Welcome to the Behind a Shield podcast. As always, my name's James Gearing. And this week, it is my

absolute honor to welcome on the show, stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and the man behind

the winning with humor program, Craig Shoemaker. Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host of

topics. From Craig's early life, his journey into comedy,

the impact of censorship not only on comedy,

but for the rest of the population,

his own powerful mental health story,

some of the tools he used to heal his psychological and physiological ailments,

the healing power of laughter laughter and so much more.

Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a

moment. Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback

and leave a rating. Every single five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making

it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of well over 800 episodes now. So

all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can

get them to every single person on planet

earth who needs to hear them. So that being said, I introduced to start by saying thank you so much for reaching out and coming on the Behind

the Shield podcast today. I love it. I love what you're doing. It's right up my alley and I'm

ready to roll. I do a lot of podcasts where they have all these pre pre prepared questions and

they have an agenda. We got to stick with it. I can tell that's not what we're

going to do it. It's a free flow, which is actually what I teach when I coach is called genuine

energy flow. So let's flow. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, I think a good icebreaker before we hit record,

we just had a hurricane skim north of us. You were there at the infamous hurricane that hit California.

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