Contrary to the budget joining us to discuss the 2024 budget and Mr. Edum's optimism about reducing reliance on borrowing and increasing revenue is Dr. Fermi Egbeshola, President, Association of Small Business Owners of Nigeria. Good evening Dr. Fermi. Good evening and thank you for having me. We're really happy that you're able to join us and use now tonight. Is there anything to celebrate about this budget considering that it seems a bit rushed? Well, rush may be relative in the sense that by our constitution the budget supposed to be passed and signed before the end of fiscal year. So having the budget been signed this time before the end of the year to me is like resetting the cycle of a budget from January to December which is right and I think it deserves commendation but not the government of the homes of now seeing to the implementation of the budget and ensuring that they rely more on revenue and less on borrowing as they have promised. Oh, okay. So the lawmakers increased the budget from 27.5 trillion Naira presented by the President in November to 28 to 7 trillion Naira, a difference of about 1.2 trillion Naira. So what's your take on this? Well, if there is need the legislation has the rights to increase the budgets if there is a real need for it but the question is who is really asking question on why the budget is being raised, what it is meant for and who is going to supervise the use of the raised budget. So the budget has been spent from taxpayers money. So the taxpayers need to continually ask questions about budget raise. So I think it is time for us to be more responsible as citizens of the country to be asking more questions. If the budget has a 1.2 trillion extra raise, we should know for certainty what this budget raise is for, how it will spend, who are the stakeholders that will join government in monitoring the implementation of the raised budget and to monitor the effectiveness or review of this budget at the end of the exercise, then we can actually justify if the raise is reasonable or otherwise. Okay then. Now the Nigerian government has in recent years relied on advances from the CBN to show up a budget deficit amid dwindling revenue. I want you to join the answer with this coming question which is a bit long but I know that you will be able to take the two together. So before the expiration of his tenure from a president, Mohammad Abu-Hari, he requested the Nigerian Senate to approve the securitization of the CBN's 22.7 trillion Naira debt by converting it to a 40-year bond. Now the International Monetary Fund had cautioned about the CBN's use of ways and means to finance the deficit, complicating inflation containment efforts. Now with President Inoubo, the ways and means has been eliminated by taking the funding that is required from the market as opposed to the printing of money by the central bank of Nigeria. This should be good news to Nigeria, isn't it? Of course it is. Bringing that aid to ways and means of raising fund is the best way to go. We have so much resources in this country such that government can always raise enough revenue if they are strategic about it. It means we can continue to widen the tax net. It means continuing to look at other ventures and governments and Nigeria can diversify into to increase revenue. And that's the best way to improve our economy. That's the only way we can continue to attract investors to the country. And we also optimistic that next year, now that this year, right now, that Dango to Refinery will also begin to begin the operations, we will expect to see that more are going to cut down imports and import to the country and have more trade surplus in the country that we will be able to push on some of these reasons why we have ways and means before now. So it's the best way to go and we look forward to having this becoming a part and custom of our budget from now onward. Hello. I hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Today, people are living longer than ever before. By 2020, half the UK will be age 50 or over. This shift in the population and its ever increasing demands means West Sussex County Council has had to change its adult services and the way they are organised. Until now, the Council has spent most of the money meeting the needs of relatively few people, but it is moving towards more preventative and universally accessible services. The Council will not always be the direct provider. More and more, it is working with the voluntary sector to deliver community-based services. What we've been able to do by making additional investments is put that investment into voluntary sector organisations, community organisations that are very used to working at the heart of their local communities, working with the particular needs of a certain customer group. The British Red Cross, for example, has been commissioned to run the Home from Hospital scheme, which is there to support people when they first come out of hospital. Age UK West Sussex has been commissioned to provide the Good Neighbours scheme, which gives invaluable advice and support to help residents continue living in their own homes. Another good example are the My Network and My Network Plus services for adults with learning disabilities and their carers. They have been commissioned by the County Council, but are run by community-based service providers. Through six drop-in centres, the services work to make sure individuals get the support, help and advice they need to continue to live independently. The County Council also supports Frame of Mind, a community interest company providing vocational training for adults with mental health issues or learning disabilities. Trainees learn picture framing and general business skills in a real business environment. We're delighted in West Sussex that we have so many of the advantages that older people bring, their contribution to communities, their contribution as volunteers, their work as grandparents is all hugely valuable, so we need to make sure that we're prepared for our ageing population in this county. It is with this in mind that the new prevention assessment teams have been created. They aim to help people stay healthy and remain independent for as long as possible. While the assessment teams assist with health and social needs, the new CareWise scheme gives residents guidance on some of the financial advice they might need in their later years. For those who want to remain in their own homes and stay safe, the County Council and NHS West Sussex have teamed up with Wieldon and Eastbourne Lifeline to provide telecare. The service has a range of sophisticated telephone-based units. From monitoring a person's health through to getting emergency help if they fall, telecare gives confidence and peace of mind at the press of a button. The County Council will continue to run some services. These include the new specialist day services aimed at people with a physical, sensory or memory impairment. The centres offer a range of activities, personal care, advice and information, as well as providing support for carers. The changes have taken place in a difficult financial climate, but there is no doubt they have brought real benefits and have made sure that West Sussex residents are well placed to face the future.


Human beings are storytellers. We've always been storytellers. Before we wrote stuff down, people would sit around in the dark around a campfire and tell stories. Some of the stories were about the hunt. Some of the stories were about being that time that something happened when we were out trying to gather food. The time that the creator chased you, the time. We're storytellers, and then we make up fiction as well. It's a funny thing. I honestly wasn't explicitly conscious about like I got to like open this thing up to the whole world kind of thing. It's just like the universe was just pushing me this way, and I knew that the next step in my journey was to now take this to other people to gather like-minded folks to help them experience the healing that I experienced. It's like it's a standard shaman's journey. The wounded healer. Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. We are still in Cambridge in Massachusetts. We are now going to be talking about how we are the stories we tell. We have Bob Cohen joining us on the show. Hello. Hey, how are you? Thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It's been a great pleasure. Yes, and it's been such a pleasure meeting you and learning about your journey and what you're building. Bob Cohen is the founder of Ouroboros Story Hour, the true tales of healing and altered states, which is an unscripted storytelling project that focuses on consciousness, hacking practices, plant medicines, traditional psychedelics, healing, and maximizing our potential as human beings. You can check out the links in the bio below to their Facebook page, Ouroboros Story Hour, as well as you can get in touch with their Gmail or Ouroboros Story Hour at gmail.com. And we want to give a shout out to the whole Living Center, which is where we're shooting this interview at. This is Amelia Sabatoska Space. She's the founder. It's a psychotherapy, health coaching, and online workshop space right here in Mass Ave in Cambridge. So a huge shout out to her. And let's jump right into it, Bob. So we love asking our guests. We find ourselves as stewards of Earth. What is your current take on the state of humanity? The current take on the state of humanity? I think we are in a crisis of compassion. People are so focused on taking care of themselves and their families and their tribe that they've lost this idea of we being in this whole thing altogether. And it informs people's opinions. And it's as simple as things like... So I'm not young, so I argue politics on Facebook with my middle-aged friends. And I don't live in an echo chamber, so I make sure to cultivate friends across political spectra. When we have conversations, we miss each other, because they're thinking utilitarian. They're thinking theoretical. And I'm thinking, how can we take care of people that need to be taken care of? And we just miss each other. And I feel like if they could remember that there's more to life than that $150 bottle of fancy wine that they want to buy and that the person that we cross on the street may not have a place to live, may not have food, then maybe we can buy a $50 bottle of wine and do something better with that other hundred. A crisis of compassion. Yeah. Yeah. Such a deep focus on our own sustenance and also the sustenance of our families and our nuclear families that we have forgotten about the interdependent global village. But even global, yes, but even just even in your town, on your street or that neighbor that you don't get along with, well, what's going on with that? It's the kind of thing where I don't know how you teach that.  The message that you're broadcasting right now I think is critical for us to reflect on how we actually have more meaning and fulfillment in our lives when we do compassionate things with the extra that we have. With all that we have, not just the extra. Yeah. Yeah. With all that we have. Be show up and be with people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is now you're getting a really good taste of Bob. I love this. I love this so much. All right. Bob was actually born in New York City and then he moved to Boston around the age of 28.  Well, unlike maybe some of your guests, I have a way longer journey. So I'll try. I'll do what I can to keep this brief. So in the mid 80s, I was in a PhD program at Stony Brook University for English Literature. And we had some family issues and we, my wife, I had just gotten married and my wife and I decided that it was in our best interest as our own nuclear family to be someplace else than where we were. So we moved from Stony Brook to Boston. And the original intention was to stay there for a year. So I was in third, I was in third year of the program, had finished up my coursework and was getting ready to do Orals and Hermione dissertation. And a year turned into 30 years. It's funny how the, it's funny how these things happen, you know, you put down roots, even if you don't intend, even I didn't intend to put down roots here. I still feel like I'm, I still feel like I'm still suffering from, from what do we call it? We'll move on.  I want to open space for that last thought that you were having just a minute ago. Yeah, I was struggling over words. We'll talk about words later on. I lost the word that, you know, that, that, that, that cultural dissonance. Like I feel, I feel like culture in New England is very different from culture in New York. And so I have never felt like I fit in here. You think about that, that old Frost poem, you know, the Mendingwall, the payoff line, the last line of the poem is good fences make good neighbors. And that very much informs the different psyches between New York and New England. My standard joke is that if you're online in New York and you're there for any length of time, you can start a conversation with the person next to you.  Here, when you talk to someone online anywhere to an actual New Englander, I always feel like they're looking for the wet spot in my pants.  I don't know you.  And the funny thing is that in my family, I'm the least New Yorker of all of my family. I mean, I like I've lost my accent. And I'm not as I'm not as out there. I'm I was actually the demure one in my family. But here, I've always been viewed as the person who's way out there. And that I used to be a select man in my town. And that was my reputation because I said I said what was on my mind. And I didn't pull punches. And it was never unkind. Well, maybe sometimes, but I tried not to be. But it was this idea of, well, keep your thoughts to yourself, you know, just put a smile on your face and remember good things to make good neighbors.  Yeah, I see you want me to jump like this because from there, you know, I did a number of things. I was a full time freelance writer for for for about 10 years. I had a small web design practice that I kind of did in between. And then my wife was the CEO of a national nonprofit organization.  And we wanted we wanted to have a family and she had a six figure salary and and benefits. And I had a really cool job. I wrote about I did adventure journalism. So I'd go on like rock climbing trips, ice, ice climbing trips, scuba diving, like I've cut holes in lakes and guns, gun scuba diving under under under the under the ice. But of course, that doesn't pay real well. So we agreed that I would stay home and raise the kids. And that went all the way till about 2008. When my wife so my wife had been in her job when she was well, was like 29 or so. Until I won't say how old she is anymore. I won't say how old she is now. Got to get in trouble. And there was a she had a crisis at work. She did the president of the board of directors decided he wanted to spend money to enrich his friends. And she drew a line. And he wasn't having it. So he actually assaulted her in after a board meeting. She brought up the issue about the assault. The board circled the wagons around the president, the man. And as a result of that, she ended up losing her job. And so we went from six figures, six figure salary to holy fuck, what are we going to do now? So that was around that was around 2008.  I mean, I don't want to in store in story hour, like I'm pretty open about it. I mean, I almost lost my house a few times. We really had to scramble and struggle to keep our home and to keep our family together and to make sure that our children didn't understood what was going on, but didn't feel the deep effects of the trauma from what was going on for both of us. And so my wife's story is really not mine to tell. So I'll tell my story in this. It was, it was hard.  Yeah, how to deal with finances. And don't forget, now I'd been out of the job market for a bunch of years. So even though, you know, even though I've got a master's degree with 30 credits for toward a PhD, it's like, what have you done for me lately is really how, you know, really what it was. So it was not easy for me to kind of plug in and find, you know, and find something that worked. So we worked hard at that. And around 2013, we found ourselves in a situation where we didn't have health insurance. And my family, every family has a curse. So my family's curse is bad arteries. So my dad, his brother, their father, and whoever else from back in the old country, they all died in their fifties from from from heart attacks. And we had the money that we had within the assets, I kind of pushed us outside the bounds of qualifying for mass health. It's but we would periodically try. So by the time by the summer 2013, I was very sick, like just walking down, I would break out into a sweat walking down to the mailbox. And so I kind of resolved myself to, well, I have a good life insurance policy. I don't want to leave my family. I don't want to burden my family with medical debt.   And somehow or another, this is like this is really like where the journey begins in earnest. We you know, we periodically make these calls to Mass Health. So my wife called and she got a woman on the phone, whose name was loose, L. U. C. E, which is light. Somehow or another, I don't I will never know how this worked. Somehow or another, we found ourselves with being covered by Mass Health. Wow. Within a week, I was bringing women's hospital having a heart surgery. When they when they, you know, when they looked at when they looked at the data, three of my arteries arteries were 99% blocked. No. My fourth one was 85% blocked. And my doctors looked at me and said, how are you not dead? So here's a really, it's a really cool thing. Your heart actually creates peripheral blood vessels when the big ones get when the big ones get blocked up. So it was like keeping me going. Wow. 99% 99% block three of them. Yeah. And then here's just a really crazy thing that happened. So as I'm, you know, as we're kind of like moving into this like late summer, this late into the late summer, I fall asleep and I have a dream. So I'm a right among the things I do as I'm a writer.  So I had like fall asleep. I had this dream. I'm in a room with this person who's like my literary mentor. And we're talking about the story. And he says to me, that's a good story, but I got another one for you that you have to work on. And I said, in the name of the main character is going to be Tola. T-O-L-A-H. So, okay, well, what the hell's Tola, right? Okay. So he says to me over and over again, T-O-L-A-H, T-O-L-A-H, T-O-L-A-H. I wake up, Tola is on the tip of my tongue. I go to my handy dandy phone, hit that, you know, Google Tola. It's a word that appears in the Bible two times. And one of the places that it, what are the places it appears is, I think it's Tom 24. It's my God, my God, why have you, why have you forsaken me? And so I read through the, I read through the, you know, I pulled up my Bible app, read, you know, read, read the, read the poem and I am, I'm a car carrying atheist. I experienced grace. My body, like I, like something happened to my body in that moment. And it was like, wow. Wow.   They're like this long. And they were, they were so blocked and they were so brittle that the doctor said that if I were, say, five or six years older, they would have cracked my chest and done a bypass. Instead, they put, they put in stents and really cool. They went through an artery in my wrist.  Within two days, I went from profoundly sick to like, I could rock. I, if they would have let me, I could have gone out running two days later. Wow.  Yeah. And it was like, it was like this big ship. And so, you know, we're later on, we're going to talk about, about how psychedelics interact with our consciousness. But there are a lot of ways that, you know, that you can have these consciousness altering events that kind of lead me to the idea that really what psychedelics do and what any of these practices is do is they open up doors for us, and that they lead us to a sort to the source. To the source, yes. Which is us. Yes. Right. It's, it's, it's this reframing thing.   Now what? Because I, you know, in a funny sort of way, you know, the, the idea of like dying from a heart attack, like that gets me off the suicide hook, right? My suffering's over. My family gets some money. And I get paid, I get relief from my pain. Because at that, you know, at that time, we still hadn't sorted our, we still really haven't sorted our situation. Only now I'm not dead. So there's this initial state of euphoria where like, wow, you know, I feel great, you know, and then there's like, well, now what? Meaning. Yeah, like now, now what? And that actually made me more depressed than I was before. So we hit the summer of 2014. And I'm out of my mind. Like, I'm like, I'm ready to check out again. And I came across an article. I'm pretty, I might, there were three articles that I'd read that summer. One was in the Washington Post. One was in the New Yorker. And one was, I forget where the other one was. One of them was a Michael Pollan article. So we could, it would be like a nice, tidy story to say Michael Pollan got me here. So they were talking about the research at Johns Hopkins and NYU, the psilocybin research. So I thought to myself, well, yeah, you know, I tried mushrooms a couple of times in 1980 when I hitchhiked around the country. That sounds like that could work. It was a very pleasant experience. I just did it to, you know, just to get messed up. And this idea was born that psychedelics were going to sort of like help me reconfigure my being. Only I was in my mid fifties.  So you get into the year late 20s, early 30s, you still have friends that are in school. So you know people who know people. And then eventually you don't know anybody. So I'm like, all right, so what am I going to do? So I do two things. I started educating myself about psychedelics. So I'm hitting, you know, going to hitting J store and reading reading the journal stuff, reading the neuroscience, reading the reading, reading, reading, reading the research, trying to like educate myself on the language and like understanding what's going on. And it's just just push, push, push, push, and eventually understanding comes. And in the process of doing that self education, I discovered the horizons new perspectives and psychedelics conference. So it was in New York. Now, at that time, we really didn't have any money. And I'm like, I got to go there. I have to go to I have to go to horizons. So fortunately, it's in New York City, it's in the village. And I'm from New York. So I was able to get to New York, stay at my mom's house out on Long Island, and take the train in for both days of the conference. So we're midway through the conference. And the I think it was the NYU team that was up, but I forget what the hell they were talking about. But like some research. And so they were doing work on the end of life, end of life trauma and something else. So we get to the Q&A portion of the presentation. And I stand up and I go, this is really great.  And so I go, well, what I said was I said, I'm not asking you where where I can score drugs, but you know, can you help a brother out? So it's like, I got the laugh in the room that I want to help brother out. Yeah, can you help a brother out?   So like meanwhile, like so that's that's that's that's September, that's early October of of 2014.  And I literally put her up around my neck. They went into my garage, got up on the, got up on the ladder and I used to rock climb. So I had a tie knots. Yeah. And I designed it so that the so that the force would so that the force of me putting the weight on it would drop down and wouldn't swaying. Like I got this, like all planned out. And then I thought to myself, my kids are going to come home and find me this way. Yeah. And so I got down. Wow. And so at the, you know, at the at the at the conference at the after I had after I had that's that's a profound shift when you think about the people that are going to be affected by the decision. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's because it's not about you at that point, you know, it really is. And it's like, it's your relate. It's that compassion thing, right?  And there is also a way to not be miserable. And that's what the discovery, right? Right. This is this is the discovery. So at the at the at the horizons conference, this woman came up to me at the very end of the day and she's the first she's she's the second angel. I actually had like in my journey, like there are a number of like really concrete angels who came into my life. So there's the angel for my dream. There's loose. And then there's a woman named Mary Kay from New York City. And she saw me like through the cheekiness through the through the through the steam of the snarky thing. And she said, I heard you. I know how you feel. I know somebody, but I wanted to meet you first to make sure to have a conversation with you. I'm going to go talk to this guy. And I'll tell you, I'll find you tomorrow and I'll let you know what's what. So the Sunday of the conference, she comes up to me. She gives me a name. There's this guy in the Upper West Side who trips it. And he worked he worked with MDMA and with mushrooms. So my interest at that at that time was mushrooms, in part because I was afraid MDMA is a vasoconstrictor. And so with you know, with having the stance, I was had some concerns because it's a methamphetamine based drug. So I had some concerns about how that might affect my my new apparatus, my new apparatus.  But I have we have a network of people. There's somebody in Providence once you I'll get you in touch with that person. So I'm like really desperate at this point. So he connects me with this person in Providence. We talk and I think at the end of the day, I'm going to use I'm going to use the pronouns that disguise gender. They so I think they were concerned that they wouldn't be able to handle my situation while I was tripping. They like to use a very high dose of mushrooms, seven grams, which is a which is a lot. And so they said, I really can't we couldn't like we couldn't meet each other. And they said, well, I'm going to connect you with psychotherapists that would start you at a lower with this person with this person who actually was not a psychotherapist, interestingly enough. I'm going to connect you. I'm going to bounce you back to our friend in New York. Okay. I call up our friend in New York. Arrangements are made January of 2015. I'm in New York City, which is right down the street from where I was born is Upper West. I was born in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, which is like 110th Street. It's up in Morningside Heights. So I'm maybe like 15 blocks from there lying on Riverside in like in a couch and Riverside Drive. So we started out with two and a half grams of mushrooms. And I got stuck in a loop. So my New York friend says, well, you seem to be stuck in a loop. Do you want more? Okay, sure. So I ended up taking five grams of my first trip. Whoa, what loop were you stuck in? Oh, I'm also practicing Zen Buddhist. So I got stuck in this loop where I realized the absurdity of the Zen practice and the Kwon practice. I practice the form of Korean Zen. So they call them Kongans, but it's K-O-A-N. People know it as. And I was stuck on one and had been stuck on one for a really long time. So then I started having this conversation with the dead founder of this dead Korean monk founder of the Kwonam School of Zen.   So. They up the dose to your past. Yeah. So I'm like looping, looping, looping. So my friend from New York, you know, upset dose to and he did some funky stuff with sound. So once I got past that, it was the most extraordinary thing I said, I ended up like revisiting my infancy. Like I regressed back to, I regressed back to, to like, to baby state. And I want to be careful about how I always say this, because some things are not my stories to tell. But I needed to be loved in a way that I wasn't. Yes. And we all do. Yeah. Yeah. And so I actually went back and gave myself. Yes. That stuff that was missing from me. Yes. And it was this profoundly healing thing. Yes. And then like, so three, three, three big, three big things happened in that, in that, in that experience. So there's this piece, then the other piece is that my dad, he was a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department, he retired on the captain's, on the captain's list. He's a really brilliant guy, but he also didn't know how to play with, didn't know how to, he was like all about power.  So he never like, like he could have been he was smart enough to be police commissioner. He got stuck in like the civil service thing. And then he ended up like ending his life in a way that was not satisfactory for him, because he died a year after he retired from the police department. And then my great uncle, Henry Mady, was a painter and sculptor in New York City. So his parents were Polish immigrants. And he's completely self taught. His work is extraordinary. It's exquisite. Same thing though, like he couldn't, like he couldn't, they couldn't figure out how to like get out of their own way to, to open up themselves to the world so that they could, the world could embrace them. And they're, and they're, they're brilliant. So these were really smart guys. And so I went back to them. So I went back, like, and I had a conversation with them. I said, look, you guys are all done. I said, I got this now, I will carry this forward for us. So you don't have to worry anymore. You, you got, you guys can rest. And then the other kind of crazy thing was like, I was like doing all these crazy rituals. And whatever, like I'm out, I'm saying like it was, I was a bed wetter. And I didn't realize how traumatic it was. And so I went through this whole thing with rituals. And I ended up like pouring water all over my, all down my shirt, like down in my pants, and then changing.  And I'm like, wow, this is, you know, this is like, this is the deal. Yes. But I'm still back with this problem of where do I score drugs? And finding me further meaning in life. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, what a, what an insane series of life experiences from the clogged arteries near the heart 99% clogged to then needing to find meaning when you regain that state change. And then all the way to all the trauma that was healed and what you experienced with your first psilocybin experience, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, and all the way up to, you know, to where you're at now. And I'm really excited to be able to talk about that. Because I think it's so fascinating that you've taken what was some of the most profound experiences of your life and you've really built on top of them and shown it made spaces for other people to be able to express themselves at their fullest as well. Yeah, yeah. So I can't score drugs. More research. I grow my own mushrooms. Wow. And it's I kind of like I worked it out. So 2016, well, through 2015, 2015 to 16. And I don't have anybody to trim it for me. So now I'm fooling around experimenting with micro dosing, micro dosing.  All that fun stuff. And how often were you dosing? And I did a total of from 2015 till last, till last year to the beginning of 2018. I did a total of six rounds of six, six rounds of micro dosing. So it's for 40 days. And then I would not dose, you know, I wouldn't take any for a while, because I wanted to do the idea was like I didn't want to be dependent on on drugs. Totally. So you would do like, maybe a gram or something? No, no, point one gram. Oh, point. Wow. That's so micro dosing. That's really low. So point one, every day for 40 days. No, no, every other day, every third day, every fourth day. So the bottom of protocol is yes, a tenth of an active dose. Okay. And you take a new redose every fourth day, every fourth day, so that you have your time of sobriety and then another dose. Right. So then you did it 10 times over 40 days. Well, you write 10 times. So that was you do that. And then you take a couple months rest, right. And then and then do it. And what were you experiencing on the days that you would take the point one grams? Heart opening more so than on the control days. Well, the idea with the idea with micro dosing is it's sub perceptual. So it's not unlike taking Prozac. So it's where only without without all the the shitty side effects like not being able to get hard on. So, you know, you don't feel anything explicit. But it's this kind of gradual thing that we like, if think of it like when we when someone has has been in extreme exposure, we don't throw we don't throw them in hot water, we gradually raise up their temperature. So it's that same was that same thing like just gradually over the course of a couple of years, open my heart. Little bit by little bit by little bit interesting. And then as you're experiencing that, where are you finding differences in you know, and your heart opening up as this amongst the finding meaning in life is this with finding meaning in family and your children in your community. Where was it most with purpose? It starts with, for me, it started with my relationship with myself. You know, the people say all the time that you can't love other people until you love yourself. And so it was that because we have this conversation when people talk about forgiving like forgiving is not about letting the guy off the hook that did you dirty. It's about letting yourself off the hook for having been done dirty.  And so it was like it kind of like established that part of my journey forward in what I call I call these my bonus years. Yeah, my bonus years. I'm supposed to be dead. So so I got to you know, I got to reinvent, you know, I got to reinvent myself. Yes, yes, and then be able to inspire other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we kind of go along with this. And then every year after I kept on going back to to to horizons. So after my third year, I got connected up with a guy named Lex Palger, who used to be part of Symposium.  And in my third in my third horizons, 2014, 15, so 2016, he invited me back to the after party at his place in Bed-Stuy. That's Bedford Stuyveson for you folks who weren't from New York, which used to be one of the worst neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I mean, like, my dad worked in Bed-Stuy in the 70s, you know, back when there were 2,500 murders a year in New York.  So I find myself at this at this party, and I'm the oldest person there by by a lot, but whatever, like I'm tickled that, you know, someone would think to invite me to something like that. And it's like part of this like whole rebirth thing. So I'm there. So I'm talking with one of Lex's roommates, actually, Mary Kay's daughter, Catherine. Now this is now another angel in the in the story. So I tell her the story about the about standing up and saying, can you help a brother out? And she goes, that was you. That was you. That's funny. Yeah, we all thought you were a narc. So, you know, we got a good chuckle that, you know, we got a good chuckle out of it. You know, there's like, there's a funny, I don't we don't have time to do it. So there's actually a funny drug story that at that party. But anyway, you know, we talked so Lex floats back into the conversation. And he says, you know, we kind of like relate this thing. He goes, Oh, that was you. Like, yeah, he goes, you got to come. So Lex, one of the things Lex did was he actually did story. He did he organized storytelling things. He goes, you got to come to my thing in Brooklyn. And I go, Oh, okay. So he invited me. He was in a place called Hell Kitchen, which I think is in it's either in Bed-Stuy or Bushwick, I forget which, but he goes, You got to come. And so, okay, well, as long as I can crash on your couch, no problem. So a month later, I'm now in a, you know, in, you know, the in the hip capital of the universe, in the hipster capital of the universe, telling a story about my journey to, you know, my journey to psychedelics. Excellent. And it was like, bam. So I'm a writer in 2016. So I'm a writer and I tell stories. And this kind of like falls right in. And what's really cool is that it got me out of the preparation for telling unscripted storytelling for me is very different from when I'm writing a story. Yeah, because there were no notes. Yes. And I composed the entire story without ever writing it down a paper, and I would drive her out of my car and practice.  I got, I got this down. And it came off really well.  We had a really great time. Now I really dig telling stories. So Lex comes back to, Lex comes up to Boston that so now we're getting to the, I guess, the spring of 2017, the Northeastern's SSTP so that students for sensible drug policy. Yes. Group was doing sort of like a shout out to them. Yeah. And also shout out to Ismael. Yeah, Ismael. Yeah. And shout out to Rick Doblin and Leonis Ananda and Maps. Yep. We love Maps, maps.org. Please go check them out. Yeah. Psychedelics is the psychotherapy. They're so far along with helping make the movement happen. Yeah. Students for sensible drug policies are very important organization. And they're really getting into the minds of young people. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, so real cool. So Lex is, Lex is doing this, is hosting the storytelling thing. So he asked me to come and share my story again. So that was actually a funny night because I started out my story with, does anybody know where I can score LSD, ayahuasca, mushrooms? And the, you know, I'm pretty good at this. Like the whole, like the whole room was like, did he just ask to buy trunks? Yeah.  And then at the, at the end of the night, a very, a person I've become friends with, a very, very dear young man came up to me later on and he says, come here, I gotta, he invited me into the bathroom. He tore out a sheet.  Yeah, that's awesome. So, so, so we do this now. Now, but also at that, also at that event were some people from what is called the Boston Theogenic Network. So it's really, it's a Facebook group. And what we say, what's the term of art everyone seems to use? It was a group of like-minded people. I think that's what people said now.  He's a good fellow, right? You know, in the psychedelic community, we're like-minded people or like-hearted people, if you like, better. Yeah. And they invited me to come to their meetings. So I'm like, okay, cool. Now I have a place, I have an audience where I can develop this storytelling project because I'm really digging into telling stories. So I go there. I meet with a woman named Leah Friedman. She's one of the founders of Ben and Nathaniel Pottenham is another one of the founders of Ben and a few other people.  And this is where we're having meetings about psychedelics. So I get this idea like, I want to tap this audience and make the storytelling thing happen. So this pushes us into the summer of 2017. Awesome. I started out, just up the road here is the Cambridge Democracy Center. So they're like, they're a direct action, their mission is direct action. So I call them up about space. My project wasn't quite right for them. They directed me to an organization called makeshift Boston, which is a cooperative working space. So freelancers get together, they, you know, they work during the day, they write the space out at night. So I make the arrangements to get the space and they really dig this project. So they give me a good deal. And that was August of 2017. And that's when you went up and gave your first talk at my first story hour. And you were refined at that point, because you had given the talk a couple of times. Yeah. Yeah. So I had like, I could do this. And I was also a public official. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty comfortable talking in front of crowds anyway. And you had your first stint in curation too, which is great.  You, after you intro'd it, and then they also told about their experiences. Yeah, with hacking consciousness. Very interesting. Okay. So then the, okay, so now the formation of this happens. We have your big, we have your big story about coming out and about, you know, well, we didn't even really get to like how you ended up talking to your family and your community and how hard that is to do that in the process. Yeah. Tell us a bit about it. Yeah, sure. So again, it all starts with your relationship with yourself. Yes. Or it's, I don't want to put it that way. It started with my relationship with myself. Yes, yes. Am I okay with this? Because, I mean, this is a fact of life until things change. You're legal drugs. And now I'm a policeman son. And here I am taking illegal drugs, because I'd never really, you know, I'm not a lawbreaker. And I have to, you know, I had to get okay with that. But things were so like, you know, there was, there was a movement going on. There was, there was this the universe was pushing me in it. It was gently, not so gently guiding me in a direction. I guess I almost died. I said, correct, course direction here. You know, this is this is where we have to go. So this is like part of how I have been able to come out of the closet was to learn to accept the guidance from the universe and to get in touch with my intuition. Interesting. Yes. And then that assisted with getting in touch with your family, community, right? Because if you do, and when we do things where we're a little, where they're shame involved, it's hard to engage other people. So you're confident in yourself and the way that you are engaging with these with your own consciousness hacking experiences. And then you engage with your family or community based on your own confidence with those exactly. So with family, because I couldn't buy drugs, I had to grow mushrooms.   And, you know, I was always very cautious to, to frame it. And it's actually how I frame it in my mind anyway, but it's medicine, you know, I'm growing medicine because the medicine the doctors give me don't work. Yes, correct, correct. They make the medicines the doctors give me make me sicker. Yes, correct, correct. So this is so this is what I'm doing to help myself. For thousands of years is what we've been helping ourselves with. Yeah, yeah, natural secretions of planet Earth of Gaia. And yeah, and here we are, millennias later, putting it as a ban, a civilizational ban, so we can keep the hierarchies and the economies and the power. I mean, if anybody's paying attention to this, this is medicine to make us feel better.  Leave us alone. Yes, yes. Let us, let us, let us get better please for, I mean, for such a myriad of reasons too. And we'll get there. We'll actually let's get there because that was the big point about the confidence with the self to be able to engage with coming out. And please come out of the psychedelic closet as soon as possible, have that confidence with yourself and then talk to your family, friends, coworkers on social media about it, find your communities that will support your little, your golden nuggets of experiences with consciousness hacking and become out as soon as possible because we need you in the world so bad. Okay, now I want to talk about, I want you to explain the importance of why you started this because you know that there's, you had this profound change in your own life from it. And then you thought that you could then open the door to or a Boro story hour for other people to be able to come and feel that similar profound change in their own experience to share it with other people, build a community. That's these are the big things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  We've always been storytellers before we wrote stuff down. People would sit around in the dark around a campfire and tell stories. Some of the stories were about the hunt. Some of the stories were about being that time that something happened when we were out trying to gather food, the time that the creator chased you, the time we're storytellers, and then we make up fiction as well. And it's a funny thing. I honestly wasn't explicitly conscious about like, I got to like open this thing up to the whole world kind of thing. It just like the universe was just pushing me this way. And I knew that the next step in my journey was to now take this to other people to gather like-minded folks to help them experience the healing that I experienced. It's like it's a standard Shaman's journey. The wounded healer. Yeah. And so here I am. Okay. And believe me when I tell you, I was far from better. I may still be far from better, but it takes a long time. It takes a long time. It's our whole journey. Yeah. So we do this. And now in the course of getting involved with Ben, I now have access to a community of people who can- I've solved the drug dealer conundrum. I now know people and got introduced to people who did that. This is a very important point. I didn't actually get to highlight it so much in when you initially mentioned it, but it is so important to increase accessibility to safety, to safe and well conducted psychotherapy sessions. This is so, so critical. Yeah. And doing it from a ceremonial point of view as well. With intent. Yes. So we get through all through all the 2016, I'm just kind of like working out the kinks in the project. And I started out where I was highly curating the nights, like picking speakers around subjects. That was my first model. And that worked to an extent. And some really cool things happened as a result of that. But the universal easement pushed me away from that. It's just let things happen organically. So we go through a lot of 2016, all the 2016, 2017. So we're in January of 2018. And I have a nice supply of mushrooms out in my basement. And I found myself in a possession of a day where nobody was around. And I go, yeah, I think I'm going to go have a trip.  I get my eye covers I put on the Johns Hopkins soundtrack for mushroom tripping, laying on the, I laid out on my couch. And I'm kind of like falling into this, you know, like nice and falling into this nice trip. And I'm actually experiencing bliss for the first time. But then I hear this noise like, so there's all these, there are chainsaws because I live in the country. And I'm trying to like not pay attention to that and you know, stay in my head and like hold on to the bliss. And it just, that noise just wouldn't go away. So I'm peeking on the mushrooms.  And I see this army of guys cutting down one of one of my neighbor's trees. So the street I live on, it's really long. Everyone has like two and 300 feet of frontage. We're like not close to one another. But I can see this going on. And they're the way that they were cutting down, and it was a big tree when they were cutting down by lopping the branches first, and then they were going to cut the trunk. And something really crazy happened. There was this transference of consciousness with the tree. Wow. And I suddenly found myself experiencing directly the tree's terminal agony. Yes. Wow. Correct. Yeah, yeah. Because it is all so connected. Yeah. Yeah. And that also, I don't really, this is a simulation exclusive. I've never told people this. I've never told people this part of the, I've told the story before, but I've never told this part of the story. It was very traumatic for me to leave graduate school. I mean, it's a big hole for me right now.  I was on track to be Dr. Cohen. I'm not Dr. Cohen. So that kind of like limits where I can teach and things like that. So it's like, it's always been this sort of a gaping wound. And there's this, there's this crazy convergence of experiencing the tree's terminal agony, but then also re-experiencing the trauma of leaving graduate school and like this idea of like losing it like, rip one one limit of time and thrown into a chipper. So we get to the end. So like now the trees, the tree spirit is all but all but gone. And I, as an act of compassion for the tree spirit, I was like, I will take you to ground. We together went, I took, I carried his spirit back to the source. Yeah. Interesting. And so this is this kind of interesting connection, like going back to the Shaman's journey thing. So in agrarian, in agrarian cultures, when shamans have that, that death rebirth experience, it's done where the spirit goes to ground. Hunter gatherers, they, their, their bodies are flayed and then reconstituted. So I come from farmers, interestingly enough. So we, we go, we go to ground together. So another part of shamanic experience is this idea that parts of our soul break off and they go someplace. So that part of my soul rested in the ground with the tree until March of 2017, when an opportunity to participate in an ayahuasca ceremony came along.  So, but in my second, in my second, like the first one was like, the first one just, it was just all about just being able to survive the night because it was very intensive. In my second journey, I actually had a rebirth experience where I came like, my spirit came back up out of the ground. It was in the spring. And it was, it was actually Mother's Day of 2017. It was that, it was that weekend. And that just supercharged the story project. It just, it was like, bam, I'm, I'm reborn. Like praise the Lord, you know, I'm reborn. Yeah. Yeah. The, the amount of experiences that you've now curated for other people, both as speakers as well as attendees is incredible. So you've done, you've done 21 of these shares that's about one a month that you're doing. And this is anywhere from 20 to 40 people are showing up to these. You have people speaking on altered states of consciousness, meditation, psychedelics, healing, trauma, helping with their addiction, talking about ego death, talking about oneness, and the feeling that the speakers, the audience get when they're sharing these experiences, they're, they're able to communicate the golden nuggets. The audience is able to receive. There's a sense of community. There's a sense of awakening for audience members to understanding how other people have grown and flourished through it. And we make that meaning between us when we talk about these stories. Yeah, we do. It's, it's because this is, you know, crackpot theory 47 for me. But the way, the way I think of communication is that we have stuff in our heads that's filtered through our experiences, the people to whom with whom we communicate have their own set of experiences. We have some agreement on what words mean more or less. And then when you speak them, that meaning gets, I think it gets out here. And together we sort of like make something. So in a place like in a place like story hour where we are in the room together and mixing our energies together, there's stuff that there's communication that goes on that's nonverbal. That's not the, not the like, that's beyond the idea of, you know, nonverbal cues like gestures and facial expressions energetically. And so we, when we were talking about this before about about meaning making, it's the thing I kind of like left out of, I left out, not a purpose is just, it's I left that part of it out as like this idea of being in the space together and our energy connecting like we communicate in this deeper way. And so we have this, I try really hard when I talk about, when I talk about story hour, I owe it the short, it would be easy to call them shows, but they're not their shares.  They're givers and receivers in these things. But the giving and the receiving actually really does go both ways. And that's where we make the meaning. That's where we make the experience when that happens. And I, I can't think of a, well, I'm trying to think now, I can't think of a single time when people didn't come up, storytellers didn't come up to me afterward and say, Oh my God, this was just so healing.  And this is like this idea that we're not alone and we're not alone in our suffering. And it gets back to what we talked about before with the, you know, with compassion, the compassion crisis, we don't meet each other in that space anymore. We don't meet each other in the space of, you know, even if it's not the same thing, I'm miserable, you're miserable. We're human, right? The Buddha says life to suffering. That we all have that in common, you know, the Nazi and the Quaker.  We're all, we all suffer. And it's just how we manifest our fear that shapes what goes on. And that gets back to, you know, the tagline of story hours, we are the stories that we tell ourselves. Nazis tell a particular story about the world. Quakers tell a different story about the world. People who take psychedelics tell a third story about the world.  We reorganize, you know, we literally reorganize our brains. But we still do not understand the relationship between the chemicals and the reordering of our brains.  Well, why does it work? Because what's the source of all the healing? You and me. And it's just how do we like what door do we go in through to get to the source to understand that. And that's like that's like what fundamentally what happens at Orbor story hours is we're opening this we're opening, we're opening up the same door, and we're all going through the same door. We all have we are sharing a moment we're sharing, we're directly sharing an experience. Yes, yes. This ability to open the the communication to source to all that is have space for that have space for healing have space for storytelling have space for psychedelics have space for altered states of consciousness for that love and compassion is just, we need more of that we need more of these stories around the world for people to feel more comfortable talking about them and you're doing exactly what's needed, you're actually, you're actually going even a step further. And then you're taking it on the road, you're doing a documentary here, the ones that the shares that you do here. And then you're also, you're planning one in Providence, one in Portland, Maine, potentially San Francisco. And so this is again, this is one of those things where can we spread the word across the world? Can we get more people to do the Orbor story hours? I love that. Yeah, it's can we get a bunch of people in the room together to acknowledge that we're human? One of the things I love about the psychedelic community is how do I put this when we're out and about in the world, you're at your office, you know, you bump into someone, how you doing? Yeah, I'm doing all right. When I'm in spaces with people who are who do psychedelics and we're sort of like, how you doing?  How are you feeling miserable? Because I care about you too. And it's just opening, just opening it up to like not pretending that everything's okay. And not always that some occasionally it does come up that I am feeling blissful or I am feeling tons of love and compassion. Yeah, because sometimes it happens. Sometimes we're on the wild up as well. Yeah. And that we can give ourselves more during those times and that type of thing. Yeah. I mean, for me, I don't, I think everyone's journey is different with everyone's life journey is different, but everyone's medicine journeys are different as well.  But you actually do have bliss from time to time. So last year, I went to Firefly, which is a regional burden in Vermont. And I wasn't I wasn't intending to going. It's another angel in my story. So my friend Paige kind of just she could hold me into getting on the waiting list. So like, okay, I'll go on the waiting list. I didn't think I was going to get a ticket. I got a ticket. So now we're now we're camping, you know, we're just like really hot, we're camping.  So everybody else who goes on it burns a lot of drugs. And I kind of like wasn't doing many I didn't really want to do a whole lot of drugs. I was like just digging like being around free people who just felt free. And the night of the bug burn, someone got the brilliant idea of dropping acid. And then at the peak of taking acid, doing MDMA. So I believe that's called cam. I believe that's called candy flipping candy flipping candy flipping. Wow. Yeah. And hopefully, there's again, responsible. Oh, absolutely. We are disclaimer, responsible use. Well, the thing is, like, we've been camping together all week.  And we all stayed together. And so the responsible will become evident in a second. So I actually did story hour at Firefly as well. And we were supposed to do I was supposed to do one like the night of the bug burned. And I was like, yeah, we're not going to do that. We are the story. So we get to, you know, we get to this big open field with the with the bug. And we're all kind of like sitting together in a knot. And we're, we're tripping our hearts are wide open. It gets dark. And for people who have never been in the mountains, where there's no light pollution, the sky is just so different from when we're looking at the looking at looking up at the sky at night. That's right. In Cambridge.  And we were kind of like all we were like all not together. It was we actually had a it was a consensual platonic cuddle puddle. And we're all just kind of like pulled in together. And I felt the warmest and safest I've probably ever felt in my entire life from that night. And I had this vision where I might my mind kind of like travel back through the eons of time and imagined what humans, the way humans coexisted, the way humans existed before we had cities and towns. And we were apes that cuddled together for warmth on the on the, you know, in an open field on the mountains, because it was dark and we were afraid.   Yeah, the cars and building and surface level connections and money and economies and all that other type of stuff is a very, very different feeling than the feeling of laying there in a cuddle puddle where you're looking up at the stars in a non light polluted area when you're really tapping into that feeling of oneness. I completely agree.  I want to we have a couple other things to hit on the way out. I want you to you I mean you gave us a little taste in this and we'll have to talk about it more next time. But the way that we make meaning between us with words I think such a fascinating topic that will unpack more soon.  I thought that was so funny. It is. Yeah, it is very funny. It's very funny. And then I want us to hit on the you know, we've been talking about this throughout the conversation. I think it's so important to hit on your thoughts on science and spirituality because these two things are they're so intertwined and they're so beautifully able to guide us in a direction of prosperity and so abundance. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, the science and spirituality are entwined in our culture. Right. It's not explicitly they're not necessarily have to be explicitly connected. But for somebody like me who was born in the mid 20th century with a mature history of science and rational thought, I went in the direction of science. I became an atheist. I stopped going to church and it was it was all about materialism like the way what can I see smell taste touch? What can I measure? And as I it's began this this this you know, this journey with psychedelics, I really had to sort of I had to be able to explain for myself how these things worked with the science before I could open up to the spiritual part of it. And even even like even today, I have to I have to have both explanations. I have to be able to say well, I know that you know that that if I take a tryptamine based psychedelic that it's going to it's going to interfere with my default neural network that it's going to cut it's going to cut off communication to pre prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain that assigns value and rational thought connects to the other parts opens things up opens up your heart, you know, fires the h5ht to a neural receptor and it's done reliably and it's dose related and you know I needed to know all those things to be to feel comfortable enough to put it into my body to say okay, I understand how this works, except that when I got when I have gotten into those altered states, all that shit goes out the window. And when I when I talked about this in the car when we were driving over when I first started, my practice really kicked up with the ayahuasca.  So in my first three in my first three journeys, I have the storytelling project going on. So it's research for my for my project, you know, it's not it's not the spiritual thing. And so I very meticulously took note of the of what happened as it happened with the idea that I would plunk these things in on the on the the hero's journey model. Around about my third round about my third ayahuasca ceremony, I literally lost the ability to process language. I was lying out and I was lying on the floor. And I could hear people talking to sound like Charlie Brown like one one one one one one one one one. I'm completely in my body like it's all about how my body feels. It's all about like I'm having thoughts, but they're not words. It's it's I don't want to murder Noam Chomsky and over over over simple life. But I remember it when grad school talking about this like idea like sublang sub you know, sub language level thinking. Yes. And after I when I had that experience going forward, like the remaining five or six ceremonies after that, I decided to go into the space and to put down my observer mind and completely embrace the journey and not worry about what it meant and not worry about being having to report back to somebody about what what happened. Yes.  You're so right though with sub language level thinking and experience at feeling can just be so critical towards the feelings of of oneness that we need to get to that we need to desperately get to and they're so intertwined we'll get to talk more science and spirituality as well next time we chat. Let's do the two questions on the way out of the show. The first question is are we in a simulation? Funny you should say that in my very first mushroom trip the you know the the the the psychedelic gods have been very kind to me because they I have like a lot of inner work to do but I got an opportunity for a very brief moment to pop out of our reality and I got a glimpse of the multiverse and I saw infinite universes and you know the you know somehow or another like I needed to know that and then last month I did a San Pedro ceremony with some folks who are from South America and actually I'm going to go practice with them in Ecuador in July and I was lying I was lying on the on the ground feeling the mushrooms so the word word pops up in like in my field division and I'm looking at this because I was trying to think I was lying there and I was trying to think of something so this word word comes in so they start laughing about how absurd words are and then I made the universe stop and then I learned to play with it and so the idea that I can do that means that this is not exactly real I mean it's real to us it's we are the story we tell like this the simulation kind of comes back to this idea of we tell a story about what our what our reality is and I something when I'm when I'm feeling less than benevolent I call it a shared delusion and it's what it is so yeah I think we live in a simulation yeah the shared simulation yeah that we all live in interesting um and then how about the last question is what is the most beautiful thing in the world I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna fall into a Harry Potter metaphor here and in in the in the in the in the philosopher stone or sorcerer stone depending on where what part of the world you come from there's a part of the story where Harry finds this thing called the mirror of error set and when people look into the mirror error set they see what they wish that they were and Dumbledore tells Harry Potter well what does a content man see in the mirror error set and it's they see themselves exactly as they are yes and that to me like the ability to really be comfortable in our skin to look at ourselves without the shame and without the self-loathing and just to say you know I see myself yeah yeah I to me I think because we all did that we wouldn't have all the we wouldn't be doing all this other all this all these awful things to each other because we would be enough for ourselves I believe that's the first time on the show we've had that that as the answer of looking at ourselves and being in the most content with the way that we are confident and where we are at in our life trajectory and in our own shoes yeah that's just comfortable like being comfortable with ourselves in our own skin honestly that that is my that's that is my spiritual work yeah correct and facilitating that for for hundreds of other people and yeah and then and then sharing this across the world yeah as well and then being able to get the messages out and get people going in their communities with stuff like this Bob this has been so awesome I love you so much thank you for sharing thank you so much for having a journey with us it's been such an honor thank you thank you thank you Bob Cohen everyone huge thank you for tuning in we greatly appreciate it we would love to hear thoughts in the comments below on the episode let us know what you're thinking also share more conversations with doing storytelling about hacking consciousness with our families our friends or co-workers online let's get the stories rolling let's get more people talking about this around the world make sure to check out the links below to both the facebook.com for slash or a borrow story hour as well as or a borrow story hour at gmail.com if you want to get in touch again Amelia thank you so much for letting us use your space whole living center here in Cambridge and also everyone check out the links to simulation below help us continue growing and impacting more people and support the artists entrepreneurs and organizations around the world that you believe in and go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world we love you very much thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon peace Bob that was so awesome I'm glad you liked it I can't believe that you were almost dead and then you came back and then you almost killed yourself and then you profoundly changed yeah then you got the settle side that you needed and that you yeah and then you did the fatum and dosing this is such a crazy fucking cool dope awesome journey I love it so much and how you're doing the hundreds of people yeah it's such a cool journey I'm so glad that Julia made this happen and it's funny I wasn't going to do the hardware thing and then I said what the hell