From the Streets to the Mic: Why I'm Starting a Podcast

There's a question I've been asked more times than I can count over the past few years: Why now?

Why, after a lifetime of staying quiet about where I came from, am I suddenly ready to put it all on record? Why a podcast? Why tell strangers the things I barely told my own family?

The honest answer is: because I finally understand it myself.

Where It Started

I was born in the Fulton Projects on the lower west side of Manhattan. If you know New York, you know what that means. If you don't — it means poverty, crowded apartments, and a childhood that moves fast whether you're ready for it or not.

I was one of eight children. My mother did what she could. But before I turned six years old, I was removed from my home and placed in an orphanage.

I don't say that to shock you. I say it because it's the truth, and the truth is where this story has to start.

The Years Nobody Talks About

After the orphanage came foster care. After foster care came a group home. And after the group home — when I was 16 years old — came the streets.

Just me and a grey suitcase.

I slept where I could. I ate when I could. I survived the way kids who have no other choice learn to survive — by figuring it out one day at a time, with no roadmap and no safety net.

I was arrested 13 times between the ages of 17 and 30. Not because I was a bad person. Because I was a kid with no structure, no guidance, and no one who understood what was actually going on inside my head.

I didn't understand it either. Not yet.

The Turn

By the time I was 21, everything had changed. I was a husband. I was about to become a father. Something in me had shifted — some survival instinct that said: this is not where your story ends.

I became a police officer.

I know how that sounds. A kid with 13 arrests, pinning on a badge. But that's exactly what happened. And it wasn't irony — it was intention. I knew what it felt like to be on the other side of that badge. I wanted to do the job differently because of it.

I served for years. I saw things that stay with you. I built a career, a family, a life that looked nothing like where I started.

And then I retired.

The Diagnosis That Changed Everything

I was 62 years old when a doctor handed me a piece of paper that reframed my entire life.

ADHD.

Not a character flaw. Not a weakness. A neurological condition that had been running in the background of every single thing I'd ever done — every impulsive decision, every struggle to stay focused, every moment I'd felt like I was fighting harder than everyone else just to keep up.

Sixty-two years of not knowing. And then, suddenly, knowing.

I sat with that for a long time. I thought about the kid in the orphanage. The teenager on the streets. The cop trying to prove something. The husband and father who sometimes felt like he was holding it together with tape and willpower.

And I thought: someone needs to hear this story.

Why a Podcast

I'm not a writer. I'm a talker. I've always processed things out loud — in conversations, in arguments, in the quiet moments when I'm working through something and I need to hear my own voice say it.

A podcast felt right because it's honest. There's no editing out the pauses, no cleaning up the rough edges. It's just me, a microphone, and the truth.

All Mike'd Up isn't going to be a polished production. It's going to be real. It's going to be uncomfortable sometimes. It's going to be the kind of conversation that most people never get to have.

Who This Is For

If you've ever felt like your story was too messy to tell — this podcast is for you.

If you've ever been written off, overlooked, or told that where you came from was where you were going to stay — this podcast is for you.

If you've ever gotten a diagnosis late in life and felt the strange mix of relief and grief that comes with finally having a name for something you've been carrying for decades — this podcast is for you.

I'm not doing this because I have all the answers. I'm doing it because I've lived through questions that most people never have to ask, and I think there's value in saying them out loud.