Great Moments in Weed History

From the depths of the ocean, a mythical weed-loving monster arises to wreak havoc on the authorities who attempt to eradicate her favorite plant. Would you believe this no-budget 1980s monster movie is based on a true story?

With special guest Jon Gabrus, we explore how a locally-produced film called Ganjasaurus Rex actually tells the history of outlaw weed growers in Humboldt County via a kaiju about a Godzilla-like creature that swats down police helicopters.

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Visit our podcast feed for 100+ episodes of Great Moments in Weed History , and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

The internet has burning questions about getting lit. So GMIWH took a week off from getting high on history to jump into the r/trees subreddit and drop some knowledge on those seeking advice. As you might imagine, the questions range from the serious, to the silly, to the strange. Think of this one as "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Weed (But Were Afraid to Ask)."

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Visit our podcast feed for 100+ episodes of Great Moments in Weed History, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

Let's head back to 2700 BC to meet an ancient Chinese hemp goddess who lived on a mountaintop full of cannabis plants where she brewed the elixir of life. And doesn’t that sound nice?

Our guides for this trip are Christina Wong and Wendy Zeng, two chefs, culinary cannabis creators, and the co-hosts of Mogu Magu, a culture, food, and cannabis collective exploring the Asian immigrant experience.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 100+ episodes of Great Moments in Weed History , and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

Cody Bass is a second generation outlaw who fought the law and lost, but never lost faith in cannabis. Today he’s a successful weed business owner, and the mayor of Lake Tahoe, California—the very jurisdiction where the authorities once literally tried to run him out of town. 

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Visit our podcast feed for 100+ episodes of Great Moments in Weed History , and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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Mila Jansen first scored hash down on the docks in 1964, smuggled into Amsterdam by sailors from exotic ports of call. She soon after opened an early forerunner of that city’s legendary cannabis coffeeshops, before spending many years living in India, Afghanistan, and other traditional hashish producing regions. 

And then, upon returning home, she absolutely changed the game as one of Amsterdam’s top cannabis growers and the inventor of an era-defining device for modern hash makers called the Pollinator. Best of all, she’s still getting high, and setting trends today.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 100+ episodes of Great Moments in Weed History , and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

We turned a crystal ball into a bong. Then we invited Leafly Senior Editor David Downs to smoke the strain of the year out of it and make predications for the future of cannabis. 

After reviewing the highs (and lows) of a tumultuous year, we see a bright, green future for the plant, the culture, and the industry in 2024 (and beyond). So please get lit and join us, as we go Bake to the Future.

STRAIN OF THE YEAR

Each year, based on extensive smoking and hard data, Leafly selects the strain of the year. Check out 2023’s winner.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

Explore St. Nick’s psychedelic shamanic roots in Siberia in the only Christmas Special where Santa gifts you magic mushrooms and even the reindeer get high AF!

So hang on to your sleigh bells, because it's time for Abdullah and Bean's annual re-telling of this classic story as we celebrate the holiday season with Amanita muscaria mushrooms, weed-infused cookies, extra oil to dab for Chanukah and plenty of fermented yak milk.

Special thanks to Harvard professor Donald Pfister for his enlightening annual lecture on Psychedelic Santa! 

Check out Doubleblind magazine and MAPS for more information on psychedelics.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 100+ episodes of Great Moments in Weed History , and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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In an age of corporate cannabis, who keeps authentic weed culture alive? In a time of abundant strains and concentrates, whose tastes define hashish connoisseurship. 

Wooks, that's who!

Named for the Wookies in the Star Wars universe—Chewbacca being the most well known example —and found primarily hanging around outside concerts and festivals, wooks are noble, gentle creatures dedicated to living in the moment, getting lit and following their bliss.

So we seshed with real-life cannabis couple (and self-described wooks) Cass Greener and Sean Dunne—the filmmaking team behind the new documentary film Wooks—about the central role that wookies have played in shaping and spreading cannabis culture throughout the live music scene.

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Visit our podcast feed for 100+ episodes of  Great Moments in Weed History , and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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Todd McCormick’s weed journey began when his mom handed him a joint on the way home from chemotherapy. As a survivor of pediatric cancer, he later advocated for the plant’s legalization alongside legends of the cannabis movement like Jack Herer, Brownie Mary, Dennis Peron and Dr. Lester Grinspoon.

Getting busted for growing medical cannabis at a mansion in Bel-Air made him an international cannabis cause célèbre, but that's just one part of his incredible story.

Todd also forged lasting friendships with weed icons like Tommy Chong, Woody Harrelson, Bill Maher and Hugh Hefner. We get into all that and much more in this "two-joint" interview.

ALSO: Check out Todd's book How to Grow Medical Marijuana and his two documentary films, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High and The Culture High

Todd also operates the Authentic Genetics Seed Company

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

Emerging in the conformist 1950s, the Beat subculture pushed back against corporatism and consumerism in favor of a contemplatively nonconformist lifestyle focused on art, poetry, jazz and “kicks.”

The small circle of young writers at the core of this lit-erary movement—Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady—were all heavily influenced by the improvisation, illumination. and imagination they found in cannabis. 

Among their most acclaimed and lasting works are Kerouac’s generation-defining novel On the Road and Ginsberg’s epic poem Howl.

On this episode, Martin Torgoff—author of Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats and Drugs—explains just how central cannabis was as a creative tool for the Beats as they sought to bust through the conventions of both literature and society. And how along the way, they founded LeMar, America's first cannabis legalization organization.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

In 1983, an outlaw weed grower pseudonymously published Indoor Marijuana Horticulture, a truly game changing book that sparked a global movement. 

In the forty years since, "Jorge Cervantes" has traveled the world writing articles, shooting videos, meeting with growers, sampling harvests, and generously sharing his weed wisdom. In this episode, Jorge recalls his incredible life story, from seed to flower.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

Cannabis activist Ellen Komp has been on the frontlines of the fight to end weed arrests and provide safe access to this incredible medicinal plant for decades. Including as an editor of Jack Herer's groundbreaking book about hemp—The Emperor Wears No Clothes, as the deputy director of California NORML and as author of Tokin' Women: A 4,000 Year Herstory.

In a special live episode taped at this year's Meadowlands conference, Ellen shares the modern history of weed as seen through her own eyes.

LEGALIZATION NATION

Check out the Kickstarter for Box Brown's comic journalism book about the dirty deeds of corporate weed.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

When a bunch of lawyers and shadowy political operators pushed a ballot initiative in Humboldt County, California that could destroy the legal weed industry in America's most legendary cannabis cultivation region, comedian Billy Wayne Davis—our guest this week—said "hell no."

On October 1st, Great Moments in Weed History will join Billy Wayne plus Mike Glazer from Weed + Grub, Frank Castillo from Peak'd and Henry Zebrowski from Last Podcast on the Left for a benefit show at the Mateel Center in Southern Humboldt to help vote down this eradication initiative known as Measure A.

In addition to traveling all over the country to make people laugh, Billy Wayne is also the host of the excellent podcast Grown Local on which he interviews all sorts of weed people—with a particular focus on small-scale craft growers.

In this episode, we dig into a few of Billy Wayne’s personal greatest weed moments, from his cannabis origin story to a life-lesson he got firsthand from stand-up legend Ralphie May.

STOP MEASURE A IN HUMBOLDT

Check out this website for more information on how Measure A would devastate craft farmers in Humboldt County and how you can help through grassroots political action or sending a donation.

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Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

Whether portraying Bong Boy as part of the Upright Citizens Brigade or taping his solo stand-up special at a weed lounge, comedian Matt Besser never shies away from embracing cannabis culture.

In an appropriately stoned interview, Matt shares some personal great moments from his own weed history, explores how cannabis enhances the creative process, and explains why he never goes on stage stoned—unless it's 4/20.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

Cannabis has profound therapeutic properties, providing healing relief from ailments ranging from chronic pain and insomnia to cancer, seizure disorders, MS, ALS and digestive disorders. But how can you get the most out of this safe, versatile plant medicine? And why is your doctor so in the dark about weed? 

As a young hippie physician with hair well past his shoulders, Dr. Jeffrey Hergenrather witnessed firsthand the plant’s incredible potential for treating a wide variety of conditions during the seven years he served as in-house physician at the Farm, a legendary counterculture commune in rural Tennessee.

Ever since, he’s been a tireless advocate for safe access to our favorite life saving plant. Including as a founding member and one-time president of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians—the oldest organization of physicians specializing in the use of cannabis as medicine. 

While hearing the good doctor’s long history with cannabis, we also discuss how to talk to your doctor about medical cannabis, how to convince Grandma to give it a try, and how exactly a single plant can be efficacious for so many different ailments. 

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

The weed legalization movement has always embraced street theater, a tactic Adam Eidinger certainly put to good use the time he led a giveaway of 10,000 joints during a presidential inauguration. He also lead the charge to end cannabis prohibition in Washington DC and then followed up with an initiative that legalized psychedelic plants, including mushrooms, ayahuasca, and mescaline.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

The War on Weed first started crumbling because of courageous cannabis patients like John, a super chill, funny and cool person to share some herb with who helps spread the word about the plant's miraculous medicinal properties among those who—like himself—have Friedreich’s ataxia.

According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, Friedreich’s ataxia is a genetic, progressive, neurodegenerative movement disorder affecting 1 in every 50,000 people. John explains how cannabis helps him treat and manage the condition, and also takes us through the truly great moment when he first spoke out (loud and proud) in public to let both the FDA and his fellow FA patients know about his own positive experiences with weed. 

An act that touched the lives of many other people who have since found therapeutic relief in cannabis!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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 

Our annual celebration of cannabis concentrates explores the global phenomenon of contemporary hash with one of the leading innovators in the scene. 

Puffco founder and CEO Roger Volodarsky is truly and fully a hash-head and his commitment to spreading hashish culture is both longstanding and profound.

The innovations that Puffco has introduced over the last ten years have elevated the modern hash experience in ways that truly have changed the game. All of it fueled by his personal passion for this plant, its resins and the culture.

7/10 GMIWH ARCHIVES

If you want to know more about the earliest spiritual uses of hashish, dating back literally thousands of years, check out our recent episode titled “Cannabis in the Ancient World”

To trace the spread of traditional hashish along the old Spice Routes and Silk Roads of yore, scroll back just a few episodes further, and tune in to “Weed History in the Middle East”

For the incredible story of the birth of contemporary hash, check out our 7/10 special from last year, it’s called “Meet the Psychedelic Surfers Who Invented Dabs” about the legendary Brotherhood of Eternal Love and how they created the earliest known BHO.

Or go back another year, to our first-annual 7/10 special, “Celebrating Hash’s High Holiday with an IRL sesh…” You’ll hear me get a crash course in cutting-edge cannabis concentrates on that one, so if you’re still a bit mystified by all the talk about oils, waxes, shatters, crumbles, resins, and rosins, I’m right there with you, and, spoiler alert, it’s by far the highest I’ve ever gotten on this show.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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

Journalism is the first draft of history—so who better to explain the rapidly evolving cannabis scene of 2023 than a couple of dedicated reporters on the weed beat?

Tauhid Chappell is an Executive Board Member of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He’s worked at the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Free Press.

Jelani Gibson reports for New Jersey Cannabis Insider, a joint effort from NJ.com and The Star Ledger. 

They took a break from telling truth to power and following the money to give us an insider's peak behind the scenes of how legal weed really works—and who it works for.

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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

Starting in 1976, the National Institute on Drug Abuse supplied Robert Randall with enough government-grown cannabis to treat his severe glaucoma.

While lighting a perfectly legal joint on CNN, Randall once explained to Larry King that keeping the condition in check required puffing 10 joints per day.

To hear the incredible story of how he ended up as America's first federally legal cannabis patient, we spoke with Alice O'Leary Randall, his wife and partner in a decades-long campaign to make cannabis legally available to the millions of people who wish to use the plant medicinally.

EPISODE SPONSORED BY PAX

It's time to puff, puff, PAX with the world's most advanced cannabis vaporizer. Check out PAX.com for exceptional cannabis experiences made easy. And use the promo code "great moments" for 10% off your order!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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

"Weed taught me how to be American," chef Roy Choi says of his favorite leafy green. Weed also inspired his most iconic creation–the Kogi taco–easily one of the stoniest culinary sensations of all time.

A life-long, loud-and-proud cannabis enthusiast, Roy Choi had to pretty much invent the modern gourmet food truck just to get his Kogi tacos out to the people. Fifteen years later, he's now among the most respected and influential chefs in the world

From his early adventures as a member of the 'United Stoners of America,' to his brand new line of edibles with Tsumo Snacks, we talk about cannabis, food, culture, and how to keep pot weird. 

NOTE: We discuss two scientific studies in the episode, one about how weed actually makes your taste buds more acute, and one about hyper-priming. 

EPISODE SPONSORED BY PAX

It's time to puff, puff, PAX with the world's most advanced cannabis vaporizer. Check out PAX.com for exceptional cannabis experiences made easy. And use the promo code "great moments" for 10% off your order!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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

The archeological evidence proving weed played a central role in ancient spiritual practices—including the Judeo-Christian tradition—is irrefutable. But just as the plant's medicinal properties have long been denied by the medical establishment, the world's "mainstream" religious scholars consistently erase this inconvenient fact.

But not Chris Bennet, a self-described “religious reformer” who has been intensively researching the ancient history of cannabis for nearly thirty years. He’s the author of five books, including Cannabis and the Soma Solution, Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible, and his latest—Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World—just published this month.

Chris explains how the rise of monotheism led to the earliest prohibitions against "marijuana," as a way for the authoritarian theocrats of antiquity to wage a proxy war against a wide array of older spiritual traditions that revered weed as a sacrament.

EPISODE SPONSORED BY PAX

It's time to puff, puff, PAX with the world's most advanced cannabis vaporizer. Check out PAX.com for exceptional cannabis experiences made easy. And use the promo code "great moments" for 10% off your order!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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

With a homegrown cannabis culture dating back to antiquity, and a well-established reputation for growing the world's finest weed, Thailand has long ranked as a dream destination for herbally-infused travelers.

But it's only in the last year that the local authorities have decriminalized cannabis and embraced green tourism, ushering in a new era of freedom and experimentation. 

To find out how things changed so rapidly, what's happening right now, and what the future holds for Thailand's cannabis movement, we share a sesh with journalist and professional partier Michelle Lhooq. 

Michelle Lhooq is a drugs and nightlife journalist, and author of the stoner cult classic, WEED: Everything You Want to Know But Are Always Too Stoned to Ask (Penguin Random House). She writes a newsletter called Rave New World, and throws a party called Weed Rave.

EPISODE SPONSORED BY PAX

It's time to puff, puff, PAX with the world's most advanced cannabis vaporizer. Check out PAX.com for exceptional cannabis experiences made easy. And use the promo code "great moments" for 10% off your order!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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

It's a call to farms! If everyone with the legal ability to home grow their own weed gets started right now, by this fall we'll be flooded with so much high-quality, low-cost herb that we can essentially de-commodify cannabis and all smoke for free.

Okay, maybe not in the first year, but another weed world is definitely possible, and our guest—Danny Danko, author of Cannabis: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Marijuana—will demystify the process and help you get started. 

EPISODE SPONSORED BY PAX

It's time to puff, puff, PAX with the world's most advanced cannabis vaporizer. Check out PAX.com for exceptional cannabis experiences made easy. And use the promo code "great moments" for 10% off your order!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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

Get lit and settle in for our annual re-telling of the incredible true story of 4/20. We trace the origins of this high holiday to a single weed crew in the 1970s called the Waldos, and then track precisely how April 20th came to be officially unofficially a global celebration of the world's most wonderful plant. 

EPISODE SPONSORED BY PAX

It's time to puff, puff, PAX with the world's most advanced cannabis vaporizer. Check out PAX.com for exceptional cannabis experiences made easy. And use the promo code "great moments" for 10% off your order!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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

Time to roll a joint, split a blunt, pack a bong, endabulate a dab—or do all of that everywhere all at once. Because it's the freaking Weed-A-Thon, my friends!

'Tis the weediest episode of the year, as we puff tough while revisiting top shelf clips from all of the best episodes and interviews in the long run of Great Moments in Weed History. All to raise money for a very good cause, namely keeping this podcast from disappearing into the ash tray of history.

And if you do find it in your heart to throw in on this, and help us preserve cannabis history and spread knowledge of the plant around the world, well... all you've got to do is visit greatmomentsinweedhistory.com.

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

In a fertile band stretching from North Africa to Southeast Asia, cannabis cultivation and hashish production dates back countless centuries. 

From the ancient history of the plant throughout the Middle East to the evolution of cannabis culture in Morocco, India, Egypt, Nepal, and other traditional hashish regions, get ready to have a fascinating time getting high on history with this weed's guest.

Dr. Maziyar Ghiabr is 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. 

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

Cannabis and hemp are the same plant put to different uses. One varietal gets you lit, one helps you through chemo, while others make incredibly strong rope or highly nutritious food.

Our guest, author Doug Fine has written several books on how incorporating hemp into our society as a source of food, fuel, fiber, building materials and other industrial uses could create an entirely new, decentralized, re-localized economic system, one that would end conflict over fossil fuels while reversing climate change.

Hemp, hemp, hooray!

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

Since 1977, legendary MC Busy Bee has been rocking crowds and smoking loud as one of the true originators of hip hop music, style and culture. 

He was there for the earliest rap battles and the arrival of blunt smoking, starred in the movie Wild Style and sold loose joints of Acapulco Gold–all a decade before Snoop and Dre released The Chronic.

In this interview, we discuss how he's stayed true to hip hop's original mission of bringing "peace, love and unity" through music, how outlaw weed culture and underground hip hop have evolved over the years, and how he learned to grow his own "fire" weed from a bunch of hillbillies up in Northern California.

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

Getting high featured prominently in the work of many underground comix artists of the 1970s, from R. Crumb's "Mr. Natural" and "Stoned Again" to Kim Deitch's "Sunshine Girl" and Gilbert Shelton's indomitable Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

In his new book Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix, author Brian Doherty traces the fascinating history of this transgressive art.

A movement led by a bunch of stoned wise-asses who took a decidedly outlaw approach to publishing, capitalism and cannabis. As summed up in the Freak Brothers' sage advice:

"Weed will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no weed."

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

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 focus from potency to terp profile as the standard of quality, it's an episode for full-on weed nerds and newbies alike to learn more about our favorite plant.

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

In 1970, Bill Drake wrote the first modern guide to growing cannabis. Despite an FBI campaign to suppress this groundbreaking book, The Cultivator's Handbook of Marijuana would change the game forever by teaching millions of people how to overgrow the government.

Based on his journeys around the world—including Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Mexico—Bill's writings on cultivation and connoisseurship over the last fifty years have served as the first draft of the modern history of this plant we all love.

And at 81, he's most definitely still smoking.

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

It's been a wild year in the world of weed, and we're ready to get lit and reflect on the highs and lows. Starting with an in-depth look at the most shocking and impactful cannabis news story of 2022.

Plus: This episode includes Abdullah and Bean's annual re-telling of the classic yuletide tale: "Santa Claus is a Siberian Mushroom Shaman."

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

A confirmed cannabis connoisseur since the 1960s, Alex Lifeson reveals how smoking weed fuels his creative process, helps him heal the aches and pains of five decades out on the road with a hall-of-fame rock band, and got him hooked up with the infamous Trailer Park Boys.

We also trace the history of Rush's loving musical ode to weed history ("A Passage to Bankok"), and his encounters with everything from real deal Thai stick and Hawaiin bud to the earliest Honey Oil and the finest hashish Amsterdam has to offer. 

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 80+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

Cannabis fuels the creative journey of comedian, musician, and improviser Reggie Watts, as he explains in this highly insightful interview that starts with a how-to guide for using THC to help access an "optimal observer state" and ends with some spontaneous "beat weed-ing."

Check out Reggie as bandleader on The Late, Late Show with James Corden (and before that on Comedy Bang Bang), or start with his first album "Pot Cookies" and work your way through to his most recent special Spacial.

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

In November 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington State legalized cannabis for all adults, lighting a grassfire of weedy liberation that's been blazing through the country and around the world ever since. Including in the five US states voting on legalization in this month's election.

Leading cannabis activist and entrepreneur Wanda James joins us to recall her experiences working on that historic campaign, and as America's first licensed Black dispensary owner at her flagship shop Simply Pure.

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

Randy Lanier began driving race cars in 1978. His weed dealing career began even earlier. Along the way, he competed at Le Mans, won the 1984 IMSA Camel GT title, and drove in the Indy 500. All funded by his prodigious cannabis smuggling. 

We’re talking 165,000 pound loads of primo bud coming in on massive tugboats, including the legendary Punta Roja strain grown in Colombia. 

Upon publication of his new book Survival of the Fastest: Weed, Speed, and the 1980s Drug Scandal that Shocked the Sports World, Randy takes us through the incredible highs and lows of his life on the track, in the field, behind bars and now working to help fellow cannabis prisoners still locked up.

So roll one up, buckle up, and get ready for the green light on a truly thrilling episode.

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

The earliest ceremonial smoking devices date back 2,400 years, to ancient Scythian tribal chiefs who blazed hashish out of solid gold bongs.

While the history of the modern “functional art glass” movement started in the 1970s, with Bob Snodgrass, the Deadhead hippie whose innovative heady glass pipes and bongs gave rise to today's $100,000 dab rigs.

In an episode recorded live at the Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon, we celebrate the incredible life and legacy of "Snoddy"—the Godfather of Glass. So grab some dank nugs, hop on the bus, and get ready to meet the alchemical wizard who changed everything about the way we get high.

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every other Weednesday.

Cannabis is a spiritual and creative inspiration—according to multi-Grammy winner Damian Marley—but also just a beloved part of day-to-day life. Weed is also a family tradition, one famously begun by his father, the late reggae icon Bob Marley.

In this intimate conversation, Damian talks about the history of cannabis in Jamaica, his hopes (and fears) for legalization there, and why the Rasta community must have a seat at the table. Plus, his recommendation for the best place to get grilled fish on the beach when you've got the munchies. Shout out Screechie!

Help Make This Podcast Possible!

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

Nobody ever repped cannabis louder or prouder on TV than Laganja Estranja did on RuPaul’s Drag Race. An overnight weed icon, she's since become an advocate and activist dedicated to spreading knowledge about the plant's medicinal benefits.

Our conversation with Laganja hits on all the highs and lows of this inspiring story, starting with her first puff of brick weed in Texas.

PATREON

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

Turn on, tune in, and check out this special "joint" episode celebrating a selection of great TV weed moments as selected by writer, comedian and fellow stoner podcaster Ashley Ray of TV I Say!

From the earliest positive depiction of cannabis on television, to the groundbreaking work done on shows like High Maintenance, Broad City, Insecure, and Workaholics, we explore how cannabis culture has evolved on and off screen. While getting nicely toasted together and indulging in our shared love of watching TV.

This episode was edited by Marina Paiz 

ASHLEY RAY

Ashley Ray is a stand-up comic, actor, tv writer and host of the popular podcast ‘TV I Say with Ashley Ray.’ Find more information on her website, or find her on Twitter.

GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY - LIVE IN PORTLAND ON SEPT 10

Abdullah and Bean will be appearing live at the Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon on September 10th for a live taping of an all-new episode of Great Moments in Weed History. Please grab tickets now, and tell all your friends who live in Oregon to come get high on history with us!

PATREON

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

Traditionally, two bitterly oppositional groups love sweet, sweet donuts—cops and stoners. So when news leaked that one of America's most beloved national donut chains is lobbying to prevent cannabis legalization, our hosts sprung into inaction by calling for a boycott.

We're also asking the cannabis community to help us "high"-light all the great family-run, weed-friendly donut shops we can buy from instead. With a special shout out to Portland's own Voodoo Donuts, which actually makes a donut in the shape of a blunt.

GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY - LIVE IN PORTLAND ON SEPT 10

Abdullah and Bean will be appearing live at the Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon on September 10th for a live taping of an all-new episode of Great Moments in Weed History. Please grab tickets now, and tell all your friends who live in Oregon to come get high on history with us!

PATREON

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

For ten years, the Secret Sesh in Los Angeles has brought together true OGs from all walks of life to see, smell, smoke and celebrate their favorite plant. What began as a clandestine cannabis farmer's market—held in garages and back lots—has since grown into a stadium-sized weedy realm unto itself.

At the center of it all: Our guest this week, podcaster and comedian Adam Ill, who takes on a journey from his early days as a stoner skater in "the late 1900s" to his role today as master of ceremonies at the now legal—and no longer secret—Secret Sesh.

Also, check out Abdullah's 2019 report on the Secret Sesh for KCRW radio in LA.

GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY - LIVE IN PORTLAND ON SEPT 10

Abdullah and Bean will be appearing live at the Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon on September 10th for a live taping of an all-new episode of Great Moments in Weed History. Please grab tickets now, and tell all your friends who live in Oregon to come get high on history with us!

PATREON

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

The legalization debate reached the US Senate this week, prompting us to recall the time Tucker Carlson had to say the words "Great Moments in Weed History." Immediately followed by the biggest name on Fox News lamely spewing Reefer Madness nonsense while getting trounced in an on-air confrontation with our co-host.

More seriously, in this episode we share an optimistic update on progress towards federal legalization, following testimony before Congress from two people with deep connections to this podcast. 

BEAN VS. TUCKER CARLSON

We share excerpts from their debate in the episode. Here's where you can watch the whole thing, or you can read the Leafly article debunking Alex Berenson's book.

GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY - LIVE IN PORTLAND ON SEPT 10

Abdullah and Bean will be appearing live at the Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon on September 10th for a live taping of an all-new episode of Great Moments in Weed History. Please grab tickets now, and tell all your friends who live in Oregon to come get high on history with us!

PATREON

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

In 1976, a pair of Vietnam vets turned international weed smugglers loaded a twin-engine airplane with 6,000 pounds of primo sinsemilla bud known as Mota Magic.

Unfortunately, the ill-fated smuggling run ended in disaster when the planeload of weed crashed into a remote frozen lake tucked away in Yosemite's rugged backcountry. 

But from that tragedy arose the greatest "gold rush" in cannabis history, as some of the world's top rock climbers, the DEA, forest rangers, and itinerant hippies all raced to pull as many bales of Mota Magic from the frozen lake as possible.

This episode was recorded live in Humboldt County, California as part of the Savage Henry Comedy Festival. Special thanks to everyone at Savage Henry, an incredible independent humor magazine and comedy club operating in the heart of America's most famous cannabis cultivation region. 

GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY - LIVE IN PORTLAND ON SEPT 10

Abdullah and Bean will be appearing live at the Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon on September 10th for a live taping of an all-new episode of Great Moments in Weed History. Please grab tickets now, and tell all your friends who live in Oregon to come get high on history with us!

PATREON

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

When police in black helicopters started descending on Humboldt County, CA to bring 'death from above' to illicit cannabis grows, the locals banded together and fought back. 

As a co-founder of both the Citizens Observation Group and community-supported KMUD radio, Agnes Patak spent decades monitoring the cops and broadcasting real-time warnings about their raiding parties. She tells us how CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) made life a living hell for Mom & Pop growers, and why she's so proud to see her community continue to honor the plant, the environment, and our collective struggle for peace and justice. 

EPISODE SPONSOR: PODTONES

This episode of Great Moments in Weed History is brought to you by Podtones—the first 100% pure cannabis rosin vaporizer.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 70+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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

Take a break from the world's troubles and get blazed with comedian Jon Gabrus upon the premiere of his new TruTV show 101 Places to Party Before You Die. Along with co-host Adam Pally, Gabrus travels the country to live it up, including getting lit early and often—as one would expect from the host of the stellar High & Mighty podcast.

We talk about how becoming a stoner changed his approach to comedy, and his favorite weed scene from a movie. Then we make plans to assemble a cannabis heist crew to take on an overclocked Volcano vaporizer.

EPISODE SPONSOR: PODTONES

This episode of Great Moments in Weed History is brought to you by Podtones—the first 100% pure cannabis rosin vaporizer.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 70+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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

To honor the high hashish holiday, we're celebrating the surfing, smuggling, LSD evangelists known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

That commune's international cannabis concentrate smuggling ring got them dubbed "the hippie mafia" and involved some of the most fascinating characters in the history of cannabis true crime.

Including the largely unknown story of Ronald Hadley Stark, who has been pegged by various people at various times as an undercover CIA asset sent to subvert the counterculture, a rogue KGB operative sent to foment a new American revolution, a ruthless career criminal disguised as a peace-and-love flower child, and a cunning snitch who transformed the Brotherhood of Eternal Love from idealistic hippies into big-time drug smugglers.

For more on the BOEL, check out these books (The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and Orange Sunshine) and documentaries (Orange Sunshine and The Sunshine Makers).

EPISODE SPONSOR: LIFTED MADE

Cannabis is meant to be shared, and our newest sponsor Lifted Made has found one of the most accessible ways to do it... with hemp-derived novel cannabinoids like Delta-8 THC, Delta-9, Delta-10, THC-O, HHC, CBN, CBG and more. 

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 70+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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

In this special episode, we answer your burning questions about cannabis—from "How do I get my Mom high?" to "What will the world of weed look like in ten years?"

Very special thanks to our backers on Patreon, who supplied the questions, and whose generous support makes this podcast possible. Please enjoy this slightly off-the-wall take on Abdullah and Bean as your personal "weed life coaches," and then join us again next Weednesday for another classic GMIWH history story.

EPISODE SPONSOR: LIFTED MADE

Cannabis is meant to be shared, and our newest sponsor Lifted Made has found one of the most accessible ways to do it... with hemp-derived novel cannabinoids like Delta-8 THC, Delta-9, Delta-10, THC-O, HHC, CBN, CBG and more. 

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 70+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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

In 1996, Sweet Leaf Collective began bicycle-delivering donated cannabis to terminally-ill AIDS patients. By "running tight game," Sweetleaf's founder flew under the radar for decades while simultaneously expanding the operation to provide millions of dollars in free weed annually. 

Abdullah and Bean share a sesh with "Sweet Leaf Joe" to hear his inspirational story firsthand, including tales of the countless people and communities he's been able to support along the way.

EPISODE SPONSOR: LIFTED MADE

Cannabis is meant to be shared, and our newest sponsor Lifted Made has found one of the most accessible ways to do it... with hemp-derived novel cannabinoids like Delta-8 THC, Delta-9, Delta-10, THC-O, HHC, CBN, CBG and more. 

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 70+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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

Sour Diesel first surfaced at a downtown hippie rock club, and ascended into being the premier smoke among New York City's celebrity set and lit-erati. Talk about making it big in the Baked Apple!

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

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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

Weed-infused edibles date back more than a thousand years, but did you ever wonder how the humble "pot brownie" become a cultural icon? It's a wilder and more fascinating story than you probably imagine, one that starts in Egypt in 1799 and ends with the publication of the most controversial cookbook of all time (except for maybe How to Serve Man)

And at the center of it all is an iconic lesbian power couple who claimed they got duped ("doped?") into educating most of the world on how to get high off dessert.

So get ready for an incredible intercontinental and cross-cultural tale of culinary adventure that involves Moroccan hashish makers, an avant-garde artist, a literary scandal, an elaborate weed prank and a high-larious Peter Sellers movie.

Check out the original Alice B. Toklas Cookbook!

Watch the movie I Love You Alice B. Toklas.

Learn more about this incredible couple with the book Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice.

Then check out clips from Laverne and Shirley, Taxi, Frazier, That 70s Show, Desperate Housewives, Mr. Show and other very special TV episodes that celebrate the weed brownie.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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

Whether living in legal states or under prohibition, weed smokers continue to face stigmas and prejudices of all kinds. So to kick off our official Pride Month programming, we're revisiting our 2021 interview with true friend-of-the-podcast Jessamyn Stanley—a self-described “fat black queer woman" who's been breaking down barriers in American yoga since she began posting about her personal practice on Instagram in 2012.

Jessamyn's the author of Every Body Yoga, and Yoke: My Yoga of Self Acceptance, hosts the podcast Dear Jessamyn, and has created the yoga app The Underbelly.

She also co-founded the activist organization We Go High North Carolina to push for an end to cannabis arrests and a social justice based approach to legalization.

And she's a Great Moments in Weed History listener, who says her own cannabis activism was in part inspired by our episodes about Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary, two indomitable activists who fought for medical cannabis during the height of the AIDs crisis.

Check out our podcast feed for those episodes!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

PATREON

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

What was it like to be the in-house weed cookie dealer at Upright Citizens Brigade in NYC during the legendary improv theater's glory days? Our guest John Flynn tells all in his new memoir Baked!—and we give him credit for providing creative inspiration to a cultural institution that launched the careers of many of today's top comedic talents.

Founded in 2004 by Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, Adam McKay, Rick Roman, Horatio Sanz and Drew Franklin, the theater and school helped launch the careers of Paul Scheer, ,Kate McKinnon, Jon Gabrus, Aubrey Plaza, Rob Corddry, Rob Riggle, , Ed Helms, Aubrey Plaza, Zach Woods, Nicole Byer, Bobby Moynihan, Andrew Daly, Jason Mantzoukas, Nick Kroll, Donald Glover, Ben Schwartz, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson (Broad City), Chris Gerhard and many, many others.

From baking his first batch of THC-infused treats to help fund his musical tribute to the movie Showgirls, to a run-in with FedEx that became the moment his weed cookie empire crumbled, John shares the highs (and occasional lows) of a very sweet ride.

SPONSORED BY EMJAY DELIVERY

If you'd like to try California's best cannabis yourself, without leaving home, head over to Emjay Delivery and remember to use promo code GREATMOMENTS (all one word) for 10% off your first order, 15% off your second order, and 20% off your third order. Abdullah and Bean both highly recommend this excellent service with incredible cannabis and unbeatable prices.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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. 

The Emerald Cup began in 2003 as an underground locals-only harvest celebration among outdoor organic cannabis growers in Northern California’s famed Emerald Triangle. They kept the first-ever contest a secret from the sheriff by pretending it was a birthday party.

Today, the Emerald Cup is the world's most prestigious cannabis competition, drawing 30,000+ pot-lovers to a "state fair for weed" complete with its own awards show. And this year Abdullah and Bean both participated in the judging process! So roll one up and settle in for an incredible ride.

Along the way you'll learn how to judge cannabis for yourself (without becoming judgmental),, discover some of the best flower, concentrates, edibles, topicals, tinctures and weed drinks on the market, and get inspired to host your own weed cup at home!

Episode also includes a special appearance from Woody Harrelson, some serious terp-talk thanks to SC Labs, and a big shout out to Emerald Cup impresarios Tim and Taylor Blake.

SPONSORED BY EMJAY DELIVERY

If you'd like to try California's best cannabis yourself, without leaving home, head over to Emjay Delivery and remember to use promo code GREATMOMENTS (all one word) for 10% off your first order, 15% off your second order, and 20% off your third order. Abdullah and Bean both highly recommend this excellent service with incredible cannabis and unbeatable prices.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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. 

Social equity programs designed to remediate the damage done by the War on Marijuana have all-too-often had the opposite effect. To find out why, Abdullah and Bean share a sesh with top-drawer cannabis journalist Amanda Chicago Lewis and discuss her new article in the New Republic: "Legalized Pot Was Supposed to Help Build Black Wealth in Los Angeles. It Failed."

From shady politicians to venture capital d-bags, she explains what's gone wrong, and how those lessons can be applied to legalization laws in the rest of the country—and around the world.

We also discuss how Amanda's 2014 Rolling Stone article about the Pamela Anderson / Tommy Lee sex tape was adopted into the Hulu series Pam & Tommy.

Also mentioned in the episode, her 2017 GQ article that blew the whistle on a secret plan to patent cannabis.

For more on that subject, check out Bean's subsequent investigative series for Leafly.

And for more on social equity in Los Angeles, check out Abdullah's reporting for public radio station KCRW.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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. 

Hop in our hot box time machine set for 1991 Grateful Dead tour, where a "kind bud snob" named Greg first encountered the incredible weed varietal he named "Chemdog." A moniker that Greg then took on himself while spending the next 20 years cultivating and circulating this foundational gas strain..

Chemdog (the man and the strain) in many ways paved the way for modern cannabis, but that road definitely had its rough patches. Hear this incredible story straight from the legend himself, as he tells Abdullah and Bean about being a tour legend, "helping out" Phish and the New York Giants, getting busted, and coming out on the other side as a legal master cultivator.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our Great Moments in Weed History podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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. 

Celebrate today's high holiday with the story of Jack Herer—the man, the myth, and the strain that changed the weed game forever. This is the legendary tale of how a cannabis-hating rightwing military police officer had his life transformed forever the first time he got high (really, really high) off some Acapulco Gold and became the leading voice of the weed resistance.

From writing his classic cannabis conspiracy book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, to rediscovering a US government propaganda film called Hemp for Victory, to traveling the country tirelessly with his band of cannabis evangelists, this one-man movement inspired an entire generation of activists and agitators and helped usher in the beginning of the end of the War on Weed.

If you only know Jack Herer the incredible strain of cannabis, well, then, you don't know Jack. But you will after experiencing this special live episode, recorded at the Green Street building in Los Angeles.

Very special thanks to our sponsors for this episode, High 90s, Podtones, Big Pete's Treats and Heavy Hitters.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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. 

Abdullah and Bean get high non-stop in this very special episode, fueled by the huge stash of cannabis and edibles they've been tasked with judging as part of the prestigious Emerald Cup competition. Along the way, we talk about the history of this podcast, our big plans for 4/20, our favorite past episodes of the show and, of course, what it's like to judge a prestigious weed contest.

It's also a Weed-a-Thon because this episode is our first-annual crowdsource fundraiser encouraging avid listeners to support Great Moments in Weed History on Patreon. All of our Patreon supporters get access to special video versions of the podcast, plus bonuses and special rewards.

Special thanks to all the brands mentioned in this episode, including Tweedle Farms (use the promo code "greatmoments" for 20% off), Podtones, High90s, Dee Thai Tropical Gummies,. Rose Delights Deep Sleep Gummies, Potli, Space Gems and Oasis,

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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. 

Social media deletes, throttles and shadow-bans weed related accounts regularly, often without warning and with clear bias against independent creators. When YouTube erased Arend Richard's account "The Gay Stoner" with nearly 200K subscribers, he did get mad, but he also got even by bringing together a group of prominent "weed tubers" to form their own independent platform.

Abdullah and Bean talk with Arend about the highs and lows of fighting the system. While exploring the suppression of cannabis education and entertainment as a free speech issue that's all-too-often ignored in the raging debate about cancel culture.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 60+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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. 

Cannabis is a sacred plant in Shinto and Sumo wrestling—two of Japan's oldest and most vital traditions. And hemp was once the island nation's second biggest crop, after rice.

Marijuana prohibition arrived via the American military occupation that followed World War II, Ironically, it's now the success of legalization activists in the United States that's inspiring a movement of homegrown advocates to return cannabis to its rightfully exalted place in Japanese culture.

In this episode, Abdullah and Bean talk with Naoko Miki, co-founder of Green Zone Japan, a leading organization pushing for the rights of medical cannabis patients.

CHANGE.ORG PETITION

This is the change.org petition referenced in the episode, regarding the case of Ryujiro Oyabu, a celebrated ceramic artist who is currently challenging Japan's federal ban on cannabis. Please sign and share with your friends.

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 50+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

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. 

From Afghanistan's Kush Mountains, to LA's early 90s hydro grows, the story of game-changing weed strain OG Kush is one of the greatest cannabis tales ever told—with cameo appearances from Cypress Hill, Xzibit, Snoop Dogg, and Dre Dre. But this fascinating history was completely hidden until very recently, when the original growers who put the OG in OG Kush finally came forward to claim their glory.

So roll up a fat joint of this skunky, lemony, piney legend (or whatever you've got to smoke), and settle in for a sesh with Abdullah and Bean as they give you the inside dope on the ultimate high-status strain.

HIGH 90S

This episode of Great Moments in Weed History is sponsored by High 90s.

Their Nineties OG Kush is a cross of San Fernando Valley Hindu Kush x Chemdawg that’s got all the incredible flavor, potency and soaring high that made OG Kush one of the all-time game changing cannabis strains. .

High 90's is also launching two new OG strains this month! White Fire OG, a collaboration with OG Raskal and Mamba OG in stores across Southern California. And don’t sleep on their other strains!

EPISODE ARCHIVE

Visit our podcast feed for 50+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday, including these special Moment in Weed episodes.

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. 

A new report confirms the cannabis industry added over 100,000 new jobs last year —a 33% increase—so there's never been a better time to start your legal weed career. But whether you're a hardcore trapper looking to come in from the cold, a supply-chain specialist hoping to ditch your boring widget gig for a cool weed one, or a young person seeking something entry level, gaining entree into your first green job can be daunting.

Enter Abdullah and Bean, who offer solid advice for finding and landing your dream job based on their decades of experience in and around the industry. Plus, our usual dose of silly nonsense and serious weed puns.

Here's the 2022 Leafly Jobs Report referenced throughout the episode.

Visit our podcast feed for 50+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday, including these special Moment in Weed episodes.

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. 

Whenever cannabis and capitalism collide, legacy weed farmers find themselves caught in the crossfire—trapped between hyper-capitalized mega-grows with corporate lobbyists and the corrupt government bureaucrats who do their bidding.

In a just-published article for Rolling Stone, ace cannabis reporter and longtime friend of the podcast Mary Jane Gibson details how a shady backroom deal pulled the nug out from under California's old-school weed growers. As a result, a confluence of extinction-level-events now threatens to bring down the state's entire legal weed system via an impending market crash.

But fret not—the Hempire has only begun to strike back.

Mary Jane Gibson joins us for this episode of Moment in Weed, which includes a ceremonial smoke sesh.

Here's a link to Mary Jane's original article in Rolling Stone.

Find Mary Jane on Instagram here.

And connect with Weed + Grub, her podcast with brilliantly blazed stand up comedian Mike Glazer.

PATREON

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Within the Church of Entheogenic Plants, a dozen varieties of psilocybin (aka "magic") mushrooms await those who wish to incorporate use of psychedelic fungus into their religious and spiritual practices. Two years ago, the church was raided by local police, but they re-opened the next day and still plan to sue in federal court to affirm their religious liberty.

So take a trip (yes, pun intended) with Abdullah and Bean to this incredible oasis in Oakland, California to see for yourself, while also learning about the long history of mushrooms and other psychedelics for spiritual and ceremonial use.

The Church of Entheogenic Plants is also known as ZIDE DOOR.

The organization Decriminalize Nature has been at the forefront of successful efforts to decriminalize magic mushrooms and other psychedelics.

Double Blind magazine has information and resources about psychedelic culture, cultivation and best practices.

MAPS is a leading organization advocating for legal access to psychedelics for medicinal use.

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 or signature lighter. And it truly helps us make the best show possible. 

When Heisman Trophy-winning tailback Ricky Williams famously chose natural grass over professional football back in 2004,, the NFL, sportswriters and many fans reacted with horror and anger. How dare one of the greatest football players in history walk away from the game that made him rich and famous?

With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, Abdullah and Bean decided to ask the man himself, and found out that from his first time getting high, to starting his own cannabis company (appropriately called Highsman), to studying Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, Ricky Williams has always blazed his own path in life.

He also led the way for a generation of athletes who successfully pushed back against professional football's hypocritical and draconian ban on cannabis, leading to a new era where the NFL has now stopped drug testing players for weed, and has just donated $1 million to study how the plant's medicinal properties could actually help players deal with pain management and provide neuroprotection from concussion.

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 or signature lighter. And it truly helps us make the best show possible. 

From his incendiary album "Legalize It" to his defiant speech denouncing Jamaican officials to their faces for their downpressive laws against ganja (delivered while smoking a spliff on stage), Peter Tosh fought for the equal rights of cannabis people around the world. While also promoting the plant's myriad of therapeutic benefits in detailed ways decades before the medical establishment started to catch up.

Along the way, he created some of the most seminal and iconic reggae music of all time, working solo and as part of The Wailers alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Livingston.

We're honored to have Niambe McIntosh—Peter Tosh's daughter and founder of The Peter Tosh Foundation—as our guest to discuss her father's life and work. 

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 or signature lighter. And it truly helps us make the best show possible. 

In 2004, Weldon Angelos was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling $900 worth of weed. That's what you get for bringing some of the earliest hip-hop shows to Salt Lake City, Utah.

A music producer who has worked with legends like Snoop Dogg, Tupac's Outlawz, Nas, and Pink,, Weldon's case became a symbol of the racism and injustice that plagues our criminal justice system.

But as you'll hear in this interview, from the moment he arrived at a maximum security prison—to serve a virtual life sentence—he began advocating for himself and other non-violent cannabis prisoners. Now head of The Weldon Project, he's built a truly bi-partisan coalition—Cory Booker, Rand Paul, Charles Koch, Alicia Keys—that pushed President Barrack Obama to commute his sentence in 2016, followed by a full pardon from President Donald Trump in December 2020.

In September, Weldon sent the Biden administration a letter signed by more than 150 celebrities (Drake, Killer Mike, 2 Chainz, Ty Dolla $ign, T.I.), athletes, politicians, law enforcement professionals and academics calling on the President to issue a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to all people with non-violent federal marijuana convictions.

For more on what the current administration is—and isn't—doing about cannabis, check out our recent interview with Representative Earl Blumenauer, one of the leading marijuana legalization voices in congress, in an episode titled "Is Biden Gonna Legalize or What?"

PATREON

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

Celebrate 2021's weediest highlights with Abdullah and Bean's inebriated recounting of the year's most impactful cannabis news stories. PLUS: Our annual re-telling of the classic Chrstmas tale "Santa Claus is a Siberian Mushroom Shaman."

Recorded IRL in a "holiday hashish hot box," this episode also gave rise to a conspiracy-themed spin-off show called "The Green Pill," and introduced our new sponsors Human Meat and Vlad's Blintzes. 

PATREON

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

ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

Our round-up of 2021's biggest marijuana stories featured these articles and journalists::

LEAFLY REPORTS

Leafly Cannabis Harvest Report this year (by David Downs)

Leafly Jobs Report (by Bruce Barcott, Beau Whitney, and Janessa Bailey)

Leafly Seeds of Change Report (by Janessa Bailey)

Altria, Maker of Marlboro Cigarettes, Is Lobbying on Cannabis Sales in Virginia

By Nushin Rashidian and Alyson Martin in Cannabis Wire

How Mitch McConnell Accidentally Created An Unregulated THC Market

By Lester Black at 538.com

I needed answers. My hunt to find the backstory of the perfect pot pipe

By Adam Tshcorn - LA Weekly

Marijuana trade group drops lawsuit against state after backlash

by Dan Adams - Boston Globe

South Dakota Supreme Court Invalidates 2020 Marijuana Legalization Initiative As Activists Pursue 2022 Ballot

Kyle Jager - Marijuana Moment

VA Secretary ‘Looking At’ Medical Marijuana Policy Change Following ‘Profound’ Discussion With Veteran

Kyle Jager - Marijuana Moment

Conan O’Brien Celebrates Retirement By Smoking Weed With Seth Rogen On TV

Kyle Jager - Marijuana Moment

The Oligiarch and the Marijuana Fund

Mary Jane Gibson - Rolling Stone

Winemakers Collaborate With Weed Growers on New Cannabis Appellation System

Jackie Bryant - Wine Enthusiast

Celebrity Cannabis

by Lindsey Carmela Bartlett in Forbes

Steve Urkel

Justin Bieber

Seth Rogen 

Lil Kim

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DISCOVERS 17 PSYCHEDELIC COMPOUNDS

by Jimi Divine - LA Weekly

When cannabis and capitalism collide, our community's best laid plans for an equitable industry all-too-often go up in smoke. Enter Shaleen Title, a longtime drug policy activist who in 2017 became one of five inaugural commissioners of Massachusetts's Cannabis Control Commission.

Described as “the people’s weed watchdog” by Boston Magazine, Shaleen is widely recognized for her focus on social and racial justice and her efforts to make the cannabis industry more fair and inclusive.

She's also an avid listener of Great Moments in Weed History who supports the podcast on Patreon—just saying... and she shares that among her personal great moments was being the first person to order legal cannabis delivery on the East Coast.

Naturally Shaleen's weed and gummies were provided by a social equity company that represents everything she works for as an advocate, attorney and now head of the Parabola Center—a think-tank she co-founded to "support people not corporate profits" in the cannabis industry.

Please join us for an engaging conversation on the bright green future of cannabis with someone helping to make it happen.

SUPPORT "GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY" ON PATREON

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When prominent author Marie Lee published an essay titled "Why I Give My 9-Year Old Pot" in 2009, it set off a media sensation. Years before CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta ever touched the subject, Lee's vulnerable and defiant description of desperately seeking relief for her severely ill son—and finding it in cannabis—struck a nerve with parents worldwide.

Now a teacher in the creative writing program at Columbia University, Marie Lee joins Abdullah and Bean to relive her son Jay's difficult, rewarding journey using medical cannabis to treat severe autism and other debilitating conditions. Including the life-saving help they got along the way from Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, underground marijuana growers, and the weed community writ large.

We also get an update on Jay, who is doing great!

SUPPORT "GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY" ON PATREON

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PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS!

This episode is brought to you by Tweedle Farms, Northwest Oregon's premier, family owned hemp farm, specializing in farm-to-table, terpene rich, high CBD hemp flower, concentrates, vapes, edibles and topicals.

Use promo code “greatmoments” for 25% off your next order shipped anywhere in the United States.

MARIE LEE'S NEW NOVEL

Marie Lee's next book—The Evening Hero—is forthcoming May 2022 from Simon & Schuster;

In the 1990s, a new federal law banning any student with a drug conviction from receiving financial aid led to the formation of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). Created online by a swarm of young activists in the early days of the internet, the organization quickly grew into the largest student organization in the United States.

Today SSDP has over 5,000 active members on 300 college campuses around the world, all of them dedicated to advocating for the legalization of cannabis and the end of the War on Drugs. To hear the antiestablishment history of this game-changing organization, Abdullah and Bean sit down with founding member Kris Krane, who has also served as SSDP's Executive Director.

SUPPORT "GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY" ON PATREON

Sign up for our Great Moments in Weed History Patreon for special bonuses and fun surprises

PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS!

This episode is brought to you by Tweedle Farms, Northwest Oregon's premier, family owned hemp farm, specializing in farm-to-table, terpene rich, high CBD hemp flower, concentrates, vapes, edibles and topicals.

Use promo code “greatmoments” for 20% off your next order shipped anywhere in the United States.

In remote areas of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia, indigenous farmers cultivate cannabis on small plots that date back centuries. Maintaining their precious landrace strains has been an uphill battle in an age of rapid industrialization, but now the effort to preserve this living cultural and botanical history has gone global.

The Indian Landrace Exchange is a a grassroots, locally-led, globally crowdsourced effort to support these traditional cannabis-growing communities while preserving some of the oldest cannabis strains on Earth before they're lost forever.

In this episode, Abdullah and Bean speak with @irrazinig—co-founder of the Indian Landrace Exchange—about growing up surrounded by post-colonial cannabis, making a fateful trek to "the Humboldt County of India," and forming a mutually beneficial bridge between indigenous communities and the world of legal weed.

SUPPORT "GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY" ON PATREON

Sign up for our Great Moments in Weed History Patreon for special bonuses and fun surprises

PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS!

This episode is brought to you by Tweedle Farms, Northwest Oregon's premier, family owned hemp farm, specializing in farm-to-table, terpene rich, high CBD hemp flower, concentrates, vapes, edibles and topicals.

Use promo code “greatmoments” for 20% off your next order shipped anywhere in the United States.

As America's most thoroughly freak-powered cannabis festival celebrates its 30th Anniversary, we share a sesh with legendary street activist Vivian McPeak,, who co-founded the Seattle Hempfest in 1991.

From the event's radical roots as a "protestival" occupation of a public park, to the glory days of legends like Jack Herer and Woody Harrelson addressing 100,000+ stoners at 4:20 from the main stage amid a massive cloud of smoke, Vivian explains how a combination of hippie idealism, pothead pragmatism, mutual support and civil disobedience helped establish Seattle Hempfest as a people-powered working model for every freaky weed fest to follow.. Plus the inside story of the first-annual Bong-A-Thon, and a weed pun battle for the ages.

Learn more and get involved at hempfest.org and check out Vivian's podcast Hempresent.

SUPPORT "GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY" ON PATREON

Sign up for our Great Moments in Weed History Patreon for special bonuses and fun surprises

PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS!

This episode is brought to you by Tweedle Farms, Northwest Oregon's premier, family owned hemp farm, specializing in farm-to-table, terpene rich, high CBD hemp flower, concentrates, vapes, edibles and topicals.

Use promo code “greatmoments” for 20% off your next order shipped anywhere in the United States.

Upon turning 80, rock legend David Crosby gets lit with us and lovingly recalls the greatest moments of his own illustrious weed history. From blazing out The Beatles, to sailing the high seas with the 1970s most prolific pot smugglers, he's seen and smoked it all—and lived to tell the tale.

Croz also explains why he loves growing his own, and just might write a song about it.

Special thanks to Mighty Croz, his personal weed brand, for arranging the interview. And check out his excellent new album For Free.

SUPPORT "GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY" ON PATREON

Sign up for our Great Moments in Weed History Patreon for special bonuses and fun surprises

PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS!

This episode is brought to you by Tweedle Farms, Northwest Oregon's premier, family owned hemp farm, specializing in farm-to-table, terpene rich, high CBD hemp flower, concentrates, vapes, edibles and topicals.

Use promo code “greatmoments” for 20% off your next order shipped anywhere in the United States.

Ross Rebagliati won the first ever Olympic gold medal in snowboarding, only to have it stripped away when officials reported he’d tested positive for marijuana on a post-race drug test. Ross soon found himself in a Japanese police station, under heavy interrogation for hours and potentially facing a long prison sentence simply for having a few nanograms of THC metabolite in his urine.

He tells Abdullah and Bean his entire epic Olympic story, from being fifteen and one of the first serious ski racers to switch to snowboarding, to smoking weed on the chairlift while training for World Cup events, to everything he went through at the 1998 Olympics and its aftermath, and his new career as the founder of Ross’s Gold, a Canadian cannabis company. 

He also offers words of comfort and encouragement to sprinting sensation Sha'Carri Richardson, who was disqualified from this year’s Tokyo games after testing positive for THC.

JOIN US ON PATREON

Sign up for our Great Moments in Weed History Patreon for special bonuses and fun surprises

PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS!

This episode is brought to you by Tweedle Farms, Northwest Oregon's premier, family owned hemp farm, specializing in farm-to-table, terpene rich, high CBD hemp flower, concentrates, vapes, edibles and topicals.

Use promo code “greatmoments” for 20% off your next order shipped anywhere in the United States.

July 10th (7/10) is the 4/20 of hashish, a day to celebrate cannabis concentrates and culture in all forms—from the traditional sieve and hand-rub methods used in places like India, Morocco and Nepal for millennia to the modern world of BHO extracted dabs, with its many oils, waxes, shatters, crumbles, resins, and rosins.

Sound confusing? Don't fret, because Abdullah, Bean and special guest expert Ry Prichard (Bong Appetit) will demystify and explain the fascinating history of cannabis concentrates, including how they're made, how they're consumed, and how to get the most out of this incredible way to inhale your weed without greening out.

Best of all, after a long, long time recording over Zoom, we're back to blazing together IRL and so happy to share our first official sesh back on such an auspicious occasion.

Program note: Bean gets really, really high in this episode!

PATREON

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

Brownie Mary's "magically delicious marijuana brownies" brought healing and joy to thousands of AIDS and cancer patients in San Francisco, even as she shouted down the police and took on City Hall. As this self-described "little old lady" once declared, shortly after being released from lock-up:

"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS, they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window,"

We're proudly re-posting this episode from Season 1 of Great Moments in Weed History as the conclusion of our month-long Pride celebration.

Special thanks to our sponsor Tweedle Farms for supporting this podcast, including this special Pride series of episodes!

PATREON

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

Dennis Peron first tried cannabis in Vietnam. After smuggling two pounds of high-grade herb home from the front, he became a charismatic and defiant leader of San Francisco's medical cannabis and gay rights movements. A fiery street-fighting optimist, Dennis suffered multiple stints in prison and even took a bullet in a police raid—all without ever giving up or backing down.

As part of our ongoing Pride Month celebration, we're proudly re-posting this Season 1 episode that gets at the root of how the LGBTQ+ movement played a central role in not just changing the laws in California (and subsequently around the world), but in subverting a propaganda campaign against weed engineered by the government, law enforcement, and the medical establishment.

Our Pride programming will conclude next week with our episode about Brownie Mary, another indomitable activist who fought for medical cannabis during the height of the AIDs crisis.

Special thanks to our sponsor Tweedle Farms for supporting this podcast, including this special Pride series of episodes!

PATREON

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

Whether living in legal states or under prohibition, weed smokers continue to face stigmas and prejudices of all kinds. So to kick off our official Pride Month programming, we sat down for a smoky sesh with Jessamyn Stanley, a self-described “fat black queer woman" who's been breaking down barriers in American yoga since she began posting about her personal practice on Instagram in 2012.

Jessamyn's the author of Every Body Yoga, has a new book Yoke: My Yoga of Self Acceptance out this month, hosts the podcast Jessamyn Explains It All, and has created the yoga app The Underbelly.

She founded the activist organization We Go High North Carolina to push for an end to cannabis arrests and a social justice based approach to legalization.

And she's a Great Moments in Weed History fan, who says her own cannabis activism was in part inspired by our episode on activist Dennis Peron.

Our Pride programming will continue the next two weeks with re-releases of episodes about Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary, two indomitable activists who fought for medical cannabis during the height of the AIDs crisis.

Special thanks to our sponsor Tweedle Farms for supporting this podcast, including our special Pride series of episodes!

PATREON

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

From blazing a joint at his audition, to smoking Austin, TX completely out of marijuana during the shoot, Dazed and 'Confused star Jason London tells Abdullah and Bean that the greatest weed moments on set all happened between takes, and behind the scenes.

So journey with us back to the magical summer of 1993, when a cast and crew of talented unknowns that included Matthew McConaughy, Ben Affleck, Renee Zellweger, Anthony Rapp, Mila Jovovich, Parker Posey and writer/director Richard Linklater all adopted a method-acting approach to portraying 1970s stoners, with plenty of high-jinx and high times ensuing on the way to making one of the most iconic stoner films of all time..

Warning: You don't need to have a joint to enjoy this episode, but it would be a lot cooler if you did.

PATREON

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

Support for ending weed arrests is at an all-time-high, but our newly elected President has long been a leading proponent of the War on Drugs. So where does that leave us when it comes to passing federal legalization? And if it passes, will Biden sign it?

To find out, Abdullah and Bean sat down with Representative Earl Blumenauer—co-founder of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, and a leading pro-weed voice in Washington, DC. After publicly pushing for legalization for more than fifty years, he explains why he believes so strongly in this issue, what to expect in the future, and why he (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) decided to wear marijuana leaf masks to Congress.

PATREON

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

From Acapulco Gold to OG Kush, the history of cannabis breeding dates back thousands of years and spans the entire globe, spawning a story that stretches from the legendary landrace varietals of Nepal, Thailand, Nigeria, India and Morocco all the way to today's modern super hybrid strains.

Due to prohibition, however, the history of these strains and the people who helped breed and proliferate them have been all-too-often lost, obscured or subverted. So to sift the myth from the legend, we're joined by the illustrious Danny Danko, longtime cultivation editor at High Times magazine before branching out on his own with the podcast Grow Bud Yourself.

This is our official 4/20 episode for 2021, please share it with your buds while celebrating the high holiday. For a history of 4/20 itself, check out our Season 1 episode about the Waldos: "4/20 Started With a Treasure Map to a Weed Garden."

PATREON

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

Willie Nelson has smoked Snoop Dogg, Woody Harrelson, Ricky Williams, Chelsea Handler, Toby Keith, Johnny Knoxville and many other famous faces under the table.

We got to hear a few of these hilarious stories firsthand recently while working with Willie and his crew on the Luck Summit, a four day online event (April 26-29) exploring cannabis in all aspects.

As a special sneak preview of what's in store, we're proud to present a legend in his own right—Jay Chandrasekhar, star and director of Super Troopers, Beerfest and other films as part of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard. Jay joined us to share some incredible stories about getting blazed with America's most iconic living stoner.

And stay tuned after that for the first ever episode of Great Moments in Weed History, about the time Willie smoked a joint on the roof of the White House.

We've got some incredible surprises happening between now and 4/20, so please subscribe to the podcast and join us on social media.

PATREON

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In a tale of weedy vengeance, Abdullah and Bean investigate the life of Harry J. Anslinger—America’s first “drug czar,” author of Marijuana: Assassin of Youth, and the man most responsible for the global prohibition of cannabis. And then they settle the score.

This episode is tied to the premiere of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, a new film from Lee Daniels (Push, Empire) telling the awful true story of how Harry Anslinger used the full power of federal law enforcement to target the legendary jazz singer for multiple arrests, ultimately hounding her into an early grave.

Highlighted by a brilliant Golden-Globe-nominated performance from Andra Day, the film rightly casts Anslinger as the villain. But with the narrative focused on Holiday and an undercover FBN agent tasked with taking her down, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and his decades-long racist campaign against weed doesn’t get a lot of screen time. 

So Abdullah and Bean decided to dig deep into Anslinger's horrific life story.

And yes, exact an herbally-infused revenge worthy to be called a great moment in weed history!

Special thanks to Johann Hari whose excellent book Chasing the Scream greatly informed this episode. 

Clips come from: Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live, George Carlin from his album Toledo Window Box, The Big Lebowski, Marijuana: Assassin of Youth, and the legend Ed “NJ Weedman” Forchion

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GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY MERCH

Visit our new merch store with Teepublic.

Explore Santa Claus’s psychedelic roots in Siberia in the only Christmas Special where Old St. Nick gifts you magic mushrooms and even the reindeer get high AF (just ask Blixen)!

So hang on to your sleigh bells, because Abdullah and Bean will be celebrating the holiday season this year with Amanita muscaria mushrooms, cannabis-infused cookies, marijuana mistletoe and fermented yak milk, just as Santa always intended

Special thanks to Harvard professor Donald Pfister for his enlightening annual lecture on Psychedelic Santa! And to friend-of-the-podcast Nonna Marijuana of WAMM, who turns 98 this Christmas Day. You can watch Nonna and Abdullah make “egg nug” together in the Bong Appetit Christmas special. Or watch Nonna make medicated latkes.

Check out Doubleblind magazine and MAPS for more information on psychedelics.

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In 1971, John Lennon performed publicly, for the first time in five years, at a rally decrying the injustice of Michigan police targeting a radical political activist for an elaborate undercover sting operation, resulting in a sentence of ten years in prison for passing two joints.

The concert brought massive media attention, and John Sinclair soon after walked out of prison a free man, landing John Lennon on Richard Nixon's official enemies list. 

For the next three years, the President's "plumbers" harassed the former Beatle and his wife Yoko Ono, while the INS threatened him with deportation over an old hashish bust back in England. Meanwhile the FBI tapped his phones and sent agents to tail his every move

Lennon, Ono, and their legal team fought them every step, and along the way created a new legal precedent in immigration law that still stands as today's DREAM act. (At the time of this podcast, the Supreme Court had yet to rule on a case brought by the Trump administration challenging DACA and the DREAM Act).

Read John Lennon vs. The USA (written by Lennon's immigration attorney Leon Wildes) for more info, and watch the documentary The U.S. vs John Lennon

Also learn more about Dr. Lester Grinspoon (whose expert witness on the difference between "marijuana" and "hashish" helped save the day) in our episode about Carl Sagan.

Long live Nutopia!

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

Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl sat rolling joints and cleaning the stems and seeds from a brick of weed when a fateful knock came at the door of 710 Ashbury Street.

Having your communal crash pad raided by the police isn’t typically the start of a great moment, but for the Grateful Dead, the October 1967 undercover police sting operation that targeted their home and headquarters turned into a pivotal inflection point in the band’s trajectory. One that would change cannabis history and spread weed consciousness around the world. 

That's because rather than pleading out or turning informant, they held a press conference right in the same room where they’d been busted, calling out the local police and the national War on Drugs as a racist, hypocritical, counter productive, unconstitutional failure.

Abdullah and Bean also discuss the huge role the band and their many Deadhead followers played in spreading high quality marijuana and seeds across the country, including classic strains like Sour Diesel and Chemdog.

Very special thanks to the legend Harry Shearer (The Simpsons, Spinal Tap) for guesting on this episode, as he actually wrote the 1967 pro-legalization statement the Dead presented at their press conference.

Read more first person accounts of this incident in Rock Skully's book Living with the Dead and in Rosie McGee's memoir Dancing with the Dead.

Hear the Grateful Dead's October 22, 1967 Marijuana Defense Benefit concert in its entirety at archive.org

Check out Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally's book A Long Strange Trip.

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Once a year, Hindus celebrate cannabis and the god Shiva with the ancient festival of Maha Shivaratri, an all-night affair of fasting, meditation, chanting, and dancing.

Abdullah tells Bean the story in this Freaky High-Day episode, and the guys talk Hinduism, the divine origins of cannabis, weed-loving deities, and psychedelics.

They also try hash-infused Bhang, one of the world's oldest edibles and maybe Shiva's favorite.

PATREON

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

A weed-fueled stoner prank escalated to the highest court in the land after a student in Juneau, Alaska used the opportunity of the olympic torch passing through town to unfurl a banner reading "Bong Hits For Jesus."

What makes this a truly great moment in weed history is not just the way Joseph Frederick thumbed his nose at an oppressive high school and its humorless principal, but the years he spent afterward, defending his personal liberty and the free speech rights of all students in the United States.

Along the way, he'd face police harassment, multiple arrests, and a series of courtroom battles that led all the way to the Supreme Court. Where the Justices repeatedly had to say and hear the words Bong Hits for Jesus.

PATREON

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Richard Lee's life changed forever 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, Richard would fight to educate his family, his state, and ultimately the entire country about medical cannabis.

Eventually, he transformed an eight-block stretch of his adopted home town so thoroughly that it came to be known, affectionately, as Oaksterdam. Richard’s empire included two cannabis coffeeshops, a medical cannabis dispensary, a gift shop, his political headquarters, and the 30,000 square foot main campus of Oaksterdam University, the country’s first trade school dedicated to training people for careers in the legal cannabis industry.

He then put up his own money to run a state-wide marijuana legalization initiative in California. Not long after, the Feds came to shut him down. And the city of Oakland rose up in his defense.

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Native American leader Alex White Plume planted his first hemp crop on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 2000, sparking a long battle over tribal sovereignty that included a series of DEA raids, a federal injunction, and a tense stand-off between Alex, his siblings, the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Along the way, Alex would discover an important ally—millions of feral hemp plants that were first planted in the 1940s to support the U.S. war effort in WWII, as extolled in the long suppressed government propaganda film Hemp for Victory!

Learn more of the White Plume's incredible story of suffering and vindication in the documentary Standing Silent Nation.

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

Roll another one, and celebrate the high holiday with part 2 of Abdullah and Bean's #BlazeAtHome420 special, which features even more of their personal greatest weed moments, from chopping it up with Dave Chappelle backstage at the Doobie Awards and getting cast as "Greasy Stoner #1" in an episode of the Trailer Park Boys and as a dab-ripping Phish fan on High Maintenance, to getting stoned in Siberia and slipping through the fingers of the KGB.

Please stay safe, sane and stoned this 4/20 and be sure to assemble your own weed crews (past and present) for a digital sesh. Check out GMIWH social media (@gmiwhpodcast) for info on 4/20 livestreams where we'll be hosting weed history trivia live!

To learn more about the history of 4/20, check out our Season 1 episode "4/20 Started With a Treasure Map to a Weed Garden."

Thanks so much to everyone reaching out on social media to say the show is bringing you some joy and laughs right now, that means the world to us.

PATREON

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

Celebrate 4/20 at home this year with Abdullah and Bean, in a special two-part episode where the hosts of Great Moments in Weed History share their own personal greatest weed moments with each other—and with all of you weed history heads out there.

In part 1, they swap stories about grass-oriented adventures they've shared jointly together while working at VICE and High Times, including legalization day in Denver, the world's biggest ever Cannabis Cup, a trip to Hunter S. Thompson's house, getting to know Nonna Marijuana, and the origin story of the cannabis cuisine show Bong Apetit.

Part two will drop on actual April 20th so look out for it!

And remember, great moments in weed history happen to everyone, and they happen every day, so while we're all stuck at home this 4/20, we can still get together with our friends online, get lit, and share our best weed stories. And someday that will be a weed story too.

To hear the long, strange story of how 4/20 became a high holiday, check out our episode about the Waldos from Season 1.

Abdullah and Bean wish to thank everyone who has reached out to say that the podcast has been bringing them some joy, relief and laughs right now, it means the world to us. We also wish to dedicate this episode to all of our weed crews, past and present.

PATREON

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

When 22 tons of weed washed up on Brazil's beaches one magical summer, the locals interpreted it as a gift from Yemoja, a sea goddess deity with African roots that was adopted into Brazilian Catholicism. 

In celebration they threw some of the most incredible cannabis-fueled parties in history, where they sampled and shared the countless cans of incredibly potent "Thai stick" that improbably came in on those unforgettable "green tides."

One minute cannabis was expensive, shwaggy, and hard to find in Brazil. The next it was suddenly free, dank, and everywhere.

So naturally, it will be forever remembered as The Summer of the Cans!

Special thanks to Tocha Alves, a Brazilian director who made an incredible documentary film called The Summer of the Cans and supplied us with a version with English subtitles so we could tell this story.

Very special thanks to weed legend Danny Danko, host of the OG cannabis podcast Free Weed, for suggesting this story!

And a HUGE THANKS to Savage Henry Comedy Club for hosting us as part of their incredible annual comedy festival in the heart of Humboldt County, California, and to Alec Cole for his help with the recording.

PATREON

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Smuggling hashish out of Afghanistan in the 1970s presented the Brotherhood of Eternal Love with a unique supply side problem, which they solved in a way that forever changed the game for cannabis concentrates and culture.

Best known today for their international LSD operation, this legendary group of surfers, smugglers, and psychedelic evangelists also worked together with the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground to break their spiritual leader Timothy Leary out of prison.

In this episode, Abdullah and Bean focus in on the Brotherhood's incredible marijuana smuggling ring, which got them dubbed "the hippie mafia" and involved some of the most fascinating characters in the long and fascinating history of cannabis true crime. Including the largely unknown story of Ronald Hadley Stark, who has been pegged by various people at various times as an undercover CIA asset sent to subvert the counterculture, a rogue KGB operative sent to foment a new American revolution, a ruthless career criminal disguised as a peace-and-love flower child, and a cunning snitch who transformed the Brotherhood of Eternal Love from idealistic hippies into international drug smugglers.

For more on the BOEL, check out these books (The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, 1984 and Orange Sunshine, 2010) and documentaries (Orange Sunshine, 2016 and The Sunshine Makers, 2017).

PATREON

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Hashish bon bons play a starring role in one of Louisa May Alcott's "scandalous" short stories, but you'd never know that by reading her many biographies. Partially because she wrote Perilous Play (1868) under a pen name, but mostly because her experiences with high-powered edibles have been all but erased from history.

With the recent Greta Gerwig adaptation of Little Women sparking a revival of interest in the author, Abdullah and Bean spend the episode recounting Alcott's incredible life story, and uncovering her stoney exploits, including settling in for story time as they read weed-infused excerpts from her jaunty little tale about a group of young society women who pass a most interesting afternoon and evening together by getting absolutely wrecked on hash candy.

Special thanks to researcher and activist Ellen Komp, author of Tokin' Women: A 4,000 Year Herstory, which chronicles this story and many others. 

PATREON

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

His newspaper ads read 1-800-WANT-POT, promising New Yorkers quality cannabis at a fair price, delivered in under an hour, by bicycle, at a time when legal cannabis was still a distant dream.

Known as the Pope of Pot, Mickey Cesar had first learned how to navigate the illicit weed business in the 1970s while living in Amsterdam, before coming home to start America's first underground delivery service. What followed was a tale of overcoming arrests, getting shot, and a snitch calling Howard Stern, all to bring the cannabis sacrament to his growing flock.

This episode features special guest Ben Sinclair, star and co-creator of High Maintenance on HBO. On High Maintenance, Ben plays a NYC weed delivery guy who makes his rounds on bicycle, so naturally Abdullah and Bean were thrilled to share with Ben the story of his real life predecessor. 

We recorded live in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the Bell House in NYC as part of the 2020 Brooklyn Podcast Festival.

Special thanks to journalist Mike Sager who wrote a June 1991 Rolling Stone article about Mickey called "The High Times and Strange Time of the Pope of Pot"

Special thanks to Danny Danko for MCing the live show. And to Kevin Schumacher for taking photos. And to everyone who came out to share a very special evening.

PATREON

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

In the middle of the night on December 9, 1976, a pair of Vietnam vets turned international weed smugglers stood on a makeshift runway in Baja, Mexico, watching as a work crew loaded up their twin-engine airplane with 6,000 pounds of primo sinsemilla bud. 

The unregistered flight’s illicit cargo was a locally-grown high-grade red-hair strain known as Mota Magic.

Unfortunately, the ill-fated smuggling run ended in disaster when the planeload of weed crashed into a remote frozen lake tucked away in Yosemite's rugged backcountry. 

But from that tragedy arose the greatest "gold rush" in weed history, as some of the world's top rock climbers, the DEA, the forest rangers, and itinerant hippies all raced to pull as many bales of Mota Magic from the frozen lake as possible.

This episode was recorded live in Humboldt County, California as part of the Savage Henry Comedy Festival. Special thanks to everyone at Savage Henry, an incredible independent humor magazine and comedy club operating in the heart of America's most famous cannabis cultivation region. 

Also thanks to a "Great Moments in Weed History" listener known as BGTM for hipping us to this incredible story. Please send suggestions for future episodes to [email protected] -- don't worry, Abdullah won't see them.

And please do us a huge solid and tell all your cool friends about the podcast at your next smoke session!

PATREON

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

High Times founder Tom Forcade's story concludes in part 2, which features a special guest — Rex Weiner — who was there for the magazine's wild early days, and shared many illicit adventures with the weed smuggler/political activist behind it all. 

We discuss how the book Agents of Chaos by Norman Spinrad influenced Tom Forcade towards an embrace of chaos as the true third rail in American politics.

Rex recalls High Times' glory years including cover stories on Bob Marley, Hunter Thompson, Debby Harry, The Sex Pistols, Cheech and Chong, and other cannabis celebrities.

And we hear about the time Tom and Rex stowed away on a luxury cruise to watch a rocket launch!

High Times magazine changed the world, and if you love weed, you should know this incredible unsung story.

PATREON

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

Weed smuggler/political revolutionary Tom Forcade once described his life goal as going “all the way, whatever that may bring." 

In 1974, at just 29 years old, he used profits from flying planeloads of Colombian bud into the country to found High Times magazine.

At the time, Forcade already had a long history of subversive acts under his belt, including throwing a pie in the face of Otto Larsen, head of the U.S. Commission on Obscenity and Pornography during a congressional hearing, getting indicted for a supposed plot to firebomb the 1972 Republican National Convention, forming the Zippies as a more confrontational alternative to Abbie Hoffman's Yippies, and helping to lead the then ascendent underground press movement in the United States.

But while everyone today knows High Times, few remember the brilliant, radical, mercurial swashbuckler who started it all. So buckle up for one of the wildest, weediest rides in the history of this weed history podcast.

Also in this episode: As a ten year High Times veteran, Bean shares his thoughts on that experience, and speculates on what Tom Forcade might think of today’s cannabis industry—including the investors who’ve taken control of his creation.

Check out the book Smoking Typewriters to learn more about the underground press movement of the 1960s and 70s, which was frequently targeted for marijuana arrests as part of a general campaign of government repression.

PATREON

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In 1970, the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ran for Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado as the anointed candidate of the newly formed Freak Power political party. 

He promised an immediate end to marijuana arrests and abusive policing. He also promised to rip up the streets of Aspen and sod them. And that his first act as sheriff would be to “install on the courthouse lawn a platform and a set of stocks in order to punish dishonest dope dealers in a proper public fashion.”

Thompson even shaved his head bald, so he could refer to incumbent Sheriff Carroll D. Whitmire as “my longhaired opponent” during their much anticipated debate. 

Hear an excerpt from that debate in this episode, plus archival audio from the Freak Power Party’s campaign headquarters on Election Day.

Read the book Freak Power for more on Hunter S. Thompson’s run for sheriff, including his incredible artwork and campaign materials.

Watch the documentary Gonzo to celebrate the life and work of one of the 20th Century’s towering figures in journalism, politics and literature.

Watch Great Moments in Weed History co-host David Bienenstock (aka “Bean”) visit Hunter S. Thompson’s house for an incredible weed-infused dinner in this viral VICE video.

PATREON

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

Reefer, muggles, gage — whatever jazz-age slang you prefer, marijuana most definitely played an outsized role in the development of this most unique and influential American art form. From the formation of the first ever jam sessions to the racial integration of the leading jazz bands, cannabis culture and consciousness of the era pushed musicians and audiences alike towards a higher appreciation of authentic, improvised, expansive self expression.

As jazz evolved into the world’s most popular musical genre, weed-friendly musicians began to tour, leaving a trail of newly initiated reefer smokers (and freshly planted reefer seeds) in their wakes. A wide range of jazz greats also made approving references to “Mary Warner” in songs like Reefer Man (Cab Calloway), If You’re a Viper (Fats Waller), Texas Tea Party (Benny Goodman), Muggles (Louis Armstrong), Gimme a Reefer (Bessie Smith), When I Get Low, I Get High (Ella Fitzgerald), and I'm Feeling High and Happy (Gene Krupa).

We explore this incredible underground history via the unique friendship of two of the scene’s most legendary Vipers (or weed enthusiasts) — Louis Armstrong, the most famous jazz musician of all time, who inhaled two cigar-sized joints on the daily, and clarinetist Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, a middle class Jew from Chicago who became very, very well loved in jazz circles for having a steady supply of the finest herb available.

Read more about this incredible era in weed history with Mezz Mezzrow’s book Really The Blues (1946).

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Alice B. Toklas was born in 1877 in San Francisco, but she relocated to Paris after the earthquake of 1906 destroyed 80% of her hometown. And on the very day she arrived in the City of Lights, Alice met and fell in love with Gertrude Stein—also an American expatriate, and a collector of important work by not yet renown masters like Cezanne, Gaugiun, Renoir, Matisse and Picasso.

These very painters would bring friends and rivals to the apartment shared by Gertrude and Alice at all hours to show off their latest masterpieces, and so, one of the art world’s most celebrated salons was born, which would draw in the leading lights of Paris in the 1920s, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Charlie Chaplin, and Salvador Dali.

So what’s this all got to do with the invention of the modern weed brownie?

That’s an incredible intercontinental and cross-cultural tale of culinary adventure that involves Moroccan hashish makers, an avant-garde artist, a literary scandal, an elaborate weed prank and a high-larious Peter Sellers movie.

Check out the original Alice B. Toklas Cookbook!

Watch the movie I Love You Alice B. Toklas.

Learn more about this incredible couple with the book Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice.

Check out clips from Laverne and Shirley, Taxi, Frazier, That 70s Show, Desperate Housewives, Mr. Show and other very special TV episodes that celebrate the weed brownie.

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

In 2013, renegade weed activists in Philadelphia vowed to host a monthly public smoke-out in front of the Liberty Bell. Despite clashing with heavily armed federal forces, their efforts brought cannabis decriminalization to the birthplace of American democracy. 

Check out N.A. Poe's YouTube channel, and you can follow him on Twitter @NikkiAllenPoe. 

PATREON

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

On New Year's Eve 2016, Zach “Jesus Hands” Fernandez risked his life to change two letters on the world's most iconic sign. For the very first time, he tells Abdullah and Bean exactly how he did it, and why it was worth the risk. They also get pretty blazed and have a lot of laughs.

Jesus Hands says that when the deed was done, he celebrated by smoking a joint of Jack Herer and listening to the song "The World' Smiling Now" by Jim James of My Morning Jacket.

The episode also tells the story of Danny Finegood, the first person to change the Hollywood sign to say Hollyweed in 1976.

PATREON

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

In 1973, twenty-year-old Valerie Leveroni Corral was riding in a Volkswagen bug through the Nevada desert when a small airplane swooped down low enough that its torque caused the vehicle to careen end-over-end. Valerie was flung against the roof and doors, causing brain damage, epilepsy and debilitating migraines. She was then prescribed a staggering range of pharmaceuticals to deal with the aftermath, but they proved largely ineffective in stopping her convulsions and grand mal seizures. And the side-effects left her a zombie. Then her husband Mike read about a government-funded research paper that showed unique compounds found in cannabis can reverse the growth of cancerous tumors and help control laboratory-induced seizures. What happened next is a story of resistance and resilience that involved an iconic weed garden, an armed police raid, a barricade of cannabis patients in wheelchairs and walkers, and a standoff on the steps of City Hall pitting the Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) against the DEA.

Also in this episode, Abdullah fondly remembers hosting episodes of the VICE culinary cannabis show Bong Appetit featuring the legendary Nonna Marijuana—a.k.a. Valerie’s mother!

Learn more about WAMM with the book Dying to Get High and the documentary film La Vie En Vert.

Catch the incredible Nonna Marijuana holiday special of Bong Appetit with Abdullah as host.

Learn more about Prop 215 co-author Dennis Peron in our Great Moments in Weed History episode from Season 1.

WAMM wishes to offer special thanks to a grower known as "Dr. John" (not the late musician) for helping to supply them with cannabis after their earliest arrests and garden confiscations.

WAMM also wishes to stress the key role played by the LGBTQ+ community and AIDS/HIV activists in helping to organize and operate the collective.

PATREON

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

Everybody knows Cheech and Chong as the world’s ultimate stoner icons, buthow did they rise from obscure road comics to writing, directing and starring in one of themost influential movies of all time?

In 1967 in Vancouver, Canada, a draft resister from East LA named Richard Marin met a musician named Thomas Chong - whose family owned a local burlesque house. Fusing their comedic super powers in a crucible fueled by love for weed and improv, Cheech and Chong grew from performing in between burlesque acts, to Grammy-nominated comedians, leaving one world left to conquer: Hollywood.

Up in Smoke may not be the first ever stoner comedy, but it’s the one thatchanged popular entertainment forever. And if you’re asking yourself “How Did This GetMade?,” rest assured that it happened in the most Cheech and Chong way possible.

And Abdullah and Bean try to piece together the many ways that Up in Smoke predicted the future, despite having a plot that barely makes sense.

LISTENING NOTE: Roll up a comically oversized joint for this episode!

PATREON

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

What would happen if one of the biggest heroes and one of the biggest villains in professional wrestling got arrested for smoking a joint together?

Just ask babyface "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan and legendary heel The Iron Sheik.

In 1987, that very fate befell two of the WWF's biggest stars. The aftermath of those shocking arrests not only changed the trajectory of both their lives forever, it also forever transformed pro wrestling in ways the sport is still grappling with.

Also in this episode, we learn how the Iron Sheik fled his homeland of Iran in fear that the Shah—who came to power thanks to a CIA-back coup—was about to assassinate him.

And we chart how a first-generation viral video attacking Seinfeld star Michael Richards for racist comments gave the Iron Sheik a third act as an online heel and a Howard Stern show favorite.

For more on The Iron Sheik’s amazing life, check out the documentary The Sheik and Jim Duggan's autobiography Hacksaw.

PATREON

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Ever wonder what President Barack Obama was like as a pot-smoking teenager in Hawaii? We did, so we dug deep into Barry's time with his high school weed crew, the Choom Gang.

“In Hawaii, chooming means indulging in pakalolo,” fellow Choom Gang member Tom Topolinski explains to Frontline. And yes, pakalolo is yet another slang term for cannabis, as heard in Hawaiian musician Don Ho’s classic song, “Who Is the Lolo Who Stole My Pakalolo?”

You might remember seeing this young version of Obama portrayed by Jordan Peele in a classic Key and Peele sketch. The former president famously admitted that he used cannabis as a youth and that he surely inhaled as “that was the point.” Though he opposed cannabis legalization as a senator, his public stance evolved over the course of his tenure, and his direction to federal authorities to lay off state-level efforts to legalize cannabis makes him the most progressive president on the cannabis issue to date. Some say it’s just good policy, but we say it calls for a special shout-out to the Choom Gang.

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In 1964, Bob Dylan met The Beatles for the first time, and after a bit of awkward small talk, offered to share some of his marijuana. Based on a misheard lyric, Dylan assumed the Fab Four already blazed, but it turned out this would be their first time "turning on." And so begins our Season 1 finale, in which we explore one of the most iconic smoke sessions of all time.

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Dennis Peron (1945-2018) first discovered the healing power of cannabis while serving in Vietnam. After smuggling two pounds of high-grade herb home from the front, he became a charismatic and defiant leader of San Francisco's medical cannabis and gay rights movements. A fiery street-fighting optimist, he suffered multiple stints in prison and even took a bullet in a police raid—all without ever giving up or backing down.

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Amsterdam has long been a safe haven for cannabis freedom, but few today remember the subversive, anarchistic, defiantly pro weed Dutch Provo movement (short for provocateurs), which used a mix of radical street theater and outrageous political pranks to expose the authorities as out of touch and incompetent, while bringing coffeeshops, seed banks, and legal cannabis to the Netherlands.

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Mary Jane Rathbun was already selling weed brownies in San Francisco when the AIDS crisis hit. So the self described "little old lady" started volunteering at hospitals and crisis centers, where she made her "magically delicious" treats available for free to those in desperate need. And when the cops tried to stop this mission of mercy, "Brownie Mary" had a simple message for the authorities: Go F*ck Yourself.

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In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt in a failed attempt to install colonial rule. French soldiers did succeed in enthusiastically adopting the local custom of consuming hashish, a practice with a long, storied history in the Islamic world. When the occupation ended, they brought a taste for cannabis home that lead directly to the formation of Paris’s famed Club des Hashischins, where Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Charles Baudelaire drank coffee laced with weed and got weird with it.

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After 29 years in lock-up on a first-time cannabis smuggling charge, Robert "Black Tuna" Platshorn published his memoirs of bringing in planeloads of Santa Marta Gold from Colombia and getting snared in one of the DEA's earliest operations. Then America's longest serving prisoner in the War on Marijuana dedicated himself to pushing for legalization, with a surprising twist.

Every year on April 20th (4/20), cannabis lovers celebrate their favorite plant with festivals, protests, marches, and smoke-outs great and small. So what are the grassroots origins of this high holiday? And how did it spread around the world?

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In 1967, Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon set out to research marijuana sufficiently to convince his best friend—famed astronomer Carl Sagan—to stop smoking weed all the time. But after making a fateful trip to the library, Grinspoon returned convinced the case against Mary Jane was all lies and propaganda. So Lester and Carl began enthusiastically exploring the cannabis "Cosmos" together, igniting the medical cannabis movement and sparking many stoned epiphanies along the way.

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A legendary figure in the music world, Fela Kuti is best known for inventing Afro Beat, battling the Nigerian government, declaring his own sovereign nation, and loudly proclaiming his love of cannabis. Join Abdullah and Bean for the story of his greatest triumph over the cops!

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Jesus didn’t smoke weed. But is it possible cannabis was the key ingredient in the Holy Anointing Oil used by Christ and his disciples to perform healing miracles? Join Abdullah and Bean for a deep dive into an herbal mystical mystery of Biblical proportions.

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Famed poet, memoirist and civil rights icon Maya Angelou had a profoundly life altering experience the first time she smoked some “grifa”—in 1946, with two lesbian prostitutes she met while working as a waitress. “I learned new postures and developed new dreams,” Angelou wrote of her cannabis muse. “From a natural stiffness I melted into a grinning tolerance. For the first time, life amused me.”

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From his first toke in West Texas in 1954, to the joint he's most definitely puffing on right now, Willie Nelson has been America's ultimate weed icon for over sixty years. In the first ever episode of the podcast,, Bean tells Abdullah about the time the Red Headed Stranger smoked a "fat Austin torpedo" on the roof of the White House.

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