Hey all, here are all the videos I have of my talks over the last four years. I realized I had a couple from this summer that never made it up (still waiting on the Boom footage to arrive and a couple others only exist in audio that I'm trying to locate) so I figured I'd take a moment and put them all in one place, chronologically. Some of them have various technical issues, but unfortunately, those are beyond my control. Enjoy

Thanks!!!

Great stuff Snozz, thanks. Definitely gonna be watching those.

Awesome (keep being) thanks

Great work Snozz!

Is that Dennis McKenna in the first vid or is my imagination running wild??

Yes, that is the man himself

What exactly does it take to become an "icon" in the psychedelic community? To me, T. McKenna was a guy willing to experience, and also had a knack with picture inducing vocabulary, but deep down I don't think he was doing anything that some of us "bedroom explorers" aren't capable of. He just had an above average ability to choose the "correct" words for describing + seemed to be coming from a genuine place.

What exactly got you to start speaking at these sorts of places? What about you seperates you from the people in the chairs?

Around here this topic is something best learned to be kept to yourself. Occasionally, very occasionally, you may run into someone who you can see it in their eyes that they follow and have been "there" in certain instances. But all in all, it's something best kept to yourself.

The thought of putting together a conference about such matters doesn't even enter the realm of logical possibility or even something to be desired. So, it's a new aspect of the equasion for me, if you know what I'm saying.

I'm not sure what it takes to become an icon in the psychedelic community, nor am I interested in becoming an icon. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather not feel the compulsion to write/speak on some of the topics that I have, as it can generate quite a bit of discomfort at times (more on that in a moment). As a person, nothing separates me from the people in the chairs, I just happened to be intimately familiar with the novel research coming out of the Nexus (namely phytochemical analysis) and that was deemed worthy of dissemination by several conference organizers, which eventually gave me enough perceived legitimacy to share my cultural critiques.

What got me started speaking at these events was twofold. First, I found myself at several psychedelic gatherings and realized that the people leading discussions on plants/drugs were incredibly lacking in their awareness/knowledge of the subject matter they were discussing. I had come with questions I was hoping they could shine the light on, and instead I found myself answering numerous questions from the audience, as I had more answers than the speakers. The initial time this happened was at a rainbow gathering and it led to me getting invited to present at Psychedemia at UPenn.

Second, with the opportunity to present at UPenn, it meant that the insane amount of novel data that the Nexus had generated could be shared. Researchers and laypeople were fascinated by the info coming out of the Nexus. Researchers wanted more info about the analysis, laypeople wanted extraction troubleshooting. I spent the whole conference chatting about both in numerous individual interactions. This led me to try to get the Nexus info further out there, as there was clearly demand and no one else really had much like it. I would say I became a mouthpiece for the research efforts of the community here because the research was a goldmine and could serve greater utility in the hands of more people.



The main reason I've given my cultural critiques is because few other people within the "psychedelic community" seem to be offering anything in that vein, and to me it seems that we're in dire shape. I don't expect to change anything, but there's a lack of dialogue or even public examination/consideration of many of these ideas and if I can at least plant some of the thought seeds into peoples minds, perhaps some discussion (or maybe even action) could possibly germinate. I don't expect that to be the case, but I feel an obligation to try.

Honestly, I'd rather not feel compelled to try to point to the silences, omissions, and bold-faced silly statements. It would be much better if the community at large was as critically-minded as many of the folks here. In my experience, that's not the case. At the end of one of my presentations, a woman asked me what I wanted them to do...all the other speakers had a pitch, a schtick, a product they were pushing...what was mine? I found that really tough as I had just spent 40 minutes arguing for autonomous and self-directed engagement with the world around us. I had just made a plea for structural analysis and critical thinking and here I was being asked to give this person a plan of action. My initial reply was "Think for yourself and act accordingly," followed by some elaboration on the aforementioned themes.

Honestly, for me, success looks like not feeling compelled to get on stage because the ideas/concepts/themes I'm trying to start discussions around are already part of the normalized discourse...the BS gets called out by the majority of the audience, and all that jazz. Or put another way, ideally I'd like to make myself (in this role) obsolete.

This is totally awesome, Snozz. Thank you for posting them all in one place. I think you are a real asset to the community. I'm glad to see you representing!

Thanks art!

I just saw that Boom uploaded my video from last summer as well so I've added that to the OP. Please note that the first half of that talk is the same as the second half of the Ozora talk, but the rest is entirely new material.

Must take some courage to do all that, my respect

beautifully written. snozz ftw