What a BAAMplex evening last night at the Kindness Temple again, this time with Larry Brilliant! Here's the transcript ot the magical encounter --including the audio!-- and our Jai Jagat photo at the end of the night ...



And an excerpt from his talk ...
 

I was invited to the Pentagon for an award, and I was invited to speak about atypical, unusual threats to national security. By that I meant climate change, and pandemics, and hatred, and selfishness. That was pretty strange; I talked on the Armed Forces TV to three point five million marines, and soldiers, and sailors, and then I gave a talk in the Pentagon main auditorium to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all the Department of Defense, and all the Brass.

I had a slideshow. The first slide that I showed was that picture of my wife and I in hippie gown and our "magic bus", smoking a joint in the Khyber Pass. I said, "I want to thank you for inviting me back to the Pentagon; this is my second visit. Of course, my first visit was with five hundred thousand screaming anti-war crazies, and you wouldn't let us in. And I also want you to take a look at that photo; that's me. Now there's only two possibilities: either you know about that and you still invited me, in which case good on you, or you don't know about that, and you're the Pentagon, and now I'm worried."

Then I waited a second, because I wasn't entirely sure what would happen. They all laughed and jumped up and applauded. I said, "Okay, now we can talk."

I learned that from Ram Dass, that if you've got something you are worried about as your secret, lead with it.