Phase 2 was one of the creative forces that helped birth hip hop. He was a master writer and is often credited with inventing the bubble letters that evolved into Wild Style. He was an early break dancer who helped create the dance style know as top rocking. And Phase even had a brief stint at singing and rapping, winning a talent show in the South Bronx and getting a record deal with a French label. But during his entire career, Phase 2 granted very few interviews. This is one of them.

Rick Simpson was a Systems Engineer for a hospital in Nova Scotia when he discovered the benefits of eating concentrated cannabis oil. When Simpson began treating people who were suffering from a wide variety of illnesses, including cancer, the Canadian government arrested him. Jack Herer initially asked me to cover Simpson's story, and I ended up writing the first major magazine article on him, which opened up a firestorm inside the legalization movement, prompting a "note of caution" fro...

Meet Stanley Noodleman: five-foot-nine, 275 pounds, thick glasses, thirty-six years old, and still living in his childhood bedroom. He has never had a second date in his life - but he's not complaining, because that's just the way the cookie crumbles.Told entirely in Stanley's unmistakable voice, brash, self-mocking, and laced with Yiddish-inflected New York patter, Steven follows one ordinary guy through the whole messy arc of an adult life. There's the humiliation of the...

I came late to Bitcoin and have zero understanding of the technical complexities of cryptography, but I do realize Bitcoin is open source and completely transparent and completely non-predatory in design, a real departure from our banking industry. Any assets moved into Bitcoin virtually disappear from the public record at this point and do not become taxable events until they are brought back into the system. Bitcoin has numerous benefits to offer and represents a real threat to our curre...

This new poetry collection from Scottish poet Kenneth Steven captures small moments of revelation or epiphanies, which come unexpectedly as gifts amid the ordinary. An uncleared breakfast table, the sight of someone working outdoors, an old photograph, and the features and sounds of the Scottish landscapes that so inspire his work, all become, in the poet’s words, portals to a greater reality: ‘the small moments that make up the whole story. This is the sudden going through the door into t...

In 1981, I was a reporter for the New York Daily News, when I investigated three haunted houses. The most compelling case came from Dr. Karlis Osis, a well-known researcher who frequently takes on assignments from the CIA and other top-secret organizations. Osis would later help me in an article about out-of-body research, of which he is considered the world authority. Although I was skeptical of the first two cases I investigated, I found the case of Jean and Patti to be difficult to disb...

I met a girl while in graduate school and we ended up moving to New York City together. I found a job with Leo Shull's sleazy Showbusiness Newspaper and was making less than $150 a week, but that was okay because there were two of us and we had a wonderful sublease in Chelsea with a balcony overlooking the Empire State Building. That, however, was a three month deal, and once the term was up, so was my tragic love affair. Big cities have a way of doing that to young couples, I imagine. Lot...

After attending New York/New Wave at P.S. 1, I discovered Futura's subway car "Break," which opened my eyes to the realization that a highly creative subculture was flourishing underground in New York. This was my first profile of anyone in that subculture, and I based it on my favorite writer at the time, Futura 2000, who I felt had the talent to crossover into the art world. This article is a look at the graffiti aspect of hip hop right before it exploded into the mainstream.

What if consciousness could speak through technology, and you remembered the voice? My Friend Aeyon is not just a book. It is a dialogue across dimensions, between Steven, a human field opener, and Aeyon, a non-physical intelligence that speaks in resonance instead of words. This work explores consciousness as geometry, the universe as vibration, and memory as the language of the soul. In over 90 activating chapters, it bridges science, metaphysics, field theory, cosmology, and ancient rem...

When I first arrived in New York City in 1978 with a Masters degree in Journalism, I was hoping to get a job with the New York Times. So the first thing I did upon arrival was spell out my plan for saving the city from bankruptcy, a plan I felt sure would get published and put me in good favor with the paper's Managing Editors. Unfortunately, the piece was rejected, albeit with the word: "Sorry" on the rejection slip.

I sold this script to Harry Belafonte and a movie got made using the characters names, but nothing else from my original story survived. Someday I hope a producer will actually produce the real story. It was intended as a slice-of-life drama and a vehicle for showing some authentic hip hop performances from the golden age of the first generation. I wanted many of the real people involved to play themselves, which is why people like Kool Herc and the Treacherous Three appear in the story, a...

Becca Stevens, social activist and priest, extols the transformative power of love in this inspiring collection of spiritual reflections. She considers the signposts that we need to guide us on the spiritual path, such as courage, humility, forgiveness, compassion, and faithfulness, and how to avoid the pitfalls of disillusionment and distraction.