Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 497: Ngaio Bealum

Episode Date: March 12, 2022

Ngaio Bealum, cannabis connoisseur and marijuana activist, joins the DTFH! Check out Ngaio's awesome podcast, Chopping it up with Ngaio! You can also follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Shudder - Use promo code DUNCAN for a FREE 30 Day Trial! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. ButcherBox - Visit ButcherBox.com/Duncan to receive a FREE ground beef for life with a new membership!

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Greetings to you, my loves. I'm still in Tacoma, Washington. Last night's show was awesome. Thank you for anyone listening who came out.

What a fun night. If you're listening to this on the weekend of March 11th, we have sold out two of the shows. So there's still tickets for two other shows. You could just go to duckatrossell.com. If you're in Tacoma, Washington or nearby, the ticket links are there. Today we have a podcast of podcasts.

Our guest, Ngai Obilam is a cannabis connoisseur, a marijuana activist, somebody who has been out there at the protests, getting arrested and doing all of the work that had to be done and still has to be done to end the prohibition of marijuana. I asked our esteemed guest all the questions I've been wondering about the cannabis industry and we got spiritual and deep.

And this is a glorious episode. Before we jump into it, I hope that you will consider subscribing to my Patreon. It's at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. Subscribe, you're gonna get commercial free episodes of this podcast along with extra content. Subscribe to the video tiers. We've got a weekly meditation,

well, weekly family gathering and we're about to publish our book of erotic, cryptid short stories. If you enjoy today's conversation, I hope you'll check out Ngai Obilam's awesome podcast, Chopping It Up. I was just a guest on that show and essentially this conversation is picking up

from where we left off on his show. Won't you subscribe to his podcast? Please. All the links you need to find him are gonna be at DuncanTrussell.com. Now everybody, please welcome to the DTFH, Ngai Obilam. Obilam. Welcome, welcome on you.

That you are with us. Shake hands, no need to be blue. Welcome to you. Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. It's me Duncan Trussell, Duncan Trussell. Ngai, welcome to the DTFH. Hi. The DTFH Family Hour.

This is the DTFH Family Hour, as they call it. And man, I gotta tell you, you're doing your podcast yesterday was so fun. Oh, thanks. And I just want to pick up exactly where we left off talking about one of my favorite topics, which actually, I don't talk about much on the podcast for some reason. Abundance.

You just started talking about it. Can you tell me what is your definition of abundance? Having enough. I mean, that's the thing. There is definitely enough to go around. And one of the challenges I think we have in Americans and in the world really is the greed is the only god that can ever be appeased.

And we keep trying to tell people it's not enough. We don't have enough. But we have enough for everybody to eat. We have enough for everybody to have a place to stay. We have enough for all of this stuff to happen. But you have to ask yourself, how much is enough? We're talking about this inflation right now, but it's not inflation.

It's greed. These companies are making record profits and still raising their prices. Like 20-something years ago, I read a story about a guy in Japan who made tofu. He made really, really, really, really good tofu. But he figured out that all he needed to do was to sell two, maybe three boxes of his tofu.

And then he could be sad. Then he could have his days free. And he could pay his bills. He could chill with his old lady and all that stuff. And everybody's like, but your tofu's so good. You could make more of it. You could do all this. You could do this and that.

And he's like, I really only need to sell three boxes and then I'm good. Why would I subject myself to all that stuff? Why would I go after all that when I have everything I need already? Right. And this is the question we have to ask ourselves. How much is enough?

Is $1 billion enough for you? Is $2 billion enough for you? Is $3 billion enough for you? This is interesting. So your concept of abundance is more in line with, find a way to be happy with what you have. And you are instantaneously abundant versus the abundance that a lot of people, when people

are abundant, they think, like Michael Beckwith from Agape, this idea of the universe is infinite. Energy, infinite. We live in a universe where there is, at least as far as we're concerned, infinite energy right in the sky, enough to keep an entire planet alive here, here. Just a million, and so because there is this reality, whether it cannot be hidden in the sense

that you can't hide the fucking sun, you know what I mean? There's no way to hide the sun. The sun fucks up the whole concept that there isn't enough. Yeah. Because the sun's up there just blasting us with energy. So much energy. Giving us enough. But giving us trees, giving us food, giving us life,

giving us vitamin D, there is enough. There is more than enough. We just don't allocate it correctly. And we want to make sure that some people don't get it because it makes other people feel powerful. That's right. That's an idea. That's the big conspiracy is there's enough for everybody.

But if everybody has everything they need, or more than what they need, if everyone has, like, gets to live the life of a billionaire, then billionaires are no longer special. How many people are going on dates with Jeff Bezos after everyone's a billionaire? You know what I mean? All the billionaires, how many people suddenly they're like,

I don't care you're a billionaire. I'm a billionaire. Now what? A billion dollars is not a personality. A billion dollars. I mean, I guess you could cuddle a billion dollars. But I mean, is a billion dollars a good cuddler? Is a billion dollars not a kiss?

Is a billion dollars going to billion dollars playing the clitoris? I think, sadly, I mean, I think if you set up the game that we've set up where it's like, you know, we're doing this kind of ridiculous, insane game where some of us have so much and some of us don't have enough. And that's so much thing. It really does.

It might not be great to cuddle with the literal stack of dough, though I wouldn't be opposed to trying. It would be cool to know what it feels like. Just throw it on the bed in decent proposal style. Hold it. But what I'm saying is it's like the only reason I think people are driven to achieve that much is the same reason like those sad little birds that build.

Have you seen those bird, the bower bird? Have you ever seen these birds? What's the bower bird laying on me? Oh my God, it's so weird. It's this bird that gathers twigs and stones and sticks and builds these like intricate structures in the forest to attract a mate. A female bird flies by, sees a well built,

whatever the fuck it is, it's like, oh, yeah, I want you to, I want to lay your egg, man, let's fuck. Women are often impressed that you can do something well. Whatever it is, you could be the regional Kribitz champion. There's going to be somebody who's attracted to that. Yeah, yes. So I'm saying if like everyone had everything they needed, then using abundance is your bower bird style

made attracting magnet, it wouldn't work anymore because we all have a billion dollars and now we have to actually deal with our personalities. But is that abundance or is that skill? Right, you have the skill to find the things to build this nice house. Yes, skill. So that's a skill.

That's a skill, right? Like a peacock, you have the skill to keep all those pretty ass feathers in one place in the face of all these predators and all these other things. A female peacock is going to find that attractive and be like, well, if this person can keep everything together and still look this pretty in this hard ass world, maybe he knows what he's doing.

Yeah, that's a beautiful peacock. But what are your, what's your thinking in regards to like the sort of metaphysical ideas behind abundance? The idea that no, no, it's not just that what you have is enough, it's that you can actually have anything you want. Like there is the potential somehow via meditation, prayer, visualization to manifest. Rob Brezhne, who does the real astrology column,

I don't know if it's still in your alt weekly out there, but he also wrote a book called Pro Noia, which is the concept that the universe is conspiring for you. Yeah. The universe is out to help you. And he says, you can have anything you want if you ask for it in the right tone of voice or the right frame of mind.

And a lot of these cats, a lot of this manifesting, a lot of these things, this is true. You can't like, I rely on the universe all the time. And, you know, it's been close. It's been close a couple of times. I was like, come on universe, you got to come through for me, dog. You got to come through right now.

I need a place to stay. And it generally works out for me. But it's, it can be a challenge. Sometimes I think of it, if it's like playing chess, like you can make moves, but you have to make allowance and adjust for the other person's moves. You can't always just be moving like my plan is this and I'm going to go like this, this and this.

And there's some other person or some other force, like, well, no, we're going to counteract this with this and we're going to counteract that with that. And so now where you might have had a good plan, you might have had a good strategy, your tactics have been exposed as to not paying attention to what, what all is happening on the board.

Right. You have to keep evolving. It's not just like you can, you have to change and shift. It's not, it's a two-way conversation when it comes to manifestation. It's not just like a- And you know, I mean, it's easy here in America for the most part to be like, yeah, man, it's the line of opportunity you can manifest.

You can be, if you just work hard enough, if you just apply yourself, you can have it all. You can get what you want. And sometimes it's true, but it's, it's, I mean, you can get most of what you want. A lot of times it's, it's a tricky thing. But then there's other places and even here in America where you can't, you, maybe you haven't been equipped.

Maybe you don't have the tools. Maybe you don't even have access to the tools that would need, that you would need for you to build your bower bird nest to attract a nice mate. Right. Right? Yeah. Right? They've come down all the forest and now there are no twigs and stones.

Oh, right. Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, that's, I think that's the, that's where the manifestation stuff kind of slams into like a real wall. Yeah. Because it's like, oh, you know, I don't know. You're, you're setting up an accidentally, and I think it's a beautiful thing as a subjective philosophy that you don't put on other people

with your own life. If you, if you want to play around with the concept, it's great. Just stick to yourself though, because if you start universalizing it, then all of a sudden people who aren't doing great, it's like, well, you didn't manifest hard enough. And that becomes, that's one of those things.

That's why you have the cancer, because your faith in Jesus was not enough to overcome it. Yeah. Shit happens. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a weird Zen phrase, but it's so true. Shit, happens. Thank you, Shutter, for supporting this episode of the DTFH.

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Shit happens. Yeah. That's such a weird Zen phrase but it's so true. It happens. I think that's so important though though I'd subjectively like I do know that stuff works

and the earnest home. You get in the science of mind if you've ever gotten into that stuff or the Kabalyan or like any of that stuff. Do you know what I'm talking about? You ever heard of earnest homes? You know, my mom was a little woo woo. She definitely does some, used to do like,

you know, the crystals and the readings and the ESPE and all that stuff. And the mind is powerful. Like I visualize having good sets. I visualize buying a car. I visualize making the rent. I visualize all these things, you know? But it doesn't always happen like you want it to happen

and you have to be able to handle that and to deal with that, right? Like Octavia Butler says, change is the only constant. And then you have to shape change is what she says in the urgent books. Shape change. Shape change.

Right? It took me a year to figure out. I was like, oh yeah, shape change. And I was like, oh yeah, shape change. Shape change, change shape. I love it. That's so smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You should read the books. Read Parable of the Sower. I used to carry that book around like it was a fucking Bible tract and it ended out to be. Octavia Butler. Octavia and Butler. Parable of the Sower. Oh my God, hold on, look that up.

Well, you know, I think that people forget sometimes that this two-way conversation is happening. And then when they forget that and they don't get the thing they were trying to manifest, then they can get bitter, despondent, angry, cynical. None of this shit works.

But if you wait a little bit, then you realize, oh fuck, if I got in that thing. Like my wife and I, when we came up here, we were in full prepper mode from living in LA. We found a place that was like branch, Davidian style, like a compound. Owned by a weapons, like a guy who makes ammo. So it's all set up.

Dude, it was like, it literally was set up for the end of the world. And thank God that he knew, like I think this guy just wouldn't sell it to us because he's looking at me and my wife and our California license plates. And his kid gives us a tour of the massive like forest behind the house that's like all uphill.

And his kid is like talking to our realtor, being like, there's a lot of good family friendly places out in Hendersonville and just kind of mentioning like, what the fuck are you doing? You don't, you're not gonna chop wood. Come out here with your city ways. You're not gonna hire someone to chop wood for you. It gets cold out here.

Yeah, yeah. You're gonna get a sweater, LA boy. That's it, yeah. So we couldn't get that. We didn't get the house. And I was like, what the fuck? And now in retrospect, we're both like, oh my God, thank Christ.

They wouldn't sell you that fucking place because we would have been fucked, man. I don't, we wouldn't have been able to sell it. We wouldn't have been able to move back to LA. So you know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, man, sometimes. You gotta trust. My, one of my biggest gifts

and maybe one of my biggest curses is that I am an incredibly patient person. Sometimes you just have to wait, right? That's why a lot of times I identify with Aaron Burr as presented in the musical Hamilton where he says, I'm not falling behind. I'm lying in wait, right? You have to wait for the opportunity sometimes.

You have to pick your spot. At least for me, for other people is different. Some people can kind of impose their will on a game, right? But when I'm playing my best, I'm in like flow state, right? Like Bryson DeChambeau, the golfer, talks about a sympathetic state. Like I'm just in a vibe

and that's when the game comes to me and that's when I have a better game is when I'm just in the moment and play and not trying to force anything but just trying to step up and be my best. Sympathetic state, can you go into more detail? What does that mean? Sympathetic state.

It's just his fancy way of saying he catches the zone and gets in the flow state. His mindset is right. You know what I mean? He's paying attention to the, he's not overthinking anything. He's just paying attention and playing golf. And that guy's a crusher.

Are you a golfer? Yes. I'm not very good at it, but I do really enjoy it. You think as long as I played golf, I'd be better at it, but no. Yeah, well, I think I had a manic episode and bought a bunch of golf clubs and never played. Let's go, let's go, man.

Maybe we can play once I get on the right. The biggest thing golf has taught me is the follow through is just as important. Oh, right. Even though like post-hitting the ball. You still have to follow through. Okay, okay. Go into detail about that for me

because friends, this obviously isn't just about golf, but go into details about that, okay? Because like, I'm dumb in a lot of ways, but when I was like taking some golf lessons, I was like, oh yeah, this is a metaphor. Like the whole damn game is some kind of like philosophical. Spiritual, weird initiation that I don't really understand, but I was smart enough to be like,

okay, there's way more here than what I thought when I was watching my dad's boring-ass golf game he put on the TV. But go into detail about that follow through, please. Okay, so golf instructors will teach you when you're swinging the golf club. So when you think about baseball, you're just thinking about hitting the ball, right?

Yeah. Right, you wanna hit the ball. You're aiming right at the ball, you hit the ball. And they tell you in golf, you wanna swing the club and the ball just gets in the way. Right, so you just wanna make a good full swing, right? The ball is almost inconsequential. I mean, it's what you're trying to do,

but really a good full swing, flush, follow through, making almost a perfect circle if you're thinking Zen style. And that's what will give you the good contact and give you a good golf hit. Wow. And if you just think about hitting the ball, it's not necessarily the best way to do it. Okay, now from that, extrapolate how you apply that idea

to other aspects of your life. It's one of those things, like if you have ideas, but you don't act on those ideas, or you don't do anything to get that idea to happen, if you don't follow through on your idea, on your full swing, then it's not, you're not gonna get the result, always the result that you're looking for,

or the result that you'd like to find. And the thing about golf is so frustrating because unlike a lot of other sports, there's nobody playing defense. No one's throwing a curve ball at you. No one's trying to lock you down in a box in one. The ball is just sitting there. You have hit that ball in a straight line, 175 yards.

Yeah. More times in UK count. And yet for some reason today, it's not working. Okay, what are you looking at now? That is something I'm, that's what I love about games like golf, bowling, archery, darts, archery. That's what I love about it, is that it, over time, if you keep playing those games,

you get a sense of like, maybe there really is a multiverse. Like right now I'm in a parallel timeline than the one I was in, even with comedy actually, but right now I'm in a parallel timeline where the identical things that were working in the, just the other time I was playing are all not working now. The wind seemingly the same,

that the air feels the same, and yet something's different now. What do you, what do your theories on that? It's just something like neurological, like shit is on. That's the whole you can't throw a rock in the same river twice. Yeah. Right? It's always different.

Even if it seems the same, it is always different. Right. Right. You know, you've eaten this thing a million times. You've made this sauce a million times. It's still gonna be a little different. Everything, whatever. The humidity, the weather, the air. It doesn't even matter.

One tiny little ass blade of grass could be the difference between shaking the ball to the rider, hitting a bullet right down the fairway where you wanted to go. Yeah, man. Clean your golf course. Dude, there's a lot of things. You know, and I try not to overthink,

that is my biggest problem with golf course because I come from like fast-paced sports. I like basketball. I like soccer where your flow state is easy to get into because you just run and you fucking concentrate and then you're in the zone. Golf, you kind of stand around a lot. You have a chance to stand there

and get in your own mind. Like, I'm not opening my hips enough. I'm not opening my hips too much. Keep your arms straight. Keep your elbow in, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just fucking hit the ball. That's the easiest way. Make a good swing.

Swing through. Follow through. You're all into yourself. But with golf, it's also the inaccessibility of the golf course. You know what I mean? That's like, with piano or like muscle memory style things, you can really, you have all the time in the world

if you have a piano to get your hands to start remembering like patterns and riffs and stuff. But with golf, you could go in your backyard, I guess. I'm like practicing here. Go in your backyard. I got a driving range three miles from me. It costs six bucks for a small bucket. And you just go out there and you hit it.

They also have a little practice area. I mean, it's like everything. It's like taking your basketball by yourself to the court and just working on your jumper or working on your free throw or running layup drills. I mean, you still need muscle memory. You still have to drill it. You still have to have some fundamentals of it.

And I'm fortunate, I'm not a fancy country club golfer. I'm not trying to pay $200 to fucking walk around for four hours. I go to the $15 course. I paid $12 yesterday to play nine holes by my house. Right? I'm not, I bought all my clubs at the thrift store. Okay.

Right? It's not, I'm not trying to make the tour. I'm just trying to focus my mind and get my steps. I should let you borrow mine until we start. I'm not going to talk about it on you. It's embarrassing. I should just send you mine. Listen, when you get to LA, we'll come out.

We'll go out to the little, I always, it's not at water. It's not Silver Lake. The little one where they shot Swinger. This is a little part three. It's harder than it looks, but it's a fun little course. And we can go to the golf. I know exactly what you're talking about.

That would be fun. I mean, the, you know, the flow state, it's like, it's something that I'm really interested in. I think anybody who's a performer, anyone should be interested in it because it is the, you know, once you find yourself in it. And, oh my God, oh, the best, the best. But when you're not in it, you know,

actually I heard that song Cecilia by Simon and Garfunkel. You know that song? You're breaking my heart. You're shaking my confidence. Take it, go on. Yeah. That's about inspiration. That's about flow state.

That that's the, they were, the song, the, that, that the moment where like, cause for me, like sometimes I will start working on a song or start writing. And it's like, why did I ever think this was hard? This is as easy as anything ever. And then the next day it's like, ah, I'm a fraud. I can't make anything.

Why am I doing this to myself? I gave up. So what, what do you do to get into a flow state? Do you have any rituals, any sacraments, any psychedelics you take? What's your process? Yeah. You know, weed and basketball have always gone hand in hand

since the seventies, but for some strange reason, I cannot find the right weed strain to improve my golf game. Golf for me is better sober. Basketball for me is better, just a little stoned or even a lot stoned. It's the weirdest thing. How often are you stoned? Not as often as I used to be.

And I don't know if that's good or bad, but the minute I turned 50, I kind of became a lightweight. Interesting. And so now it doesn't take me as much to get high. I just did a, I was at the Transblade Challenge event in San Francisco last week. It was like a weed competition, 10 to 12 different strains, a bunch of different growers,

a bunch of different things. And I was there for maybe four hours and I was higher than I'd been in a long time. I mean, it was great. It was glorious. I was not out of control. I can handle my weed. Well, I suppose weed was the best,

but I was definitely higher than I'd been because I don't really, I don't really like smoke like that anymore. I want to thank Squarespace for supporting this episode of the DTFH. Lots of people asked me, how do I start a podcast? And what's awesome about Squarespace

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Thank you, Squarespace. Here we go. I don't really like smoke like that anymore, I mean, I still have degrees on occasion. Yeah, that's cool. I mean, that's interesting. Don't you think people have an impression of you as being someone who's stoned all the time?

Well, sure. And that's kind of the impression that I give out, definitely on the social media. And that, you know, early in my comedy career, I fought against that potlabel comic, because it was gatekeeping. People were keeping me from gigs. It was like, all you do is talk about weed,

which is not true. I talk about weed a lot. But it's not my whole thing. I got jokes about sex and quantum physics and raising kids and being in Montana and all this other shit. But all they would hear was a weed joke. This is back when weed was especially illegal.

And so that's all they would hear. And they didn't, you know, it was, I didn't get in the Montreal because of that. I didn't get into a lot of things. They almost canceled my Make Me Laugh episode, because I did like six weed jokes on three of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but then I just started leaning into it.

I was like, fuck it, weed has been with me longer than any of you fuckheads have. And when I got divorced, me and weed came to an understanding like, I will go hard for you and you will make sure that I have a gig and have some money and can get a place to eat and, you know, get a place to live and some food to eat. I'm going to dedicate, I'm going to dedicate years

to helping you out. And we've gotten along really, really well since then. And right as soon as that happened, like my boy was like, I'm moving to L.A. to open a club. I need your help. I was like, boom, here we go. And we started to activism.

I leaned into the festivals. I leaned into being a weed comic. And it kind of worked out. And now weed's legal. And everybody wants to be the weed comic now. Which is a whole different thing. Like, we need a young ungyo bilam. That's the old show title.

The old show business gig goes, right? We need an ungyo bilam. We need an ungyo bilam type. We need a young ungyo bilam. Hey, no, we don't. We don't need you. We don't need any replacement ungyos. Oh man, I'll always be me.

But you're, I want to talk. See, this is, to me, I think something that is really curious about cannabis is that it has some kind of, it has, it's not like you're versus some other drugs. It's like you're just eating them or something, you know? But with weed, there's like a spirit. There's a mysticism to it. Right.

Yeah, it's a sacred plan. Yes. Yeah. And so if you had to describe that personality, that spirit, how would you describe it? What is the personality of weed? Do you assign a gender to it? What are your, what are your thinking?

What's your thinking in that regard? A lot of people tell you that the cannabis is big on female energy, right? Because you smoke the female plant, right? Cannabis is sex. There's a male cannabis plant. There's a female cannabis plant. You don't really use the male for much except for maybe propagation because it doesn't really produce the THC.

It gives you some terpenes and some things, but really you just kind of, if you're a breeder, you'll use it for the pollen. But really you're using, you're interested in cultivating the female, making sure the female gets everything it needs. And then it's going to give you what it has, you know? That sounds so weird to say it like that. But there's a lot of that. Now my ex-wife would say to cannabis,

weed just gives you what you need, right? So when people say to me, I don't really smoke weed because it makes me sleepy. And I'm always like, you probably need more sleep. Right. Right. You should think about that. Because sometimes I'll smoke a joint. Like I'm just going to say to relax.

And I smoke a joint and then all of a sudden I'm like, you know what? There's a lot of shit I need to do. I'm going to straighten up the kitchen. I'm going to fire off these females right quick. I'm going to do all this little things. I need this energy to get up here and take care of my business and focus and get over my ADHD right quick. All this shit and hand all these things I need to do.

Right. Yeah. But that's one of the challenges for it too though. Because people, one of the challenges they're having with the Germany medical cannabis industry is that of course the Germans want to be like, if you have A, then you do B. If you have this sort of problem, then you need to smoke this sort of weed. But weed doesn't always work like that. For some people, a cush will make them sleepy.

For some people, a cush will give them energy. For some people, trainwreck is this. But for another person, trainwreck is that. It's not, everything is not the same thing for everyone. You have to find what works for you. And fortunately for weed, there's thousands of different strains so you could find one. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that is, you know, that's one of the wonderful things about getting legal is people like how precise it's getting like, you know, how like people are learning like that you could almost dial in states of consciousness according to the plant. Now, I don't know how much of that is placebo effect or how much of that is real. But in my encounters with marijuana, it's versus other psychedelics. It has a, it has a kind of stern quality to it.

You know, like it's like, if you want, if you have been fucking off, if you haven't been taking care of yourself, if you haven't been exercising, or if you've been an asshole, it reminds you of that in a, in a, in a, in a pretty ferocious way. Sometimes, yeah. Which makes it kind of like a good friend. You want friends like that in your life. Right. It's not blowing.

It's, it doesn't, it sounds cheesy. It doesn't blow smoke. It's like, well, I, it will identify exactly where you're fucking up. And, and, but also, I think it also will like, I don't think it likes to be abused if that makes sense. You know what I mean? Like it, it won't let you, I've noticed that if I go into like fade weed phases, like getting stoned for like a year straight or something, somewhere in there,

I'll start getting signals from it. Like you need to take a break for a little bit. We love a tolerance break. People love a tolerance break. We talk about that all the time in the cannabis industry. Hey, sometimes you got to take a couple of days or a week or even a month off of smoking weed. Just let your bodies, natural chemicals get back to their little homeostasis or whatever the people call it and see how you do for a while.

Right. Um, that used to happen to me when I would judge the Emerald Cup because you judge Emerald Cup and you smoke weed for four weeks, like every day, 400. You got to smoke 400 different strains in a month. So you just sun up to sundown. You just smoke all kind of different kinds of weed. And then you do the festival and you smoke weed all through the festival. And then the day after the festival, you get up.

You're like, I'm going to smoke a joint and you roll a joint. And then you're like, you know what? I'm good. I'm good for a minute. Yeah, you judge the Emerald Cup, dude. That's crazy, man. I've seen that. I look at that and I shudder.

I would be in the fetal position, two strains in. I would be gone. I would gone like the wind. I would be out. I would be on a rickshaw, whatever the fuck. Yeah, man. I don't know where you did. Gone.

I would do that to my friends because my friends, you know, we tell people, yeah, I'm judging flowers for the Emerald Cup and everybody's like, man, I wish I could have your job. I wish I could just smoke weed all day. I'm like, all right, come over and help, right? Bring some snacks. And then they come over and we start smoking weed and four strains in.

They're like, oh, man, I'm good. I got to go home. I'm faded. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, man, we got to smoke at least 10 more today just to keep up with the quota. And we have a list. We got to get through all of these today.

Today. Yeah, no way. No thanks. Maybe you could help me understand this because it seems to me like at the Emerald Cup, the fifth strain that people are checking out, it seems like the first few strains have an advantage over the later strains because the judges are getting increasingly high.

You know what I'm saying? Like, how do they, do they acknowledge that? For me, I don't, you don't have to smoke a giant joint of every, of everything, right? You don't have to smoke a whole. For me, I take a couple hits. If it's super tasty, I'll take a third hit. And I sit around for 15, 20 minutes and see how I feel, right?

So, you know, in the next 15 minutes, if all of a sudden I feel like I should get up and do my taxes or clean out my living room or if I'm just sitting there kind of maybe in a nap or feel like I want to, you know, food around a little bit or whatever, then you get a feel for the effects. You don't, you don't have to smoke the whole joint. And then, you know, half hour later, it's like, man,

that one's probably worn off, only took a couple hits. I got good tolerance. Then you smoke another one and see how it feels. And if you, if I find myself being crazy high, like I smoke some weed, you know, like the 15th strain of the day and I don't really, like I get the flavor and everything, but I'm not really feeling different effects.

I'm like, well, we'll come back to that one tomorrow morning. Fresh. Let's see how it goes. Right. So you find the ones you like and then you go back and you smoke those all again and see what's going on. When, when, when people come to visit the judging, like the judges would all meet up once or twice a week and people will come to visit and they're like,

which one should I try? And Swamy would always be like, find the one that doesn't have much left in it because that's the one that everybody's smoking. Right. That's so cool. Look for the emptiest jar. That's the one that people like.

How, how much is winning the Emerald Cup affect growers lives? Like is it, what is that going to do to a strain? It's, it can, it can do a lot to a strain. My homie, first of all, I make friends. Like if I smoke some weed and the weed's not labeled, we don't, they don't, everything's just got a number. So I smoked this one weed one time

and it was the weed I thought should one, should have won and it came in third place and I almost got into a fight about it, but whatever. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Dude, it gets heated. We have some arguments. Who are you arguing with? Like a fight, fight?

Like you almost got into a fight, fight. It wasn't quite physical, but words were exchanged. Fuck. Dude. No kidding with some other beat. I was passionate about it and should have won the fucking cup. And let me say it too, the Emerald Cup, from all the cups that I've judged, the Emerald Cup is the most fair

and the most really everybody has a chance and all the judges really know their shit. You know, so there's no, there's no shenanigans. Sometimes you do a cup, you're like, I feel like the sponsors are kind of pushing us toward one way or the Emerald Cup. Wide open and the best lead generally wins.

But it's also, you know, you can't, it's so close. It's so subjective. But anyway, the point is he came, that weed came in third place and I, they told me who it was from. Finally, they're like, oh, it's third place was a purple candy cane from Green Shock Farms. I ran over to that dude and I was like, Bruh,

I love your weed. We have to be friends. Here's my phone number. What's your phone number? I want to come visit the farm. Tell me how you do it. I'm like, we're homies now. Cool, that's so cool.

That's a good weed. It's, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it really fucking hard to grow weed like that? The idea we all had as kids, you could just take a seed and put it in a pot and grow like good weed. That's not true. I grow halfway decent weed

using the benevolent neglect system. I just throw some shit in the backyard. Although I just got a new grow cabinet. I don't know if you can see it over here. Your camera turned off because of the internet. I want to see it. When your camera turns back on, I'll let you know.

The way Riverside works is when the internet, whatever the fuck happens, when the speed fluctuates, the camera disables. But I do want to see that. So wait, what was it you said, benevolent? Benevolent neglect is how I raise my garden. Okay, right?

I just kind of, you know, like I throw some cuts out there, some seeds out there, and I try to keep it watered and I do my best to keep the bugs off of it. And that's fucking it. Right? And I got my homies,

like my hardcore weed growing homies will come over and be like, oh, you need to top it. Oh, you need to do this. You need to add mulch. I'm like, dude, it's fucking weed. I'm just trying to, I'm not trying to sell it.

I'm just trying to have extra weed during the holidays. Right? But if you want to grow- Oh, that's so cool. Good championship weed. And yeah, you know, you got to top it. You got to make sure this is that and that is this. And I love talking to growers about that.

And I love listening to growers talk because those guys, it's like watching quantum physicists discuss shit. They did the whole thing. I'm using a Bacillus Thuringus on this one and I brought in a thing. It likes a this and a that and a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's great.

It's great stuff. It's wild. Yeah. It's wild, man. There is a real difference between weed farmers and like other farmers. You know, they have a, they have a very fascinating alchemical quality to them that's

and also again, like I can't just, like I love marijuana. So I can't distinguish how much of the, what I think about it is my own romanticism attached to it and how much of it is real. But anytime I'm around the plant itself, I feel like it's got a kind of awareness to it that I don't notice in other plants.

You know what I mean? Like when, when you're, when you're around like a monkey or a dolphin and you're like, Oh shit, this is not like being around a chicken. This thing is like watching me. It's judging me a little bit. You know what I mean? I don't think weed judges you.

But like you said, weed is a good friend. We will definitely sometimes tell you when you're fucking up or help you decide on your next steps. No, weed to me is always going, Hi, hi, hi, hello, hi. Whenever I'm around it, that's just since I'm getting, it's very welcoming and it's like, wow, hi.

It's a very sweet energy, a very beautiful energy. That's one of the things I like about weed. Like we talk about that. Like the weed circle, right? You stand in a circle, like the round table. Everyone is a peer. No one is, is, there's no hierarchy

when you're smoking the weed. You're standing around in a circle evenly. Like everyone is together. Like even people who don't smoke weed, I like, I like people, people who don't smoke weed, but will still stand in the circle. Those are some of my favorite people, right?

They just stand there and they like, they take the joint. They don't hit it. They just pass it to the next person because they're sharing in the fellowship and the energy and the ritual of the cannabis circle, which is a great thing. Do you think Tolkien, do you have you read Lord of the Rings?

No, but I am familiar with it, but it's kind of a nerd badge of honor that I have yet to read Lord of the Rings. You know, I had chances and then now I'm like, I'm just going to be contrarian about it. I'm not going to fucking do it. Well, I'm jealous. It's the, it's the kind of thing

where you wish you could wipe your brain just so you could read it again, especially stoned. Tell you what, once you read Parable of the Sower, I will read Lord of the Rings. You got to. Well, anyway, I just, I sometimes there's like, there's Tolkien had such a clear affinity for like smoking with a pipe and like that,

just what you're talking about. Like that appears over and over again. And now I've always wondered like, man, is it just tobacco he smoked her? Whoa, cool. Get off the black hole. Look at that. That's a ha, that's cool.

It's the ceremonial. Welcome to the inner sanctum, sir. What are your, I want to know your thoughts on, just because, and I'm sorry, if we don't have to talk about weed, I'm sorry, if when you go on podcast, people just want to talk about weed. Right, it's one of those things.

Eskimos talk about snow. Okay, cool. Great. Because I have questions, man. What are your thoughts on Delta 8? I haven't really tried it. It's one of those things, to me, it strikes me as one of those things.

You know how like, you're hip to maps, the multi, what is it? The multi-disciplinary association for psychedelics. Those guys are, you know, when some MDA, MDMA came out, right? And then all of a sudden it's illegal. Well, we just changed a couple of chemicals in here.

So it's technically not illegal, but it gives you all the same effects. And that's pretty much what Delta 8 does. People who do it, so it's maybe a little stronger than regular THC. I don't know. I just, I live in California. I travel around and everybody knows me.

So I just smoke weed weed. I don't have to worry about a loophole. Man, I got it. That's like both my wife and I, when like we're in a place where it isn't legal, and you'll see like they're selling Delta 8, and it just makes you sad. Because you're like, I want to, in California,

you just, you know what I mean? It's like, I'm happy people have access to something like that here. But, you know, there's something so like truly depressing about being in a place where weed is illegal. I always feel weird about buying hemp at a gas station. Same.

We're spoiled. Once you've been in LA, you're so spoiled. Oh, God. So spoiled. You're so spoiled. Because you just, yeah. But, okay. So another weed question for you.

Okay. Do you study or have you paid any attention to the world religions that have marijuana as a sacrament? Sure, sure. Those cats in India who do it, the Rastafarians, love a little weed as a sacrament. For me, weed is definitely, I mean, I'm not super mystical or woo-woo,

but for me, almost any drug has to be taken with intention. Right. You can't just be mindlessly doing shit. Right. So sometimes my intention is to get stoned. But sometimes I'm going to smoke the sativa and really mop and vacuum and get into the flow state of mopping the floor. Right.

But do you have, aside from the intention, do you have any kind of mystical, like, do you pray or do you have any sort of, do you find yourself connecting to any of these philosophies and weed? On, probably on a superficial level, like I'm, I don't really try to get too deep into any one religion because I'm a joiner and I have to be careful what I join.

Right. I, I'll get into shit. And so I'm very careful about what I really get into. Oh, I see. You're afraid like it'll, an undertow will pull you out or something. I'll be super rostered, dude. You know what I mean? We come to a reason I and I, but I have to be careful.

I have to be careful about that sort of thing. That's why I never became a Marine. So, yeah. You're right. I know what you mean. But, but it is, it is my school. It's a heightened state. It's an elevated, it changes your, your brain chemistry.

So it's a different, like I had a friend who did acid so much, Joel Barfield, may he rest in peace. He was like a brother to me. We were very, very close. But he did acid a lot to the point where he could induce a psychedelic state just by force of mind, just by reminding his body of what it was like to be stoned or to be high on, to be tripping. And he would, he could just get into it.

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Log on to butcherbox.com forward slash Duncan to claim this deal. Thank you, butcher box. Yeah, I know people who can do that. In shamanism, this idea comes up, which is like the shaman really doesn't even need the substance anymore. There's a direct access to that place. Yeah, which I agree with. It's just interesting.

That's so fascinating that the reason you don't delve deeper into it is a sense of being consumed by it. I've never heard anything that I really liked. Man, when I was in college, we went to India and I smoked weed in a Shiva temple on the banks of the Ganges River. And with these Shyvites singing these kirtans that when you're stone, I mean, talk about that circle. When you're doing this thing that's like, God knows how old it is.

God knows how old whatever this ritual is. God only knows. We will never know. You're reaching back and you're reaching forward. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. It's something so special and something so powerful. But yeah, I just remember that never really engaged in an actual ritual involving marijuana

and then experiencing that resonance. It's kind of like the way you feel when you take MDMA. Are you saying, well, no, no, wait a minute. Now, because you're a deadhead and I would say that smoking weed and going to a dead show is also a sort of ritual. Sure. Oh, yes. Yes, I don't mean to.

Yes, absolutely. And thank you for pointing that. I don't mean to hierarchize like just because it's like a thousand year old ritual that the Shyvites are doing somehow that makes it, you know, more advanced or some shit than a more like than what we have in the West, which is the that thing that you're talking about. It's just it's just interesting to see the way it shows up. I think sometimes we don't we don't recognize the rituals that we perform out here in the West. We don't we don't make for small magics.

We don't realize a thing. There was a thing on Twitter today where a dude had ordered Chipotle, but he had forgot to change the address from what he was in a completely different spot. He ordered Chipotle delivery and the Chipotle driver brought it to his house and he's like, hey, man, I'm not even there. So you can just have that Chipotle to yourself. Go take lunch or whatever. And the driver wrote him back and was like, hey, you know what, man?

I got to thank you because the place I delivered to is right next to the graveyard where my brother is buried. And so I'm going to sit in there and have lunch next to my brother and talk to my brother. So really, I really appreciate you. And that's such a small magic. It's such a weird coincidence. And yet it was perfect for both people. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. That, that's the real religion, that thing you're talking about there. That's the real thing.

All the other religion is just like trying to catch up with that thing and you can never catch up with it. Yeah. I'm a great believer in small magics. Small magic. Yeah. Me, yeah, me too. I mean, and I always, it's one of the easiest things to forget about for some reason, at

least for me, I forget because it's so subtle. And the more you want, by the way, I've noticed maybe you could fill me in on how this works for you, but the more I want small magic to show up around me, it seems like the less it happens, like the more I'm just in the moment, the more it just naturally appears. That's that whole let the game come to you vibe again and paying attention and being, being in your, in your walking Zen or in your natural mindfulness flow of state where you're not. Yeah.

Well, they say about archery, like you have to want to hit the target, but you can't try too hard to hit the target and you kind of have to not be super attached to the results. Yeah. It's like, quarterbacks, football quarterbacks to tell you, make good, make good decisions. Live with the results. That's cool. Bhagavad Gita, you have a right to your action.

You do not have a right to the fruits of your action. So forget about whatever comes from the stuff you're doing. Just be in the action itself. Rituals, man. I got to read you this. You made me think of this. Okay. Did you hear this shit about the Catholic priest who said the wrong word?

The wrong word, the wrong, wrong word. I got it. Can I just, can I just read it to you? Just so people. Have you heard of it? You heard it. Yeah. No, I'm hip to it.

Okay, go. Okay, cool. Speaking of just crazy rituals. Okay, a Catholic priest in Phoenix has resigned from his position after a church investigation found he had been incorrectly performing baptism over his 20 year career. As he poured the holy water during the baptisms he performed, the Reverend Andres Orongo would say, we baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father Orongo misstated one word, we baptize, should have been I baptize.

And getting that word wrong nullified all of the rituals he performed using that language. If you were baptized using the wrong words, that means your baptism is invalid and you are not baptized. Olmsted wrote in a message to parishioners, you will need to be baptized. Can you, like, what are your thoughts on that, man? Here's my argument. This is what I would say to him. I would say that his baptism is stronger because he's invoking the entire community

and not just the one person, right? Yeah. We, we as a community, we as a church, we as an establishment, we as a vibration baptize you in the name of this all powerful magic here, right? Not just I. It doesn't just come from one person. God doesn't just come from one person. God comes.

God is the force, right? Yes. It's in every tree. It's in the fucking doorway. It's in your Mardi Gras beads. So when we baptize you, we're coming together as a group. And I would, I would say, give me, if I was trying to be baptized, it'd be like, give me the community mojo.

Don't just give me the mojo from the one priest. I don't know that dude. He might like kids in a weird way. Give me the whole thing so everybody can get in on it. That would be, that would be my argument. And also, I think God understands that people are not infallible. That's the whole point of being a human. Well, right.

But if you're, this is to me, what's fascinating about Catholicism in particular, as opposed to other forms of Christianity, is that it has this technical aspect to it that if you are a full on, if that's fully what you are, if, if I'm pretty sure that if you die and you're not baptized, I think you like go to like limbo or something. You go to limbo. Wait, that, and that this means that if any of these people whose baptisms have been annulled or whatever have died.

Listen, it'll be a party because it'll all be there. And they'll be like, Father Arganza? Hell yeah, what's up, man? I got baptized by Father Arganza too. What are we going to do? Let's play bingo. No, it's going to be a, you're going to show, you're like, you've been a, you've given money to the church.

You've done charity work. You got fucking baptized. You show up to heaven and they're like, bad news. You're fucked. No, you're going to limbo out of a technicality. Like that's what I'm saying. It's like, to me, trying to- That's only if you think God is a petty regional manager.

They do. I mean, that's what I'm saying, man. Like if, if they, if you're saying you're a ritual, that's what they, that's exactly their version of, of like the divine force, the thing that created tigers, jellyfish, the thing that created fireflies is like, yeah, but you got to say, I, in that ritual, or I'm putting you in close towels, I can get you without putting you there.

I mean, it's true. Words have power, right? There's that cartoon where the, it's the, it's the, thanks to a typographical error, John received power and riches beyond his wildest imagining in exchange for selling the devil his soup. That's cool. Yeah.

Fucking technical error. That'd be awesome. So, I mean- I mean, listen, you can't, I don't get hung up on that. Like the thing for me to, even when talking to people and, and, and, and things like this is I don't always try to listen to the exact words. I want to listen to the vibe to what you're, what you're trying to say, what you're meaning when you say that, you know what I mean?

Because not everybody is super gifted with words. Not everybody can always express themselves like that, or, or they're trying to, to, I don't know. I try to listen to the whole thing, to the whole, the whole story, and not just the words that are being said. That's very compassionate. It's, it's cause you can really- They all think I'm tough.

No, that's so compassionate. It's not true. I've been talking about the joy since 1986. Yeah. What's your favorite strain of marijuana right now? Whatever I'm smoking at the moment. Lately- Come on, tell us something.

What do you got? Lately, I've been enjoying the pigeon-pop pie that I got at the Translate Challenge. If we're talking like, I'm, I'm, I'm big on, you know, I'm one of those guys like, oh, this is 17 year old Scotch imported from the hinter lens, right? Yes. So I'm definitely one of those like, oh, this is a Mendocino indoor. This is a, it's like wine for me or Scotch or some shit. So I do like the fancier exotic ones.

But if we're talking like readily available strains that are, that are kind of universal. Yeah. Blue Dream gets a bad rap because it is everywhere, but a well-grown Blue Dream, a well-made Blue Dream. You understand why it's so popular because you smoke that shit and you're like, man, this shit is, is really just got a nice hybrid feel. It's got a great feel for, it's great for movies because you're relaxed, but you're not too stoned to somewhere you can't follow along.

You can get up and make sense. Yeah. Yeah. I love Blue Dream. Oh God, I can't wait to get back to you. Blue Dream is great. What? Pre-98 Bubba Cush, you can find one of those cuts. Those are also very nice and sure, diesel. I love a good diesel.

And I like a gelato every once in a while. Cookies, but I do like ruts because it reminds me of that old school skunk. They call it ruts, but really they should just call it skunk. That shit smells like a skunk shit in your bag. Man, I got, when I was up in San Francisco a long time ago after a shop, these growers gave me a giant butt of skunk weed. It was so strong. I took it back to the hotel room.

I had to fucking pay the cleaning fee because I didn't smoke in the room. I've argued that cleaning fleet. I've argued with them. Right? What time did I say they tried to charge me the cleaning fee? I was like, I didn't smoke in the room. You have pictures of me standing outside, not smoking in the room. They're like, well, we have stems and things in the garbage can.

I was like, yeah, because I rolled a joint, but I smoked it outside on the little patio. Right? And I was like, okay, we'll remove the fee. And then he goes, there must have been some good shit because it was stinky. I was like, hell yeah, it was good shit. I'll smoke bad weed. We met. They wouldn't remove the fee for me.

I got on the phone with like the executive manager of the hotel and he goes, listen, whether you smoked weed in there or not, the room cannot be, we can't give it to a guest because it smells like weed. You can't open a window or use some air freshener. What do we do when someone takes a giant massive shit? This stuff was radioactive, man. I've never encountered anything like it. Like it just, just its fumes, whatever it was putting out, soaked into the walls.

And forgive me if the folks who gave this to me are listening because I don't mean this is, I didn't get, I couldn't even get that high from it. It just was incredibly pungent. Yeah, maybe it was because I was annoyed having to pay the room fee or something. And I was just like, yeah, no, I had some weed like that one time. My homie in Portland knew a guy, he's retired now, but he used to harvest on the solstice in the equinox. And we used to call it Portland magic harvest.

And that shit was the stinkiest weed. Like I would drive it down from Portland in two Tupperwares and a plastic bag in a box in the trunk. And my whole car would smell like weed. Like I was standing across the gym one time with a small bag of it in my hoodie. And one of my homies was like, I can smell you across the gym. Like I made friends because the neighbor next door at the apartment smelled us smoking. And he had to come and knock on the door and be like, what is that shit? Like what's going on, dog?

We got to be homies right now. That shit was so good. I wish, I man, I wish I had some weed again. I missed that weed. We've lost so many strains. I've become like those heirloom guys. Oh, wait. I never even thought of that.

Like there's strains that just are gone now. When was the last time you saw a chocolate tie? When was the last time you saw a Panamanian red? When was the last time you saw some straight up Oaxacan? There's no more Panama red? I haven't seen a Panama red in a million fucking years. Probably since the 80s. People are bringing it back.

Acapulco gold is kind of making it come back, which is great because that's a nice weed. But I mean, there used to be a weed called Champagne, which was hella popular. I haven't seen that weed in forever. What happened to Odyssey? There's so many, you know, it's just one of those things, man. It's like the Cavendish banana. It starts to take over shit.

And with this legalization, growers and these companies and consortiums, they're trying to make all their money back right away. So they want big yielders that ripen fast, right? Everything's got to be ready in eight weeks, nine weeks. There's no 12 weeks sativas. 14 week plants. Some plants take 14 to 16 weeks to come into full ripeness. They don't have time for that shit.

You got to have turnover. You got to move it around. So we're seeing this vast commercialization and we're starting to lose some of these more, you know, maybe they don't yield as much. Maybe they take longer to grow, but they fucking taste delicious and they have great effects. And it's worth the patience and it's worth having that. And it's worth holding on to that.

So I definitely got a bunch of heirloom seeds. And that's one of the reasons I got this grow cap. You do? And so I can do some stuff and hold on to some of these older things. We respect the ancestors. That's so sweet, man, that you're doing that. Like we need a vault. We need, like, not just the arctic seed vault.

They're starting that. They're starting a weed genetics vault and like a seed vault like that for that, for sure, for sure, because it's important. That's important. Can you talk a little bit about the- You ever read The Botany of Desire? Start to interrupt. No, I've heard of this book.

No, I haven't. Yeah, check it out. Let me write that down. I'll send you a text. Now, you know, okay, the, okay, the, so just because we're talking about, like, you're telling me all the kinds of interesting nuances in the, like, weed industry that I just wasn't aware of. But it, let's talk a little bit about, I think, some of the most

unacknowledged people in the supply chain of marijuana. Okay. That I love and I don't think they get enough credit, the trimmers. I was just going to say the trimmers. The trimmers, it's like, the trimmers, no one, like, you know, everyone's celebrating the growers, but the tr- these people, it's a hard job. It's a hard job and it doesn't pay what it used to. That's what I heard.

Yeah. I heard that the industry is shifting away from the trimmers and that they're kind of just getting thrown to the wayside now because of, like, some kind of, like, a new way of do, of trimming weed or something. There's a bunch of differences. There's machines that do it. They don't do it as efficiently, but they do it faster and they don't, you know, you don't have to pay a machine $200 an ounce or $150 an ounce to trim weed.

No, is it $200 an ounce? No, $200 a pound. Sorry, I take it back. So it was $200. We used to get $200 a pound to trim weed and you could trim maybe two pounds in a 12-hour day if you went hard. But you would also come home with a repetitive stress injury, but you could go hard. Right.

You could go hard at it. And also with the advent of all these concentrates and all these dabs and all these extracts and things, sometimes some companies just buy the whole plant. Like, we'll buy that whole tree off of you and you don't have to trim it at all because we're just going to take it. We're going to freeze it, mash it up, we're going to extract all the shit from it. So we don't really need to trim it. We want all the leaf.

We want all that stuff. But yeah, they're trying to pay trimmers like $20 an hour. Like, it's a regular job and in some ways it is, I guess. Because it's legal. Because it's legal. The reason trimmers will get paid so much. What? Trimmers need a union.

We need a trimmers union. Oh, I thought you said there are. Well, yeah. The reason for that amount that you're getting paid is because you're up in some underground farm somewhere. It's true. You know where I've heard a lot of some like it can either be like some kind of like marijuana utopia or things could get weird out there.

You know, like hippies with guns is always a weird combination. Yeah, right. Yeah, they got to defend themselves up there, man, because they're competitive and like it's not the it's not always some agrarian paradise. I mean, it is, but you can't go to the cops, right? One of the gifts in the curses of this new cannabis legalization, one of the cool things is it is definitely less. I mean, there was never really a lot of violence because it's weed.

But also you can't just go see a guy. Like if a dude owes you money, like some dude didn't pay you the money on the weed, you could just show up and be like, hey, bro, you need you got to give me the money. You got to give me something. Right. Do something. And now you got to send a letter. Right to your lawyer or the court.

I was going to cost you more money just to go see this dude about the money. Wow, such a different landscape. It's such a different landscape. You're like, dear sir, please remit the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. As opposed to like, hey, man, you owe me a thousand, just give me the money. How many times did you end up trimming weed? Like how often did you do that as a job? I trimmed weed a couple of times for sure, definitely.

And I still like to visit the farms during harvest season. I don't really trim like that anymore. I'm an OK trimmer. I'm not, I'm not like an all-star great trimmer. When you were trimming, were you staying in a like a house or where? Yeah, you were staying in the cabin in the woods. Sometimes they have tents. It depends.

I mean, I would never, I wouldn't just show up like, you see some of these trimmer grint laborers, trimigration season, they just show up hoping to catch onto a spot. That's how you end up sketching. Like I have friends. I would just call my friends and be like, hey, if it's trim season, I got a couple of weeks, man, let me come up and get into it for a couple of weeks. And, you know, they'll be like, yeah, man, you can come up and hang out, you're funny enough or whatever.

And you sit there, we're sitting around and it will be very social. But for some people, it's definitely a different, a different vibe. So. Okay, I, okay, that's cool. Now, this gets me to something I'd love to hear your thoughts on. It's my stoner hypothesis that let's take a strain of marijuana, whatever it may be, randomly selected strain of marijuana. Okay.

One tree trimmed with a machine. One tree trimmed by a professional trimmer. Give people these strains, not letting them know which was which. I don't know how you'd create the actual study. My hypothesis is that the weed that was hand trimmed is going to have a much better high than the weed that was trimmed by the machine. Thoughts. I concur with you, one of the challenges that they would have with the machine,

some of these newer machines are better. But one of the things about this machine is it's going to bump your weed around and roll it around and you're knocking off all those trichomes, right? And the trichomes are where all the terpenes and all the THC and all that good stuff is in that. Those are those little, that's how you make the hash. You take those little glands and you knock them off the tree and you press them together. And now you have hash or now you have dabs, right? So when you're doing it with machine and it's rolling around,

bounce around there, the trichomes are just falling all over the place, which is great if you're a company, because then you could take those trichomes and turn them to another thing. But if you're just trying to smoke flour and you're cutting it by hand, you're saving a lot of that stuff for the staying on the plant. And it also looks better. You can tell when something's been machine trimmed because it looks almost too uniformed and kind of mushed as opposed to when you cut it up and let it, you know, looks like a centerfold, looks like a high time centerfold.

Yeah. Yeah, man. And then this, see, this is the thing. Like we're also excited about the end of the prohibition. And in your podcast, we talked about how like now everyone's like, it's legal and doesn't, they don't realize all the activism people like you have been doing forever. Bro, they're trying to run away from the stoner lifestyle. They're like, oh, we're getting away from the stoner paradigm.

Fuckers, stoners are the ones who got weed legal. Quit fucking with us. Right. We're the ones who went to jail behind that shit. Pay some respect. I'm an OG. It will be treated as such. Yes.

Yes. Celebrate the stoner. What are you going to do? Disregard them now just because like it's like legal. You're going to just like say that that entire thing was just a result of the prohibition. Oh, fuck off. Now, okay, this is my theory to go back to the trimmer thing. See, I think weed, like, okay, what is the coffee?

Coffee is a sponge, man. Like if you, if you get coffee around incense, it'll like soak up the incense. You know, it'll like and fuck up your coffee. I think weed does the same thing for human energy. And that I'm just, I know it's, I mean, listen, y'all look, you know, the guest is, we're talking about weed. All right. What are we going to do?

I just, these are my thoughts. I haven't talked about weed in a while with anybody, but like I feel like it absorbs human energy. And so when you're, when you're smoking weed and, and trichromes, trichromes aside, these tremors, God knows what's on their hands, right? Fuck knows. That's the best. Finger hash. That's getting into the weed too.

All their oils and the patchouli's dripping out of their hair into, you know what I mean? Into the weed. Like whoever they were fingering or fucking or whatever. That's getting into the weed. Oh, you're super fancy. You're like, you smell it. You're like, I don't know. I feel like the trimmer had some bad vibes.

This is maybe going through a divorce. Can I get some weed that was turned by a happier person? Oh yeah. This smells like they sat around enjoying a birthday, eating cake, finger banging. I'm telling you exactly. This was a mystical trimmer because some of those people up there, they might as well be Jesus. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Some of the people up there, you, I've met some of them and it's like, I don't know what planet you come from, but it's not this one. You're like some kind of, you know, I'm talking about that fairy folk, the elf creatures. You're one of them. His name is Swamy. You can hang out with Swamy. You can hang out with Mendo Bruce.

You can hang out with Tim Blake, a bunch of cats, bunch of cats out there. Sunshine. They're all named sunshine, sunshine. She's hella cool. There's a lot of cool people out there. And they're, and they're so, they're all like healthy and they're all, but they're mystical and they're all like, who knows what? Drinking like tinctures and pinecone mixes with weird like.

It's easy to be healthy and mystical when you live in the woods and have kind of cut yourself off from that whole, from the rest of society. Like I, I go back and forth on that all the time. Like, man, I could just go live somewhere and fuck being a bodhisattva, fuck trying to help people just go out in the woods and live my own little peaceful life. I wouldn't even know if there was a war in Ukraine. I don't know. Right.

I'm just sitting in the woods drinking tea, maybe journaling, maybe not. Maybe I'm just having my own thoughts in my head. Maybe I'm just living in my own little cabin-fied world, but it's tough. It's tough because I feel like, uh, like that song by Solomon Burke. Until all of us are free, none of us are free. So. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. That, that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The bodhisattva concept is really beautiful and it doesn't have to be a permanent bodhisattva, by the way. I mean, I didn't, again, friends, I like weed.

All right. I'm sentimental about it. You or you and I are both sentimental about it. I love weed. It's got me through. So much to save my life. It's been there for me. It's, it's giving me a career.

It's been there from. Yeah. Yeah. It was the worst cinema. There's other podcasts to listen to if the stoner talk is bothering you, but. We've covered a lot of things to that. That was not just weed. We talked about a lot of things and that's what.

Yeah, I know. But actually talking about weed is not just weed. Like the, the other thing about when you're getting marijuana during the prohibition is that like these people put, are putting their asses on the line. A lot of them and a lot of them it's, they're not as financially motivated as you might think. A lot of them know it's medicine. A lot of them know this is like helping people have cancer. A lot of them know this is healing people and needs to be in the world, you know,

and they were up there like just waiting for the fucking ATF to come in. Take everything. One of the best growers I ever met, Dr. John Hudson, may he rest in peace. He started growing because his sister told him she had cancer and he had heard that weed could help with cancer. So he started growing a weed for her. It turned out she was a liar, but it also turned out he was a really good weed grower. So he's super got into it.

He opened a little small dispensary and really, really in helping sick people. He got busted a couple, three times and, and the third time he got busted, I was like, man, why are you still doing this? He's like, well, I think I'm kind of crazy. Also the shit needs to get out. And then the fourth time he didn't get busted, but the DEA, and I know three people that this has happened to, the DEA showed up at his house and they're like, Hey, listen, this is, this is where you grow it.

This is who you're selling it to. This is this, this is that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, quit. Just quit because if you don't quit, we're going to fuck it all up and you might win, but it's going to take all your money. It's going to take all your things. It's going to take all this and this. So you should just stop.

And he stopped for like five years. I know, I know. Better than arresting him, I guess. I know a couple of people. How terrifying would that be to have the government just show up and be like, we know everything about you. And then also you're like having to look at them like, all right, let's play the game that I'm growing like fucking plutonium out here.

What's not yellow. Thank you to plutonium. I'm telling you all that it's not yellow. Thank you, radio. It's just a weed plant. It should be next to the strawberries. Congratulations friend. You just shut down a farm.

That's what you did today. That's what you did today with your life. That's what you did. You shut a farm. I'm so proud of you. You just shut down a fucking farm. That's how they feel it too. It's haunting for them.

So when we moved to LA and there were maybe two dispensaries in LA when my boy Don Duncan opened up his and all of a sudden there was like a proliferation of dispensaries and the fed started showing up and busting people. And so what we did was we started like a texting and a phone tree and we started flash mobbing these dudes and we would call the TV stations and we would call the police and we'd be like, hey, there's people robbing medicine from sick people right now. Right. Right.

And we would show up. Right. Don't take my medicine. Quit fucking with sick people. We're supposed to be helping people and it created a lot of bad press for the feds. And so they stopped, they didn't really stop. They stopped with the long protracted raids because they would come in, they would tie everybody up, they would bring in a safe cracker,

they would take all the stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they threatened everybody with the rest. And then after they started getting the negative publicity for that, they would just kind of show up and smash and grab. They'd just run in and grab as much money and weed as they could and then run out. And then that creates a different thing. You're like, oh, so are you guys really trying to uphold the law? Are you just out here smashing and grabbing like a gang?

Yeah, yeah. Oh my God. What? Yeah, we all know the fucking answer to that. We all know the answer to that. I'm just asking questions. Everyone knows, everybody knows like they're just smashed, they're grabbing the weed, they're grabbing the money.

Essentially, it's like there was, I know what you're talking about. That was the period where marijuana stores were like just fruit trees or the cops to come in, wait for the fruit to grow, wait until like, you know, there's enough, there's a lot of money. It's successful. And then come and take it, you know, and they would want, like that's what's interesting about your friend is like, from what I heard, they would watch, they would act like they're doing surveillance,

but really the surveillance they're doing is they just want to wait until there's enough stuff to grab to make money off of. They're casing the joint. Yeah, exactly. They're casing it so they could like, you know, once there's enough, you don't want to bust someone who doesn't have a nice sports car or someone who doesn't have like shit that you can sell at auction. Right, exactly.

But you seem, when we were talking about, I can't remember which festival, it seems like you've managed to not demonize the law enforcement that you don't feel bitter about that, that like you somehow forgiven them or was I am I mistaken? I go back and forth. I mean, once again, lots of times people when you hang out with them as individuals are very cool, but when they start forming large groups or joining gangs, they're different within that concept, right? Right.

Because I've definitely hung out with some cops who be like, I would never bust anybody for weed. I've never busted anybody for weed a day in my life. I think it's stupid. Same. And I've definitely hung out with cops who are like, I can't wait to fucking bust somebody for weed or I can't, you know. So are you like, well, you're talking to me like you've had cops.

What do you mean? Like, did they throw the handcuffs on you? Listen, I've been arrested for weed in three different states. It's two different states. Almost arrested in Nevada on some bullshit. They just took the weed because legalization was going to be there like a year later. The cop was like, this is not even going to matter a year. I'm like, I'm glad you agree.

So you could take this weed. I'm still mad about it, but I didn't pay any funds. Right. I didn't pay any fucking. That's cool. I'm not fucking coming back to Elko until the shit is legal. Yeah. When I came back and shit was legal and no one's ever slated me on anything.

So sometimes you got to wait them out. You just got to be patient. Have you ever done time? Did you ever have to do any time? Never any hard time. I spent a weekend in jail in LA on some bullshit and I spent a day in jail. This motherfucker outside of, was it salmon Washington? I'm driving to a gig.

It's late at night and I had borrowed my mom's four by four because it might have snowed. I found it might. It was like a wintertime gig and I taken it to get an oil change. I was like, fucking check everything because I'm driving through small towns and I'm black. So make sure everything is good and they're like, everything's all good. And so I'm driving through the small town and the cop pulls me over because the light over my license plate was out. Oh my God.

And then now I got weed in the front seat and also maybe I got a warrant from some shit that happened four years ago in Seattle that I never paid a ticket. Totally fucking funny about it. And now I got to spend a night in jail. I got to tell you though, it was a nice jail. I had to sell all to myself. They brought me a decent lunch. They let me use my cell phone.

They brought me a couple of magazines. I was like, man, that's cool. And then I got to go back up to go to court. And the judge was like, well, it's kind of dickish, but I got it. It was still kind of legit. I'm like, whatever. And then they're like, you got to pay a fine. I'm like, okay.

And then I fucking left. I never paid that fine. And then weed's legal like three years later. And then I called around like, you don't have any warrants. All right, I'm good to go. Wow. Thank God. But I had to miss again.

That was the thing that upset me. And here's the other thing too though, right? Like, so he sees the weed on the front seat and he takes that weed and he kind of searches the car. He finds the other weed, some of the other weed, and they take me to jail. And I'm thinking to myself, well, he didn't say anything about the hash ease, which is definitely a felony. So I'm probably, I'm probably good, right?

I'm not going to say anything to it. And then I get the car back. I was like driving to Montana. I'm like, oh, look, my hash is right there. So really, it's not too bad. We avoid the felony. That's cool. I've avoided the felony twice.

One time I was staying at a Motel 6 in the San Fernando Valley, just because I was coming to LA to do something and I was going to go see my kids and whatever. And the fucking cops knock on the door at like 10.30 in the morning at the Motel 6. And I'm like, what's going on? They're like, well, you have a warrant for your arrest. I'm like, I don't have a warrant for my arrest. I'm fucking naked. I got weed and hash on the goddamn thing.

I'm like, I don't have a warrant for my arrest. I cleared all my, I was very careful to clear all my shit up. They're like, well, you got a warrant right here. So now I'm handcuffed. They take me to the thing. I got to call my new business partner and be like, hey, you got to bail me out of jail on a $30,000 warrant on some bullshit, right? Right, right, right.

And so, and then I get to court and the judge was like, yeah, no, he doesn't. He did all the things. He got all the stuff. And we're like, what, what about the hash? I'm like, well, I have a letter from my doctor right here. This hash is, is completely covered under the prophecy, under the 10th of Prop 15. And then the prosecutor's like, well, hash is a wobbler, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, according to the governor's guidelines.

And they're like, okay, we got to continue. So then I got to go back, right? And I show up with the governor's guidelines and said, I'm like, listen, it's right here. And the judge was like, okay, cases dismissed. And then my public defender was like, hey, you need a job. You can't afford me, bro. Man, I, you, the fact that you're able to talk about this and laugh, I'm so impressed. I mean, I, I, I'm so impressed.

I just, that's so cool. I'm a black man in America. I've only spent like five days in jail in 54 years. That's really not bad. That's really not bad. That's so, man, it's just satanic that you have to, that that is the experience. That's so satanic that that's, I get it. It's just, yeah, it's probably just because I'm, I'm white that like this stuff is, and I,

I have no like that I find this stuff so infuriating just out of a lack of, listen, what are you going to do? Do you, you know, that's the activism. You know, the job is dangerous when you take it, right? That's part of the civil disobedience. I didn't, I wasn't surprised. You walk around with weed in places where weed is illegal. Every once in a while, you might run into trouble.

So you just have to be willing to accept it and willing to deal with it. You know what I mean? Okay. Last question. Yeah. I think a lot of people, especially in California, they feel like the work is done. You know, and I wonder if you could share with people some, some things folks who are in states where the weed is still illegal or people who want to like, who have that activist impulse in them.

Can you give some advice or some instruction to folks who might want to, all right, continue the work that you've been doing? Go hard. Don't expect science and common sense to win the day. Because how many city council meetings or things have I been to where they're like, oh, these arguments are all make a lot of sense. You all bring up very good points and then they vote against the whole thing anyway. Because that's right, right.

If science and common sense would win the day, we'd be, we'd be a lot better off in a lot of different ways. Right. Don't be afraid to speak out. Just, you know, be ready. Have a good lawyer. At least make friends with some lawyers, people who can help you out a little bit. Don't be afraid to be a little more radical than you might usually be. Because you're in no good negotiations, right?

So you, you want to start your negotiations from all the way over here, right? Because they're going to start all the way over there. And if you try to start here and they're here and they'll be like, well, you try to compromise. You're like, okay, I'm a compromise. And then they move that way a little bit. So start over here. Start with like, we should be legal. We're all going to fucking the streets, right?

Gotcha. Yeah. And then try to get it to, okay, you can carry a couple ounces. You can grow six plants, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Love it. We should hand out weed to children and people who are fucking the streets whenever they want. Start from there. It should be part of lunch program.

At least for the teachers. God knows it should. It should. There should be spas at these schools, steam rooms where you get stoned on your break, sit in the steam room, go back to work. That's what we got to push for. Cannabis-infused massage right after you get off before you have to grade some papers. That would be a good time.

That would be a good time. So you're heading out on the road. Working folks find you. I know you're going to, are you going to Spain? I'm going to Spain in March. I will be in Spain for the International Cannabis Business Conference and for the Spannabas Festival. And then I thought I was going to Denver, but that got moved.

So in April, April 8th and 9th, I will be at the Spring Smokeout Barbecue in Monterey with two short E40, Mazi, and a bunch of other cats. And then 420, I will be in Hobbs, New Mexico with Devon the Dude at the Hobbs, New Mexico 420 Celebration Smokeout. And you know, that's my birthday. 420? Yeah. Hey man, congratulations.

That's a good birthday. Isn't that cheesy? It's cheesy though. I always feel embarrassed by it. It's like, it's like, if they say you pick your incarnation, I'm like, I'll do 420. Well, that's a good choice. So cheesy though, but. Minus 215, which is the proposition that legalized medical cannabis in California.

So. No way. That's so cool. Yes. All right. It all works out. Hey man, thank you for your time. It's so, I like the, the last two days, just getting to spend time chatting with you.

It's been such a. Man, it's always a pleasure. I can't wait for you to come to LA so we can go play bad golf and smoke good weed. It's going to be a good topic. Yeah. And let's smoke weed and golf, please. Even though like, because I suck so bad, man. It doesn't matter.

Can't make me worse. We don't even have to keep score, man. We're just come out here for the walk and the experience. Okay. Awesome. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you, man.

All the links for the shows are going to be at duckatrustle.com. Thank you. Hade Krishna. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was it. And Gio Belem, everybody. All the links you need to find him will be at duckatrustle.com.

A tremendous thank you to our glorious sponsors. And thank you for listening. If you love the show, do subscribe at patreon.com. Ford slash DTFH and come see me live. All those dates are at dunkatrustle.com. I'll see you next week. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney.

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