Great Moments In Weed History W/ Abdullah And Bean

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,

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 Please support Great Moments in Weed

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. An

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. 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. An

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 DR

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 Chemdo

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 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. 

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. PATREON Please support Grea

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. 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. 

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 HIs

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

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 u

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

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 acce

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 wh

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

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 possibl

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 v

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 fi