The Cole Memo

In this episode, I sit down with Joseph Hughes. Joseph describes himself as the son of the last drug smuggler.

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The auto-generated transcript is available below.

in this episode I sit down with someone who describes thems as the son of one of the last drug smugglers his name is Joseph Hughes and he will be releasing a project that I believe is currently titled the last Smuggler I actually got a sneak peek at this project it’s a podcast that he would be releasing regarding his story which we’ll be discussing today so consider this a sneak peek at what could be the last Smuggler podcast folks Joseph Hughes story is fascinating and I’m so excited to share it with you one of the things that Joseph and I talked about before we got on air was just how much effort is required to make a podcast and folks I’ll just keep this very brief by saying folks it’s while you might be listening to this podcast for free right now it does cost money to produce uh this podcast and there’s even things like you know software licensing fees and so on and so forth the point being it all adds up and so if you’re able to support our show our our show is supported by listeners like you uh you can become a patron it only costs $3 a month to directly support our show you just go to the memo.com patreon once again that’s the co memo.com Pat o n one of the best ways to support our show of course though is free just simply like this episode subscribe to or follow our show leave us a positive review from wherever you’re listening to us from folks your engagement and support is always appreciated please enjoy this episode of the coal memo today is January 18th 2024 in case I didn’t make it clear I’m your host Cole Prest [Music] you got it by me yeah starting off the podcast with a laugh yeah no I got a few people with that one that was a that was a funny a funny little joke I like I do satire every once in a while you know with as serious as the subject matter can be that that I cover you got to got to add some humor and well I got to say I’ve been so excited to speak to you uh let me just say the message I received I I I received the pilot episode of your podcast and the person that that connected us said listen to this and let me know if you’d like the introduction to the son of The Smuggler who produced the above podcast and I said enough said connect me connect me you know but I listened to the pilot episode as I told you multiple times and I loved it and uh you’re it sounds sounds like he just had such an interesting childhood before we get into that uh do you mind introducing yourself to my audience please yeah my name is Joseph Hughes and uh I’m a professor at Berkeley College of Music a writer and um a dad and uh uh I myself um have dabbled in marijana but um since it’s legalization in Massachusetts but but um but I’m more kind of in the uh um what what we call the Legacy phase of of you know of the trade and uh um but I’m thrilled to meet you yeah thank you so much for sitting down with me and I I mean that’s actually kind of where I wanted to start uh you T like I said I listened to a little bit of your story and you talk about as I just started off with growing up as a as a young boy your father was a drug Smuggler I mean let’s just start there let’s Dive Right In yeah absolutely well one thing that I should point out you know is that my I always put biological before father in in the case of my my um you know my Smuggler dad um his name was was Mike Woodward um and the reason is because I had a very good dad his um and uh you know so uh the reason why so to take it his just to take a step back a little bit the prehistory of meeting my old man because we left Laredo Texas when I was one and The Story Goes that um my mother’s from Boston and she was you know basically a Catholic girl and loved um you know was in the was in the girls room at Jean dark high school in Milton when Kennedy was assassinated and you know read the other America by Michael Harrington in high school and was very idealistic and wanted to change the world and so she went to sign up she instead of going to college she signed up for Vista which was Kennedy’s Peace Court basically the domestic peace courp and she could have gone to Honolulu but she she um you know she Charmed the the the um uh orientation leaders but they she was ultimately sent to Laredo On the Border um and um she uh she met my old man he was from kind of a faded uh family Dynasty his his uncle was mayor of Loredo Pepe Martin um this is in 1966 and um so so you know so he was from a family of no small means On the Border um and you know the thing is he was a dyslexic and he was um a huge well he was very well first of all he when they met he had a part-time job in the Vista office and when they met to hear my mother described he’s very Charming very handsome very charismatic and you know basically they fell in love and this is in a period where before birth control and all that people basically not before but basically people your first love you basically married the person they married in Mexico and you know they were too young they were kids and Mike my my old man was um at the beginning very stable things were sort of steady and he had a job as an engineer at the uh television station in the radio and then later his uh stepfather who was a big rancher in South Texas got a job in Pierce all in the power plant but somewhere along the way he started to really experiment with drugs and I don’t mean heavy stuff like heroin I’m talking about like peyote and he’d go on these walkabouts and you know and um and he got it into his mind that uh that we should um uh go to T New Mexico which was a hippie Promised Land it was on Time Magazine I think in’ 68 or 69 is this you know mecca for for hippies to go land was very cheap and so he convinced the sister um to leave uh Laredo and they went she and her husband my my mother um and Mike um packed us all up we went to uh T New Mexico and you know by this point he was um he’d kind of lost his way a little bit I mean you know he was um after he lost his job at the power plant he was bartering in to and trying to you know make an’s meat but he didn’t my aunt moved into a home in Taos and he found us aa aa is a like basically a dug out in the ground and he thought well this is good enough and he moved the family into AKA and when when winter rolled around I don’t know if you’ve ever been to New Mexico cold but it’s it get it gets cold you know and like people ski in New Mexico and in Colorado and you know so when winter rolled around it got very cold and I almost died of pneumonia and my mother said this is it that’s it enough is enough and these um friends of Mikes they she called them the four Magi they just came it was Christmas time in 1970 and they just arrived on on by this point she had moved out of the out of the key rafter of the hospital and she was at my aunt’s house and they arrived at the doorstep and they said we don’t know why we’re here but we’re going we know you’re in trouble and we’re going to take you back to Austin and they did and she so she basically escaped Mike and Mike followed and he and you know cut his hair he tried to he said I really am going to get a job and get my life together and you know this is in the days before rehab so you know he long story short he ends up going into hospital my mother calls her father and says you know Daddy I I I have to get back to Boston I have to go home and you know and he bailed her out he sent money for the for the airplane ticket back and with us two kids my sister and myself and I never saw Mike again until um Pat Hughes who was my mother’s second uh husband and was a very good man um and that’s another whole story he was a Catholic Lefty and just a great guy all around had been a priest you know incredible story uh but he died he died young he died at age 40 of kind of a young man’s heart attack and so my mother you know for a at least a year two years was grieving she was beside herself with grief and so my grandmother reached out and she sent me down to the Border first summer terrific my grandmother was a wealthy lady we lived like I I liveed like a you know a child on the manor swam in the pool she had these apartments she had an Antiques business and a ranch I mean it was it was like very Lux kind of Lifestyle for a boy and you were how old by this point I’m 12 yeah and you know we were struggling financially we had no money we had nothing really uh back in in Boston and and so it was really nice for me that first summer between the first summer that’s 1981 in the second summer 1982 my biological father put on a kind of charm fensive went on a charm offensive and he said I want Joseph to stay with me I want Joseph to to stay with me next summer and you know and he was basically he was doing Logistics on for a deal and for for him he thought it would be ad agous to have a boy on the deal with him because it it kind of like acts as like a little bit of a decoy I’m on vacation I’m with my son you know and so so he um he convinced my grandmother my grandmother you know she’s another whole story I hope to get in into her story in in the series but you know she was way ahead of her time she could have been CEO of a company if she you know if she were born today but you know and the boys boys will be boys kind of culture of the Border she was like okay I’ll let Jo Joseph stay with you so I did that second summer and that’s the summer that he pulled me into his world and that first episode of the podcast uh starts out in bante which you know started out Cole like a vacation I thought well this is great we’re going you know we’re going with uh you know his his uh his stepdaughter and common law wife and and all these other kids who has it turned out from uh his boss who was the head of the gang it had a very big kind of unwieldy family um and it was it was uh several of his kids and his his uh his wife and so we were in Boo deante and that’s where the the podcast picks up and it’s sort of like okay this is not a vacation this is going down with you know with with uh with Mike and with moose to get the to get a stash of the drugs right of the of the marijuana uh remember marijuana is like a schedule one drug at this point still is but it’s you know it’s completely elicit to to to to move marijuana in any quantities and so uh uh so we’re going to get a sample and to bring it back to a drug dealer in Dallas you don’t meet that individual in the uh in the first episode I I tried to kind of leave it on a cliffhanger uh and you know we we kind of make it across the border but my life has changed by this point I mean it was like you know because it was a it was such a scarring event to be used in that way by your father you know uh and uh and so you know so um it was tough and it was and so and I wouldn’t see him again until maybe um how many how many years later was that 1993 so about 10 years later when my grandmother turned by this point he’s wanted by the by the government by the law and he’s living on the lamb in Mexico he doesn’t even live in the United States and he made a kind of trip into New New Mexico to my aunt’s cabin um he didn’t actually go to the cabin he went but we met at a at a restaurant nearby and I took some pictures there was a mariachi band and you know that was the only other time I saw him alive after that he died I got news that he he died under under his death has shrouded in in in mystery and I’d like to explore that in the podcast and actually I’ve unsealed the indictment and I’m trying to piece together you know the years in Mexico but in particular I’d like to kind of bookend the series on on his death in in uh in neval Ledo um under very mysterious circumstances there was a you know there was a um robbing alcohol and prescription pills he had possibly called for the ambulance the old gang was possibly in town kind of circling around it was unclear exactly if there was Foul Play or or or how he died if he just checked out um and so so those are things I’d like to explore um and uh you know and I’d like to go and visit the places I’d actually like to go on a recording trip and talk to the people who are willing to talk um you know it’s sometimes tricky uh yeah getting back I I remembered what I wanted to say about my brother he so his podcast a lot of the folks that he interviewed about his dad they also broke the law quite a bit because they were burning draft cards it was the 1960s but some of the people that I would like to interview Cole they are former like marijuana Smugglers who now are let’s say stock Brokers and they they they don’t brag about their time you know smuggling Mar smuggling weed they don’t do that they what they they want to put it behind them and and you know in the case of the boss of the gang his son is uh and later Mike became his own boss but but the uh the guy who at that time was kind of the head of the gang he you know he was a very legitimate business person with two lucrative businesses he set his children up in the in the businesses you know so those folks don’t necessarily want to talk to me I have to figure out like maybe I fly into town and say I’m here in the hotel with my co-producer and love to just buy you coffee and you know you know kind of like that approach yeah yeah what was your what was your dad’s name or your your biological father’s name yeah well his birth name was Michael lions and like me he was adopted so his his name was Michael Woodward and actually there was a little bit of uh difficulty in tracking down because I I have requested his FBI file under the Freedom of Information Act and my aunt wrote his obituary and she called him Lions but his name ask did he have like a cool gang name um well no well he no he was called there were three mics associated with this gang and he was he was uh I don’t want to name them necessarily but they were the three mics and my old man who was bilingual they called Miguel okay yeah so he was known as Miguel in in that in that Circle in that world gotcha and I’m curious you know I I can make assumptions uh but why was it hard to know you said it was hard to know your dad used you like that why was it hard to yeah like why was why was that hard to know what what like it sounds like something’s Weighing on you to to have come to that realization well it was it was maybe maybe I phrased it in artfully it’s it you know it was it was uh painful to know that he had no moral compass that he would use the people closest to him to you know to the other thing to say about my old man is that he was a worldclass alcoholic you know and that that does change people’s personality he also likes Spirits you know he and so um no he he was basically morally uh just kind of a snake in a lot of ways turn on his family so that’s hard it’s hard to know that’s in your family your family sort of it it it make it turns my stomach to know that like because I have a son right and I think well what was he thinking why would you you know why would you endanger your your son that’s what I was trying to get out yeah yeah like what you know and actually my whole life as a as a dad to to my son Elliot I’ve tried to to do the opposite of what what Woodward did you know I basically tried to do everything exactly you know I would I would ask myself what would Mike do and I would do the opposite yeah and I’m just curious is it was it the danger aspect of it because I look I’m not going to mince words obviously crossing the border with drugs and and bringing it to somebody in the context of maybe doing business is not something a kid should be involved with so I that was the Assumption I was going to make in which why you thought it was I mean that’s dangerous activities right um so absolutely yeah yeah it was the danger it was the the lack of concern and Care yeah because you’re right the first summer 13 1 the first summer I was 12 the second summer I I joke it was kind of like my Bob mitzah or whatever but that his idea was that he was you know he had a twisted rationale for what he was doing but um I would later find out that that was a it was a pattern of his to to kind of try to pull in family who were vulnerable either because they were young or because like I in the case of one cousin of mine she’s mentally a little bit uh unstable and he kind of I believe and I you I have to sort of investigate this a little bit more but what I’ve heard is that he drew her into the last harad drug deal that he went on that I describ you know he basically died on that deal but there was she did not go to his funeral for example and I always kind of was left scratching my head a little bit about that and I I think it was because she was involved on that deal and you know and and so I think that his that and and actually the other interview that I’m trying to get is with his Mexican son because um his he had a wife in Mexico a common law wife um and I knew I met the son on that that time that I at my grandmother’s uh 70th that big blowout birthday party in New Mexico and I took one look at him and I realized he kind of had the same like that that like uh that look of a kid who had been brought into something he shouldn’t have seen and I want to connect with him as part of this project I tried in November and I I think when they realized it’s not necessarily money on the for for I can’t like you know I’m not going to it’s actually goes to the heart of journalistic Ethics you can’t send someone 500 bucks and say I want to talk to you doesn’t quite work that way that’s why I say I would like to go on a recording trip and say I’m in guadalahara I’d like to sit down you know buy you a coffee at the hotel would you the other thing too I’ve learned this from some journalist friend of mine U is when you have the mic on like we’re talking with a mic right now like I see the mic in front of you people it have this a very odd reaction where they want to speak they want to tell their truth they want to like they see the red light and it changes their nature almost so I’m I’m hopeful that I can um you know get him to talk about what it was like to to be Mike’s uh you know basically that he had another family in Mexico and I I believe that he he he he drew that kid in as well um and I I know because his mother told me um um at one point we we were there related to my grandmother’s estate we were there and kind of talking my grandmother hit oil a little coded to the story I mean she was very colorful but at the end of her life she kind of like found out that she was uh she had hit oil in Kula Texas so a lot of people came out of the woodwork they wanted part of this you know um and and uh yeah and I spoke to uh to Mike’s Mexican wife at that time and uh and got the impression that he had pulled her son in as well so I would like to talk to someone like that I speak Spanish you know I could travel down to guadara and and and and talk to him yeah yeah and you know I I want to I’m not I’m not meaning to glorify this I want to get into actually something that you talked about beforehand uh W with regard to maybe some of the like the truth of the matter you know the full truth I would say um but I did think it was interesting to talk or to hear you describe um how transactions that that you might be involved with in would just happen out in the open naturally yeah um just like you know somebody get out you hand them a bag and they’re just like like almost like you’re like oh look at this batch of tomatoes yeah well I’ll tell I’ll tell you something um about writing that Memoir because um that Memoir was was really challenging to write because um I don’t remember everything about that summer I know we had drugs and I know it was near my head in in a bag but a lot of what creative I learned by writing this Memoir a lot of recreating those scenes is you put yourself back in the place and you write in the first person and you write in the present tense and by like you you inhabit it again you embody it again and in doing that it took me 10 years um but I figure I earned it at that point and you know and I was in therapy and other things and and somehow I feel like I got 80% of the story exactly right and then there’s 20% that I I embellished a little bit you know nothing related to the drugs or you know but there there were elements of it that I was like you know you you kind of go in and you say well you know that’s create that’s what creative non-fiction is it’s where you you you you know you sort of have to and for me it was incredibly therapeutic to do that because it allowed me to to piece together what had happened to me that summer uh and uh you know as it relates to the openness um it is TR it is true that at the whole way that Mike was able to operate in Mexico was you know during the PRI in Mexico I’m not a historian but I’ve I’ve read up a lot about it there was a kind of um they called the partio revolutionario international and so you know they they the pre they call it the pre and so they had this kind of winking agreement with with um with the cartels certain cartels and they called it the tax mafiosi and so if you knew who to bribe you let’s say you Cole wanted to smuggle marijuana you could smuggle marijuana you had to know who to bribe and you had to um make sure you bribe them the right people and and then you know then you could operate relatively out in the open and and and you know so in a coffee shop might have been owned by the you know by by the the uh the cartel as an example you know and so a lot a lot of this you know the of course everything the Cadillac close to that I mean it sounded like that’s the Cadillac Bar is something else the Cadillac Bar Theo the story of the Cadillac is is a little different um from you know like a rinky ding Cafe and Bo you can see how I made the the similarity though right yeah yeah yeah so the Cadillac was a famous Smuggler bar and actually just a it was like a honky Tong kind of if during prohibition this was a guy he was a New Orleans Saloon keeper His Name Escapes me a French surname an American who wanted to make money during prohibition so he set up a lot of people did this actually a lot of gangsters like um Bugsy seagull’s girlfriend opened up a nightclub in newal Ledo but um so he went to noal Ledo and he opened up this kind of Speak Easy sort of operation and it was understood that he was friendly to the well he served alcohol because it was Mexico but he was also friendly to the people who were smuggling they were called teos people who were bringing in alcohol illegally so what they refer to today as the infamous you know noo Ledo Plaza that was you know basically christened by uh the teos and the Goos the you know the Opium Smugglers the um uh the the uh the folks who would who would bring uh alcohol across um and so that was kind of a well known uh and well trodden path and that was like the way station along that path and so and you know it was a great place it was uh it was a it was kind of a fabulous uh bar um and you know very colorful Poncho viia saddle and one room and you know there were the the the waiters had bow ties and white linen everywhere and that was Mike’s headquarters that’s where he would go he would go there to do business and to do bribes he was also you know he was also uh um you know he was he would go to boy toown which is the which is the brothel I mean you know and and and and actually this these were sort of rights of Passage their idea was that they were doing a young boy a favor by bringing him across in Mexico if you can belly up to the bar and put you know your money on the bar you can buy alcohol and so there was this whole kind it’s there’s a lot of kind of toxic Macho behavior um as part of this story that underlies the story and actually there’s a lot of toxic enabling that goes on from the women in in their lives because you know for for if you have someone who’s uh working as a Smuggler in your household um you know some months were extraordinarily fat because you know you you you had a successful let’s say you smuggled some a ton of marijuana across and you’ve got $40,000 in a duffel bag in a room and you know and some extra weed and and and and everything’s good but other times it was that the you know the the common law wife who had a job as a telemarketer had to you know earn the earn the rent that month and so as it happens Mike rented his house from an uncle named Tio who lived across the the Border in newal Ledo he he was a he was kind of a businessman and so you know but that that was the model the model was that he would be he would either have a ton of money that he was trying to invest or he was totally broke yeah I don’t know if you saw I was just sharing images I don’t know if it yeah I did I saw that was cool yeah uh Cadillac bar for folks that are watching is this does this what it looked like on the outside side yeah yeah that’s it is this a good picture of the inside yeah wow yeah that’s fantastic that’s cool thank you foring that the one right there in the middle looks to be like the early days see that where it says yeah that one and the one next to it that’s fantastic very cool yeah um did you were you subject to that Macho Behavior did they make you go to the the wh house and well I I’ll tell you I caught a break I remember I have a specific memory of they wanted to and I it was my that’s what you meant though right they would make the young boys is sort of a WR a passage like hey you have sex yeah yeah it’s time to pop your cherry you’re 13 yeah and so yeah so I remember having a very close call where they were going to bring me to boy toown this my uncle and Mike and we were sitting around a table and they were saying you know they were telling jokes like the first time I went to boys town I I had to limp across the bridge blah blah blah like really bad crude redneck stuff like terrible and um and we were going to go he was going to I think it was moose was there and uh his common-law wife came in they were shopping in the maralo nearby and she put her foot down she said absolutely not there’s no way you’re taking him to to boy toown I I won’t allow it and and she she kind of saved me and I you know and I I am grateful to this day to her for for that that she just wouldn’t allow it she just wouldn’t let it happen but it was a it was a close call yeah it was a close call yeah I just Googled boy town and it looks like on Wikipedia it’s talking about how it’s an array of like brothel and saloons and this looks like the best picture that I can find online of what may have been boy toown yeah well I’ll tell you the story of um those encampments so when Persian army um when BAS basically during the Mexican Revolution um pers pershing’s Army was chasing panchovilla all over Northern Mexico you know the US and Mexico were um um having these skirmishes along the border and uh they the men needed entertainment along the border and so so that basically the brothels would follow as encampments and follow the soldiers um and so that’s the origin of the the kind of the boy town encampments they’re not only in Laredo they’re they’re I think in other in other border towns yeah not so much anymore I I I you know I think uh noeva Ledo is so I I mean I don’t know if you know but noeva Laro is that is Ground Zero of the of the Zetas and the Zetas are one of the most lethal cartels um and all of this came after Mike I mean the Zetas existed but they they the kind of government going to war with the cartel s and the Border becoming hyper violent that happened from about 2006 on my my old man died in 2003 January 8th 2003 so he kind of dodged a bullet in that way because he he probably would not have survived the the the era of excessive violence along the border uh he was you know he was kind of of a Dying generation that’s why the the the premise of my series it’s called the last Smuggler because he may have been the last of the kind of Greeno gentleman Smugglers you know there was like there were like these families in Laro right that that you bribed them and they operated that you paid the P so but they were small time right they were um and then yeah there’s a whole history that happens in the 2000s with democracy when democracy came to Mexico and you know things just became a cauldron of violence um and uh and you know and fortunately for me because I don’t really want to name I don’t want to get into that history because those are like that’s a different level of scary I’d rather not mention those those folks but the but the group is called the Zetas and they they transformed noal Ledo so that people don’t really even go across anymore they’re so afraid you know the Cadillac shuttered the boy town is there’s no bu no that doesn’t really doesn’t really exist anymore either and and you know doctors and dentists who have their practices if they could go to Laro and open up their they went across the river and did so so it was it became very violent yeah no that that uh that was particularly interesting to me because yeah just based on my short Google exactly what you just said is what I found the origin of uh boy Town concept along the border can be traced in part to the relationship that developed between the United States Army and various ad hoc entrepreneurs in northern Mexico so the point though that I made is or that that the reason it really resonated with with me as I recently did a series with legal sex workers from Nevada and that is a hold over from World War II that’s when that bu started so it was a similar thing where the men needed entertainment quote unquote yeah and uh it had to be in certain areas so yeah um that’s interesting I didn’t know that wow yeah yeah so but to get back to um what we were just talking about you know uh I like that you how we transitioned here from transac to the open and kind of clarifying that why the project is called the last Smuggler cuz this was before the let’s say Cel days if you will or or like you say heightened violence correct yeah correct yeah I mean it wasn’t it wasn’t exactly like not violent but it wasn’t it was basically I don’t remember anyone I don’t remember guns being part of this whole package you know what I mean like I I I remember there being muscle any like when we went to Dallas we had a we had a bodyguard so the gang had a bodyguard and then when we went to Dallas they had a bodyguard I remember there there’s there was always be these very big dudes around and you kind of knew they were the muscle I just don’t remember them I don’t remember seeing a gun ever maybe they were I I do know that there’s you know it’s a gun crazy culture but it wasn’t part of the oper modus operandi to my understanding it was more like they these were guys who were kind of like you know they could they could beat you up but they weren’t going to they they weren’t Killers per se like you know sarios that that’s all much later that comes later gotcha and one of the things that stuck with me I’d like to um if you’re able to and we could talk off air about this but the James Bradford your resident expert sounds like a awesome resource and I believe yeah I took this note off of something that they said and I think it relates to talking about how your biological father was the last Smuggler it’s this idea that a lot of times uh people will make somebody out to be a Kingpin as if it was a vertical integration when really it’s much more nuanced than that and it’s not like it’s uh and I just want to take a brief moment to to really explain what I’m saying so for folks that don’t know what the term vertical integration means in some states just to use cannabis as an example because it seems like this can resonate with people in some states vertical integration is a requirement to participate in the Cannabis industry Florida is an example so what that means folks is that you have to grow it you have to transport it you have well sorry you have to grow it package it transport it and sell it so from seed to sale vertical integration you are basically you know you’re you’re growing it yourself you’re selling it yourself and and you’re making all the money that is what itical integration is and I thought it was interesting I believe it was James Bradford that made the point that um it’s like the goal of prosecutors to make somebody like you know uh your biological father out to be a a Kingpin but really it’s like a coordinated effort between many different parties yeah yeah I thought that was it I yeah I Bradford it’s so brilliant I mean I I I totally agree with you and thank you for that clarification I didn’t actually understand ver integrated as it relates to cannabis um in that way that’s interesting um but um yeah he actually if you recall from that snippet he he he said that he quoted Sam kinon talking about the internet of dope you know and it was it was very kind of like flat actually it sounds like you know and you know uh which is different again from from today I’m imagining you know where where the both in Mexico and in the united probably on both sides right um but at that at that time it um I think that you could operate on the margins and you know as long as you bribe the right people right and again we’re talking not small amounts of money and and uh but it was still it was risky in this way that if let’s say you’re you Cole are bringing a you know a truckload of weed in it’s 1990 right and um let’s say that that um you know that it gets in an accident that it go it falls into the real ground these things happen you know that let’s say that that it that you get um hijacked you know basically you’re on the highway and people you know these kinds of things were not unheard of or rival you know gang member heard about it and kind of found it so then you’re on the hook for the money um and you know if the product gets skimmed or that’s another way that these deal go south there’s all it seems to me like there’s a million ways it can go south and and that’s the problem is is and that and and I will get into that as I develop the series I happen to know that our deal that I was involved with when South and um I don’t know why I I speculate as to why in the Memoir I’m not I’m not actually sure I was by that point at this what we I called it the safe house but it was with Mike’s boss and um and I know my grandmother was called in to uh to she had to basically provide the ransom for my they had taken my uncle and probably would have taken me um and I and you know and I was put on a plane back to Scranton not Boston because um I went that summer to stay briefly at the end of the summer with with an aunt who lived in Pennsylvania but um but yeah so our deal that we were on it was one of those deals that that went South and it was it was you know horrible and um and all of that yeah and I want to we’ll get back to just open conversation but you know I’m trying to do my part here and discussing this project with you on air but I also want to take oh that happens sorry about that no it’s okay uh that happens to me sometimes too uh anyways uh you know I’m trying to spread the word of your story on here and I continue to you know do what I can to share it I’m curious though for folks that want to help get your story out um is there any way that they can directly assist with with that like either by way of just directly contacting you I know you’re kind of workshopping it and making it you’ve got it written down and stuff and you’re you’re you’re trying to push it out then you want to do it strategically the right way I’m just asking just you know to try to give you any help that you might be able to to give you the platform uh what could a listener do maybe to to help you yeah I mean I think there’s there’s two Avenues one is um you know as you as you know because you’re in the space the podcast space is very saturated now and so that’s a good thing it it means that there’s a kind of leveling off in prices and you know things can be done a little bit more cheaply so um I’m very lucky to be at Berkeley College of Music I have these incredible people James Bradford you mentioned um and also a song composer named Ali and you know they they’re just very invested in the story and would love to work on it the per episode kind of shits and giggles budget is 10 grand and so we’re trying to raise that for the spring to to continue our work we’re also pitching it to companies that that would probably want to do it inhouse they would say okay you can keep you know your song composer Bradford can be part of it but but we have this uh you know we want to do the the sound design piece here and you know we want to sign this this uh this journalist to help you and so forth that that actually I’d be very open to that because um I think that to really explore the story you need some journalistic chops you know I’m in the process of unsealing the indictment that sent my old man on the run in 1989 90 right around that time it’s actually in in in the mail to me right now um and so I I’ll look at that and I’d like to just kind of recreate follow the money if you will you know of his career right um and uh that takes resources so I am talking to some folks um you know I don’t want to kind of mention it because it’s it’s it’s a little delicate in in process and I and I um but then there’s a whole Third Avenue and this is where maybe you you could uh put the word out which is you know there is an industry behind what I’m doing so I’m telling the story of the last Smuggler and this is a legacy story for the legal cannabis industry so in the same way that I would think like anheiser Bush would want to know the story of their you know the bootleggers and the roots of their business um I would think that there are these companies out there that that that might want to sponsor this project and you know the whole series I could do it with my team um as currently constituted probably for 80,000 for the whole series um and you know I think what we would do is we would say Okay um legalization has made this you know a a very common thing um let’s you presenting sponsor come in and kind of tell the story of Your Roots the Roots of your industry and um and you know and we will maybe we could do a video together of you know producing an episode or doing the you know in the studio uh finding the the the U the scores and finding the the which songs to use and and and and maybe you could use it on your website and you know a a as a matter of fact there was a guy in Boston he was a former city council person named Tito Jackson and I have an introduction to him I haven’t yet met him but he’s a he’s like a prodigious fundraiser for his brand right like he’s raising capital and it seems like that you know the these uh you know it’s a very competitive world the kind of cannabis legal cannabis so I I would say to someone like him if he’s listening you know I’d say listen raise money for the podcast and you become exec producer and you know kind of lives under your brand as much as anything we go out in the world with it as well but it enables us to continue the work gotcha and I could I could totally see it rolling out something like that and in a fashion like that I mean to say um unfortunately and this is kind of what I was going to kind of open up to open discussion and you may have seen it since you mentioned uh you saw some of my podcasts with Tony um one of our mutual acquaintances um unfortunately it doesn’t seem like many cannabis companies I don’t mean to say all but many cannabis companies have that attitude of embracing that Legacy story and instead they want to professionalize and they use words like that professionalize standardize and yeah you know make it this they don’t want it to look or feel or resemble at all what the past looked like which I think is sad and I want to give you the space though to be very clear because you told me this before we went on air and I do as I told you I don’t mean to glorify this yeah it’s not that it was rainbows and butterflies all the time but there is something to be said about I think the traditional Market I do want to give you this space though to talk about maybe what I just alluded to if you want to yeah well I mean one thing for sure is the people who want a profession the standards I I’m in Boston and I I you know I’ve been kind of getting the word out about the podcast and I I met a guy named Jeff Ross rosson r a WS o n who runs something called the Cannabis Institute and he he’s all about like he for example uh tells the story of going to his local weed shop and getting this uh um you know getting a joint they just opened up I think he paid 8 and you know he said the quality was terrible and he said one of the things is that there there is no like quality control so this dude’s a scientist MIT trained I believe or Harvard trained I can’t remember but you know I think that that there’s a need for professionalization and you know but at the same time that that’s true there is also uh people who are you know just are very curious about what was it like before you know you know as I’m on the faculty at Berkeley you can’t walk down massav in Boston without smelling weed coming out of every building you know it’s basically everywhere and so I think for a lot of folks like young people especially they they do Wonder like what was it like when it was you know before you know Massachusetts legalization began in 2017 but you know what was it like across the country before that and you know and and so I think there is an appetite and you know it may not come from the kind of corporate weed folks the problem is that the mom and pop we shops don’t have the money right you know you know so yeah so Tony’s great but but um it’d be great to find someone kind of um in kind of in the um who’s sort of between those worlds may have some Deep Pockets but isn’t necessarily on the corporate side and that would be the kind of person that could come in and say I’m gonna make this happen this is an awesome project right and one of those details that I fixated on earlier in your story which I know you you you said you know may have been uh you know kind of an embellishment or whatever but also somewhat true is the idea of openly inspecting the product and that is an element of the traditional Market that like I said like you just said I think there are good uh things that come out of legalization and standardization and professionalization which include testing you know the ability to do recalls there were no recalls in the traditional Market because there was no mechanism for that right it was just kind of like hey you got bad product enjoy um yeah but but there’s something to be said I think about the the sterilization or or the like I say the the industry is slowly but surely not starting to resemble what it was and it’s becoming very like consumer packaged good which I understand that is America right you can’t go to a store without seeing consumer packaged Goods but at least with cannabis flour which is what I’m enjoying right now like you know I know that this could you know you could technically cpg it like you do with cigarettes but I just am arguing I’ve been trying to make the argument that that cannabis flour the you know in in its natural form should really be sold as produce just like it was you know so that you can look at it smell it and just as a connoisseur maybe for like the the average consumer they’re just like hey get me a a box of weed and I’ll smoke it and it’ll get me high but for a connoisseur I like who like with my grapes or any other produce I buy I inspect the product might even pop a grape in my mouth see if it’s a good you know good batch um and I think that should exist in the Cannabis market and that’s one simple way in which I feel like it feels like an AER of uh what I felt was a good actually a good thing that existed in the traditional Market you know yeah yeah I mean in a funny way I can’t I can’t speak to that I had an experience with when I when I came back from that summer one of the things that happened to me was um I really started to rebel I mean I I for one thing I didn’t tell my mother what had happened and and I was sort of bottling it up and I didn’t know sort of it was a secret and so I started to kind of like Rebel and go to kager parties in the woods in my town on the Southshore in Stoten and and and and started to smoke joints and one one time I I had a joint with my friend Keith McKenna and it was laced with PCP and my friend turned into um you know Mr Spock with the Vulcan ears and like I basically began to hallucinate and I remember thinking it was the scariest thing that ever happened to me and I didn’t know it was going to if it was ever going to end and it turned me off of weed for exactly 43 or 44 years oh wow and then you know and then when when it became very legal you know or not very legal but very decriminalized and very accessible you know I would I got a medical marijuana card because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and mainly for me personally Cole it it just made me feel very mortal when I would embibe in you know and mostly it was gummies and so on and and maybe chocolate and that and I would feel like I was dying every time I did it I would feel like oh this is awful I feel like I’m dying and then I would want to eat a house know yeah and so you know and so and so I thought it it it really wasn’t probably the ticket for for for me and around the same time actually I started to do tai chi very seriously and I think the chi took the place of of you know what what the the M the marijuana had been doing but but um but I acknowledge it’s medicine and and it’s ancient medicine and uh you know and also the The Smuggler The Smuggler is also an ancient role right and so you know I have no doubt that my old man was a was a you know a connoisseur and that he knew you know how to inspect the leaves and the buds and you know well in one detail I picked up on is that you were selling or I can’t remember exactly if it was the sample I can’t remember which part of the story it was but you had Celia and from my understanding of history there was there was weed which was heavily seeded and yet pick through all the seeds and stems and then there was Celia which people finally figured out how to separate the males from the females and it was yeah high-grade cannabis so yeah it sounds like your dad did know what he was pushing yeah I think so I think and the stuff that he consumed they did it in private I mean they didn’t do it it was considered very forbidden and you know and they did it in private but but um I did get the story from my uh you know my wouldbe step sister his his uh step daughter that one time she was in this was when things were kind of going off the rails for for for that little family unit they were in Austin and she once showed up at a party and she said oh I just had this laying around and it was like the finest Grade weed that you know that he would have brought up and you know she was like the cool kid in school because she you know she just had access to this amazing quality and quantity of marijuana you know yeah and I was going to ask you that like I feel like it’s hard as a kid I mean you know you gota you can’t tell details but were you ever like I have a pretty crazy life and try to like tell confide in kids about like with your friends about it or anything do you get what I’m asking I do I I remember I’ll tell you a funny story because I a hundred years ago I got a degree in screenwriting from Boston University and I wanted to do the kind of Hollywood writer thing and I I didn’t end up going that route but uh but I had a partner and we wrote together and you know we optioned several screenplays maybe as many as five and you know and we were having a little bit of of success at it and we went to the Austin Film Festival we had a submission in there and because I was in Texas I remember I turned to this friend and I told him the story of that summer the story that I’m freely telling now with the Memoir and with this podcast and based on his knowledge of me he we had gone to Bowden College together and we then went to graduate school together I remember him just looking at me like I had two heads like he couldn’t understand that I had this chapter in my life and and in a way I was never able to Heart mentalize It successfully either you know and it was it was kind of a kernel shame that I carried um and you know that those those kinds of of things are very hard to deal with you either own your story or your story owns you and so part of you know kind of coming out with his story and trying to frame it and historically and understand the players and all of that is because I would like to own the story you know um because you know I could have I could have died on that trip it was a very dangerous trip it was very kind of like uh harrowing the whole thing and so so I’d like to own the story what do you think about I know that it sounds like you’re supportive of cannabis but what do you think about just drugs in general like well yeah absolutely I think my brother told me a funny story recently about something have you ever heard of the Cobra effect uh so the so in India during the Raj right when when the British were in power in India they the the the country was over Run With Cobras and so the crown in its wisdom decided that it was going to say to the average Indian householder if you bring in a dead Cobra we will give you x amount of pounds and so so what happened was everybody started to breed cobas in India and you know literally like raising cobas in their backyard and slicing the head off and bringing it into the you know the what wherever the Raj had its headquarters and getting the money and eventually the the the the administration there the colonial Administration was like wait a second I think we got this all wrong and they said forget it no it was all a mistake there’s not going to be any compensation for bringing in uh dhead cobras and what did the people do the Indian householders they released all of the cobras all over India and all of these cobras India was overrun more than it ever was before because of the Cobra effect so my attitude about drugs and and you know Malcolm Gladwell has like a thing about the Border like that there’s a lot of studies there’s a lot of research that the tighter you make the border the more you make it attractive for people to want to go through and bring elcd Goods through this is the whole story of the War on Drugs you know so my attitude about drugs is legalization is um it makes it more of an open situation once you take the taboo off of it you can get into regulating it and understanding it it’s basically a plant we’re trying to understand we’ve always related to plants as human beings you know and so understanding cannabis and you know a lot of the kind of like animus against cannabis it was frankly racist you know if you think about like in the jazz clubs and you know in New Orleans and these places people the white administrators in Washington DC were like up in arms about you know black joy that was their basic issue it wasn’t so much cannabis you know like Harry anslinger and these other people there was a lot of racial animis against the users of cannabis who were largely African-American and Mexican American and you know and and you know not to say that Mexico wasn’t against cannabis it was Mexico also had like this this whole kind of like anti- cannabis scare in the cities and it’s going to turn our children into zombies and all this kind of stuff right but past past cannabis do you do you agree that just the idea of prohibition is futile yeah that’s the point I’m making with the Cobra effect I think I think you can’t get to regulation in um through this pathway of of making it taboo making it you know and so there are some drugs that are very destructive but and don’t have the answer to how to regulate or how to sort of like scale those drugs into the society there will always be forbidden fruit in our society that’s just part of I think it’s just part of human human nature yeah absolutely and to your point one of the things I was kind of P working my way towards have you ever heard of the iron law of prohibition um no and I thought I thought this is where you might have been going so I’m glad I I can share with the audience and you what is it’s something I’ve talked about a little bit on the show I learned about it from somebody else I actually just pulled up the Wikipedia page so the iron law of prohibition is a term coined by Richard Cohen in 1986 which posits that as law enforcement becomes more intense the potency of prohibited substances increases Cohen put it this way the harder the enforcement the harder the drugs and it’s the idea that you know something as simple as Thorton says that if drugs are legalized then consumers will begin to wean themselves off of the higher potency forms for instance with cocaine users buying cocoa leaves and heroin users switching to Opium the thing is like with as you said making the Border Tighter and uh really clamping down on the smuggling of these naturally occurring substances like the Cannabis cocoa and opium and and even mushrooms uh because it’s getting you have to package it smaller and package it within things you synthesize a stronger version of that drug allowing you to compact you get you follow me 100% I couldn’t agree more and think about that as it relates to people I mean think about Trump in 2016 coming down the escalator at the Trump Towers saying murder they’re murderers they’re rapists they’re you know it’s basically the it’s that’s that is the the uh the same kind of thing it’s it’s sort of like the other or turning or you know trying to try to create and whip up a frenzy of what’s coming across the borders you know and um and you’re you’re it’s the iron law of prohibition yes it’s true and and it’s true that in countries that have open borders they have fewer problems I mean not to say that that you can have a country with no border policy at all and you know you know Europe has you know a m a migrant crisis just as America does these the rich part of the world the kind of south to North migration is happening everywhere but you know but there has to be a more sensible way where you’re not labeling whole categories of people or you know plants that we’ve lived with for hundreds of for Millennia as bad and evil and taboo and this is this is basically you know kind of like the shadow side of human nature that we’re talking about right and like you say it’s just yeah if you’re giving it worth by trying to prohibit them and it it encourages things to become more dangerous like it really reminded me of your example of with the cobras like you have this intention on your face and you it all blows up it like it get worse as a result exactly yeah did you see the Elvis movie where Elvis went in I forget the name of it but he went in it’s based on a true event he went in to talk to Richard Nixon and he wanted to get like a federal Badge of from the um I don’t know if from the DEA or what but but basically it’s the irony of you know Elvis uh associated with marijuana and um hash cocaine C drugs with the youth movement and the hippies and he tried to make common cause with Nixon saying you know uh let’s go to war on these folks and let’s do this and let’s do that and he you know there’s this uh um picture photo op of them posing together and and whatnot but the reality is that Elvis died of a legal overdose of you know pills that his doctor was prescribing and you know Elvis was like an idol of mine when I was when I was a kid and it’s sort of like you know he it’s the it’s just that’s such a good example of the hypocrisy of this this nation and our drug policy because you know Nixon was all over it he he thought it was a great idea to make common cause with Elvis and this fine young man and you know but but you know we know how Elvis ended and we know even at this time I think that during that trip he was thrown out of his house by Priscilla um down in in in uh in Memphis and because of drug use because he was just out of control and then he makes that trip to the White House and you know right but it’s funny even back then there was the the distinction how those drugs are okay right those aren’t those aren’t drugs those are from the doctor that’s right well that’s right and if you if you watch Mad Men and you know all those women who were like God help us some of the things that people on in the 1950s and you know it’s like it was the doctor it was like doctor Feelgood right and uh and certain drugs were okay and certain other drugs weren’t and you know and and uh but I think we’d all be better off if we try to uh judge less and understand more and change that part of ourselves that feels the need to lash out and to to kind of to kind of uh you know assess someone else’s what they want and what they need to you know life is hard what people need to get through life and to to kind of cope is up to them yeah my brother just started using cannabis so it was kind of funny he I just kind of like to sit back sometimes he was debating my dad who’s not like supported like it’s not like he’s like he’s just whatever he’s like it’s legal whatever you know before it was illegal he had opinions about it but now he’s just like whatever um yeah anyways uh they were debating whether alcohol was a drug and again I have opinions on this obviously it’s a drug I’m sure you would agree with that um but I was just playing around with him because I know my brother gets mad and kind of gets heated during uh arguments my dad was like he’s like no alcohol is not a drug and I was like yeah Callen he does have a point they do say drugs and alcohol right and he was like he was like yeah King P Checkmate and I what was funny is I did not even age age with him but I just you know so yeah but it’s funny that like he he actually believed that and I didn’t I just didn’t feel like taking him to task that night my brother was doing it himself to try to like explain that that they’re obviously drugs you know um I truly believe that that’s still a belief today that you know there’s there’s these drugs and there’s these like coffee for example I mean coffee is insane I just started drinking coffee within the last few years and it’s insane that yeah like the first time I ever drank it in a meeting I was like I I had to almost like leave the meeting I was like Wow people like I thought somebody slipped something in my coffee or something I was like wow this is how people feel crazy yeah yeah that’s right no absolutely I mean that’s that’s that’s it yeah so I know I’m bouncing all over the place but um were there any bases just particularly with your story uh that that we didn’t discuss today that that you wanted to discuss you know we talked about how um you looked back on it and you know again I know that there’s going to be much more when this series comes to to reality many more details that I’m sure will come out but I just wanted to give you the space if there was anything specifically we didn’t discuss today that yeah um no I think we hit on like some really crucial kind of um elements in the in the whole kind of story um the other thing I should say I always want to say this about my my old man because you know to call someone a Smuggler you know it’s like calling someone a prostitute right it’s not the prostitutes are the world that’s like the world’s oldest profession and like being a Smuggler could be thought to be an ancient and honorable profession but the other thing I just want to say about my old man because I know I’m going to come into contact in interviewing his you know his close-in circles that is you know his sister his brother his cousins um he um he he was beloved right so you know how he chose to make his his living and you know it wasn’t something that I was attracted to but but I also acknowledge that he had a lot of potential he had artistic potential uh he was funny he was charismatic uh but it was a very tough scene that he was drawn into and you know um this was really in the days before people really did therapy you know yeah and uh and you know the Border was tough and and uh and you know that Bandit culture is very seductive and he you know and so he he kind of lost his way but I I I sometimes just feel the need to affirm that he didn’t start that way that he was he started out with great potential and you know and was a good brother and a good uh you know son who his mom and and he was Beloved the other thing too there’s a whole kind of dark comedy element like a lot of he was very funny in his in his own way and very lovable but you know we mythologize the good and we mythologize the bad and um you know a true Reckoning would include uh some of some of the really worse worst kind of behaviors that and that that’s why it’s been challenging for me to to kind of t story as as the creator of it but I I believe that you know by telling his story I get some you know some bigger themes the Border you know the drug trade and that it’s a it’s a legacy project it’s it’s like something that to be able to really unearth the story in all of its details would be pretty amazing because you know it’s like you ask one person about him and you get one answer but if you bring five different voices in you get this complete picture of the man and so that’s really my intention is to honor my father in telling the story as well you know yeah yeah very well said very well said and like I say I’m really hoping that this comes to light because what what I’ve heard and just this discussion today has been amazing and I hope it’s not our last discussion especially if you have any updates you know in the future please reach out but I’d love to I might even you might even hear back from me because I’d love to have you be great yeah I would love it um I guess I wanted the last topic of discussion that I wanted to end on uh is something that I’ve already kind of touched on in some spirits but I’m just curious what you think is somebody who does believe you know we’ve pretty well established that we believe that prohibition is a failed policy um you know and even causes more problems sometimes than it solves it’s interesting that like even in States like California and my my home State Illinois and other states that are starting to legalize cannabis I actually say legalize in um quotes because I’ve been having attorneys on my show and we’ve been discussing let’s just call it the shortcomings of legalization again in quotes because when you think legalization you think like uh beer where you can go and buy as much as you want and have as much as you want of course there are strictures right uh no drinking and driving um no drinking in public you know you can’t be like just trashed in public although that does happen because of bar culture anyways though that’s a Nuance um I’m just saying generally speaking that’s the acceptable behavior right and you would assume that would follow with cannabis but it seems that in every state there’s this idea of possession limits and they’re coined they’re described as public health safety measures um like well we don’t want to give out too much but and on its face I mean look I’m not going to say that I understand that I can see how maybe for half a second or some people can’t understand that but what I’m really getting at and I’m curious what your take on is is the idea that prohibition and and the policies that existed before legalization actually do continue um by way of of ideas of possession limits for example or or in States like my own where you can’t grow your own cannabis it’s legal but you can’t grow it and if you grow it still go to jail so there’s like so many different ways in which you can still get in trouble and I’m curious that’s not alone with my state that exists in California although to some lesser degree I know you guys have more liberal laws but I’m just curious I know that change can be incremental but what’s your take on this um well you know I can share a personal anecdote I was um friend of a friend I I went to a backyard barbecue this summer in Stoten the town where I grew up and the dad at this house he had um three massive marijuana plants in the backyard and I I was thinking about like how um on the one hand the kids are exposed to this but on the other hand it’s um it it’s a way to control the you know the the the the quality of it and to to have a kind of pride in it and in the process and and so my hope is that um that that will kind of catch on as the model that people can just grow as much as they want on a kind of personal basis and then you know and and have pride in what they’ve done like show it’s like it’s like plant people you know they’re people who just have incredible pride in their plants and then you know that can be like a like no pun intended a Grassroots movement and you know and then then they move out from there and and uh and you know know because it’s very hard you know I think it’s a Margaret me quote there’s there’s basically nothing that a small group of determined citizens can’t accomplish when they put their minds to it you know and so you know there’s a lot of ways a lot of the people who are on the other side of some of these issues are very well organized there’s a Martin Luther King quote I I heard recently also where he said you know the people who are who are for peace should be as well organized as the people who are for war and that’s the beginning right is that you have to get organized and you know and and so it’s it’s like the the people it’s and and actually a similar quote by um by Mother Teresa she said if you have an anti-war rally don’t invite me but the moment you have a peace rally I I’ll be the first to attend and so the idea is for all of these things right because people believe very strongly in cannabis as medicine the idea is to hold a positive vision and to be able to you know take the the necessary risks just like my old man you know his risk quotient was huge because he wanted of course his motivation was a little bit different but but there was an inkling at the beginning where he was like I you know I’m going to do this because this is cool and this is this is you know I’m I’m you know and the US government is a little hypocritical on this issue and you know and so I think we can still have that uh spirit of you know I’m going to within bounds take some risks and uh and you know and I’m gonna have the best Supply personally in my backyard or you know I’ll have my friends and I are going to smoke the best pot and and then and then it slowly just kind of catches on it’s just catching there is a Berkeley student um I Heard a podcast recently of a Berkeley student she was um known in the music scene here in Boston she was um known as like the the Brownie Girl she’d perform at these and then she’d show up at these shows and she would sell these brownies and then after after um after she graduated from Berkeley she opened a company and it’s doing pretty well it’s it’s like an artisan company that you know that sells sells uh Edibles interesting so I think that’s the route to go the route to go is just you know within our sphere of influence you know to just to keep uh putting the word out and doing the good work and uh um and you know people people catch on right and to your point and it’s a point I’ve tried to make uh to some of these big companies that have even been on this show uh where it’s like I I hope they exercise their their influence to encourage a future like that because it actually increases their talent pool yes they you as you just said a student took their entrepreneurship to the next level yes and it’s like this could be your asset this could be your talent pool you know right but by not supporting these measures that we’re discussing You could argue you’re not you’re you’re you’re potentially decreasing the size of your talent pool so yeah yeah that’s right I I mean I hope I make a good Mark for some of your you know some of the big companies out there that they’re like okay this guy could tell this story tell it in a meaningful way tell it in a way that could could Garner an audience and maybe we could take credit and raise up this story bring the story out and tell the story and you know and it becomes part of this narrative you know it’s sort of like the history of a plant yeah yeah I love that idea and I’ve been telling that’s what I tell the companies uh is that as soon as they Embrace a story like the one you’ve been telling and the the Heritage you talked about that’s the moment that I become their number one supporter and I’m like check out this brand this is this is great I stink because they support the ideas that that the culture was founded on yeah yeah exactly because I I think there’s right I think you know with with marijuana with cannabis you know you you always want to connect it to sort of the the yeah there’s like there’s like a whole prehistory and you want to connect it to the music and the counterculture and the that’s part of this beautiful tapestry and you know as now as the accountants and lawyers start to come in because they think they can make money we don’t want to let stamp on that story the story is the story and the story you know and so going forward the way you honor that tradition is by kind of weaving it into your your your practices yeah yeah and I was just pulling up a a picture um one of the jokes I make sometimes and I think it’s just good to have a picture to to really just round out our point on this do you think it like these old protests where the hippies are together they’re like let’s legalize marijuana but let’s make it so that there’s a possession limit because you know and if anybody exceeds that they do they should still get in trouble and if you grow it you know that might be an issue too you should only be able to get it at a store I don’t even think they were talking about stores here like maybe they were yeah right no I don’t think so I think you’re right but I I don’t think I think they were just like hey I can get pot just fine I just don’t want to worry about going to jail on my way back class or whatever you know yeah exactly yeah so yeah you mentioned Bradford there is a funny story that he tells about a group in California called the Brotherhood of eternal love and their idea was that um if we could get the whole world my mother actually shares this philosophy like for global warming and other issues that are pressing in on us that are the existential issues if the whole world went on a simultaneous asset trip right our leader we could probably get to a much better place a lot quicker it’s like my brother is friends with Bill Bill Burr out in California the the famous comedian hell yeah and Bill Burr you know apparently he went on an acid trip one night and he came off the acid trip and he he quit drinking cold turkey I listen to his podcast every week oh okay okay got it it was mushrooms say same same difference some kind of a you know like a psychedelic that would take us to a place where we could sort of see the future of the species and the fut of the planet if we continue our on our course present course and I mean the tragedy for this group and this speaks to the people who are in it for the money is that you know because it’s America Cole what they did was they formed a church and um and then they started they said we’re going to fund this Enterprise by selling weed well here’s the problem they were in California they became very successful at selling weed sort of like my old man my old man owed Millions to the to the IRS when he died and you know these were people who suddenly got a taste for money and they you know then and so some of them stayed true to their Roots within this group but many of them kind of peeled off and they became like old school like they got into Coke and other things and uh but there was this kind of beautiful generation that that just continued on that path and all they wanted to do was fund this worldwide asset trip that would bring the world to a better place yeah we need something like that we’re as a species we’re in we’re in so much trouble like it could not hurt us as a species right well I think that that idea coupled with uh another one of Bill Burr’s ideas which is like we need somebody uh that has to live with their decisions is what he says like look I whatever I’m not trying to be aist because I hate it when people are aist against me I get the opposite into that Spectrum right people are like you’re too young or whatever um but uh so I’m not trying to be aist but I do like his point there where it’s like you got to live with your decisions you know like you’re like Obama for example like hopefully he gets to live you know like a very long life but as a result of being elected so young he has to live with his decisions right that’s right that’s exactly right um yeah but anyways I like the the spirit of that joke but back to your real Point um I’ve heard people talk about like it should almost be a requirement for every leader that has the capabilities of a military under their belt that you have to undergo like regular psychedelic trips to like keep your ego into check and to you type I don’t know exactly how to describe it it’s so hard to describe it unless you’ve been through the experience and it sounds like you have because you you yeah we’re going back and forth in this so yeah yeah yeah that’s right yeah absolutely I think so and and uh um you know know yeah no I I I think that’s it I think we that’s where we’re at right well that’s a great note to end on everybody uh you know safely and responsibly uh take you know take time to yourself I was about to say take psychedelic drugs but take time to yourself and if that includes psychedelic drugs then against do it responsibly and whatever but just take care of yourselves folks and uh Joseph I had such a good time speaking with you today thank you for your time um please keep in touch likewise so um fure folks I hope you found as much value in this conversation as I did uh and Joseph I look forward to the next time that we connect yeah we will we’ll do it soon Cole absolutely right good chat