A love of all things cannabis prompted cannabis media professionals David Bienenstock and Abdullah Saeed to create Great Moments in Weed History — a podcast dedicated to telling stories, cracking jokes, and, yes, smoking weed.
The episodes are lighthearted and free-form. Bienenstock recounts historical events — some surprising, like a recipe for cannabis tincture found in the Bible — Saeed reacts, and both smoke a ton of cannabis. The show may be funny and the hosts may be stoned, but Bienenstock told Cheddar the show serves a very important purpose: preserving the history of weed.
"As we enter this legalization era, which is very exciting, Abdullah and I are very worried about the fact that we could really lose the true outlaw history, the resistance history, the social history of people pushing back against a very unjust law. And at the same time, we get this new idea that it's big business, which is legitimizing cannabis. Well, that's really BS," Bienenstock said.
"There are a lot of people who you know and love throughout history who have cannabis stories that are almost never included in histories of those people. We feel it's important to preserve and tell those stories to keep them alive," Saeed added.
A few of the hosts' favorite episodes include one digging into celebrated American poet Maya Angelou's relationship with cannabis, one discussing the Beatles introduction to weed, and the aforementioned episode about cannabis in the Bible.
The podcast's concept might be a little unconventional, but as Bienenstock said, having fun while creating change is what cannabis culture is all about.
Cannabis legalization "has always been a grassroots movement of people and it's a great model for how you fight injustice and have a good time doing it — and win," Bienenstock said.
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