Great Moments in Weed History

In the 1970s, Michael Garnier was a first wave outlaw weed grower in Southern Oregon, which became, and remains, a legendary cannabis growing region.

Michael has an equally storied history as a treehouse pioneer, and is currently the proprietor of Out and About Treesort, located just outside Cave Junction, Oregon.

As you’ll hear, in both weed and treehouses, he had to fight the law to make his dreams a reality. But he persevered, and now he’s combined those two callings with 420-Treehouses Bud and Breakfast, a cluster of three beautiful treehouses that look down o...

New York City's most legendary strain first surfaced at a downtown hippie rock club, and ascended into being the premier smoke among the Baked Apple's celebrity set and lit-erati.

Sourcing, buying, selling and eventually growing this game-changing strain was an obsession for a young herb aficionado named AJ (a.k.a "Asshole Joe"), whose fortunes rose and fell as part of Gotham's rough-and-tumble underground scene. For decades, AJ kept his hustle a secret from even his closest friends, but now he's ready to tell all.

NYC LIVE SHOW - 'THE HISTORY OF WEED'

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Aaron Argueta’s weed journey touches on the Southern California reggae scene, the freewheeling medical cannabis grey market, and the emerging world of CBD for pets, with stops along the way in jail and business school.

It all started with some early, formative, aromatic encounters courtesy of his herb loving father, followed by advanced weed mentorships from a world-famous ganja farmer and the band Slightly Stooped.

Today, Aaron is the co-founder of Bailey’s CBD For Pets, a California wellness brand built around hemp-derived CBD oils, soft chews, and other pet wellness products, with offerings for...

From terpenes to THC, the biochemistry of the cannabis plant is endlessly fascinating. So get yourself rolled up and ready to delve into "the weeds" with someone who's seen and smoked as much cannabis as anyone on Earth.

As co-founder of SC Labs—one of the first cannabis analytical laboratories—Alec Dixon helped pioneer the use of scientific assessment to increase our understanding of cannabis, while providing the public with third-party verification that their stash is free of potentially dangerous contaminants.

From how cannabis labs helped identify the first high CBD strains, to the shift in f...

As lead guitar for Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, Jorma Kaukonen performed at Woodstock, Altamont, the Monterey Pop Festival and on some of the most legendary concert bills of the psychedelic rock era, sharing the stage with everyone from the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin to B.B. King and Muddy Waters.

Along the way, he not only lived cannabis history, he inhaled it. As you’re about to hear…

For the past three decades, Jorma has been happily living a sober life, but when a lifetime of non-stop guitar playing finally caught up with...

For 35 years, Families Against Mandatory Minimums has resisted America’s War on Drugs by sharing the stories of people subjected to unconscionable prison sentences for non-violent drug offenses. 

In this episode, FAMM's general counsel Shanna Rifkin explains how the organization convinces lawmakers and communities to adopt harm reduction based approaches to drug policy, and what you can do to help the cause .

PATREON

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EPISODE ARCHIVE

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Meet the brains behind "Pizza Movie," which hit Hulu a few months ago and became something of an instant cult classic. 

Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher joined (or jointed) forces as BriTANicK while still in college and have been creating distinctively stoner-friendly comedy together ever since. 

From sharing their earliest herbal experiences at NYU, to working on Pizza Movie together for nearly a decade, in our conversation we get into the many high and lows of their shared journey as improvisers, comedians, filmmakers and best buds.

All of which culminated in a hilarious an...

Acclaimed comedian Skyler Higley discusses the highs, lows and potential pot-holes of using cannabis as a creative tool,  While also recalling his own weedy journey as a stand-up, writer for The Onion and the New Yorker, and frequent collaborator with Conan O'Brien.

Don't miss this episode if you want to know how to have more (and better) high-deas while getting lit.

And the check out Skyler's new podcast, Help Me Be Black

Best known for distributing massive amounts of LSD , the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was an outlaw group of surfers, smugglers, and psychedelic evangelists who also exported so much hashish out of Afghanistan that they developed a game-changing new way to move the product at scale.

Working with their in-house research-and-development team, the Brotherhood invented a highly innovative chemical solvent-based concentration system that gave rise to the modern dab. 

So settle in for a wild ride, and happy 7/10 everyone! If you don't know, it's like 4/20 but for hash instead of weed.

This episode first a...

In 2002, professional soccer player Ethan Zohn won Africa: Survivor, netting himself a $1 million dollar prize and overnight fame. 

But it was his subsequent battle against cancer that made him a true survivor, and also opened his eyes to the therapeutic power of cannabis. 

As you’ll hear in our interview, Ethan tried smoking herb just once as a college student, and liked it, but felt he had to put all forms of intoxication aside to focus on his athletic career. Years later, however, the plant would play a profound and central role in his healing jour...

Like many lifelong weed activists, Brian "Box" Brown’s radicalization began with a youthful arrest.

His form of resistance? Brian is an acclaimed comics artist, whose works include Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America, a comprehensive, book-length graphic novel tracing the history of cannabis prohibition all the way back to the 19th Century. 

He currently publishes a weekly syndicated column called Legalization Nation that tracks the high and lows of the new legal industry. With a heavy focus on exposing how corporate cannabis is pushing around small farmers and legacy operators. 

PATREON

Simon Espinosa, a young comedy writer from Santiago, Chile, turned a stoned text message chain with his brother into by far the largest Spanish-language cannabis media platform on the planet. 

En Vola (which literary translates to “in flight”) started in 2012 as a rudimentary website where stoners could post their most mind-bending and ingenious high-deas. Today, Simon and his collaborators have accumulated over 85 million views on YouTube alone.

And Simon doesn’t just create comedic weed videos, he also works tirelessly to educate the community, push for legalization, and to bring together culture and activism by organiz...

Dr. Peter Grinspoon—author of the new book Aging Well with Cannabis: Feel Better, Sleep Better, and Live Better with Marijuana and CBD—explains that senior citizens are the fastest growing demo of cannabis consumers. But they often need help accessing information and safely ingesting the plant.

Dr. Grinspoon is a primary care physician and educator at Massachusetts General Hospital, an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and serves as a board member of the advocacy group Doctors For Cannabis Regulation, which works on legalizing cannabis with an eye toward social justice issues. 

PATREON

This week saw weed history happen in real time when the federal government announced its officially rescheduling cannabis out of Schedule 1, the most restrictive category. 

To be clear, so far much remains unclear about this process, which will happen in phases. Amid a lot of confusion, there’s cause for excitement, but also cause for concern. 

So for a clearer picture of what the future holds, we reached out to Shaleen Title, a lawyer, activist, adjunct professor and director of the Parabola Center for Law and Policy, Shaleen’s also a former top cannabis regulator for th...

Comedic 'heavy hitter' Jon Gabrus joins the year's weediest episode. Plus Bean shares details from 4x20 Quick Hits, a new Hulu original series he worked on that's dropping on April 20th, with episodes about High Times founder Tom Forcade, the history of functional art glass, the making of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and, last but not least, the Legend of Ganjasaurus Rex!

MEGASESH
Tickets and livestream passes for Gabrus's 5th Annual Mega-sesh are available from Dynasty Typewriter

PATREON

Please ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private seshes, plus c...

Writer, actor and director Ben Sinclair is best known as co-creator and star of the HBO series High Maintenance. A recent New York Times headline asked: “What happens when TV’s favorite weed dealer tries to quit?”

The article centered around Low Maintenance, Ben’s new Substack column, where he “delves into his complicated relationship with marijuana."

I've known Ben a little bit, for a long time, and wanted to take this opportunity to hear more about his current journey with(out) weed, and also to have an open discussion about intentional use and conscious uncoupling...

Angela Dawson is a fourth generation farmer, albeit the first of her name to farm cannabis. She’s also a leading weed activist in the state of Minnesota, who's currently preparing for the 4/20 soft-launch of "The Garden on 26th," a new licensed retail dispensary in South Minneapolis that will sit just steps from where Alex Pretti was publicly executed by ICE agents in January.

Angela and I discuss the many ways the War on Drugs laid the groundwork for our government's current disastrous, cruel and very racist approach to immigration enforcement. How opening a dispensary focused on mu...

Gettin’ lit on 4/20 used to mean something special. And it will again.  So on this episode, to spark that return to glory, we’re going to trace the origin story of our annual high holiday all the way back to its roots, as the singular creation of a small group of stoners on an epic quest way back in 1971. 

That’s right, it’s time recount the epic story of the Waldos—but with a twist. 

This year we’re not just going to celebrate this unique history, we’re also gonna make a pledge to not let 4/20 b...

In 2019, Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Tushar Atre met a tragic end after paddling out into the rough waters of the underground cannabis scene in surfer haven Santa Cruz, California,

At once a love story, a crime drama, and a who-dun-it, this epic tale is chronicled in the riveting new book A Killing in Cannabis.

My guest for this episode is the book's author, Scott Eden.

A prominent anti-weed editorial in this week's NY Times is just the latest attempt to resurrect the kind of government propaganda and media hysteria that helped make the plant illegal in the first place.

So we talked with Kyle Boyar, a scientist with a background in neurology, microbiology, and analytical chemistry and an expertise in cannabis about the junk science used to discredit cannabis, the harsh reality and hyped hysteria around Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome, the potential ill effects of re-scheduling cannabis instead of de-scheduling it, and about how Kyle became a weed scientist in the first place. 

Rainbow Valentine is the creator behind Disorganized Crime: Smuggler’s Daughter, a first-person podcast series that explores her life growing up as the offspring of two psych*delic pioneers—as she calls them—who together operated a cross-country w--d distribution ring while living a life fully immersed in hippies, seekers, and counterculture luminaries. 

After digging into our GMIWH interview, be sure to check out Rainbow’s own podcasts, not just Disorganized Crime: Smuggler’s Daughter about her own family, but also her in-depth audio documentary about Wavy Gravy (American Prankster), and her latest series Psychedelic Women.

- Disorga...

Roll up for a special edition of the pod where Bean answers your w--d advice questions with a little help from green-minded journalist Mary Jane Gibson and the Reddit r/trees community.

Think of it as everything you ever wanted to know about your favorite plant but were afraid to ask.

Check out Mary Jane (yes, that's her real name) via her incredible "My Sandwich, My Choice" Substack and her videos on Instagram and Tiktok.

PATREON

Please ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private seshes, plus cool rewards li...

Harold Derber pioneered the modern narcotics trade with his groundbreaking invention: the mothership. By operating a fleet of clandestine motherships floating in international waters, Derber eventually became the most prolific supplier of illicit weed in American history.

In this interview with David Tuch, author ofThe Wireless Operator: The Untold Story of the British Sailor Who Invented the Modern Drug Trade, we tell the tale of a larger than life outlaw, a story full of action, adventure, intrigue, espionage, romance, mystery, murder and of course the smuggling of massive amounts of weed.

PATREON

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Get ready to experience a beloved annual tradition as we celebrate the many surprising ways that Santa Claus is based on old trippy traditions around psychedelic mushrooms.

So please, buckle up your sleigh bells, roll up and get ready to take a wild reindeer ride with Santa, Bean and Abdullah Saeed, former co-host of Great Moments in Weed History. 

PATREON

Please ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private seshes, plus cool rewards like a signed book. And it truly helps us make the best show possible.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

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In January, Martin Olive was shot seven times outside the Vapor Room dispensary, which he co-founded in San Francisco in 2004. 

Located in the legendary Haight Street neighborhood, the Vapor Room was known for its extensive compassion program offering free cannabis to patients in need, and for the vibrant community of mutual support that took root in its on-site consumption lounge.

Over the past year, Martin has made a truly miraculous recovery. We discuss his shooting at the end of the interview, including his very intentional approach to integrating cannabis into the healing process.

B...

The most heinous legal and human rights abuses of our current political moment all have their roots in the War on Drugs, from corruption and racism, to propaganda and mass incarceration.

Our guest this week, Dr. David Farber, is a distinguished professor and the author of War on Drugs: A History. Together, we explore how the drug war served as a pilot program for American authoritarianism.

PATREON

Please ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private seshes, plus cool rewards like a signed book. And it truly helps us make the best sho...

In 1987, real life outlaw growers in Humboldt County, CA made a low budget monster movie called Ganjasaurus Rex, a cult classic that we explore in this episode with special guest Jon Gabrus (Staying Alive, 101 Places to Party Before You Die).

Attention anyone currently in Humboldt County, where the film was made and the story was set, Bean from GMIWH will be hosting a Ganjasaurus Rex screening + Harvest Celebration at the Mateel Center in Redway, CA on Saturday, November 8th.

PATREON

Please ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private ses...

Fed up with finance d-bags enshitifying everything? Well, I can't stop them from trying to take over weed too, but I did just tell one of the worst offenders to hit the bricks, only with much more colorful language.

Adam Bierman—co-founder and former CEO of a massive cannabis dispensary chain called Medmen—was originally pitched to me by his publicist, upon publication of his new book Weed Empire: How I Battled Gangsters, Investment Banks, and the Department of Justice to Build the Cannabis Industry in America.

Now, to steal a phrase, that’s a book t...

An underground chemist, acid-soaked sound engineers, a bestselling author, and a psychedelic band all set out together in the 1970s in pursuit of audio perfection. Together, they created and destroyed a legendary sound system known as the Wall of Sound, which was as tall as a school bus is long and more than a hundred feet wide. 

Author Brian Anderson explores this wild journey in his new book Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection.

And oh yeah, they hid all kinds of secret compartments in the...

Caleb Chen is a weed enthusiast, researcher, reviewer and academic, who runs "The Highest Critic," and is well on his way to earning a doctorate in the subject. He's also a Ganjier and a reviewer with Budist.

Caleb joins the podcast for an engaging discussion of what's cutting-edge in cannabis, or "hype weed" as the young people like to say when it comes to our favorite plant.

PATREON

Please ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private seshes, plus cool rewards like a signed book. And it truly help...

From ancient traditions to the evolution of modern cannabis culture in Morocco, India, Egypt, Nepal, and other traditional hashish regions, get ready for a fascinating time getting high on history with Dr. Maziyar Ghiabr, Director for the Centre of Persian And Iranian Studies at the University of Exeter’s Institute for Islamic and Arabic Studies. 

Maziyar is also the author of a fascinating new book called We Smoke Flowers: On Being High in Postrevolutionary Iran that traces the custom's roots to a pre-Islamic faith called Zoroastrianism, and explores its flowering in modern day Iran.  

PATREON

Pl...

Amber E. Senter’s impressive legal cannabis career began with years of underground weed growing, hashmaking and edibles slanging.

Amber is the founder and CEO of MAKR House, a cannabis house of brands, and she has served as the Chief Operations Officer of a prominent cannabis dispensary.

In addition to her various business ventures, Amber is also co-founder and Executive Director of Supernova Women, an organization formed in 2015 to empower Black and Brown small business owners in the cannabis industry. In that role, she assisted in the creation of Oakland's social equity program, the first su...

When a bunch of vulture capital d-bags ran High Times into bankruptcy, the magazine's illustrious fifty year history appeared to be burnt out. But then, in June, Raw Papers founder Josh Kesselman announced that he’d bought the brand for $3.5 million.

In this episode, Josh explains how and why he bought High Times, and his high hopes for a return to glory. Josh also shares his own weedy life journey, an inspiring tale of a young stoner who became obsessed with rolling papers, opened a bootstrapped headshop while still a college student, and eventually created an iconic gl...

Richard Lee's life changed forever in 1990 when he slipped on a catwalk while setting up the lights for an Aerosmith concert, suffering a spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. A Texas native raised by conservative Republican parents, he would subsequently dedicate his life to educating his family, the government, and ultimately the entire country about medical cannabis.

Along the way, he transformed an eight-block stretch of Oakland, California into a weed autonomous zone lovingly known as Oaksterdam. It included his two cannabis coffeeshops, a medical cannabis dispensary, his political headquarters, and the 30,000 square f...

Charlotte Parker started Head magazine while working an entry level publishing job at Penthouse, in order to cover the world of weed in depth at a time long before legalization.

Looking back at a few covers from those 1970s glory days shows she was well ahead of the curve, with stories like “How to Make Hash Oil in Your Kitchen,” and “Grow the Most Potent Pot Plants Indoors.” Plus, Head featured interviews with the likes of Patti Smith and reviews of the best weed and hash then available.

Hear Charlotte tell the whole story, including the rebi...

After being incarcerated as a teenager for weed, Kevin Jodrey joined the military and trained as a deep sea diver, only to end up conscripted into performing anti-drug interdiction raids out in the middle of the ocean. 

From there he slid back into the weed underground, spending the next few decades moving serious weight in from Mexico and joining Northern California’s second wave of off-the-grid growers. Before at last coming out of the cannabis closet and creating yet another new life for himself, this time as an internationally recognized expert on the plant’s cultivation, classification and co...

From judging the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, to touring Northern California during harvest season, to seshing with the steady stream of growers, dealers, breeders, smugglers, rogues, outlaws, musicians, celebrities, and activists who stopped by the High Times offices in New York City during our illustrious tenure at the mag, Danny Danko and I have shared many incredible adventures in the field..

So lets exhale the bullshit…. inhale some good shit… and jump into the hot box time machine for a heady trip back to a far more freewheeling, swashbuckling era in weed history than we find ourselves in n...

What does it mean to talk about Pride when it comes to cannabis?

First and foremost it means celebrating the central role that the LGBTQ+ community has played in the global struggle for weed liberation.

Pride also has a special meaning for all of us weed enthusiasts who’ve been stigmatized, criminalized or ostracized for our love of this plant. 

Prior to this conversation, I’d never met Laganja Estranja—who made a star turn in 2014 while competing on RuPaul's Drag Race—but I feel like we immediately hit it off and got on the sa...

Adam Dunn first arrived in Amsterdam as a teenager, and quickly found himself at the center of the city's famed international cannabis scene. In time, Adam would launch his own innovative ventures, including T.H.Seeds, which developed world-famous and award-winning strains including Bubblegum, S.A.G.E., Heavy Duty Fruity, and Chocolate Chunk. 

He also started Hempworks, Europe’s first dedicated hemp store, with its influential in-house clothing label.

Twenty years after first encountering Adam at the Cannabis Cup, where he was fumigating the room with a modified leaf blower full of weed, Bean sit...

Much how wine, cheese, and other agricultural products are authenticated as coming from their traditional geographic zone of origin, a new program about to launch is California will help old school growers in traditional cultivation communities protect their regional legacies in the world of weed.

To explain this exciting new development, we shared a sesh with Genine Coleman, founder and Executive Director of Origins Council, a California nonprofit advocacy, education and research organization dedicated to sustainable economic development for rural cannabis producing regions.

Genine has been working directly with t...