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Music You're in the Paracast, the gold standard of paranormal radio.

And now, here's Gene Steinberg.

So as Chris O'Brien returns to the Paracast, my first comment to him, well, maybe the last comment before we went on the air was, please, man, stay alive.

Chris was last on the Paracast two weeks ago. At the time, he sounded

terrible. And then a few days later, he's in the hospital. Chris? Yeah, well, here I am. I'm back.

I did listen to a little bit of the show, and I can't sound a little out of breath. Yeah,

unfortunately, I've been, you know, it's a two-year process now.

I've quit smoking two years, two days ago as of today, and it's one thing to quit smoking

and the act of actually, you know, I would roll my own cigarettes with a machine and smoke.

It was kind of a ritual.

You know, I cut that out of my life, but I didn't cut out to nicotine.

I kept chewing gum.

I liked that little bit of a rush after a meal, et cetera, et cetera, whatever excuse I want to justify that decision with.

But anyway, once I got back from Taiwan, I did get a chest cold, I think, on the plane.

And I figured, oh, this would be a great time to kick nicotine. And so as my

chest cold cleared up, I was purging myself of nicotine. And sure enough, the stuff was coming up.

And I was coughing it out. And it was really cathartic and rather scary, actually. And then I split the

cartilage in two of my lungs.

I separated my ribs.

And I couldn't cough anymore.

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