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PODCAST

Great Moments in Weed History

David Bienenstock

Great Moments in Weed History delves deep into humanity"s 10,000+ year relationship with cannabis (a.k.a. marijuana) to explore the humor, heart, and historical importance of the planet"s most revered and maligned plant. Hosted by David Bienenstock.

history

All Episodes

94:21

Billie Holiday vs. Harry J. Anslinger

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2021/02/26

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

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59:48

Santa's A Psychedelic Mushroom Shaman

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/12/18

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

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59:21

John Lennon Was A Weed DREAMer

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/06/04

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

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55:10

The Grateful Dead Fight the Man (And Win)

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/05/28

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

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60:45

The High Hindu Holiday

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/05/21

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

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55:05

Bong Hits for Jesus!

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/05/14

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

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56:41

Oaksterdam's Weed Mayor

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/05/07

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

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61:47

Hemp for Victory!

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/04/30

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

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74:46

4/20 SPECIAL! - #BlazeAtHome Part 2

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/04/20

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

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46:27

4/20 SPECIAL! - #BlazeAtHome Part 1

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/04/16

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

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45:44

Summer of the Cans

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/04/09

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

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56:14

Psychedelic Surfers Invented Dabs

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/04/02

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,

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60:19

Little Women Get Lit

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/03/26

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,

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60:02

The Pope of Pot (Live at the Brooklyn Podcast Festival)

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2020/03/19

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,

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65:00

Crash Buds!

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2019/11/21

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

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52:34

Treetop Flyer: Tom Forcade Pt. 2

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2019/11/14

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

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54:14

High Times Founder Tom Forcade Pt. 1

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2019/11/07

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,

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54:33

Hunter Thompson Ran For Sheriff on a Free Weed Platform

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2019/10/31

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

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54:37

Louis Armstrong’s Weed Dealer Transformed Jazz

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2019/10/24

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

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54:36

A Lesbian Power Couple Invented Weed Brownies

Great Moments in Weed History ·

2019/10/17

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

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178 results

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