Creating Consciousness

We got into the thing I've been dealing with lately. That gap between knowing all the spiritual lessons and still feeling apathetic about how to actually move forward.

Back in the dolo chair this week with my co-host Danté, first solo episode in a minute.

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Tim Hortons Discontinued The Donut Flavors

3:00 Consistency Beats Intensity Every Time

7:00 Meeting Kevin Hart And Russell Peters

13:00 The Central Park Monolith Theory

15:00 When Awareness Becomes Apathy

19:00 Chop Wood, Carry Water: The Sweat Lodge

25:00 The Show I Didn't Give A F*ck About

27:00 Three Years Of Redlining Myself

38:00 Short-Term And Long-Term Flow States

44:00 My First Job: Urban Community Gardens

51:00 Fortress Of Solitude With No Furniture

56:00 Growing My Locks Was A Rebellion

1:05:00 What We're Each Working On Now

Connect:

Danté: @ChezDante

Jesse: @PunjabiTimbit

Show: @CreatingConsciousness905

#creatingconsiousness #startwithwhy #spirituality

This week on Creating Consciousness I sat down with Habib Siam — Lebanese-Canadian comedian, PhD, and one of the most thoughtful voices in Toronto's scene — for a conversation that stretched almost two hours and still felt too short. We got into why he left the club circuit to rent his own rooms and do 90-minute cold opens, the moment the Beirut port blast of August 2020 made it impossible for him to keep comedy and real life separate, We talked about getting lost in the woods on psychedelics and encountering a school group, and the magic that happens in the third week of being off-grid.

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Gil Scott-Heron Changed Everything

6:30 Two Of My Idols Blew Me Away, One Didn't

10:00 The Check Spot And Learning To Use Silence

13:00 Why Comedy Clubs Are The McDonald's Of Comedy

15:00 The Beirut Blast That Rewrote My Comedy

18:00 I Don't Want To Be The Jerk-Off Joke Guy

23:00 Writing From Ideas Instead Of Jokes

29:00 The Sneaker Podcast That Came Before Stand-Up

36:00 My First Set, 1 Year After The Breakup

45:00 Survivor's Remorse, Truthfully, And Now

50:00 Lost In The Woods, Tripping, With A School Group

58:00 Beirut, Pandemic, Losing My Dream Job

1:03:00 The Magic Happens In The Third Week

1:19:00 Why I Got A PhD On The Wire

1:33:00 Levels To Me With Habib

#creatingconsiousness #Habibsiam #nature

Authorities told him he was looking at up to 10 years... for some crumbs

Welcome back to Creating Consciousness. This week's guest is Big Norm Alconcel — Filipino-Canadian comedian, Chef and the man behind Rude Pinoy, the empanada pop-up that went viral this year — and this episode runs over 90 minutes because every story he tells cracks open five more.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Rick & Morty, Nephews, And Being Half Filipino Half Vincy

00:03:49 Christmas In The Philippines Starts In September

00:07:30 The Y'locos Empanada Origin Story

00:13:14 Vigan City Longanisa — The Garlicky Spanish-Filipino One

00:15:00 Two Weeks, Three Empanadas A Day, Back Volcanoes

00:20:00 Hard Times, Last Dollar, Another Man's Treasure

00:25:00 Rude Pinoy Montreal Pop-Up And Jamaican Beef Empanadas

00:29:00 The Edmonton Musical Where I Played A Meth Dealer

00:32:00 Day One, Robbed By someone Who Asked Me For A Pump

00:36:00 Edmonton Police Told Me To Go Vigilante

00:42:00 The Somali Friend Who Replaced My MacBook At West Ed

00:46:00 Accept The Circumstance, Stack The Dubs

00:50:00 Seven Months In Taiwan Jail For Crumbs

01:03:00 How I Paid My Way Out And Taught English On The Side

01:07:30 Fifteen Years In Comedy And Still No Album

01:14:30 Multiple Choice Game Segment

01:22:30 The Grabba Story That Named Me Ranga Danga In Jamaica

98% of her clients are men.

Julie Marquis is a licensed psychotherapist, has been in practice for almost fifteen years, trains other therapists in EMDR, and runs Marquis Counseling and Consulting here in Toronto

Welcome back to Creating Consciousness. This week's guest is doing some of the most interesting mental health work in the city, and we spend the episode on the frameworks she actually uses — EMDR and what the eye movement part is really doing in your brain, somatic experiencing and why standing on a balance board can shut down your racing thoughts in a way talk therapy can't, the identity crisis that destroys first responders and military members when they retire and lose their tribe.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Why Julie Works Almost Exclusively With Men

00:05:23 If Men Can Heal The World Can Heal

00:07:40 EMDR — How It Actually Works

00:11:49 The Filing Cabinet In Your Brain

00:16:56 Why Movement Is The Most Underutilized Therapy Tool

00:21:00 Walk And Talk, Paddle Boarding, Going To The Gym

00:23:00 First Responders, Military, Veterans, And CEOs

00:26:19 The Identity Crisis Of Leaving The Uniform

00:29:21 Why Boys And Girls Need Different Parenting

00:31:09 Just Because You Have A Diagnosis Doesn't Mean You Get To Be An Asshole

00:34:44 Denial Land Is Like Candyland

00:38:14 Has The Younger Generation Gotten Soft

00:45:00 Enabling Vs Empowering Your People

00:46:48 Being Nice Vs Being Kind

00:52:04 When Should You Actually Go To Therapy

00:57:51 Multiple Choice Game Segment

Connect:

Jesse: @PunjabiTimbit (canonical spelling confirmed — Timbit)

Show: @CreatingConsciousness905

New episodes every week

Production by Person1 Productions

#therapy #men #creatingconsiousnesspod

What happens when your only friend is your dealer?

Welcome back to Creating Consciousness. This week's guest is Anthony, host of the Recovering Outloud podcast, and this is easily the most vulnerable conversation I've had on the show.

This week's guest is Anthony, host of the Recovering Outloud podcast, and this is easily the most vulnerable conversation I've had on the show. Anthony walks me through the whole arc — what an addict's brain actually feels like, why the same wiring that made him spiral gets channeled into podcasting today, the difference between physical sobriety and emotional sobriety, why steroids and body dysmorphia were the gateway back into his relapse after almost a decade of recovery, why harm reduction saved his life even though he's ultimately an abstinence guy, and what actually happened in that Royal York lobby that got him to call his wife and say "I'm ready."

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 The Podcast Origin — Counselor Vince And Pink Cloud Sobriety

00:06:15 6 Garbage Cans And 5 Lids — The Addict Brain

00:07:51 Cross-Addictions — Golf, Jordans, Shopping, Gambling

00:12:56 The Lengths I Would Go To Get Cocaine

00:16:22 Harm Reduction Vs Abstinence — When Each One Works

00:21:12 Food Addiction, Body Dysmorphia, And Male Vanity

00:24:01 The Steroids That Led Me Back Into Relapse

00:28:15 What Rock Bottom Actually Means

00:29:53 The Royal York Hotel Story — January 2025

00:34:35 Cocaine Psychosis And The Only Friend I Had

00:37:52 The Security Guard Who Let Me Clean My Room

00:44:35 I Called My Wife And Said I'm Ready

00:45:16 What To Do When Someone You Love Is Using

00:49:14 The Photos My Wife Kept Sending Me

00:53:27 Spirituality, Higher Power, And A Shift In Perception

01:00:05 Multiple Choice Game Segment

If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction or substance use, please know that help is available and recovery is possible. Anthony's podcast Recovering Outloud is one place to start. Additional resources:

ConnexOntario — 1-866-531-2600 — free 24/7 mental health, addictions, and problem gambling information and referrals in Ontario

Al-Anon — meeting information at al-anon.org — for loved ones of people struggling with addiction

Talk Suicide Canada — 1-833-456-4566 — 24/7 support if you or someone you know is in crisis

Kids Help Phone — 1-800-668-6868 — for young people needing support

If you or a loved one is in immediate danger, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.

#creatingconsiousness #addictionrecovery #podcast

Delux turned a $1000 microgrant into 500 pairs of free Air Force 1s given out to kids in Jane and Finch, Rexdale, Malvern, Regent Park, and MaltonWelcome back to Creating Consciousness. Delux is a Jane and Finch–raised community leader, student psychotherapist studying Gestalt, founder of the Finding Your Heart initiative, and now runs his own production company after starting from an iPhone and borrowed cameras. We spend the whole episode on how someone with no roadmap actually builds something from the ground up: how he stumbled into community work through a court case that required volunteer hours.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Non-Profit Is Still A Business Model

00:00:56 The $1000 Grant That Started Everything

00:05:35 What Finding Your Heart Actually Is

00:09:23 The Halal Pizza Mistake That Taught Me Everything

00:12:19 The Court Case That Got Me Into Community Work

00:14:52 The Airwalks My Mom Got Me From Alibaba's At Yorkgate

00:17:14 Batman, Bruce Wayne, And How Heroes Process Pain

00:21:57 The Shoe As A Blank Canvas

00:23:55 Two Full-Time Jobs And One Hour Of Sleep For 7 Months

00:26:01 Don't Sell Your Ideas For Peanuts

00:29:37 Finding Your Heart Was My Get Out Of Jail Free Card

00:31:22 More Grants In Ottawa Than I Ever Got In Jane And Finch

00:34:12 Why Hyper-Independence Is A Symptom, Not A Strength

00:41:58 Why I Started A Production Company Without Being A Filmmaker

00:44:04 What The Older Generation Owes The Youth

00:51:35 Multiple Choice Game Segment

#creatingconsiousness #nonprofit #podcast

Russell Peters offered him a room in his Malibu mansion for a month. That month turned into three months. Three months turned into a month long tour of India together. Nitish is one of my OGs from the Toronto scene, a comic I came up watching, and he flew back to town for two weeks so we got him in the studio the moment we could. We spend the whole episode on the arc: the sixteen years of stand-up, the dropped-out year at Waterloo where he realized his Rexdale math couldn't compete with the Chinese kids spinning their pens, the Russell Peters story that everyone knows the highlights of but nobody knows the actual sequence of events. Nitish also opens up about his fitness journey, about the philosophy of the middle path, about what it took to add real detail to his material after Russell's brother Clayton pulled him aside in India and told him to imagine the audience knows nothing about him, and about what sixteen years of stand-up has actually taught him about himself.TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 Welcome Back And Why LA Over New York00:03:00 Are Americans And Canadians The Same Amount Of Assholes00:06:34 Manifesting Success Means Manifesting The Hardship Too00:09:32 Stop Crying On Instagram — The Full Rant00:11:04 The Middle Path And Krishna's Answer To Arjuna00:13:41 7 Grams Of Mushrooms At 17 Broke My Whole Universe00:19:04 Anger, Pushing Buttons, And The Temple Laughing Fit00:24:29 How Just For Laughs Gags Turned Me Into A Comedian00:28:11 Dropping Out Of Waterloo And Rexdale Math00:30:38 The Visa Deal That Got Me To LA In 3 Months00:33:32 The Russell Peters Story — From Getting Punched To Malibu00:42:36 3.5 Weeks Touring India And Bombing Hard00:47:11 LA Stage Time Vs The Toronto Grind00:57:11 What 16 Years Of Stand-Up Actually Taught Me About Myself01:00:37 Multiple Choice Game Segment#creatingconsiousness #russellpeters #podcast

Rasha Elfeky's mom kept her stand-up career a secret from her dad for five months. When he finally found out, he gave her mom the silent treatment for two weeks — and her mom told her it was the best two weeks of her life.Welcome to episode ten of Creating Consciousness, This week I had on Rasha Elfeky — Toronto comedian, actress, flight attendant, content creator, and a comic who's toured with Jerry D, opened for Zainab Johnson twice, been personally recommended for Just For Laughs New Faces, and built her whole career on being able to work any room clean or dirty. Rasha and I get into the whole arc: how her mom told her to drop out of her University of Toronto criminology degree and become a flight attendant, how Air Canada rejected her because of her blood and Air Transit hired her the next morning, the three years she spent traveling the world before she ever took a comedy stage. And she opens up about being diagnosed with ADHD at twenty-nine — two years after she'd already become a comedian and what comedy taught her about herself that no diagnosis ever could. I got emotional on-mic during this one. I'm leaving that in. Peace and love, y'all.TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 Reputation Matters and Sterling's Bomb Is Coming Ego Check00:06:00 Why Versatility Beats Being Locked Into One Voice00:11:00 My First US Show at Soho House Los Angeles00:15:00 Feeling Outcasted By My Own Arab Community00:18:00 Post-COVID Comedy and Why Bad Shows Hurt Everyone00:22:00 Perform Like There Are 5000 People In The Room00:25:00 Sterling Scott Put His Ass On The Line To Get Me Booked00:28:00 Watching Headliners Is The Unwritten Rule00:32:00 Why Actors Are More Politically Correct Than Comedians00:37:00 My Mom Told Me To Drop Out And Become A Flight Attendant00:42:00 West Africa Named Me Gazelle. My Real Name Means Baby Gazelle.00:45:00 When Is An Accent Racism And When Is It Storytelling?00:47:00 My Mom Hid My Comedy Career From My Dad For 5 Months00:57:00 My Mom Working At KFC And Suing Them Now01:00:00 My Dad's Lore — Shotokan Sensei At 75 Years Old01:10:00 Diagnosed With ADHD At 29 After I'd Already Started Comedy01:13:00 Levels To Me Game Segment#creatingconsiousness #versatility #podcast

Robert Orlando started travel hockey at five years old. By eighteen he was having panic attacks driving home from games and dealing with night terrors and sleep paralysis caused by the sport he loved.This week I sit down with my friend Robert Orlando, a Brampton-raised comedian, former junior hockey player, and one of the sharpest storytellers I've had the pleasure of building this show with. We spend the whole episode on the arc — how a five-year-old ends up recruited into travel hockey, what it costs to spend your entire childhood inside one identity, what it feels like when your family's mood every Sunday hinges on how you played that weekend, and what it takes to walk away from the thing you've been told your whole life you're supposed to be.TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 Catching Up on the Old Podcast Days00:03:30 The Bakery Where My Dad Lost His Mind00:06:00 The India Trip That Turned Me Into a Rage-9-Year-Old00:09:30 Falling Off a Bike Into a Basement Beam00:13:00 The COVID Generation Will Recognize What's Broken00:15:30 Being Honest About My Relationship With Alcohol00:19:00 Why Bartending Feels Like Work and Stand-Up Feels Like the Outlet00:21:00 Trying Stand-Up In High School Because A Rapper Friend00:25:00 Travel Hockey at 5 Years Old and What It Costs00:29:00 Panic Attacks, Sleep Paralysis, and When You Know It's Time00:35:00 Learning How to Adapt When You Keep Getting Traded00:42:00 My First Stand-Up Set at the Ossington00:47:00 What the Comedy Scene Was Like Before COVID00:51:00 Content Creators Changed the Landscape After the Pandemic00:58:00 Levels To Me Game Segment#Creatingconsciousness #hockey #podcast

In 2017, Damien had open heart surgery, double valve replacement, and was back in the gym by week five. A year later he won his pro card. Welcome back to Creating Consciousness. This week I sit down with a friend, a mentor, a personal trainer, and one of the realest competitors in Canadian natural bodybuilding.From Trinidad to Brooklyn to Brampton, from building his first gym out of cinder blocks and a garden hose at fourteen to becoming head personal trainer at the Y in his first month, from being one of the first guys in Canada's men's physique category when it launched in 2012 to learning what it actually takes to keep competing when the industry shifted around him.TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 Trinidad to Brooklyn to Toronto — The Whole Journey00:08:30 Why I Don't Want to Go Back to New York00:13:00 Moving to Milton Was Too Quiet for a Brooklyn Guy00:18:00 How I Built My First Gym With Cinder Blocks at 1400:24:00 The Day the Gym Community Taught Me Everything00:28:30 Why I Became Head Personal Trainer in a Month00:32:30 The Real Truth About Passion vs Chasing Money00:38:00 Being a Natural Athlete in a Steroid Era00:43:00 What Bodybuilding Nutrition Actually Looks Like00:49:00 How to Build a Healthy Relationship With Food00:55:00 Leading By Example When Teaching Your Kids00:58:30 The Heart Murmur I Lived With for 20 Years01:03:00 Open Heart Surgery and a Double Valve Replacement01:07:30 The Doctor's Visit That Changed Everything About Recovery01:09:30 Speaking Things Into Existence Through Faith01:13:00 Levels To Me Game Segment#creatingconsiousness #mindset #podcast