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The Ballad of High Times Magazine · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just hanging out
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: feeling irie. You're in Stuff you should Know?
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Did you ever I mean, I'm gonna ask you two questions.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Did you ever read High Times much? And did you
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: ever subscribe?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I never subscribed. I was way too paranoid to do
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: something like that. But yes, I read it. I looked
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: at the pictures.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think for one year in college I actually
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: subscribed because and this is High Times magazine. We're talking
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: about everybody the I was gonna say notorious, but not
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: really notorious, the infamous weed magazine. Sure, but I subscribed
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: for I think a year because it just seemed like,
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: you know, I wanted to have that house, so that
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: like that had that on the coffee table with our
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: dress on it. I just thought it was like the
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: cool thing to do, you know.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, I mean it was legitimately cool during a
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: certain period of life. Yeah, Like, if you were fifty
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: doing that, it's kind of sad. But if you're like
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: twenty or nineteen or twenty one or twenty and a half.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Let's say, then, yeah, I get it.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Watch what you say. Though, I've learned from recent emails
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: there may be a fifty year old out there that
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: think Sidetime is cool. That's gonna be very upset.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true, But I mean, do they have it
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: on their coffee table?
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: I think that's the thing that's kidding me.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Even when I did read it occasionally, I even at
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: the time was like, this is the articles, the way
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: they're written. There were so many puns, so kind of corny.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah uh, and so it never felt like as good
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: as I think they might have thought it was. Does
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: that make sense?
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And also one of the other things too, I
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: was going to say you could sense it, but no,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: it was just really overt was they had an agenda
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: in every single one of their articles. There was a
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: way they wanted you to think, which is their position
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: on it, and they would like mock the other position
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: on it, typically the government's position on like legalization or
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: something like that.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Good point.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Over time, though, I mean, it became it's an iconic magazine, like, yeah,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: pretty much everybody's heard of High Times. If you've never
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: even picked one up, there's a good chance you've heard
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: of High Times or somebody referencing High Times. It's like
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: it insinuated itself into American pop culture. And the reason
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: why it became iconic is it survived all sorts of
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: drug culture transitions. Yeah, like, throughout all these different ways
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: of thinking and looking at drugs and different drugs people
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: were doing, High Times managed to just keep plodding along
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: and stay relevant, I guess, is the best way to
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: put it. I didn't think I was going to say
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: that out loud, but here we are.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure from the Yeah, let's just get into
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: it then, Okay, no more needs to be I agree.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: I agree. So High Times was founded by a guy
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: named Thomas King for sad, and I just realized I
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: didn't look up any videos of people pronouncing his name,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: but I'm pretty sure that's how it's spelled.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Because I was so ray to roll with four kade.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Well, I've seen the little French version of the umlaut
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: the little devil's tail coming off of the bottom of
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: the sea. Oh okay, and that indicates a sound if
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: my high school French doesn't fail me. So I think
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: his name was Thomas King for sad.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: All right, great, he looks like if you look up
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: this guy, and you know, when I went to look up,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: I'd never seen a picture of him. I expected. I
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: didn't expect to see someone so cool looking. I mean,
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: he looks like he stepped right out of the Almond
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Brothers band or something.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: I was gonna say, it looks like the Almond Brothers
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Satanic advisor.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And if you're thinking, like, what do
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: you mean it was like a pot magazine? Why do
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: you think it'd be cool? It's because I usually expect
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: them to look sort of like a wavy any like
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: weed activists, to be just decked out in tied eye
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: and kind of just wearing some sort of wacky handmade hat.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: And this guy like he looked like he could jump
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: off of a chopper and like hit the stage or something.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know that same fifty year old who's
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: upset because I said something about high times on his
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: coffee table, it's pretty much a wavy gravy lookalike too.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's wearing own handmade knit hat.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Right. So this guy Thomas King for SAD. It's a
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: pretty cool name. And if it sounds made up, it
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: is made up. His real name was Gary Goodson, and
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: it's not because his name was Gary Goodson that he
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: ditched that name in favor of Thomas King. For sad uh.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: He was actually a big, big time pot dealer. Like,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: not only did he sell literal tons of pot in
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: like the I think, starting in the late sixties and
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: going well in the past the time he was had
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: started publishing high times, he smuggled it himself. He flew
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: planes and he went to Mexico, he went to Jamaica,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: and he smuggled pot tons of pot at a time
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  Speaker 2: into the United States. There was a quote I found
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: of his that he said, there's two types of pot dealers,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: those who need a forklift and those who don't. I
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: need a forklift, And like he wasn't joking, like he
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: really don't that much pot.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So, I mean, regardless of how you feel about
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: that or him or any of it, he wasn't just
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: some guy saying, like, hey, let's try and make a
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: little dough off of this marijuana people are smoking. Like
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: he was knee deep in the business right. This was
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: after coming out of seemingly to avoid the Vietnam Draft,
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: a short stint in the Air Guard where he was
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: discharged after convincing them that he had schizophrenia. And at
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: that point he went back to Arizona and Phoenix changed
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: that name, which was his mother's I'm sorry, grandmother's maiden name,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: and you know, got into the underground zine scene. You know,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: that was a big thing back in the late sixties
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: because of the ubiquity of like being able to print
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: her own stuff in an office or a I don't
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  Speaker 3: know if they had Kinkos back then, but he got
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: into those and founded his own first underground magazine called Orpheus,
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: which had some politics to it, but it was kind
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: of just a little groovy psychedelic thing that covered like
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: music and pot and stuff.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Tell them about the issue with the peace sign in
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: the bullet hole.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a peace sign on the cover that
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: actually had a real bullet hole. So instead of just
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: drawing a bullet hole, he shot them up.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he himself shot bundles the stacks wrapped together with
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: a Colt forty five handgun to really kind of drive
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  Speaker 2: the point home.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's creative.
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  Speaker 2: That is an underground zine right there. If it has
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: a bullet hole in it, that the publisher put there,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: that's really.
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  Speaker 3: Something with real blood.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Right, you said something that I think is really worth
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: pointing out because there's a whole camp of people who
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: tell this origin story of High Times, and Thomas King
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: farsade that it was like just some money making scheme
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: or just a lark or something like that. This guy,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: in actuality was a dedicated First Amendment warrior, like dedicated.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And also he was very committed to the counterculture, not
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: just because he sold tons of weed, but he genuinely
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: believed in legalizing marijuana, that that was a crucial thing
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: to do in the United States. And he put his
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: money where his mouth is. And like you said, he
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: started with underground zines and then he took up I
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: saw that he joined or he founded. I couldn't tell
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: which one was correct. What it's basically like an associated
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: press for underground magazines. It was called the Underground Press Syndicate,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: and I think it changed its name to something else, right,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
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  Speaker 3: I always saw it called UPS.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Well, we'll just call it that. But it was, like
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  Speaker 2: I said, the ap where you could you could like
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: get all sorts of news about drug busts or about
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: you know, some spectacular pot harvest or something to do
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  Speaker 2: with underground culture, and you could just print it in
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: your your local mag and the people in Phoenix are
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: reading the same thing as the people in Denver, but
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: they don't know that. They just think it's like part
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: of your magazine.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And he eventually worked his way up to national
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  Speaker 3: coordinator for the Underground Press Syndicate, and that's where he
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: learned how to run a magazine basically, as how he
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: learned about ad deals, distribution, printing like efficient printing, real
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: printing for a little while, and I figured we should
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: probably do something on Abby Hoffman and the yippies at
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: some point. All right, as you know, want to highlight boomers.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Do you know it's That's not that I just think
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: that guy's gotten more than enough of his spotlight. But yes,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: it's all right, you know what, then forget it? Okay, Wow,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: I didn't think I was going to talk you out
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: on that one.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, if you want to learn about Abby Hoffman, you're
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: not going to learn about it here. Everybody go steal
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: his book, yeah, or read very nice. I got that one.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Uh So he did join up with Hoffman though and
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: his yippies. Again, if you want to read about them.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: They were a group that did a lot of like
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: kind of social pranks and media grab you know, activist
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: stuff for their radical causes. In nineteen seventy, for said
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: for sad.
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  Speaker 2: He said, yeah, because if you take out the oh
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: and change or no, if you change the O to
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: and A and take out the R, you've got facade
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: like the reund of a building. H So I'm making
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: an educated guess here.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: I think you're probably right, but I'm just I've been
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: saying it wrong all day so in my head, so
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: it's going to take a minute.
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  Speaker 2: It's okay. I was reading the High Times archives and
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: I guess they had some like sixth grade trained ai
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: scan and altar or turn all of their magazine photos
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: into text, and boy, it came up with some creative
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: ways of spelling that guy's name.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: Well, you also sent me a lot of fun ads
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: for cocaine paraphernalia. Dude, that was crazy.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: There is few things that are funner but also more
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: shocking then looking at vintage cocaine paraphernalia ads that appeared
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: in the likes of High Times and other magazines. Yeah,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: and there was one that I pointed out to you
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: that was just like this thing should be in the Smithsonian.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: It was a metal probably like a gold plated coke tube.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: So you put one end in the coke and you
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: put the other end up your nose and you sniff,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: right just in case you didn't know how to jest cocaine.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: How that worked.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: It shaped like an old school vacuum cleaner, and so
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: the coke goes into the bottom of the vacuum cleaner
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: and comes out the handle, which is up in your nose.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: They call it the finger instead of the hoover. Like,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: whoever came up with this is just that's dedication right there,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: because that's the kind of idea you'd just be like, man,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: we should totally make this. But then the person actually
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: went and made it and sold it.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then McDonald tired them to develop their happy
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: Meil prices. Right, they're like, this guy's really good at
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: these tiny little bubbles.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly, And if you knew what you were doing, you
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: could clip the ends off of all those prizes and
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: then as.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Cooks charge all right, So in nineteen seventy that's where
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: we were. Four Sad testified before Nixon's Presidential Commission on
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: obscenity and pornography. And this is when he got a
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: real chance to you know, take the national stage and
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: talked about well, he the quote was the only obscenity
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: is censorship, and it's the first and I feel like
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: we talked about this in our pie in the face
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: episode it had, But it's the first incident that we
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: know of where a protest pie in the face happened.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: When he pulled out a cream pie and face pied
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: doctor doctor Larson, doctor Otto Larson.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who was the chairman of that committee on Obscenity
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: in Pornography?
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, and that must be the first one. I
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: mean it's cited as the first time. Yeah, you know,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: not in a Marx Brothers movie. Somebody's like, let me
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: make a point with this.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It was a form of protest that picked up
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: really quick. I mean, there's few things you can do
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: to somebody publicly that is more disrespectful and humiliating but
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: also non injurious than the face. But he did that.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: He didn't happen anymore.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: He was called to testify, and not only did he
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: say that censorship is the true obscenity, he said he
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: said f censorship and f you, and then he pied
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: the guy in the face and a congressional hearing this
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: is what he did. This is just the kind of
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: person he was, like. He wasn't somebody who just talked
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: a big game like this guy followed through on the
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: stuff that he really believed in.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he also let that pie sit out the
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: day before in Phoenix. So it was Ryan green.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Yick.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: Should we take a break? Sure? All right, let's take
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: a break and we'll talk about the beginnings of the
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: magazine right after this.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should know, Josh and shock stuff you should know.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: All right, So we've introduced our protagonist. I guess in
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: the in the first act we we can't And you know,
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: Dave helped us put together this article and he he
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: points out that if you tried to get I mean,
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: you could do a whole article on this guy and
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: talk about all the all the wacky things he did
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: over the years, like concert festival promotion. He snuck allegedly
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: pipe bombs into the seventy two Republican Convention.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Later on, he followed the sex pistols around and co
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: produced a documentary on them called doa Yeah.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: So he was a busy guy. Doing a lot of stuff,
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: but this is about High Time. So the origin story
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: officially for High Times magazine is that he thought of
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: it with his friends while he was huffing nitrous oxide.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: Other people say it might have been an acid trip,
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: but either way, the early idea was, hey, how about
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: how about a magazine like a marijuana theme magazine. They've
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: got Playboy, and some people say, like the initial idea
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: was just a one off kind of spoof of Playboy,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: but everyone that worked there said, no, no, no. The idea
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: was always to have like a real magazine that was
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: cheeky and fun but also like real journalism and tackled
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: real topics about activism and marijuana and growing it and
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: all that stuff.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Right exactly. Michael Kennedy, who for Sad's personal attorney and
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: then came on as High Times legal counsel from like
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: the beginning until I think twenty sixteen when he died,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: he explained it that High Times was meant to be
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: a way to use free speech to teach people how
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: to grow pot, and that like they basically had found
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: a loophole thanks to the First Amendment that they could
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: disseminate all of this information as far and as wide
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: as they possibly could, and in teaching people to grow
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: their own pot, that would eventually change attitudes about pot
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: and potentially lead to legalization. And as we'll see that
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: they were successful in that quest that they started back
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, and I think, I mean, I think
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: it absolutely did that. I think one of the missions was, hey,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: let's really convince people. Not convinced, but let's really show
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: people what the truth is, which is that this is
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: a plant that can be grown like plant versus you know,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: illicit drug, you know.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Right, or illicit drug versus illicit drug. Like at the time,
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: the Controlled Substances Act of nineteen seventy had just been
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: passed thanks to Richard Nixon and marijuana, which, by the way,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: I read is not at all racist. There was a
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Latino i think historian who researched it and he's like, yeah,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: it's actually myth, so good for him. That it was
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: a schedule one, which I think it still was until
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: like this year, which means that it has, according to
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: the government, no medicinal value whatsoever, and the high potential
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: for abuse, and both of those are just absolute lies.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: They're just not correct, they're not true. They knew this
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: back in nineteen seventy and that this Controlled Substances Act
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: kicked off the War on Drugs, which in retrospect most
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: people now agree was misguided in a huge waste of
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: money and killed a lot of people. And this was
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: the era that they incarcerated, Yes, incarcerated. It's a big
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: one too. But it was in this era, the beginning
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: of this era, that High Times started to kind of
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: become not just an idea but an actuality. So they
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: wanted to fight that, which was part of the reason
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: they were willing to like use mockery or just all
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: of their articles had a slant to it because they
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: felt like they were taking on liars, and that's a
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: legitimate way to respond to liars is through mockery or
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: really kind of pushing your agenda against them. But that
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: was a huge, I think, impetus for creating High Times
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: for sure.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so. That very first issue came out summer
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: of seventy fours when it debuted, had a ten thousand
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: copy print run, and it didn't really light the world
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: on fire. I guess no pun intended. First it was
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: it had like an excerpt from a Timothy Leary novel.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: Of course, articles about hempen marijuana and how great they
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: thought it was. There were some interviews, and very importantly
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: they had a something that would, you know, stay in
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: the magazine, which was a feature called the trans high
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: market market Quotation, which is a listing of like, hey,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: in Chicago, this is how much a dimebag costs. This
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: is how much it costs in New York. This is
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: what announced we'd cost in Phoenix. You know what they
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: I guess they still call it street value, which I
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: always thought was really funny. Yeah, but that's that's what
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: it was. And it stayed in there for a long time,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: even though, as we'll talk about later, it changed a
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: little bit over the years. But this first issue, like
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: I said, was not I mean, they did eventually sell
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: out of that ten thousand, but it wasn't through It
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: was through a lot of hustling. It wasn't like, hey,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: it's on your news stand for sad said here, let
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: me get it into headshops, let me send them to
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: record stores. Apparently drug dealers bought copies and gave them
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: away to people. So it eventually did sell out the
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: two printings, but it was The second issue is when
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: it really really took off because of their you know,
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: kind of ingenious promotion.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they threw a launch party at the Grammercy
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Park Hotel in New York and invited like a bunch
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: of media and just got them messed up, like straight
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: button down media types, journalists, some like TV news people
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: showed up and we're like giving brownies and like here
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: trying nitrous oxide and have you ever had cocaine? And
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: I read a quote from Michael Kennedy, the legal council
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: for High Times. He said that he remembers three or
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: four lawsuits being brought against High Times from people who
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: got so wasted for the first time in their lives
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: that they decided to sue the magazine for it.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: I could see that. Apparently. It was also, if not
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: the first, one of the first times like live television
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: showed people doing drugs. That was one of the local
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: news stations, according to Rolling Stone, showed people on camera
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: on the news snorting cocaine. And I'm sure people at
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: home are watching this just going on, like what is
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: going on? But it was huge publicity and they sold
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: out their fifty this time fifty thousand copy run in
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: four weeks and it became like a genuine sensation. That's
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: when also the second issues when they started also as
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: an homage to Playboy magazine their centerfold ye, but of
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: course their centerfold was always these these big, beautifully photographed
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: pictures of buds marijuana Budd.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: The first one. I would take issue with the idea
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: that it was beautiful. It was a twenty pound brick
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: of schwag, just brown and compressed and ugly bit. But
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: at the time it was like their premier weed, Colombian
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: and just another aside. I'm sorry about this, but I
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: so I've always wondered in Hey nineteen, the Steely Dan
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: song when he says the Cuervo gold and the fine Colombian,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: is he talking about cocaine or is he talking about pot?
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: And I went and researched this and I stumbled into
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: like a long standing argument.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I read an explanation from one person and it sounded
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: pretty legit. They said, it's one hundred percent pot that
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: they were talking about. That's what you called really good
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: pot back in the seventies. It was Colombian and it
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have referred to cocaine in the first place, because
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: at that time most of the cocaine came from Peru.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Colombian farmers hadn't really taken up coca production, and so
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: most people, if you were aware of cocaine, you were like,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: this is some fine Peruvian. You wouldn't say this is
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: some fine Colombian. So it seems like that guy settled it,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: at least in my mind.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Hey, that could have been the original lyric. You never
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: know what. It depends on the day.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Probably, I guess it does.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: Sure, have you seen the yacht Rock documentary yet? On Max?
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: No? It's pretty good, Like about the people who came
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: up with yacht rock.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the people who came up with the
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: term yacht rock are featured in it, But it's about
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: the genre of music.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, Like it goes back to the seventies and eighties.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, what else would it be about.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a there's a band called yacht rock that
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: kicked it all off, and I don't know, Oh, oh.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: You mean like the yacht rock review? Yes, no, no,
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: no, no could with them. The term yacht rock was came
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: about in early two thousands from a web comedy series Okay,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: which I never knew until I saw this documentary. But no,
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: it's about just you know, Christopher Cross and Michael McDonald
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: and Seals and Croft, all the great people. You'd enjoy it.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: I think have you seen the limited series Black Doves
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: with No?
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: I have not.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: It's a British spy thriller like Theater ten episode.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Say No More, Sho.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: It's really good.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: I mean you can say more, but I just mean
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: I'm into that kind of thing.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: No, I'm with you. Just go watch it. I recommend it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Elsee. I always say these things in we're recording and
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: then I don't remember afterwards.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Just text me and be like, what was the thing
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: with the thing?
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Once?
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: You text me? Right now while I talk Black does.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: I don't have my phone on me. It's in the charger.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, that's right.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: So mid seventies when High Times rolls out, those very
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: first years, the magazine was doing really well, but as
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: a as a you know, sort of a new magazine.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: But Forsad was not. He was on the FBI surveillance list.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: He was very paranoid because of the massive amounts of
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: drugs that he was taking.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Well but also rightfully so, the FBI impossibly even the
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: CIA was infiltrating the counterculture and playing informants. And there
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: was a time where he was like, there's an informant
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: here of the High Time staff, and I don't know
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: which one of you it is.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: There may have been.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's possible, like he had reason to be paranoid
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: at the very least, but it was definitely fueled to
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: extremes through his drug use, for sure.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, the magazine itself was doing well. Like I
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: said that, the staff, I mean, it was just I mean,
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: if you think that, like the Lampoon and Mad magazine
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: was kind of crazy in their office, Like everybody in
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: the High Times office was huffing nitrous and smoking weed
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: and snorting blow like as they were working. But it was,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: you know, it was creating like some really relevant journalism.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: They were exposing, you know, government activities as far as
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: the drug war goes. Like when putting paraquat, which I
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: cannot help but think of Big Lebowski when I hear
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: that word.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Remember that part.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: It's when Jeff when the dude called the real Lebowski
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: a human paraquat when he was mad. I think you
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: said human even human paraquat. Yeah, but paraquat was the
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: pesticide that was in marijuana fields under orders from the
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: US and that this article helped promote a congressional investigation.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: The interviewed the Dalai Lama about drugs. That was Hunter S.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: Thompson and of course William S. Burrows doing writing. That
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: was Truman Capoti, did a guest interview with Andy Warhol.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Bob Marley was in it. Like it was really the
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: heyday of that magazine as far as being like a
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: real like they achieved what they wanted to achieve in
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: the first few years.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's like some heavyweight underground stuff right
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: there that they got into their pages for sure. And yeah,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: I think the latest thing you mentioned was nineteen seventy
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: eight with Truman Capodi and Andy Warhol. So this is
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: all in like the first four years that they're cramming
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: all this stuff in there. So yeah, right out of
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: the gate, it was. It was very successful in part, Chuck,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: because there was nothing like this in existence before, I mean,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: aside from some underground zines that fifty people read before
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: High Times. It became a national magazine, a national magazine
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: about pot and people who love pot and loved drugs.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And want to see them legalized, and here's how you
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: do it, and here's how you grow this stuff. And
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: today it seems like it's not a really big thing
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: to talk about pod or to find an article about
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: people smoking pot and Newsweek or whatever, right, And that
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: is because High Times existed and laid the groundwork for it.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they by year four they had a
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: subscribership that was about the same as Rolling Stone magazine.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah that's crazy, which is yeah, it's just nuts. In
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight, Forsyde had previous attempts at suicide, but
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: he succeeded in November of nineteen seventy eight, very sadly,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: when he was just thirty three years old. I saw
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: different things that he know. It was after the death
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: of a friend that had him really upset. And like
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: I said, there were previous attempts, so he was a
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: troubled guy to say the least. But they held his
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: memorial atop the World Trade Center at the windows of
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: the World Restaurant, and as legend has it, smoked. I
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: think Keith Richards snorted his dad's ashes supposedly, but they
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: rolled up some of Forsade's ashes in joints and smoked
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: them as a staff.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: That always reminds me of that episode from Six Feet
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Under where the daughter finds some actors who are snorting
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: like their co Their co stars ashes jodita like cocaine
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: or something like that and died. And I can't remember
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the daughter's name from Six Feet Under, but she finds
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: them doing this and just Claire, she just goes bonkers
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: on them, like what is wrong with you? It's really good,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: it's very satisfying.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: That's weird for Claire to be judging like that.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: She was so morally offended by what she was seeing
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: that she just unleashed on them. It was weird for her,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: but it fit, yeah the moment.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: I wonder if she was upset about her art class
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: at the time.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think she was there yet. I think she
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: was younger.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so High Times. This is before as far as
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: the magazine itself, before Foresad died, they did start to
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: sort of stray from their mission statement a little bit.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: As far as coverage of harder drugs, they started writing
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: a lot about cocaine, like in a big, big way.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: They even started including cocaine and meth and LSD in
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: that trans high market quotation as far as how much
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: it should cost in different cities, and it was sort
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: of like, I think the adherence of the magazine even
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: were a little bit like, hey, this is not what
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: I signed up for, Like this was a weed magazine.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: So they kind of got back to the weed thing more.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: In the eighties, cocaine, you know, the reputation started to
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: get a little bit more like hey, wait a minute,
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: this stuff is like really dangerous and there's a lot
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: of violence attached to it, yea, and the trade, and
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: so they really got back to the pot thing again
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: in a big way, and they were just getting going
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: again in the eighties back to their mission statement, when
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: the DEA launched something called Operation Green Merchant, in which
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: they really wanted to target marijuana growth and not the
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: growth of marijuana, like growing marijuana plants and advertisements for
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: this equipment that was sort of thinly veiled as like
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: oh no, this these lights just help you grow your
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: letting your regano at home or whatever, garryer lettuce. And
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: so Operation Green Merchant was to target those ads and
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: the publications that sort of taught you step by step
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: how to do this right.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: And so that. I mean, the DEA had tried to
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: take down High Times many times. This is the one
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: they almost got them with because it took out their advertisers.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Their advertisers went to jail or were run out of business,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, a huge amount of High
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Times regular advertising dollars just vanished, like overnight because of
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Operation Green Merchant. It went up and smoked this right, sorry,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: no worth it for sure. And they I read a
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: quote there they were saying like, at this point, High
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Times was the verge of bankruptcy. The DA almost got them,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: but they managed to just kind of slowly climb their
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: way back and get back into it in the nineties.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: This is when I started reading High Times. It was
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: saved by hip hop. Yeah. Before Doctor Dre's The Chronic
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: album came out, Pot was just viewed as like, you know,
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: people who listening to like hippies or burnouts like Judas
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Priest fans stuff like that. Yeah, that wo smoked pot
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: and they were just as likely to sniff glue at
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: the same time. Right then the Chronic came along and
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: it was it just exploded, like overnight, pot was totally
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: in fashion again and a whole new generation just got
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: into it, like really quickly.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and High Times magazine, I mean they rolled right
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: with it, I mean right into the nineties. All of
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: a sudden, it's like, oh, well, now we can put
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: ice cube on the cover, and you know, right about
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: this other sort of I mean, I guess you call
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: it a subculture that you know, we hadn't been highlighting
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: in the past, and you know, beyond making it relevant again,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: I think they they found out they were missing out
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: on an entire like readership that they had never targeted.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Before, right for sure. And the one other impact that
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: it had too is they helped instruct people how to
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: set up your home grow system. So as like hydroponic
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: systems started kind of going from a thing you had
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: to put together by going to fifty different stores right too,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Like you can buy this entire hydroponic system through the
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: pages of High Times. They helped people learn how to
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: do that along the way, and as a result, POTT
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: just started. At the same time, when it became fashionable
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: again in the early nineties, it got exponentially better than
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: it had been leading up to that. It was like
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: somebody threw a switch and all of a sudden, pot
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: was what you see or think of it now, like
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: just sticky buds and gorgeous like beautiful flowers and all
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: that stuff like that really was much more potent. Like
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: that happened at about the exact same time as as
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: like the Chronic and Snoop Dogg coming out and all that,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Like ninety two ninety three is when it really changed.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: I was talking to my friend Clay the other day
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: because he is who introduced us to the Chronic. When
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: we would I think I've said this before, but we
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: went over to his house and play like the Nintendo
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: whatever the system was. What was the one back then?
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: It wasn't the sixty four. Was it super nice?
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah? The sixty four?
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Was it sixty four?
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah? So we go over there and play Street Fighter
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: and Mortal Kombat, and Clay one day was like, dude,
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: listen to this. Yeah, puts on the Chronic and Snoop
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Dogg's voice came out of the speaker and we were
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: all into hip hop at the time, but Snoop Dogg,
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: he didn't sound like anybody else at the time, but
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: when his voice came out, we were like, who is
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: this guy? It's like, oh my god, and like how funny.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: And I was talking to him the other day. I
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: was like, how funny and back then, like, would you
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: ever think that? Now Snoop Dogg is like this. I
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: mean one of the most famous people in the world.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: I know, the mascot of USA Olympics.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean working with Martha Stewart. It's like, I
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: don't think anybody saw that coming.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Oh that was a good documentary too, by the way.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Oh, I haven't seen that one yet.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: It's good.
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: Is it good? Hey? I don't know if everyone knows this.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: Jerry's been to Martha Stewart's house.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that, did I.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she told us a while ago. At one point
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: she was doing something with the company. I don't know
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: if whatever happened with that, but Jerry like went to
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: her house. She said it was a real mess.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. I believe it though. It's probably like felt
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: scraps everywhere, and yeah, half half bone chicken and things
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: like that, just sitting around.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: Hodge Podge bottles just spilled all over the place. No,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: it's perfect. So High Times back to High Times from
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: eighty eight to twenty thirteen. That was an editor in
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: chief named Stephen Hager that ran the Joint and he
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: was God, man, I'm not even meaning to I swear
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: I'm not. He ran High Times magazine. This is when
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: they I mean, they had always talked about legalization, but
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: this is when they really really got into writing and
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: beating that drum about not decriminalizing but like legalizing weed
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: for everybody.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they moved that overton window and made just
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the concept of legal weed something. They took it from
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: something like a dorm room conversation to this is how
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: you would do it. Here's a path to legalization, right states,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, Yeah, And they just made it like
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: a potential thing, like a real concept. They brought it
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: into existence and helped push it along. I should say
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: they covered the people who were out there, like yeah,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: coming into or bringing it into existence or really thinking
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: about it. But through covering them and exposing them to
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: millions of people every month, that kind of got the
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: whole idea out there.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the normal n r m L.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: That was it, right, Yeah. Thomas Farsad helped bankroll them
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: in their early days, the National Organization for the Rethinking
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: of Marijuana Legislation, Reform of Marijuana.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Realization Reform, Yeah, reform. I went to one of the
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: norm the Atlanta Pimont Park used to have in the nineties,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: the normal pot rally concerts you went to that. I
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: went to one of them one year when the Black
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Crows played, and it was a lot of fun. It
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: was a great show. I liked them for a little
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: while back then, and it was really good.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: You were sitting amid a sea of brass bowls with
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: like the Tai Die little plastic middles that you would
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: hold onto.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, nobody was smoking weed. It was really weird.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: That's a little weird. That's so Atlanta.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: So yeah, they were advocate it such that there was
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: an article in twenty thirteen and the Nation that said
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: High Times magazine may be the most influential publication of
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: our era. So it wasn't just you know, cheeky articles
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: and pictures of beautiful buds. It was like they were
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: doing real, real work toward sea change.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: And it worked, yes, And yet at the same time,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: especially in like the magazine industry, they're just dismissed as
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: you know, they're just stoners. They're potheads, right, and they
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: don't care. They don't seem to. They don't go after awards,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: they don't like submit their their writer's work for awards
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that. They genuinely don't seem to care
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: about that kind of stuff because they're off doing like
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: their own thing and they're actually doing it. But I
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: saw a citation of how popular culture thinks of High
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Times from They cited a Sarait Live skit featuring Jack Black,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: and he played High Times top reporter and he was like,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: I think at a press conference or whatever, and he
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: would stand up to ask a question and then he
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: would forget what he was gonna say every time. Yeah,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: of course, Oh, I thought it was hilarious. I didn't
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: even know.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, it's funny. I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: just saying like, yeah, that's got to be the sketches
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: that he has no memory.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Right, But I could not find it anywhere, And it's uh,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: I just read about it, like all the other stuff
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about. I didn't experience a first hand. I've
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: just read about it.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: I feel like I saw it back then. But I
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: do remember that one of the issues I had, and
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: this had to be from the two thousands, was Tenacious
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: D was on the cover.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think Jack Black himself was as well.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean he is one half of Tenacious D,
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: but I mean just without Kyle. He's like, let me
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: do one without that guy. Yes, all right, we have
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: been remiss and not taking a second break. So we're
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: gonna do that now, and we're going to talk about
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: what has happened over the last decade or twenty years
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: or so right after.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: This stuff you should know, Yash and shock stuff you
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: should know.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck. So we were talking about how Stephen Hager
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: guided High Times through like a really prolific era. This
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: is like in the nineties. I feel like, and I
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: don't Maybe I'm just talking because that was the time
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: I came in contact with it. It feels like that's when
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: it really transitioned into like an iconic thing that was
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: never really gonna go away, even if it went away,
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: So in two thousand and four, as I understand it,
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: I believe Hager retired in two thousand and three, and
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: so the replacement they brought in for editor in chief.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: As far as I know, I think we've both seen
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: conflicting stuff, right.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I might have said twenty thirteen to two, which
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: was it was probably two thousand and three.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, gotcha. Okay, So Richard Stratton came in as the
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: editor in chief and he had bona fides. He served
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: eight years in federal prison for dealing pot.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: Oh I thought you get talking about editor in chief bonafides.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: No, he didn't have those. That was the other thing.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: He was a journalist. He'd reinvented himself as a journalist.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I think he had some books under his belt. He
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: wasn't like a bad pick. He made a bad pick. Yeah,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: he was very good friends with Norman Mayler, and in fact,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: one of the reasons he went to prison is he
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: refused to implicate Norman Mahler in his pot dealing activities.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: And when he became editor in chief of High Times,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: he hired Norman Mahler's son, John Buffalo Mailer, who's twenty
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: five at the time. Yeah, hired him as executive editor.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I like his name. John Buffalo Mailer had
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: zero publishing experience whatsoever. And the whole thing it was
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: just this is a bad time for High Times.
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It was ill conceived. I think they didn't quite
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: know where to go after the sort of it's not
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: like the hip hop era ended any you know, mention
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: of weed or anything like that, but it was sort
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: of past that. You know, everything changes from decade to
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: decade culturally, and they didn't quite know what to do,
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: I think, so they said, hey, why don't we do this,
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: Why don't we try and sort of change the image
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: of the magazine and become just more of a sort
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: of a cultural magazine, like essentially, let's stop writing about
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: weed exclusively and let's really stop writing about weed almost
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: all together. And that lasted for about a year. They
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: did not like that. The readership was like, what are
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: you doing. The whole point of this magazine is that
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: it's high times and it's not, you know, about freedom,
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: it's about freedom to smoke weed specifically and grow it specifically.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: And like I said, about a year later, in fact
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: it was one year later. I think they were like,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: we really screwed up here. And so they went back
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: in two thousand and five with a big cover that
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: said the Buds are back and thirty pages of pot
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: picks on the inside, and everyone was like, oh, thank god,
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: and it was one of their best selling issues of
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: all time.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they brought Steve Hager back in to kind
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: of right the ship again. Ah okay, and he did.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Like this, High Times started the idea that we should
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: legalize marijuana, worked at it ceaselessly for decades, and finally
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: was still around when that change started happening. States started
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: talking about actually legalizing pot, not decriminalizing, but legalizing pot.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Like you said, not just for medicinal purposes, but hey,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: if you're an adult and you want to smoke pot,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: go ahead and smoke pot. You're not going to get
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: in trouble because we don't have any laws against it anymore.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Like this was starting to happen, and High Times was
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: right there, totally poised to just just step up and
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: accept its kudos and it's huge, like rise to prominence.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: As this new changed culture around pot was about to
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: just explode. And around this time private equity got involved
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: and everything went down the toilet.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's the irony of this whole thing,
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: is right when they achieved all that is when they
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: tanked because of what's called the green gold rush Wall Street.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: Of course, anytime they're like, oh wait a minute, somebody's
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: making money over they're doing something a lot of money. Well,
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: how can we get involved? And that's exactly what happened.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: They started investors started throwing money money at every cannabis
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: startup you could think of, as states were rolling out
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: legalization and making tons and tons of money, and so
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: they realize, hey, this High Times magazine is just sitting there.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: It's a very recognizable brand. The magazine's okay, their website's
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: all right, but they make like eighty percent of their
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: dough from what's called the Cannabis Cup, which is I
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: think it started out as a smaller thing in Amsterdam
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: but then became like the official High Times Cannabis Cup
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: in the United States in twenty ten, which is a
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: you know, a weed growing competition. So like bring in
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: your new strains of like exotic cross breeds and like
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: high potency buds and you can win the Cannabis Cup
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: and it's a big deal. It received a lot of
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: coverage there were they did concerts, they did festivals, they
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: did trade shows, and it was, you know, a big
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: money maker. So I think they were like, hey, we
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: can invest in High Times. We can open up a
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: casino in Vegas. Maybe they bought up a dozen dispensaries
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: and made them High Times smoke shops, they talked about
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: delivery services and all they talked about an IPO for
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: a while, which never happened. But all of this stuff,
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: a lot of these big deals never came to fruition,
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: and so they found themselves eventually one hundred million in
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: debt as these deals fell apart after going through just
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: a string of CEOs, which is never it's always a
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: bad sign for a company, you know, when you have
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: that kind of CEO turnover. Yeah, and a lot of
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: those dispensaries closed, and in the in the middle of
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: the boom of the real marijuana industry, High Times was
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: struggling and basically dead.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Again because private equity got involved.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: There's a really good political article called The Long Fall
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: of High Times by Ben Schrekinger. Yeah, and it's really
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: worth three It's very long, but it's good. And that
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: article puts the blame on Adam Levin, who ran Oreva Capital.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: He's the one who came in as the private equity
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: guy and made all of these terrible decisions, did shady
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: stuff like the announcements for you know, some of these
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: business ventures, like they would announce them publicly and then
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: the other company involved would have to come out publicly
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: and be like, they haven't even a just about this.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: What they just said is not true, So that's not
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: a good thing to do. That IPO was a big
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: deal too, because if you have investors, they want you
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: to go public and then they can really start making
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: money off the company. He just couldn't get it together
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: to get the IPO out the door. Yet that didn't
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: keep them from selling pre sale shares at eleven dollars
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: a piece to High Times readers, promising them they were
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: getting in on the bottom floor before the IPO even happened.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Just shady stuff, and so this lasted for just a
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: couple of years before the magazine. The whole brand went
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: into receivership, meaning that there was a corner pointed person
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: who was in charge of their assets who would try
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: to figure out how to help them get out of
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: bankruptcy or how to help them get out of a
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: hole without going into bankruptcy while at the same time
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: paying off their creditors. And I guess it didn't really
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: work because in I guess May of last year, the
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: receiver said, Hey, we're going to have a fire sale.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: Everybody step up, get out your check books. Let's do
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: this thing.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, seven million bucks will get you the magazine, the
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: cannabis cup, the dispensaries that we still have open. Nobody
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: came forward, which is shocking. I think the most shocking
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: thing to me that I'm going to say this publicly.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: I'm going to call out publicly even why hasn't Snoop
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: Dogg and freaking Martha Stewart they would miss seven million dollars.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: They wouldn't even know it's gone. Why have they not
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: bought this brand? Because that sort of public like purchase
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: with those two names, or even if it's just a
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: Snoop Dogg, but Martha Stewart would add a funny sort
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: of cachet to it. Yeah, like it would all of
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: a sudden be a relevant thing again. And I don't know,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: it's just it's shocking that nobody came forward to buy it.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: I hope that that ends up being like your Sharknado thing,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: or like good Jared from Subway thing, or like your
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: Hugh Jackman Greatest Showman thing. I hope that to you.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, maybe somebody who knows Snoop hears this and they're like, hey, Snoop,
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: he may not even know it's for sale.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: You know, it's possible he's been on the cover a bunch,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: but he might not be paying attention, you know.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they could say snoop, High Times is for sale,
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: you should buy it, and he would say for snizzle.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Right. So I read a great quote from pot Culture magazine,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: So High Times has just stopped. They put out their
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: last published issue in twenty twenty four, and the fact
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: that they were still putting out a print magazine actually
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: says how strong the brand was at Oneman, Yeah, because
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: they went right through that time where magazines were just
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: folding print, anything was just folding left and right. And
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: yet they still had the print magazine and they had
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: a pretty heavyweight website too. High Times dot com their
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: whole archive, all the magazines on it, and yet the
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: website hasn't been updated since June twenty twenty four. The
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: last issue was September two, twenty twenty four. If you
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: go on to the site, none of the images work.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: They're all great, Yeah, rectangle disappointing. And pot Culture magazine
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: put it that the once mighty High Times dot com
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: is gone, reduced to an error message that is reminiscent
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: of finding your favorite uncle dead on the floor.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: I saw that quote.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: I don't think anybody could have put it better than that.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. I also just realize as the ultimate
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: fifty something year old white guy, I think it would
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: probably be for shizzle and not for shnizzle, because for
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: sure would be for shizzle, right.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: Sure, it would be for sure. But I think that
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: the things have evolved so much that that you're fine, Okay, okay, good,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: so yeah, snoop, Martha, please do buy High Times because
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: the it's such an ignominious and is that the right
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: word or was I just deletrious to my own vocabulary?
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: Ignominious, ignominious, ignoramus, I think is what you meant.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: No, such an unclassy end. Yeah, it's just like that
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: magazine deserves better than that.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe Jack Black, you're not going to miss seven
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: million bucks.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe maybe, I.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Mean he might miss it for the afternoon, but then
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: he would say, but I've got this magazine now.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: No, I'm with you. I think Martha Stewart has that
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: much laying under her and piles under her hodge Podge
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: bottles as you were talking.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: About, you know, yeah, you're probably right.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well that's it. About high Times. If you want
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: to know more about there's tons of tribute articles all
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: over the web to read. They're kind of fun. And
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: while you're doing that, it's time for listener mail.
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah. This is from Rosa Lee and it's just a
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: very kind, sort of gentle reminder, which is always nice
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: to hear. Hey, guys, just taking me a while to
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: get this into words, and I hope it comes across
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: with care. It does.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: But why do you suck so much?
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Exactly. As a woman in science who does science
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: every day, I just want to point out that technicians
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: are still scientists. In your episode on chemistry sets, you
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: rightly pointed out all the sexism in the past and
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: present and how science has presented to girls versus boys,
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: But you also feed into it a little bit when
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: you said that girls were funneled into technician jobs instead
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: of being the scientist. There are a lot of ways
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: to be a scientist, and technician is definitely one of them.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: That's like saying that nurses aren't healers like doctors are.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: A more accurate description is that women were and are
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: funneled into technician and now communication jobs and the sciences
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: and men to the professors and principal investigators. It is
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: better than it has ever been, I have to say,
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: but academia still hasn't figured it out, among other things.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: And I'm glad to know that, Rosalie. And that's from
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: Rosalie Maltip.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: That was a great reminder. We love love love being
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: reminded when it's pointed out to us that yes, we
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: fed into something that we were just totally unaware of,
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: especially if it's unjust.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: You know, yeah, technicians are scientists. Of course they are.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: That's right. That should be a teachhert Maybe it will
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: be well. Thanks a lot, Rosie. We appreciate that big time.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: And if you want to be like Rosalie and send
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: us an email like that, you can send it off
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: Dot Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.