November 4, 2025 • 13 mins
What if the only way to save humanity was to confront our own violence—because the aliens demand it? In this powerful conversation, Tom Skore reveals the inspiration and hope behind his novel Tranquility Moon, a story that challenges us to look inward and imagine a better future. From family drama on the moon to the real-world fears we face here on Earth, this episode dives deep into the heart of what it means to be safe, to change, and to hope. Join us for a thought-provoking journey that will leave you questioning, inspired, and ready to start the conversation.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey is Benji col Son of Alcohol from CBS Radio
and host of the syndicated talk show People of Distinction.
The talk gives you an in depth view of some
of the most dynamic, intelligent, and successful people on the planet.
Run to our website Alcohol Enterprises dot com for more info.
Email me through Benji at Alcohol Enterprises dot com if
you'd like to get involved with what we have going,
(00:30):
and as always, please continue to like and follow our broadcasts.
People of Distinction is internationally syndicated solely due to the
love and support that you all continue to give. We're
available across all major distributors, and as long as you
keep following, we're going to continue to put out the content.
Now sit back and strap in because on the line
with us today we have the impressive Tom Score. Now
(00:53):
we're going to be discussing Tom's incredible book, Tranquility Moon,
where Violence has No Voice. It's Amazon, it's Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
But simply type it into a search bar man and
you're gonna be greeted with a lot more. The discussion
at hand today is gonna be one that is tough
to swallow.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I was telling Tom.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
In the pre screening call Man, It's something that I'm
looking forward to discussing because I know I'm not the
only one screaming into the void, petrified to send my
children to school. Something's not right here, people, and listen.
As an artist myself, I often view art as an
expression as a potential mirror to society, and it almost
(01:38):
makes things a little bit more palatable to see it
that way. But this is much larger than just an
entertaining read. Tom, First and foremost, welcome to the network, man,
and thank you very much for being here. How you
doing today, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I'm doing good, and thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Tom. It is a pleasure. Your book is something remarkably compelling,
and it's something that is going to touch so many
people out there.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Listen. Let's jump right in. First and foremost, lets start
at the foundation. Tell us a little bit more about
your book, Tranquility Moon.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I see it on one hand as being a simple
story about a family in a unique situation. There are
two kids. There's a ten year old girl and a
sixteen year old teenager, and there's a mom who is
a doctor and works at the hospital, and then there's
a father who's on a mission aboard the space station
(02:32):
and trying to do about a year and a half
to two years on the space station as a preparation
for a Mars trip. So that's their unique situation. But
on the same token, it's a story about worldwide implications
in that he has an encounter with an alien who
wants him to be the go between between them on
(02:56):
the Moon and the Earth, and their simple thing is
to try to help the Earth get past its violent stage.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Tom, you said something that I thought was quite powerful
on the pre screening call man like You, And I'm
going to paraphrase because I can't remember exactly how you
said it. But if something along the lines of you
want people to receive from this book, the notion that
it's okay to want to be safe, it's okay to
not be comfortable with violence, I think it is something
(03:24):
that gets truly to the heart of this The book
is nuanced, but I'm curious to note what inspired this
particular novel.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
First, well, before I say anything about that, I want
to say that most of the people that have read
it consider it a book of hope, that there's a
lot of hope in it, and I've written it. My
background is in theater, all kinds of theater. I love comedy.
I've been an actor director, done films, and worked in
(03:56):
professional stages, and I tried to write this book so
that it would appeal to younger people. I'd say twelve
on up to eighty or beyond, because I wanted to
foster conversations, especially where there might be families where the
children are doing active theater drills in school. It reminds
(04:19):
me of growing up and doing nuclear nuclear war drills,
of crawling under my desk, and yet I wanted to
foster conversations between the kids and maybe the families. The
families are hunters, they've got guns in the house. What
are the things that are going on? At the same time,
I wanted to talk about what happened the day that
(04:42):
this story hit me. I was reading I'd always wanted
to be an astronaut and NASA and unfortunately the realities
of war in Vietnam and at that time, to become
an astronaut you'd have to fly high performance jets and
drop an apalm on people. And by the time I
(05:02):
was getting out of high school, mac namara had left
the AS Department and the Secretary of Defense and was
saying Vietnam was not a good war, so I had
to make decisions at that time, and I went the
theater route. But I still I'm a pilot. I've been
a pilot since nineteen seventy one. And when I lived
in Alaska, I built my own airplane. We flew it
(05:23):
around Alaska for thirteen years. And my sister had sent
me a copy of Endurance, And I don't know if
you're familiar with that book. It was written by Scott Kelly,
who spent a year on the Space Station and his
brother Mark Kelly, who is now the Senator from Arizona.
At the time, he was a Space Shuttle commander and
was bringing supplies up to the space station when his
(05:46):
brother was up there, and they would compare them because
they were twins. What was happening to Scott physically and
where it was Mark physically. When I was reading the book,
I got to the chapter when he started talking about
out his sister in law, the assassination attempt on his
sister in law, Gabby Giffords, and what it felt like
(06:07):
to be on the space station and have that horrible
thing happen. And I think six people were killed in
that assassination attempt. That was February eighteen, twenty eighteen, which
was the same day as the Parkland shootings in Florida
where seventeen high school kids were killed, and a short
(06:27):
period of time later, I heard Senator Olmack talking about
his children down in Atlanta apparently had at their school
they had an active shooter incident, and he was talking
about how terrible he felt not being able to be
with his children he was in DC at the time,
and not being able to help them. And the story
began to germinate out of that, and I tried to
(06:50):
write the story. It's written in a very realistic style,
and I don't try to explain how the aliens do
what they do, but there is the wilful suspension disbelief,
and I figure that if people can watch the Transformers
or Superman, they can just spend their disbelief a little bit.
But I wanted that everybody to be represented and represented fairly.
(07:13):
I believe that the military is represented fairly. There's even
when I go back and read the book, I see
that everybody in it has their point of view and
as understandable. But what you begin to understand is it's
a mirror of who we are now, where we're at,
and the dilemma that we find ourselves in. And one
(07:34):
thing that ended up being because when I talk about
these aliens, they're very advanced. It's like Arthur C. Clark
used to say, any technologically advanced civilization could actually have
such technology that to us it would be magic. And
I wanted everybody to be able to see themselves in
(07:54):
the book and to understand their point of view. Yet
at the same time, I see the these aliens that
they had AI, that they saw AI as a creation
equivalent to themselves. They are basically creators. They treat it
(08:15):
as almost like a baby. They teach it morality. They
it's evolutionary. It may be our evolution, And what happens
to them eventually is they merge with their AI and
they go beyond that. We could be those aliens in
future years, if you give people education, if you give
(08:36):
them healthcare, if you help them, if you spend some
of your money to help people. I really see this
as the two sided mirror of us now and what
we could be if we make certain choices.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Tom I want to now transition to the aliens. I
think it's first and foremost like a story about aliens
coming down is by no means new, right been all
around pop culture. It's something that we are constantly moved by.
We see it in movies, we see it in different books,
video games, you name it. So that is not a
(09:11):
new concept like what if aliens came? But your novel
it asks the more specific and in my opinion, a
much more provocative question, What if aliens came and their
sole demand was that we fix ourselves?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Now?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
That I think is crucial because it's going to force
people to look inwardly.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Why is this happening? What can we do to fix that?
I'm curious when you were writing it, what was the
most challenging implication of this question that you explore in
the book.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I want to bring up a couple of things. My
first wife was a brilliant writer. I met her at
Illinois when I was in the master's program, and then
she went into the doctoral program at Florida State in
acting Directing theory was her focus, and she was a
four point zero. I was told by the head of
her doctoral program that she was probably the best doctoral
(10:07):
student Florida State had up to that point. She was
an excellent writer. I did not consider myself an excellent writer,
at least that I don't. I still struggle with that
that eventually she would tell me that I was a storyteller.
But I've lived in I think fifteen different states in
about twenty two different cities. We were living in Seattle.
(10:29):
We bought our first home in Dale's mom, who was
a very Christian woman. She was originally from Louisiana, a
very Cajun. Dale was Cajun, the epitome of Southern grace.
And her mom visited us for a week and was
just bashing communist China. And I looked at her, and
when she left, we took her to the airport and
(10:51):
we got back to the house and I looked at
Dale and I said, to your mom is as Christian
as she is. Wouldn't know Jesus if he walked up
and slapped her in the face. And Dale looked at
me and she said, now there's an idea. And I
ended up writing a book called Resurrection Encounter about some
aliens who star goes nova or is going nova, and
(11:13):
they're looking for another planet and they come across a planet.
They decide they can restock their ship out of what
they see and they bump into a guy named Jesus,
and they start monitoring him. They put a transponder on him.
One of their aliens goes down and follows him around,
and they start to understand him and not understand the
(11:35):
politics of the time. And when it comes to the crucifixion,
they actually drug him on the cross. They pull him
out of the tomb, they bring him up to the
spaceship and through with relativity moving forward in time, they
take their spaceship and they bring him to the twenty
first century and they drop them. By that time, there's
a nuclear explosion in they root, and Jerusalem is threatened,
(11:58):
and Jesus ends up right in the love this in
the whole world is half the world believes, half the
world doesn't, and the same things start happening again. I
wrote it nineteen ninety nine. I talked to somebody, I
think last year they couldn't believe I wrote it in
nineteen ninety nine. But Dale's comment to me after that,
she said, given your background in church and in high school,
(12:20):
she said, it's no wonder that your point of view
is alien. And I started to understand what that meant,
and I think the same is true of Tranquility Moon,
there are similarities.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
People understand. The conversation has just begun. Tom.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
You introduced AI into the discussion, and that is a
fascinating concept as well. Maybe the aliens are a type
of artificial intelligent life form. Listen, it can get deep,
it can get philosophical. This is a discussion that is
fascinating to me, and I know it is for so
many of you out there. You gotta head on over
(12:57):
to Amazon and Barnes and Noble pick up copies of
Trent Quidling Moon, read the book, but start the discussion.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Tom, thank you for being a guest. I'm People of Distinction.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
Hey is Benji col Son of Alcohol from CBS Radio
and host of the syndicated talk show People of Distinction.
The talk gives you an in depth view of some
of the most dynamic, intelligent, and successful people on the planet.
Run to our website Alcohol Enterprises dot com for more info.
Email me through Benji at Alcohol Enterprises dot com if
you'd like to get involved with what we have going,
(00:30):
and as always, please continue to like and follow our broadcasts.
People of Distinction is internationally syndicated solely due to the
love and support that you all continue to give. We're
available across all major distributors, and as long as you
keep following, we're going to continue to put out the content.
Now sit back and strap in because on the line
with us today we have the impressive Tom Score. Now
(00:53):
we're going to be discussing Tom's incredible book, Tranquility Moon,
where Violence has No Voice. It's Amazon, it's Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
But simply type it into a search bar man and
you're gonna be greeted with a lot more. The discussion
at hand today is gonna be one that is tough
to swallow.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I was telling Tom.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
In the pre screening call Man, It's something that I'm
looking forward to discussing because I know I'm not the
only one screaming into the void, petrified to send my
children to school. Something's not right here, people, and listen.
As an artist myself, I often view art as an
expression as a potential mirror to society, and it almost
(01:38):
makes things a little bit more palatable to see it
that way. But this is much larger than just an
entertaining read. Tom, First and foremost, welcome to the network, man,
and thank you very much for being here. How you
doing today, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I'm doing good, and thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Tom. It is a pleasure. Your book is something remarkably compelling,
and it's something that is going to touch so many
people out there.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Listen. Let's jump right in. First and foremost, lets start
at the foundation. Tell us a little bit more about
your book, Tranquility Moon.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I see it on one hand as being a simple
story about a family in a unique situation. There are
two kids. There's a ten year old girl and a
sixteen year old teenager, and there's a mom who is
a doctor and works at the hospital, and then there's
a father who's on a mission aboard the space station
(02:32):
and trying to do about a year and a half
to two years on the space station as a preparation
for a Mars trip. So that's their unique situation. But
on the same token, it's a story about worldwide implications
in that he has an encounter with an alien who
wants him to be the go between between them on
(02:56):
the Moon and the Earth, and their simple thing is
to try to help the Earth get past its violent stage.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Tom, you said something that I thought was quite powerful
on the pre screening call man like You, And I'm
going to paraphrase because I can't remember exactly how you
said it. But if something along the lines of you
want people to receive from this book, the notion that
it's okay to want to be safe, it's okay to
not be comfortable with violence, I think it is something
(03:24):
that gets truly to the heart of this The book
is nuanced, but I'm curious to note what inspired this
particular novel.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
First, well, before I say anything about that, I want
to say that most of the people that have read
it consider it a book of hope, that there's a
lot of hope in it, and I've written it. My
background is in theater, all kinds of theater. I love comedy.
I've been an actor director, done films, and worked in
(03:56):
professional stages, and I tried to write this book so
that it would appeal to younger people. I'd say twelve
on up to eighty or beyond, because I wanted to
foster conversations, especially where there might be families where the
children are doing active theater drills in school. It reminds
(04:19):
me of growing up and doing nuclear nuclear war drills,
of crawling under my desk, and yet I wanted to
foster conversations between the kids and maybe the families. The
families are hunters, they've got guns in the house. What
are the things that are going on? At the same time,
I wanted to talk about what happened the day that
(04:42):
this story hit me. I was reading I'd always wanted
to be an astronaut and NASA and unfortunately the realities
of war in Vietnam and at that time, to become
an astronaut you'd have to fly high performance jets and
drop an apalm on people. And by the time I
(05:02):
was getting out of high school, mac namara had left
the AS Department and the Secretary of Defense and was
saying Vietnam was not a good war, so I had
to make decisions at that time, and I went the
theater route. But I still I'm a pilot. I've been
a pilot since nineteen seventy one. And when I lived
in Alaska, I built my own airplane. We flew it
(05:23):
around Alaska for thirteen years. And my sister had sent
me a copy of Endurance, And I don't know if
you're familiar with that book. It was written by Scott Kelly,
who spent a year on the Space Station and his
brother Mark Kelly, who is now the Senator from Arizona.
At the time, he was a Space Shuttle commander and
was bringing supplies up to the space station when his
(05:46):
brother was up there, and they would compare them because
they were twins. What was happening to Scott physically and
where it was Mark physically. When I was reading the book,
I got to the chapter when he started talking about
out his sister in law, the assassination attempt on his
sister in law, Gabby Giffords, and what it felt like
(06:07):
to be on the space station and have that horrible
thing happen. And I think six people were killed in
that assassination attempt. That was February eighteen, twenty eighteen, which
was the same day as the Parkland shootings in Florida
where seventeen high school kids were killed, and a short
(06:27):
period of time later, I heard Senator Olmack talking about
his children down in Atlanta apparently had at their school
they had an active shooter incident, and he was talking
about how terrible he felt not being able to be
with his children he was in DC at the time,
and not being able to help them. And the story
began to germinate out of that, and I tried to
(06:50):
write the story. It's written in a very realistic style,
and I don't try to explain how the aliens do
what they do, but there is the wilful suspension disbelief,
and I figure that if people can watch the Transformers
or Superman, they can just spend their disbelief a little bit.
But I wanted that everybody to be represented and represented fairly.
(07:13):
I believe that the military is represented fairly. There's even
when I go back and read the book, I see
that everybody in it has their point of view and
as understandable. But what you begin to understand is it's
a mirror of who we are now, where we're at,
and the dilemma that we find ourselves in. And one
(07:34):
thing that ended up being because when I talk about
these aliens, they're very advanced. It's like Arthur C. Clark
used to say, any technologically advanced civilization could actually have
such technology that to us it would be magic. And
I wanted everybody to be able to see themselves in
(07:54):
the book and to understand their point of view. Yet
at the same time, I see the these aliens that
they had AI, that they saw AI as a creation
equivalent to themselves. They are basically creators. They treat it
(08:15):
as almost like a baby. They teach it morality. They
it's evolutionary. It may be our evolution, And what happens
to them eventually is they merge with their AI and
they go beyond that. We could be those aliens in
future years, if you give people education, if you give
(08:36):
them healthcare, if you help them, if you spend some
of your money to help people. I really see this
as the two sided mirror of us now and what
we could be if we make certain choices.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Tom I want to now transition to the aliens. I
think it's first and foremost like a story about aliens
coming down is by no means new, right been all
around pop culture. It's something that we are constantly moved by.
We see it in movies, we see it in different books,
video games, you name it. So that is not a
(09:11):
new concept like what if aliens came? But your novel
it asks the more specific and in my opinion, a
much more provocative question, What if aliens came and their
sole demand was that we fix ourselves?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Now?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
That I think is crucial because it's going to force
people to look inwardly.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Why is this happening? What can we do to fix that?
I'm curious when you were writing it, what was the
most challenging implication of this question that you explore in
the book.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I want to bring up a couple of things. My
first wife was a brilliant writer. I met her at
Illinois when I was in the master's program, and then
she went into the doctoral program at Florida State in
acting Directing theory was her focus, and she was a
four point zero. I was told by the head of
her doctoral program that she was probably the best doctoral
(10:07):
student Florida State had up to that point. She was
an excellent writer. I did not consider myself an excellent writer,
at least that I don't. I still struggle with that
that eventually she would tell me that I was a storyteller.
But I've lived in I think fifteen different states in
about twenty two different cities. We were living in Seattle.
(10:29):
We bought our first home in Dale's mom, who was
a very Christian woman. She was originally from Louisiana, a
very Cajun. Dale was Cajun, the epitome of Southern grace.
And her mom visited us for a week and was
just bashing communist China. And I looked at her, and
when she left, we took her to the airport and
(10:51):
we got back to the house and I looked at
Dale and I said, to your mom is as Christian
as she is. Wouldn't know Jesus if he walked up
and slapped her in the face. And Dale looked at
me and she said, now there's an idea. And I
ended up writing a book called Resurrection Encounter about some
aliens who star goes nova or is going nova, and
(11:13):
they're looking for another planet and they come across a planet.
They decide they can restock their ship out of what
they see and they bump into a guy named Jesus,
and they start monitoring him. They put a transponder on him.
One of their aliens goes down and follows him around,
and they start to understand him and not understand the
(11:35):
politics of the time. And when it comes to the crucifixion,
they actually drug him on the cross. They pull him
out of the tomb, they bring him up to the
spaceship and through with relativity moving forward in time, they
take their spaceship and they bring him to the twenty
first century and they drop them. By that time, there's
a nuclear explosion in they root, and Jerusalem is threatened,
(11:58):
and Jesus ends up right in the love this in
the whole world is half the world believes, half the
world doesn't, and the same things start happening again. I
wrote it nineteen ninety nine. I talked to somebody, I
think last year they couldn't believe I wrote it in
nineteen ninety nine. But Dale's comment to me after that,
she said, given your background in church and in high school,
(12:20):
she said, it's no wonder that your point of view
is alien. And I started to understand what that meant,
and I think the same is true of Tranquility Moon,
there are similarities.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
People understand. The conversation has just begun. Tom.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
You introduced AI into the discussion, and that is a
fascinating concept as well. Maybe the aliens are a type
of artificial intelligent life form. Listen, it can get deep,
it can get philosophical. This is a discussion that is
fascinating to me, and I know it is for so
many of you out there. You gotta head on over
(12:57):
to Amazon and Barnes and Noble pick up copies of
Trent Quidling Moon, read the book, but start the discussion.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Tom, thank you for being a guest. I'm People of Distinction.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
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