing Blink 182. The rock and roll press was predictably the most snarky and also the most disingenuous. Consequence of Sound elaborated on their claims that Tom had gone crazy, adding this

• 27:07Jake Brennan?

  to their cheap hit piece on him: "Former Blink 182 member implies he met with Bill Clinton to discuss the threat of UFOs." When in fact, Tom did not imply he was meeting with Bill Clinton. That was a presumption the so-called journalists from Consequence cooked up entirely on his own to make Tom look crazy, based on a photo of a meeting Tom posted to Instagram and then deleted. So, is now a good time to mention the fact that the CIA has had journalists planted in the media since the 1960s as part of their secret Operation Mockingbird to help shape various narratives to fit the government's view of what it wants the public to think? Perhaps. But perhaps that's a digression that'll derail this story.

• 27:52Jake Brennan?

  And maybe you guys can go ahead and look that one up for yourself, though. Operation Mockingbird. Back to Tom DeLonge. Remember earlier when I said the government doesn't fuck around? Here's what I meant. The stakes for the meeting couldn't have been higher. Tom used a mix of his celebrity and astute politicking to set it up: himself and a federal government aerospace contractor. It is unconfirmed, but it is widely believed that the contractor was Lockheed Martin and their special division, Skunk Works. The meeting was heavily secured. Four layers of security, armed guards, and white noise pumping through speakers to scramble

• 28:34Jake Brennan?

  any listening devices inside the dark, windowless room. Tom was prepared. He had the audience he had been building toward for some time now. He had a message to deliver. He had a reaction to elicit. This was, in some really strange way, no different than being on stage. This was a performance like any other. Tom explained that the work done by the government, the military, and their contractors on UFO phenomena was worthy of disclosure, and that the proper way to disclose this information to the youth was through culture, through books, through comics, through records, through films. Tom wanted to combine his celebrity and authentic connection to the youth with the vast knowledge

• 29:18Jake Brennan?

  of the UFO phenomena he had attained over the years. One of the contractors scoffed, essentially told Tom he was a conspiracy theorist wasting his time, and he abruptly left the room. The other contractors followed him, all but one, all but the lead contractor, who sat back and listened to more of Tom's pitch. The government and its contractors were doing great work in this area. Why did it all have to be so secret? There was so much evidence that it was obvious what the truth was. Eventually, that truth was going to come out. And then what? What kind of effect would the shocking truth about alien existence here on Earth have on the American public?

• 30:00Jake Brennan?

  Could anything be more disruptive to humanity, more life-altering, than the realization that we are not alone in the universe? What would this knowledge do to humanity? It would no doubt have a life-altering influence on our core beliefs as a species, on our thoughts about our place and point in this world, about God, about the devil, about good and evil. It was knowledge, secret knowledge, that had to be handled and disclosed very cautiously. When Tom finished, the government contractor, to Tom's amazement, agreed that slow disclosure of the UFO phenomena via culture, rather than exclusively through traditional media,

• 30:44Jake Brennan?

  could responsibly bring the public around to the mind-bending notion that, yes, aliens exist. This is the part of the story where you call bullshit, and I don't blame you. Why would a federal defense contractor, or anyone connected with the federal government, entrust a foul-mouthed punk rocker from a band with a nonsensical name like Blink 182 with disclosing humanity-altering information to the public? Well, because this is what the government has always done: used cutouts from culture, individuals from the world of arts and entertainment, actors, musicians, artists. The government has relied on these individuals of influence for the better part of a century to get its message to the American people.

• 31:32Jake Brennan?

  In 1954, the CIA secretly funded the film adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm in its efforts to win hearts and minds during the Cold War against communist Russia. To further its winning efforts in the Cold War, the CIA secretly bolstered the careers of abstract expressionist painters Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. These artists were unaware of the strings the CIA pulled on their behalf to promote them, but the government's message was sent, and it was this: "In America, our artists thrive. In the Soviet Union, artists are thrown in prison." As recently as 2013, the CIA demanded and received script approval for the television series "The Americans."

• 32:15Jake Brennan?

  You know all that long-winded, expositional dialogue blathering on and on about UN regulations in the movie "Iron Man"? Guess who had a production agreement in their dirty hands all over the script for that film? The CIA. So, the federal contractor agreed to help Tom, and connected him with an unnamed general, who confirmed Tom's belief in UFO phenomena and agreed that the time was now for disclosure. Perhaps the general's thoughts around timing had something to do with the hundreds of unidentified aerial phenomena being captured on video by the US military personnel at that exact point in time. The news was coming out.

• 32:58Jake Brennan?

  UFOs were no longer relegated to the tabloids lining your supermarket checkout. They were being discussed and shown on the front page of "The New York Times" and on the nightly news. The dam was breaking. The general agreed to connect Tom with experts from the intelligence community, from aerospace, and even an expert from the White House, all to advise Tom DeLonge from Blink-182 on how to take the information he had gathered on his own thus far and disclose the fact that aliens exist. With these new contacts, Tom then pulled together a formal group of advisors, heavy

• 33:38Jake Brennan?

  hitters, ex-CIA operatives, NASA and DoD advisors, White House staff, and private-sector AI contractors, and gathered them into a new company he called "To The Stars." Its mission: to create culture to help disclose the truth about UFOs. Predictably, the press pounced, doubling down its ire on Tom for quitting a beloved punk rock band to waste time trying to validate "conspiracy theories." The media was particularly incensed with Tom's intimation that he was working with government operatives connected to the White House. This seemed to be the height of delusion.

• 34:18Jake Brennan?

  Tom was scorched across the internet, doubted, defamed, disgraced by everyone from faceless, cowardly internet trolls to the likes of "Vice" magazine, which issued a factually incorrect exposé on Tom's company's financial stability, which, coming from the bankrupt "Vice," is, as we now know, the height of irony. And then, something remarkable happened. So what exactly was in that WikiLeaks dump of DNC emails besides proof that the Democratic Party attempted to subvert the campaign of one of its candidates, Bernie Sanders, and coronate the party's chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton?

• 34:59Jake Brennan?

  There were numerous emails between Tom DeLonge and John Podesta, official counselor to the President of the United States, Barack Obama, and the presidential campaign manager at the time to the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one-time Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton. The emails detailed Tom's disclosure plan with Podesta, who became a public advocate for UFO disclosure upon leaving the White House. And the emails also detailed an in-person meeting between Tom and Podesta and other high-level government and military operatives. All of a sudden, the dick-joke-cracking UFO-chasing guitar player from Blink-182 didn't look so crazy, and Tom doubled down.

• 35:44Jake Brennan?

  In 2017, one of his official "To The Stars" advisors, Lou Elizondo, who previously ran the Pentagon's secret government program formed to study UFO phenomena, leaked three videos captured by military pilots showing unidentified aerial phenomena flying off of the East Coast of the United States. Let me say all that again: Tom DeLonge, the Blink-182 guy, hired away the Pentagon official who ran the government's secret program to study UFOs, a program the government once adamantly denied the existence of but reversed course on and admitted that, yes, the program did exist and that millions of dollars were secretly funneled to this program to study alien and aerial phenomena.

• 36:29Jake Brennan?

  And that guy helped Tom leak the video showing that aerial phenomenon. And that then, and this is the point, the government itself officially declassified that video in 2020, in effect confirming that the video Tom DeLonge leaked back in 2017 was real, and also in the process, effectively admitting the existence of aliens. As reported in "The New York Times" in 2021, the government admitted that it had no explanation for the aerial objects and stopped just short of ruling out aliens. Again, the government stopped short of ruling out aliens. Tom DeLonge, the guitarist from Blink-182, did that. This guy. What would you guys do?

• 37:14Jake Brennan?

  This happened to me. What would you do if you were, like, sleeping and you feel like a slight tapping on your body? And you wake up and you're like, "What?!" And you look down and your brother is going, "Mr. [mimicking guitar player]" and walks up your legs and he's like, walking up your legs, and he goes and zips down your zips and grabs the good old "Mr. [mimicking guitar player]" It happened to me three times last night.

• 37:59Jake Brennan?

  Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 was sick. Really sick. It was 2021, and there was no Blink-182, actually. So I should say that Mark Hoppus, formerly of Blink-182, was sick. He didn't mean to post the photo of him receiving his first round of chemotherapy to his million-plus followers on Instagram. He had a witty caption for the photo of him sitting there in his LA Dodgers hat, thick black frame glasses, and comfy Birkenstock sandals over blue socks, and the caption read, "Yes, hello. One cancer treatment, please." Mark meant for the image to be shared only with his close friends on Instagram, but

• 38:42Jake Brennan?

  he messed up his settings and the image went wide for all of his followers. And there's no telling if Mark's ex-bandmate, Tom DeLonge, was included in Mark's "close friends" setting on Instagram, or if he was part of Mark's wider set of impersonal account followers, but regardless, when Tom learned of Mark's diagnosis, he knew he was going to do something he thought he would never do again: play music with Blink-182. Tom has since been quoted as saying, "When he told me he was sick, that was like the gnarliest. Nothing matters, really." DeLonge continued, "It wasn't about fame, or money, or how big Blink was, or anything.

• 39:23Jake Brennan?

  It was like, you're gonna get through this shit, and we're gonna go dominate." You need a purpose in life, especially when you're sick and fighting for your life. Tom DeLonge knew all about needing purpose. He'd been purpose-driven for the better part of the last decade. Unfortunately, that purpose, Tom's mission to disclose the truth about aliens, often ran up against Tom's earlier passion: playing music with Blink-182. But that was all about to change. Blink-182 reunited, and Mark Hoppus beat cancer. Tom, Mark, and Travis are back onstage, stadium stages.

• 40:06Jake Brennan?

  There are less dick jokes, but they're still there, and now there's another element of Blink's sets. That moment when Mark leans into the mic and says, "Tom was right," and the crowd freaks out because they know what's coming. Blink's 1999 banger from Enema of the State: "Aliens Exist." The vindication is palpable, if not juvenile, but that's what it should be. This is still, after all, rock and roll, and even though the boys in Blink-182 are all either in or about to be in their 50s, rock and roll is still the province of youth. It's juvenile, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's a weird sort of wisdom that only kids process.

• 40:48Jake Brennan?

  They're wise enough to dream, to question authority unequivocally and without shame. Rock and roll, punk rock, whatever you want to call it, is a rebellion against growing up, against accepting adult mandates that stifle creativity, your imagination, and your ability to dream. Blink-182 and Tom DeLonge knew this when they were young punks playing shows in Southern California, and they never lost sight of it. Tom DeLonge never accepted the grown-up notion that dreams and big ideas and thinking outside of the prefabricated suburban box were the type of childish thoughts that adults need to put aside because, well, grown-ups suck.

• 41:29Jake Brennan?

  And the federal government and the media are filled with grown-ups, the majority of whom lack imagination and the courage needed to make like those old punk rockers and question authority. Tom DeLonge did something no other civilian has ever done: compelled the federal government to disclose previously unacknowledged truths about alien existence here on Earth. The question now isn't whether or not aliens exist, as Blink-182 sang about in 1999. The question is why the government, or at least some part of the government, now wants us to know this truth? Why have they reached some sort of unofficial partnership with Tom DeLonge?

• 42:15Jake Brennan?

  My theory is that there's more coming, much more. Advanced radar systems are what made it possible for those naval pilots back in the late aughts to capture that UAP footage. What technology are we developing currently that will similarly unveil deeper truths about extra and ultra-terrestrials? Will the AI revolution irrefutably prove alien existence in a way that the automaton bureaucrats and the disinterested public won't be able to ignore? Does this coming onslaught of technological truth worry the government enough to compel it toward more disclosure? Perhaps. It's just a theory.

• 42:54Jake Brennan?

  It's just me dreaming, just like Tom DeLonge from Blink 182, whose mission is anything but a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 43:22Jake Brennan?

  All right, thanks for checking out this episode. This week's question of the week is, do you believe in non-human intelligence? Do aliens exist? And have you ever had an experience with a UFO, a UAP, or something unexplainable or anomalous? Let me know, and we will discuss your experiences in our next after-party bonus episode. Call me with your answers, 617-906-6638. Leave me a voicemail, send me a text, DM me at DisgraceLandPod, email me at [email protected], on Instagram, Facebook, and X. Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. And Apple Podcasts listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on so you never miss an episode of DisgraceLand. All righty then, here comes some credits.

• 44:05Jake Brennan?

  DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a DisgraceLand All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of DisgraceLand ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand-new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com/membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook

• 44:49Jake Brennan?

  @DisgraceLandPod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/DisgraceLandPod. Rock-a'rolla.

• 44:59Jake Brennan?

  He's a bad, bad man. All right, guys, thanks for checking out this episode of DisgraceLand. Rewind on Tom DeLonge and Blink 182. What do you think? Is Tom right? Was Tom right? He was kind of right, wasn't he? 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text, let me know your thoughts. Got a new episode of David Crosby coming up next in the DisgraceLand feed.

• 45:21Speaker 07

  I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast, the true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest.

• 45:33Jake Brennan?

  Ooh, I scammed them.

• 45:34Speaker 07

  What?

• 45:35Jake Brennan?

  I could talk to you for an hour.

• 45:36Speaker 07

  You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Scam Goddess.