[laughs]

Oh, God, yeah, that's a lot of air coming out of you, Janice, when you laugh.

Get a good chomp.

All right.

Here we go.

Oh, hold your nose.

Just hold your nose.

[audience murmurs]

I gotta apologize a little bit.

I didn't know there was gonna be readings at the beginning of this, so I brought down the one-hour version instead of the fifty-minute version.

So I'm gonna try to go along at a very brisk pace, and I'll forewarn anybody going out for coffee or to the restrooms, you might miss a couple of decades in your absence.

[audience laughing]

Uh, welcome, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to make this history presentation.

It's going to be a timeline history of AA, uh, with extra emphasis on the history of the Big Book.

AA co-founder Bill W. published a July 1953 Grapevine article titled "A Fragment of History," describing the origin of the twelve steps.