Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 163 - Sam Anderson

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Sam Anderson, Producer of 'Crooked City: The Emerald Triangle Podcast' shares tales of weed, murder and good Jersey eats.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's also a show. Hey! Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I am Tom Papa. Thank you for spending some time with us. I hope you're enjoying your summer. I hope you're eating a lot of good things.

I hope that you've decided that it's no longer a battle that's going to be won. that you are going to look exactly as you look in that bathing suit, and there's no changing it. So, yes, give me a hot dog with some sauerkraut and some mustard. Yes, give me another burger. Yes, give me some pie. Just let me enjoy my life. And I'll go run on the beach or do pickleball and tell myself I'm working out. But just I hope you're enjoying yourself and having a good time and keeping safe out there.

We've got a great show for you today. We have Sam Anderson on the program. Sam Anderson. He has an amazing podcast called Crooked City Emerald Triangle. It's the second installment of Crooked City, and Emerald Triangle is his amazing, amazing story when he went up to weed country in Northern California investigating a murder on a pot farm

that came to his attention because one of the people involved he actually went to high school with. He had this interest in those farms and what was going on up there. He's got a great journalistic mind, Sam, and I know because he is my nephew. And he's super smart, super smart, super curious, great writer. And he had this great idea and started investigating. what that culture is. This was right before it was all legal. And then the story breaks that his,

someone that he went to school with was involved in a murder up at one of these pot farms where a bunch of the workers were accused of killing the guy running the farm. And it just went off from there. And I watched him as he put together this story for I guess three years, maybe four years, and he was just diligent and he just was fearless

and got these amazing interviews and put it into this great podcast, Emerald City and Emerald Triangle, sorry, Emerald Triangle, Crooked City Emerald Triangle. And it's great. It's really a good listen, and he's going to be cranking out a lot more stuff. He's already working on other ideas.

and I was very excited that he was coming through town with my daughter's graduation and was able to get him on the podcast because I really, really want to give him as much a chance to spread the word about this podcast. It is legit. You were going to like it. And after this conversation, if your interest isn't peaked, then you probably fell asleep. Or you were at the dog park listening to this and kept hitting fast forward. and maybe you dropped it in a puddle.

It's too good. It's really good. I hope you enjoy it. Today's podcast is brought to you by tompapa.com. Oh, what do you get there? You get my book. We're all in this together, so make some room. Thank you all for buying it.

Thank you all for purchasing it on an audiobook or Amazon. Make sure you go back and review it and leave stars, as many stars as they'll let you. That would be my advice. It helps spread the word. It helps feed the algorithm and keep the momentum going for the book. Also at tompapa.com, all of my tour dates. Next week, yeah, I think, well, but then this comes out the 16th, July 16th. I will be in Delaware doing an amazing show at the Bavilion Arts Center.

And it's an outdoor venue. It's a beautiful spot. It's going to be a great time. Then we're also going up to New Hampshire this summer. We're going to Anaheim. We're going out to West Hampton. We're going up to Montreal Comedy Festival. And we've got a lot of fun stuff.

And then the fall tour is packed. N.J. Pack. Huge show at N.J. Pack on October 21st. It's the biggest venue I've ever played in my home state. Very excited for that one. Also, we've got St. Louis. We've got... Yeah, where else?

We're going to Charleston, South Carolina. We're going to Nashville. We're going to Vegas. So many spots. A ton of spots. Now, I wonder, can I talk about this yet? I don't think so. I may or may not have a show at the wind coming up in Las Vegas.

I don't know. So keep it quiet. Unless you can buy tickets and you go on the website, then you can tell everybody. But I'll be announcing that officially shortly. But right now, enjoy my conversation with Sam Anderson. Do you wear headphones or not? We don't wear headphones because they don't make them small enough for the dinosaur.

I see. Are you scared that the dinosaur is biting your face? Not yet. Is it biting my face? It literally is biting your face. Thanks for being here, Sammy. Thanks, Tom. This is very exciting. I didn't know whether or not to even give you bread.

because every guest gets bread, but your family. And I've had a lot of your bread. You've had a lot of my bread, and you're going to get bread tonight, and you're going to leave tomorrow and leave with more bread. Yeah, you have a loaf for us to take on the road? I do. Oh, that's amazing. But this is, I brought you this bread.

Oh, what do we have here? You're going to be very excited. This is a jalapeno and cheddar. Oh. Right? Nice. Come on now. That is a nice loaf.

Yeah. You've really, you know, it's gotten better and better, I've got to say. Yeah. Over the years, this is a good looking, yeah, I appreciate that. I have another love at home so you can actually just take this with you on your trip, but that one's already cut. And I went for my physical yesterday. And he's like, you could lose a little weight.

And your blood pressure is borderline. Dial it in. and you won't have to go on any meds, you're good. I was like, all right, cool. And then I came home and baked this two giant loaves of jalapeno and cheddar. And just start, wah, la, la, la, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I don't care, I'll take the meds. Do you ever get tired of eating it?

No. Getting tired of bread is like getting tired of sun. Or water. Yeah, it's like there's no getting it. When I, in the morning before my radio show, and I'm like, I just got it. something with the coffee. I don't need a giant breakfast,

but one little piece of toast with butter of homemade bread. It's kind of all you need. I'm good. I really don't have to eat until, I tell myself I don't have to eat until dinner, and then I'm so hungry by dinner, and then I start making martinis and stuffing everything in my face that I possibly can.

I remember when I was in, like, middle school, we had to read an autobiography of Ben Franklin, and he talks about going to Philadelphia as, like, a young boy, He's like a kid, alone in this city. Like eight years old. And all he had with him was just like, literally nothing. I don't think he brought anything with him. And he was like, well, I decided to go in search of a bakery because I've made many a meal out of a loaf of bread.

Yes. And he goes and he finds himself a loaf of bread. And so if it's good enough for Ben Franklin, good enough for us. That literally is the best. When I was in Paris, my first time ever in Paris. and my sister, your mother, told me that she would just get like a little thing of cheese in the baguette and that was it because she had no money when she was traveling as a kid. Yeah.

And I was like, oh, that sounds so good. But then I would, I have money, so I would go to big restaurants and then eat a baguette with cheese on my way to the restaurant. You know, it's funny. And that's why my blood pressure is almost a little bit. It's funny because in New Jersey, where we're from, you sit down at the restaurant, And they always give you a basket of bread. Yeah. Almost doesn't even have to be an Italian restaurant.

Mostly Italian, but almost anywhere you go, you would get a little bit of bread. Yeah. And when I moved to California, I noticed that that's just not really a thing. It's not really a thing. And they ask, would you like bread? Because they get yelled at by people who just bring bread because there's a lot of people trying to be skinny or gluten or whatever. They're insulted. You would even think they would eat bread.

Exactly. Wow. The other side of it, one of my favorite. Italian restaurants in this area. I won't mention because I'm going to slam them for a second. Because of pandemic times and inflationary times, they do this thing on the menu where they'll charge you for the bread, $1.50 per person.

That's unacceptable. I would rather you just bury the... Just add a dollar to everything. I'm going to order. And don't tell me that's what's up. Just call it a pandemic service charge. Yes. Don't tell me I'm...

There's something so low rent about it. It's very upsetting. It's very upsetting. You're supposed to welcome them as family and hey, and some olive oil. Dollar 50 per person. And it's not cheap. It's not... How is the bread, though?

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. It is pretty good. It's not like this. Yeah. But you know, this doesn't belong in an Italian restaurant. No. belongs in your face.

Well, Sam, the reason that we're have you here, I'll do a proper intro when you're not here, so it was not to embarrass you. First of all is your podcast, which was your passion project that you put together. For years, you were talking about it. And Crooked City, Emerald Triangle, which is an amazing.

and we're going to talk about. But then also, good for us here at Breaking Bread, you also now have a new project where you, do we call it a blog? I'm calling it a blog. I'm calling it a blog. It's more of a newsletter. It's more of a newsletter. And the name of that is...

Jersey Boy Eats. Jersey Boy Eats, where we've got a kid from Jersey in California looking for all of his favorite things from New Jersey. the versions of it out here and he you tell people how shitty it is or how great it or sometimes it's great but I am sort of perpetually disappointed right what California calls a bagel or a slice of pizza right it's now you're living in Oakland Oakland that's right is it predominantly foods from up there yeah mostly but now that I'm here in LA I do playing to go review.

I think we're going to do Western bagel or one of the other famous bagel spots. Bell's Bagels? There's a lot of spots in L.A. that I've been tipped off to go check out. Yeah, they're good. I think what it is about is less that it's not that you can't find good bagels. It's not that you can't find good pizza. It's just that the whole like affair of going to get a bagel in California is so upsetting for so many reasons.

What do you mean? It's so usually if it's any good, it'll be super overpriced. There will be a line out the door. You walk in and the place is always going to look like a Hollywood movie set. It's just too nice. You know what I mean? It's just too fancy, too much like they're trying to be for Instagram influencers or.

It's a little too much on it. Yeah. Where in New Jersey, when every town has 200 bagel shops, it's just about making a kick-ass bagel. Yeah. Like the bagel place down in Long Beach Island. Bageletties. Legendary place. They have a line.

You got to get up early and go. But it is definitely not there to impress. Yeah. And the line moves. and it's just a bunch of jersey mooks who know what their orders are and they're just getting it and you know what I mean?

Like there's no one... It moves quick. It moves quick and there's nobody on that line that is there to be seen. They're there to be fed. Although you know what's funny? I have become one of those assholes taking pictures of all of my food now.

Like my partner gets so annoyed. I'm like, yeah, because every time I've got like, okay, we need to take a photo of this, we need to document this. And so I have literally become my own worst enemy. What is your opinion on the word foodie?

Foodie. Well, I don't consider myself a foodie. I'm dating a foodie. You're dating a foodie. Yeah, I think a foodie is someone who is always looking for that next new thing, that cool, new, fresh idea in food, right? The hip new restaurant or recipe or whatever it might be. I'm personally, like my favorite food is just simple, homemade, no frills,

classic more old-fashioned. I mean, what I love about the pizza and bagel places where we're from is that you can kind of wander into damn near any place and get a decent slice or a decent bagel or like a great meal at a diner. Whereas, you know, in L.A., if you want to go to the diner, it'll be like Hollywood's version of the diner. It'll be like all 50s themed and the menu is just like everything costs like 25 bucks. And it's just not the same.

you feel like you're playing a part rather than experiencing, you know, the diner is a working man's place. I think bagels, pizza, these are foods for the working class. They're supposed to be cheap and fast and easy and they're not supposed to be fancy. And I think what my newsletter is trying to do is just sort of make fun of how ridiculous. I mean, some of these places have gotten. I think California is a place that, you know, we both moved here from the East Coast. right for reasons it's an amazing place right there's so many things to love about

California yeah and the food is one of them the food out here is excellent um but California has this thing where they they are so aware of how great they are that they can't ever seem to stop talking about it and it's just really fucking annoying do you know what I'm saying yeah yeah it's like someone who knows they're hot it's like we get it we get that the weather is perfect we get that you can go surfing and and snowboarding in the same day. Like, come on. Like, yeah, maybe in New Jersey, we're all, like, kind of shivering in the cold and next to the freeway.

But we got pretty good pickles. And that's something I like to highlight. The diner thing really baffles me. That there's, and it's not just California. There's, like, there's a large swaths of the country that don't have just multiple diners within a couple towns. And they're always family run. You need a lot of Greeks. I think that's part of the problem.

The Greeks aren't in mass in a lot of different places. But yeah, like you just roll in, like the ridge in Park Ridge, New Jersey. Place has been there. I was going there when I was a kid and still there. And they're kind of cranky. And they're not doing anything other than making you food. And there's no airs about it. It's consistent, though.

You just go and you know what you're getting. Yeah. You're getting that omelet that you always get. You're getting that burger that you always get. And it's just solid. And the menus are a mile long. I love those long menus. You know, I never order any of the...

The extra... Yeah, like they've always got Italian food. They'll even have, like, Chinese food on there sometimes. Pot, yeah, with gravy, yeah, all types of... I always just get a grilled cheese with bacon and tomato. Yeah, entire pages that you flip through and never order from. Yeah, the diner is such a special place in our culture. I mean, I think especially, and yeah, because we are in L.A.,

I think it's worth pointing out, like, how many scenes from a movie have you watched transpire in a diner? Like, everyone's always getting, everyone's always, like, getting together to have very important conversation, whether they're, like, going to break up with their girlfriend or, you know, they're planning a murder about to kill a guy, and they're, but they're always hatching it out at the diner, you know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah, Pulpiction.

Yeah. there's, it is, those places are born out of those, that family needed to do something to make money and they cranked it out and they had a gregarious matriarch or patriarch in the family and they just put it up and they're just cranking it out and everyone else we're getting jobs and we're just hauling food. Yeah. Here, we're going to make a diner.

It's going to be, right? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just born out. of, you know, food, people making food was just people. It's kind of like, it's very similar to the way that families made food. There was a thing about going through, someone, I think it was a well-known food writer, wanted all the old recipes of their, of their mother and grandparents, and they got them.

And they thought it was going to be like this treasure trove of ingredients and It was like soup mix and mayonnaise. It was, right? It was like... Super simple. Yeah, salami and white bread. It was just... These people weren't trying to impress with their meals.

They were just trying to feed their family three times a day. In a time when you never went out to eat, you never ordered in postmates. Yeah. You just cranked... You had to feed your four kids and every day. It was not about impressing. It was just about making. Totally.

Yeah, my partner Rex had a really good take, actually, about the diner thing or just the food in general. It's like if you want to find good food in a city, you should get something made by the people who were oppressed in that city. Like the working class, who built that city? Who were the immigrants that built that city? So in New York, it was Italians. Right. And it was Jews. Right.

And it was Polish people. And, you know, it was a lot of European immigrants. In California, we don't have that, right? But we have, there are Mexicans. Right. And there's Vietnamese and Filipino and Thai and Japanese. So those are the foods that taste better in California that you can have those. And it's not just about the food that tastes better.

It's just that authentic, humble experience that I think we're both interested in. That is cool. Yeah. That is very interesting. All right. So the name of that. blog again jersey boy eats jersey boy eats and i sent you a thing because i really think you should do it yeah that jersey boy eats needs an instagram page that just says we're talking about this bagel a couple

lines and then drives people to the thing yeah i think it's i haven't quite figured for food i haven't quite figured it out how to how to do it yet it's also like uh very much a passion project like i'm not trying to make any money from it it's it was kind of an outlet to just start writing again. It was I been doing podcasts and radio for so long now that I had kind of lost track of just being a writer and that has been really nice to just write once a week and yeah and actually get some thoughts out. That is really good, is very noble as a writer I think that is great. As your uncle, I'm going to monetize it. Jersey Boy Eats, Instagram page. starts driving.

Jersey Boy eats book. Mm-hmm. And, right? I mean, it's a home run. I would love to do a cookbook one day. I think that would be really fun. Yeah. But being on tours also.

YouTube channel. There you go. I was thinking about starting a TikTok. I really like TikTok. I don't know if you have been. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, all of a bar stool was built out of a guy eating pizza on the street. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. I mean, and the other, who's the other guy on, Instagram who the Italian he's always eating sandwiches cuisine

cuisine he's great he's great from Staten Island a couple things just the most regular guy

you're always saying something about your sister yeah yeah yeah all this stuff is built for it but Jersey boy eats is definitely a good one but the main reason that we had you here that was kind of a side project

is your podcast explain to our listeners what the podcast is and how it came why it became why it came across your radar yeah well um i had been living in in Brooklyn uh in 2014 15 16 and I had heard about this thing that was happening in northern California where people would go out and trim weed yeah and a couple of folks I knew because I've always been sort of part of like alternative scenes, like DIY scenes, people who don't really want to work nine to five, so they're always like scrapping around, looking for weird jobs.

And so a bunch of my friends had gone out and done this weed trimming thing. And they came back with a lot of money, like big stacks of cash and all these crazy stories about like hanging out with outlaws on weed farms in Northern California, like being in the middle of the woods. What was a lot of money? What would they come back? They would go just like for the season. Go for like a season and come back with like 30, 40, 40.

grand. Wow. Which if you're like in your early 20s and you're just not a, don't have a college degree, that's a lot of money. It's your whole year. Yeah. And that's what they would do. They would get 30 grand and then they would go to Thailand or like Vietnam and

stretch that for like nine months and then go do it again. Right. There were a couple other like gigs that people would, you know, some folks would go work as a river rafting guide or, you know. Aspen. Yeah, work at the ski mountain, which is what I did after. my first season trimming weed. But then they would all come back in the fall during the harvest.

It was like this harvest time. Except instead of harvesting vegetables, they were harvesting cannabis. And, you know, cannabis is a plant that generally needs to be harvested by hand. They haven't really figured out a good way to mechanize it. And they have now somewhat, but it's still preferably harvested and processed by hand. So I found out about this world. And it was all of this was completely underground. This is pre-legalization.

Right. Right. There's medical marijuana in California, but this is way before any of the states have, like, recreationally legalized pot. So these are outlaws in the sense that they're like, they're breaking the law, right? Yeah, that's what you're signing up for. That's what you're signing up for. And so in that world, you know, I started hearing all these, like, crazy stories just,

like, hanging out with people with, you know, who have guns everywhere and knives, and there's, like, a pack of dogs running rogue around the property. and like, you know, somebody comes up the road, like, and everybody freaks out and gets paranoid because they think they're about to get robbed.

And then people do get robbed. People do get killed. Oh, they're not even looking out for the cops. They're looking out for other people who just know you have a farm and are coming for the weed in the cash. I think for a really long time,

they were looking out for, they were, I mean, they've always been looking out for the cops. Yeah. And there were times when the cops were more engaged in, in prosecuting the pod farmers than other.

times, you know, the 80s, war on drugs, it was a really scary time to be a pot farmer. You had the feds swooping in with helicopters, you know, entire families have been torn apart by the war on drugs and camp is what it was called, the campaign against marijuana, I think, is something, marijuana production. Marijuana people. Yeah, who knows? It is crazy when you think of where we're at now, I know we're jumping, but to think about where we are in a culture with weed now.

Oh my gosh. At that time, like. It's so different now. The fear and the warlike. Yeah, I mean, well, when I was 17, I got arrested for smoking weed in a car. And, yeah, I felt like a real criminal. In Jersey. Yeah, they put us in handcuffs and dragged us into the police station.

And they locked me to a bench. And I remember one of the cops was like, you got a little brother, right? Like, I think he had known us from the baseball team because we were a small town, right? It's like, your little brother, Henry, he must be really disappointed in you. right now, huh? Just making me feel like I really fucked up big time. I was just like smoking pot like a teenager. But that was Jersey.

That was Jersey, right. So this idea that there were people out there living off the grid, growing tons of weed, smoking tons of weed, making tons of cash in their own little world that they had created. It was just mystifying to me. It was just like a narnia for someone like, you know, an alternative person that this could even exist at all. Right.

So I had become really fascinated with this world. And then in the summer of 2017, was when I first found out that this kid from my hometown was involved in an insane crime out there in weed world. Did you know that he was in, that he had been going out and trimming and doing any of this before him? No, I think. And how many steps away from your friend group was he? Yeah, so he was one grade below me, maybe one or two grades below me. Okay. So we went to high school together.

We were on a couple sports teams together. Right. But we weren't like friends. Right. You know, but I knew him. Right. And, you know, one of my closest friends, their little brother is best friends with Zach, the guy in my story. So there were all these connections.

Yeah. Yeah, so I had no idea what this guy was up to. I wasn't keeping tabs on him, you know. But one day I had come home. And I was just spending some time in my hometown. And somebody was like, hey, did you hear this story about Zach? Yeah, like, he's a murderer. He killed someone.

And I was like, what? Like, that guy? No way. And there were all these rumors swirling around. Right. And the rumors were insane. They were like, yeah, he like, chopped someone's head off with an axe, blah, blah, blah. Oh, man.

There was all of these, and they started looking into it. There were all these crazy social media posts of these articles, with his face, and then all these insane comments being like, this guy, like, and I just kept thinking, like, ah. something about this feels weird. I don't see him as a murderer. But I also started doing a little research and found out that there were seven people involved

in this crime. Seven folks were at some point arrested for this. And so there was clearly like a lot more to the story. Right. And then I started talking to Zach's friends. And they were like, oh yeah, he didn't do it. Like this guy's innocent. Now at this point, you're...

It's kind of interesting because you are, you're not thinking about a story. You're just, there is a journalist in your head that's just curious. The journalist in my head has always thought like, it would be great to do a story about weed world. Uh-huh. And then. Before this? Mm-hmm. Oh, really?

And then when I found out about Zach, I was like, wow, this is the perfect opportunity to investigate this place and what goes on here. And, you know, there was a couple other sort of contextual elements to it. I was working at WNYC at the time, and I was very on and off at WNYC as were a lot of producers. I wonder if that's still the case or not, but I suspect it is. And so I had been working on this really grueling midterm elections show, just doing coverage of the midterms. The Brett Kavanaugh hearings were happening at that time. It was kind of just a harsh time in American politics. It's only gotten harsher, so it's like hard to think about.

But I remember just doing this daily national. like political news coverage. And it just was such a grind, you know. It was really... Everything that everybody else is allowed to turn off for a minute. Yeah, you're not allowed. You're really living it. You know, you got like Donald Trump's voice in your headphones all day and like cutting tape.

And yeah, so it was a rough gig. And then the midterms happened. And they were like, all right, see you later. And they cut me loose. I had no job. Right. And so I was like, well, shit, what am I going to do? So I was like, I think I'm a...

to focus on this story. And, you know, I think a lot of journalists want to make long-form stories. I mean, that's kind of like a big goal for myself and a lot of people in my community, like do these sort of big in-depth projects where you can really kind of immerse yourself in a place and experience it. And so that's what I wanted to do. Right. It took a long time to figure out how to do that.

Yeah. But that was the initial impetus. Got it. So, you know, you. You decide, okay, I'm going to go do this. And the thing from the outside watching you, because from the time you hear this story, it's 2017, to the time that Emerald Triangle drops as a podcast,

it's like a year ago. Yeah, it was November 2022. 2022. Yeah. So that's a lot. Like I'm always impressed when people grab onto something and, like, like a film idea, like when you hear people say, it took me 10 years to make this movie.

It shows that there's really something there and that they're really passionate about it because we all have ideas and then after six months you're like, ah, I'm moving on. You know what I mean? Like that kind of a thing. But you were like a dog on a bone and you stayed on this for a long, long time.

And you were going to strange places and you were talking to crazy people and all of that kind of thing. it definitely became something that you were going to see to the end. When you first, what was your first step? Was it getting in touch with Zach or was it coming out to California to start talking to people? I think the first step was talking to Zach's friends. Back home.

And hearing what they had heard. And hearing what they had heard and just getting the story, that initial story. They knew a lot more than I did because they had talked to him. They had talked to him the day before he turned himself in. So I got it from them. And then that fall, I had decided to go trim, try to trim some weed myself. I kind of figured, like, the best way to do this story would be to work on a pot farm. And so it was the fall of 2017 that I decided to go out to California.

And my dad knew a pot farmer kind of randomly. It was so weird because me and my girlfriend at the time, we were like, We want to go, like, go trim weed. And I guess my parents had, like, got wind of this plan of ours. And it was kind of funny. Instead of being like, oh, that's such a terrible idea, they were like, oh, my dad was like, actually, I know a pot farm. We just go work for him.

Right. We're like, oh, all right. That sounds convenient. So that's what we did. We drove all the way across the country and went up to Trinity County and started working at this weed farm. And how quickly did you realize, like the Jersey kid and me, here's pot farm, going to trim some weed. I'm picturing

Nirvana. I'm picturing weed everywhere, probably beautiful hippie girls around. It's just going to be heaven. Yeah. Was it? It was a mix. Yes and no. I mean, it

was beautiful. I mean, it still is beautiful. You were in this very natural place surrounded by the forest. There's a big creek on that property we used to swim in. You know, we all, there was like 10 of us living together. And we all were living in this yurt that was like me.

You know, it had like, I think like maybe six beds kind of like up against the wall. So it was like a big sleepover every single night. Right. And it was fun, you know, it was a lot of fun. We smoked a lot of wheat. We went on a lot of hikes. But it was also like really hard work. That's the other aspect of it.

Right. What's the work day like? So you wake up in the morning and because it's a weed farm, it's not the earliest shift. 10 o'clock start. Yeah, we started like 10 or 11, and then, you know, the farmer would walk in and start cooking a veggie dog and taking a bong rip. And we're like, are working today? Yeah, we're working. And around 12 o'clock, we would like get up.

We'd all pile them in this big pickup truck. And this would have been right around September, I would say. So September, like, we have to harvest the plants. They're in the ground. They've been growing all summer. And so we got to go harvest them. So we would drive up this mountain. So his house was at the bottom of this valley.

And then on the top of the mountain was this weed farm, all of these gardens. Right. And the first time I saw that, it blew my mind. I mean, I had never, I'd only seen that in a movie, you know, big tall pot plants. And yeah, and it felt like, I was like, wow, this is some real shit that I'm in right now. I mean, it's kind of funny. Like acres of it? No, they were smaller gardens.

Yeah, like patches. But you just see it and it's just like so, like that pot plant with the five pointed leaf, such an iconic thing. I don't know. It just makes you feel a certain type of way. But we would go up there and we'd have these little scissors and we would clip the buds from the plan and we'd stack them neatly in a bin and then we'd go from bed to bed and you had to keep all the strains in one bin

to keep them all together. Right. And we'd do that all day until it got way too hot. Uh-huh. And then around, like, as the sun was starting to go down, we would all go down as fast as we could and, like, jump in the creek while we were still hot. Right. And then.

So you're not. muddy, dirty. Well, I wasn't because I was there for the harvest. The harvest, I think most people will tell you is like some of the most enjoyable labor involved in farming weed. It's not the hard stuff. So you're getting the big stalks of it and you've got to take all of the leaf off of it, get it down to buds.

So the first thing you do is you dry it. So we would hang them all up to dry in this big shipping container. Right. They got to dry for like two weeks. And then he had a bunch of weed that had already been drying. Right. So after that, after we got it all down, all harvest, it, then it was time to trim it.

And the trimming is one of the harder jobs. Right. That's where you're using these tiny little scissors called chickamassas that are made for pruning bonsai trees. Oh, yeah. And you've got this little bud in your hand and you go and you just give it a little haircut. Right. And just make it look nice, you know.

So it looks like a bud that you would buy at the dispensary. Right. Because it doesn't come off the plant that way. Well, Sam, I don't want to, just to even the playing field here. I had a house off campus, and we had a closet that wasn't being used. And we grew about eight to ten plants in there. Nice. And we didn't have those fancy scissors that you guys had.

We pretty much just got drunk and then tried to smoke it prematurely. I don't think we dried it. I don't think we dried it. We were just impatient. Yeah, yeah. No money. That's great. And we got some of them.

that were really great, but the connection to it of growing it and making it, you know, this thing that you were always trying to find underground in New Jersey and during those times, like it was a, it was a very wholesome, very natural, how could this be illegal substance? Yeah, exactly. Right? Mm-hmm. And I remember, like, buying weed in New Jersey as a teenager, you would get you like, it was shady. You would, like, go up to, like, this car and you'd get this little baggy,

and you'd jump in next to this guy, and you'd give it to you, and you'd pay him 20 bucks, and you'd be constantly looking over your shoulder for the police. And, like, people did get arrested all the time. Small towns, like, on the East Coast, it was, and you would get this little bag, and it'd be, like, less than a gram. They'd always skimp a little bit off the top. It was terrible quality. Yeah.

And we would all smoke it together with all of our friends. But if you didn't throw $5 on the bag, you weren't allowed to smoke that blind. because we were broke. Yeah, of course. So it's just so funny now to come out to California and you just see it in such quantities. So, but as you're, what about the, leading up to the story of where this podcast takes us?

Was there, as natural and as cool as the farming and the connection to this herb is? Was there a danger vibe to it? Because at the time it is, illegal. Yeah. I mean, you worked for good people. But is there a undercurrent of this could be a dangerous place or is it not that really?

I think it's both. So like you said, I was working for good people who I trusted and I had a nice, dry, warm place to sleep at night and I knew I was going to get paid at the end of the day. That is not the situation for a lot of pot trimmers. A lot of pot trimmers go out to, the Emerald Triangle, which is Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity County. And they, this is during the Green Rush during the 2010s. You know, they would just go look for jobs at the grocery store.

They would stand at the gas station with a sign or holding a pair of scissors, just looking for trim work. That's how it was, you know? It was like the guys you see hanging out at Home Depot, like waiting to get picked up. Right, right. But they're white hippie kids. But they're white hippie kids, exactly. And they're also international kids.

A lot of people from Colombia and France and Germany. Germany and, you know, Argentina, like, a lot of just like traveler types. Right. Backpackers. Yeah. And so for these kids, I mean, they're just going out there not knowing who they're going to work for. And so you can get picked up by damn near anyone.

And so talking, that first time I was trimming, I had all these conversations. I was asking all these questions because I was so curious to learn what this place was about. And I just like the range of experiences that I heard about was really mind-blowing. Like everything from, oh, like, living in a beautiful house. house with somebody to cook you meals every single day and getting paid, like, perfectly on time, to, like, slumming it in, like, a wet, soggy tent and having to, like, work 12 or 13 hours a day. And then at the end of the season, you do that for three weeks, and then the guy kicks you off

the farm and you don't get paid. Ooh. And then you're, like, Shanghai in Northern California with no money, no car, just to close on your back. She is. And things can get really desperate really quickly. Wow. And that is definitely super scary. And the folks that I talked to had experienced some scary things, you know?

Right. They had experienced threatening situations with crazy individuals. You know, there's a lot of drug use that goes on in those places. Yeah. People on a lot of, like, meth and psychedelics and, and it's also just because it was illegal, you know, it attracted folks. Some of the folks who wanted to become pot farmers were just criminals, you know, folks who had made made their living off of committing crimes, whether those were violent crimes

or just what I would consider victimless crimes of buying and selling drugs. Right. But you just never know who you're going to come across out there. And I had a couple threatening encounters. You know, I was doing an interview at a bar in that town. That town, I was working in a town called Weaverville. And there was this drunk guy at the bar

who was like chatting us up and then at a certain point kind of got sketched out by the fact that had its tape recorder. This is when you're doing the story. Yeah, I started interviewing some of the folks I had met while I was. Okay, hold on a sec. Just for context. Sorry to interrupt.

But our listeners don't know what the crime was. It was murder. And it was the head of the pot farm. Yeah. Was murdered. By his workers. By his workers. Yeah.

One of which is the kid that you grew up with. Yeah. So I'm going to let that linger because it is pretty cool. You feel it, Tucker? Yeah. That is, so now this is like a, this is like, it could not get any, of all the underbelly that we're talking about, it could not get any nastier than that someone is actually murdered

and all of these kids that were there are now suspects. And a lot of those kids who were suspects were people doing this very same thing that me and my friends were doing that summer. Right. So the question was, what the fuck happened on this pot farm for this to transpire? Like, something had to go horribly wrong. Yeah. Or many things had to go horribly wrong.

Because we heard a lot of stories. It's really common for tremors to get ripped off and sent home without any pay. Shanghai. It's also really common for growers to get robbed, usually not by their workers, but usually by other folks who find out the location of their pot farm. Right. And come up there with guns and steal their... entire harvest. Or maybe you're doing a deal and you're selling your weed to somebody and you bring

50 pounds of weed, which is you're hoping to get $100,000 for it and they just point a gun at you and take it all, right? And then that's your whole, that's your whole income for an entire year. So we heard about these stories. All these stories, by the way, perfect beginning in a diner. Yeah, and we, yeah, exactly. And I think one of the things that I wanted to figure, out was like how how how common is I was still trying to figure out how common is this you know to have the bad experience versus a good one um because like you said I thought it was nirvana going out there yeah but you know quickly it became a mixed bag and then I think figuring out what happened at this part farm because even though there is a lot of crime that occurs there's not like a lot of murder like murder

is still pretty rare yeah like and this one was particularly bad I mean this guy was stabbed in the neck stabbed multiple times. So it was up close, personal, and pretty vicious. Stabbing is a different level. It's not like shooting a guy and walking away. There's something else going on there. Yeah. So now you're poking around in this bar asking stories with your tape recorder,

and this guy gets nervous. And he starts freaking out. And he's like, you're doing interviews in Trinity County? And he like chased us out of this bar. And then the guy I was was like, I'm going to go get my shotgun from the back of my car. You better get the fuck out of here, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're just yelling at each other.

And these guys are drunk, you know, so I don't think I was ever, like, fully, I don't think that this guy was going to kill me or anything. But it did, like, quickly point out to me, like, oh, yeah, like, I probably should have known better than, like, take my tape recorder in the bar. Like, I should do this. Right. Now, quick, side note on the reporting of it, that kind of thing. You're a journalist in your heart and mine.

You're curious. You're also, I don't know how you described it earlier, people that don't like nine to five jobs, a little alternative. You're not scared to travel and go into strange places and go to India and whatever. And I get very nervous when I'm going to a place in a different foreign country and it's anything below four stars. I get very nervous. If there's not a concierge I can ask, I get very skittish. I want to be that guy, but I'm not that guy. When you're in that position and the guys yelling at you in the thing,

does it roll off you or you didn't pack up and split? No, no. I was with people who I trusted, who were pot farmers and growers and workers. And I was like, okay, I'm rolling with these guys. And as long as they're not freaking out, I'm not freaking out. And I think that was the big,

that was like the big challenge reporting in Northern California, was just getting to know people, getting to know the community a little bit more and understanding how things function and like what's, you know, what you can and cannot get away with socially. Yeah, yeah. So you're, yeah, you have that journalist thing

where you don't, you know, it's like some people can be nurses. The curiosity trumps the fear. The fear of it, yeah. For sure. And I knew I was getting somewhere too because most of the folks that I talked to had never been interviewed before.

Right. And, you know, regrettably, like, I've got dozens of interviews with weed workers and growers that, you know, didn't make it into the podcast. Because the podcast narrowed its focus on the, specifically this crime. This crime, right. Right. But most of the vast majority of people I talk to, almost every one of them, had never been interviewed before. I had never really told these stories to anyone other than their own immediate community.

Yeah. And there's a sense of, like, normalcy about all of this that when you're living up there. And I started to feel it after spending a couple months there. Like certain things, I just like, you know, you see some crazy like tweaker on the side of the road with a dog and he's hitchhiking. And if I was coming straight from Jersey, I'd be like, ooh, that guy's pretty scary. Yeah. But then like three months goes by and I'm like, oh, I might pick them up. You know, like, it just kind of you normalize things.

And I think a lot of people had normalized the crime. A lot of workers had normalized the fact that it was common to not get paid. And, you know, for me, I was like, no, that's actually really insane and fucked up that there's like these pot workers who don't get paid in that. It's just taken as taken for granted, you know. So I think that was the advantage of coming in as an outsider. But it was also, you know, I'll never know what it's like to truly be in that world. I very much was an outsider and... Be in what world?

Like a grower or someone, you know, I was working at a pot farm. Yeah. But I also, like, if things really got bad, I could try to get back to Jersey and stay with my parents. You know, I had this safety net. Right. A lot of these guys did, you know. Right. They were really, some of the folks I met up there were really sort of like, this is the end of the line, you know?

They're not cut out for an office job. They don't have the money for a college degree. And, you know, maybe they're suffering from drug abuse or from mental illness or, I mean, not to say, that that's like the majority of the folks out there. A lot of people are just normal everyday folks who want to live off the grid, who want to live as homesteaders. But some of the workers were really like, this was the only thing really available to them.

So there's a real vulnerability there. On the side of the growers too, there's a vulnerability for them too because like anyone, like I said, anyone could come up. And that's what happened to Jeff Settler, you know, the guy who is the victim of this horrible crime. Right. it is intense there is that thing of i remember walking into a friend in colorado's house and he was growing the whole basement wall to wall a large basement was filled with plants and i was very nervous to spend

the next night there because it was like oh man this is you've got to be ultra paranoid oh my gosh about everything and everybody yeah the paranoia out there is next next level. God. And then you mix it with weed, which is paranoid inducing. Yes. That's got, you really. Oh my God. I mean, just to jump off onto a general thing is the legalization of marijuana. I mean, it takes all of these elements out of it. I know. There's none of that. I mean. And then people like us can just go to the store. Yeah. And just buy wheat and just buy it. And never have to worry. But the people who grew that weed probably spent most of their lives living in fear. constant constant yeah it really does break you and that's what uh is that's a that's a term called

hill crazy which is was the working title of the podcast for many years um hill crazy is like that specific form of paranoia that you get when you live out there on a weed farm for months on end yeah and you don't aren't seeing a lot of other people and you don't have a lot of access to the outside world any noise coming from the bushes could freak you out yeah you hear a truck coming up the road, you're like, who the fuck is that? Let me get my gun. Like people, and it's real too because people do get robbed. Yeah.

So, I mean. I mean, is that, would that happen at all now? Probably not. Oh, no. It's actually gotten worse in terms of crime in cannabis. Yeah, I mean, this is a whole sort of topic of conversation. But the situation now is way different from when I was up there in like 29. I did most of the bulk of my reporting happened.

in the summer of 2019. And that was right on, after legalization had happened. So legalization was 2016 in California. And it kind of coincides with the downfall of the green rush where there were, for a time, like it was a really lucrative thing to be growing pot. Yeah. From like 2000 to like late 90s to like 2014, 15, 16, right around then.

You know, the tremors were making 150 to 2. $200 a pound, you know, walking home with $30,000, $40,000 after season. But the growers were making way more than that, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. All cash, all off the books. These guys were spending money on big vacations to Hawaii, falling out on big trucks and houses. This was like a boom time. Right. Right.

And then it all dried up. And now the price of wheat has dropped to like $300 a pound. From what a pound? From over 1,000. To now under 300. Under 300. And over 1,000 was like. that's what you would sell for in California.

If you were shipping it to New York, selling it in New York City, you were making $2,000. So it was lucrative. Yeah. But now the price has completely crashed. There's a glut of weed on the market. I think a lot of the pot farmers are struggling.

A lot of them are going out of business. A lot of the same people who really sacrificed a lot to grow weed for years, you know, living in fear of the cops, doing it because they love the plant because they believe that it's, a spiritual thing, that it's medicine, that it should be available for people. A lot of those folks are kind of screwed now.

It's really sad to see, you know. I was up there not too long ago hanging out with a friend and new collaborator of mine working on a new investigation. She's a pot farmer and a journalist as well. And she's trying to get more into making podcasts because she can't make a living as a wheat farmer anymore. She's been doing it for years. So she grows the weed up there and now has a, all this product and it's like really hard to sell hard to sell it because too many folks wanted to

get into it is like a gold rush type of thing right like everyone comes in all the sudden there's too much weed the price drops um so legalization ironically kind of like killed the weed movement a lot all the growers a lot of the not all of them but a lot of the growers were against legalization because they knew this was going to happen but and if they if it would take someone being really savvy business wise to like get legit with it and still run that operation. Exactly. It's a very small portion of the people that could do that.

Right. Like to comply with legalization in California, it is the most bureaucratic red tape sort of operation you've ever seen. Yeah. It is the most regulated plant in the United States. It's most regulated everything in California. Newsom is just talking about it. We can't even get things built because the regulations of everything.

Yeah. So they had this opportunity, California, to legalize this plant and really create a small-scale, like, economies of agriculture that could really, like, bring alive these small towns. That was the cool thing about weed during this time. Yeah. A lot of these teeny, tiny rural, northern California towns suddenly had money. Right. And they could build schools, and they could, like, actually start new businesses.

And their new business would pop up to support the weed grows and, like, restaurants would open and coffee shops. And it was really, like, nice to see the revival of these small rural towns. And that didn't come to fruition because the legalization, the way that policy was crafted, it just did not favor with small farmers. It really favored big business. And they had an opportunity to limit the number of acres that of an individual farm could outbrowbrowder,

but they chose not to. So now, like, the vast majority of the weed comes from, like, massive megafarms in places like Santa Barbara. Right. I don't know if you've driven up in that area recently, but you can smell it from miles away. The scale of the cannabis farms in Santa Barbara is the next level. So they got some venture capital and some people got really into it.

The white color people got involved and investors got involved and all of these like hippie homesteaders who had been like blood sweat and tears their whole lives kind of just got cut out of it. Jeez. So amazing story. So the podcast really, dives into the solving of this crime. Yeah, we kind of stick pretty centrally to, like, that narrative of the death.

A lot of this context is, like, I tried to, like, you know, my scripts would be like 40 pages, and the editors would, like, cut, cut, we just can't do it all. Yeah, because the crime is really solving it and figuring it out. Yeah. Was this guy abusive? Was he a good guy? You know, you had an instinct with this kid, like, this is not a murder. or this is like what happened what went down yeah uh do you have a very clear picture of

I don't want to blow it for yeah but do you have a really clear what did you think of the owner going in I mean okay so the grower the grower yeah I think in the beginning it was very much like the way it was framed in all the news articles was very much like a bunch of outsiders from New Jersey and other places brutally murdering a local cannabis farmer who was like a very well-loved member of the community. He had a lot of friends, a lot of people knew him, and he was just like brutally stabbed to death by like these folks,

a lot of them had never even trimmed weed before. Right. So it was like that was kind of the tone of a lot of the reporting was like, you know, this is like a really horrible tragedy and this man did not deserve this. And, you know, I still agree with all of that. But the reality of what happened on that weed farm to cause those individuals to murder this man is way more complicated than we ever thought it would be. So I'll just say right off the bat.

This is not like a cold case. There was it wasn't like this crime was completely unsolved when I started working on it. But there was still a large degree of confusion surrounding. who actually killed Jeff and why. Right. And it was really that question of the why that we became most interested in. Yeah.

The who you can like read some articles and figure out pretty quickly. But the why, like why did they do it? Yeah. Was way more interesting to me. Yeah. Because I had known Zach personally. I didn't think he was a murderer.

Right. And I really wanted to figure out what happened. And so we do, I think we do a pretty good job of going through like what happened on this farm. Right. And to these individuals. And how did they change?

And that was something I had always been interested in, you know, how does this experience change you from being just a person looking for work to truly becoming an outlaw? What does that mean? Yeah. And so those are the questions that I was most interested in investigating. Yeah. And that's kind of where we had with it.

That's very cool. It's great. It really is a good listen. It's a And Crooked City Um Was a There was one other version of it before yours

Yeah this So this podcast came out as season two Right Of a show called Crooked City Which is a very amazing podcast Totally recommend it But it's very different Yeah

Um The Crooked City season one is about The Mob in Youngstown, Ohio And so it's sort of a look back on like a lot of crimes in the past and a lot of stories of like mafiosos about like how they used to commit crimes back in the day. That was made by Mark Smirling, who's the story editor on my show. He's an amazing documentarian and storyteller. I love the mafia that's out of New York, not in New York, like upstate, Ohio, St. Louis.

I love stories about mob that pops up in different places because it's so, All the art that was made out of it was really New York-based. It is cool to have stuff from some of the places. You're like, The Mafia in St. Louis? I know. And it's a great show. It's like, I guess the umbrella idea is sort of like, it's very place-based. Yeah.

You know, so they were looking at Youngston, Ohio, and I was looking at the Emerald Triangle. Right. But the shows, like, couldn't be more different, you know. Like, this one is very personal. It's sort of a personal narrative. Yeah. Well, you're a big part of it. And it's much more about just like that emotional sort of process of trying to put myself in the shoes of these individuals.

If you did not get into writing and stuff and you had a couple degrees of less responsibility in your life and you weren't chasing a career and trying to write and do stuff and you would just gone back for season three and season four of just being. Being a trimmer, making 30, 40, and then traveling and going back to the farm, would you have gone hill crazy? I think it depends on who I was working for. That's what it depends on. What's your farm like, you know? Are you with people you trust? Do you have a warm place to sleep or are you in a nasty-ass trailer covered in mold?

Right. You know, rainy season is really tough up there. Yeah. These are the mountains. It gets cold. Snow's in the winter. So when you're deep in the trim season, that's like November, and it starts to get real cold up there, do you have electricity? Do you have running water? A lot of these farms are totally off

grid. Right. All our electricity came from the stream. The pot farmer I worked for was like, he was, you know, he's a very respected person in the weed community and he's successful. Yeah. And so he had a well-run operation that was making like hydroelectricity from the creek and we could hang out and we had like a nice wood stove in the, in the, but you know, but it was still so cold that one night I left the water in in the bong and it cracked overnight you know right on my nightstand like that's how cold it got and so when I started to learn about with Zach and the people that he spent that summer with what they went through yeah it was far worse right like the conditions at that pop farm were unimaginably terrible right and people pooping in buckets and stuff oh yeah

or just like shitting in the woods you know not shabes Showering, they're showering in the creek. Yeah, they were, they had a, they had a spring. So they had fresh water to drink. That was the only amenity they had. They were all living in like bombed out trailers or tents. There was, you know, there was no food to eat. You know, one of the big vulnerabilities of being a weed worker is that oftentimes you're not supposed to leave the farm.

So, and this is especially true in the outlaw days. You go up there and you basically live. live on this mountain and the grower wants as little in and out as possible. He doesn't want people following you back. He doesn't want you going out to talk to people about where you are. Yeah, and up at the bar. Exactly. So they are very strict about who goes in and out, you know,

and that's where the hill crazy really starts to hit. Right. Not being able to leave. And you don't know who your other grower, other trimmers are going to be. Right? Maybe you're going with one friend, but you're going to meet a lot of new people. If you don't like them, you're like on a bad episode of Survivor. Yeah.

And I really became that. Yeah. I mean, it was like this story is kind of like Lord of the Flies. Right. It's like what happens when people get extraordinarily desperate? Right. And yeah, it wasn't good. It was not good.

If he had just gone to Costco and bought them some Capri Suns and one of those big pretzel barrels, they would have been just cut it off a little bit of the anger. I think so. Right. But then, you know, there's like. Get somebody some bagel bagel. bites and a new toaster oven. But, you know, the grower was unable to do that because he didn't have any money.

Right. And the situation at a lot of these pot farms is these growers spend everything they have getting their plants into the ground. And by, you know, so that's like you sell your weed. The cycle is kind of like follows the calendar where you harvest all your weed and then hopefully by January, a lot of it's been sold. Right. And then you got all this money. And you're going to go on your vacation and you're going to buy yourself some new clothes, but you're also going to reinvest that into the farm.

It all goes into the pot farm. And then you're living off of that through the spring and then through the summer. So by the time the fall rolls around, you're really running on fumes. And in this particular farm, Jeff was in debt to, he didn't own the land he was growing on. He was renting it. So he was in debt to the landowner. Yeah. And he owed a lot of people a lot of money.

and he didn't have any money to provide food for any of these workers. Right. And these workers, a lot of them had warrants. They were on the run. They were outlaws too. And so they can't just like go into town and apply for a job at Walmart. Yeah. Because they're criminals.

Right. So they're stuck here. Jeez. It kind of is this imagery of the Wild West of like outlaws. of like outlaws and it's like metaphorically like getting to California is like the end of outlaw country there's nowhere left to go like that lifestyle is unsustainable. I thought about that a lot when I was coming out here. It's like that whole mythos, that American mythos of moving west.

Yeah. Because I mean I would argue that the like the settler colonial violence that came that first wave that came to California in the 1850s during the gold rush isn't actually so different than what was happening with weed. You know, you had a lot of folks from outside attracted to this very remote place

for this natural resource that was highly valuable and profitable. And then they go in there to try to extract that profit. Right. And because of money and greed and, Like they, like crime happens a lot.

Crime became really widespread. So it's like when you read about the history of California and you learn about the gold rush, you learn about how many, like, how many massacres against the indigenous people happened, but also how these settlers were just shooting up each other too, killing each other over claims. Right.

And it was just a violent, violent place. And we really romanticize it in movies. Yeah. But it was a tough, violent, difficult lifestyle. And that outlaw lifestyle has never really gone away. And it's with cannabis, it's kind of like, it's interesting because you've got like these hippies who are like all about peace and love and medicine. But some of them are also just like very much like frontier style cowboy criminals who aren't afraid to like pull out their gun and shoot you. if you have something that they want.

Yeah. And that's kind of the... I remember running into that just naively touring, like when I was backpacking through California. And it was like, oh, we're all just weed and fun. And you quickly realize, like,

this guy who your friend says is the coolest guy is, like, kind of desperate. Yeah. Kind of broke. And he's stealing from us or, like, getting us involved in buying weed so he can take from it. And, like, no, these are like, there's, it comes from desperation.

Yeah. You know? And it's kind of cool. Like, when we'll go back to school in September, he's living this way, year after year, through a year, every day. Yeah. It's like, these are not people to be messed with. They're in desperate straits. Totally.

And, like, you know, I think it's also important to point out, like, that they're, I kind of focus on the worst of the worst of weed world. Uh-huh. And I do have, like, very complicated feelings about that. you know, I really wanted to try to like point out that this is not like necessarily the status quo everywhere. This stuff does happen. Like crime does happen. People are desperate. There's a lot of fucked up shit that goes on in Northern California.

But at the same time, there is like a flip side. There are a lot of good people doing good work. Like growing like organic pot, like really high quality weed, living close to the earth and trying to make it happen. And so it's really, it's a kind of. complicated picture. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

There's a lot of sides to it. Yeah. You're, where you were, where you were trimming, did he, is he, did he transition? Is he now a legal pot guy? Yeah, he's fully legal now. Yeah, I think, yeah. Because he's very smart. So like, that's like, like, we were saying, like there's a small number of people that

could make that flip and make it work for them. Yes. He would be one of those guys. Yeah. No, since he's legal, I feel like I can. totally talk about this, but he became the pot farmer for Woody Harrelson's new dispensary in Hollywood. And they were always pals. And they were pals. Yeah, Tom, Tom Belenco. Right. And he ended up making it work because of that connection and because he was a smart guy. Yeah.

They got this great relationship and now he's got his straight to, but now he's doing straight commercial products. They're doing like these pre-rolls and stuff like that. And, and, and, and, and that's what it's all about now. You've got to have branding and you've got to have marketing and you've got to have graphic design and you've got to have social media. Like all of these things that people who got into growing wheat off the grid specifically to avoid all of that shit. They didn't want to be marketers.

Like they didn't want to be branding their permits. No. Dealing with the Chamber of Commerce. Oh, God. No. Can you imagine like a bunch of long-haired dreadlocked hippies having to like go to the Chamber of Commerce? So what's really cool, especially with Tom, was that he was always really brilliant, but also had the alternative, enough of that alternative bent to him that brought him into that world. Yeah.

But he wasn't reckless. He wasn't, he was a great kind person. Yeah. He was a lawyer, too. So he was able to. He was dealing with weed law way before all the legalizations. In the 90s, yeah. He was part of the early efforts to legalize weed.

Yeah. And so that community. So that's very unusual. So yeah, you have to be really well equipped to make that pivot. Yeah. And so a lot of the folks who are maybe a little bit younger, more tech savvy can really understand how to market themselves online or just how. Yeah, like you got.

And then it kind of brings, it just kind of brings capitalism into it, you know, just becomes big business. Yeah. It kind of is, it's not very dissimilar from comedians. Yeah. Like all of a sudden, like there were comics that were just. just good at telling jokes. And then all of a sudden, the world opened up.

And it was like, can you podcast? What's your brand? Do you, what's your social media marketing? What's all this stuff? And a lot of comics are like, I just wanted to tell jokes because it was funny. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't get into it because they were good at bureaucracy, you know? Yeah.

So that's why I really like, I don't know, I think with some of the stories I want to work on next, like work on telling that, that policy angle a little bit more. You know, I think what people, I think a lot of people are aware now that the pot farmers are struggling. but I think that those nitty-rely details of what is in the policy to make it so unbalanced is something that we need to be talking about more. 100%. I think because you can see it happening other places, like even in New York, like they, you can

just tell, I don't know what the details are, but you can tell they're tripping over themselves of like how to make these dispensaries right and they're just bumbling the whole thing. It's like they haven't figured it out. And so like there's all of these illegal guys setting up within. Yeah, the illegal system. Uh-huh. And then there's, I mean, there's sketchy stuff that kids

are buying in these weird bodega kind of like places. It's like... Yeah, like the vape cartridges that are made with like horrible chemicals. Yeah, like they don't have an idea of how to, they don't get the legislation right because no one's

really thinking about it other than let's make it legal. And then the people who try to go legal end up getting screwed. Because the overhead to be in compliance with pot and just in California, I'm not sure about in New Jersey or New York, but, you know, it's tens of thousands of dollars. It's like 30 grand or more to get into compliance.

You've got to do, like, infrastructure. You've got to build, like, fences and put in security cameras. Everyone's got to be on the payroll. Yeah. There's a lot of overhead. So all of those people, they just run out of money and they just can't do it. Meanwhile, the guys who are like, fuck that. I'm staying on the black market are the only ones who are able to keep doing it.

Right. And so in that sense, legalization has been a major fit. failure. Can you still buy weed illegally? Like, do people still have their drug dealer? Tucker, I'm talking to you. You pot. Hey, I don't smoke. That's all, that's all Joey's thing. He does all of it for the apartment. Yeah, like, do people still buy it? Yeah, no, they do. For sure. For sure. Because, I mean, my dispensary is not cheap. No, we're paying 30% in taxes, I think. Right. So, yeah, it's still way cheaper you get it from your dealer. I haven't paid for weed in years because I just get it. People just give it to me now.

It's just everywhere. I have so much weed. Just flying in through the windows. I don't even smoke it. Yeah. I literally smoke maybe like so infrequently. Yeah. And it just keeps showing up.

Yeah. I think a lot of people who live in California have their, still have their guy, you know. Right. Or they got medical, which you can avoid, you know, some of the taxes. Right, right. But in, you know, on the East Coast or places where it's not. legal, they're still smoking weed. So that's got to go somewhere. So if you're a pot farmer, you're going to make a lot more money selling a pound of weed to Ohio than you are

to a dispensary in L.A. Right. Right. So that's where legalization has failed because they've created this incentive for the growers to remain on the black market. Because it's the only way they can survive economically. Right. So I think in order for, and that's not to say I'm against legalization, I'm very much for it, but I think it needs to happen at the federal level. Because as long as there is a black market somewhere, then the crime is going to continue, the exploitation is going to continue. We kind of touched on this a little bit earlier, but I could talk a lot more about the crime that's happening right now in Northern California.

It's kind of gotten worse. What do you mean? What kind? Well, a lot of the pot farms have just gone full underground and are getting bigger. and the, there's a lot of the workforce is immigrant labor now. Like a lot of like Latin American immigrants, like a lot of folks who are just refugees like on their way north, trying to like form a better life,

end up working at these pot farms and just getting killed, getting, you know, there was a really good investigation by the LA Times came out last year about the failures of legal cannabis that I'd totally recommend looking up. But, you know, they detail some of these stories and they're just like these like poor Latino, no immigrants who are dying because they're like running a space heater, like a gas heater

and they're like tent and they like get carbon monoxide poisoning and stuff like that. Why is that, why is, why are those pot farmers? Like what, why is that? There's no regulation on the pot farm as part of the legalization. So, so many growers have come in that it's become impossible to enforce legalization. And so there's no like inspector that rolls up. to your farm and... Yeah, I mean, there's supposed to be...

They're supposed to be, but they can't possibly do it. You know, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department, it's like 20 guys or less, you know? Right. In terms of, like, deputies on patrol at any given time, it's literally like less than a dozen. And they're patrolling this area that's like hundreds of square miles.

So they physically can't get to all the places. And as a result of this green rush, all of these different types of people started coming in. You know, back in the 60s, it was mostly like, people who wanted to grow weed because they were ideologically aligned with this plant and living off the grid and creating this medicine, this local farms. But you also had a lot of folks who don't give a shit about any of that.

They just want to make money. Right. And these guys come in and they grow huge pot farms. A lot of times they squat on other people's land. A lot of times they squat on public lands, national parks. They're tapping water illegally from the streams. They're introducing a lot of chemicals, fertilizers to the soil. They're leaving these derelict grow sites with tons of.

of trash and plastic and broken down vehicles. And then the people that they get to work on those farms are the most desperate individuals. Because like we talked about earlier, like that's the kind of folks who end up at these farms, the most vulnerable people. Yeah. So the situation now is honestly a lot worse than it was when I was up there. Wow. But are there as many?

Because if you're saying that it's hard to get rid of the product. Well, they're... Or they're shipping it to Ohio. There's many, many, many, many, many, many, many, pod farms. now and they're starting to go out of business because there's too many right so in the green during the green rush so many pot farmers came in that that's why there's such a glut on the market yeah but to be able to make any money you have to be growing at a really high scale or you need to have a really niche high quality product right so you're either going that legal route where you're like we're doing

like beautiful organic sungrown biodynamic yeah highly branded cannabis right and you and you and and you've got to connect in Hollywood, or you're going like full gorilla grow in the national forest where you're just spending as little money as possible. Literally your workers are eating nothing but rice and beans for months and working for dollars a day. And then if they complain, they often turn up missing.

That's the other problem. A lot of these folks, like they don't got any support systems in the U.S. No. Especially if they're immigrants, right? Right. Or like they don't have to be immigrants. They can just be travelers or itinerant folks

or like people with warrants, you know. Like no one knows. No one's keeping tabs. So if they disappear and the people who are taking advantage of them know that. Right. They're not paying for their health insurance. Yeah. It's a rough scene.

And so it's like we got to figure out a way to do legal cannabis that works for these growers and these workers. It seems like it should be its own department. Like it shouldn't be out to the Mendocino deputies to go make sure everyone's complying. There should be probably at a state level. an inspector, you know, a group that goes and checks in on all of these places. Yeah, well, I think they need to simplify the laws a little bit. They need to simplify the process of becoming a legal pot farmer. Yeah.

Because if it wasn't so hard, you wouldn't have all these guys going the outlaw route. Right. And then if you didn't have black markets all across the south and the Midwest and the west, like all these states where it's still totally illegal, then these black market pot farms wouldn't have a place to sell their weeds. So they would have to come in. to compliance to sell to the dispensaries. So it really comes down to federal legalization, I think.

Yeah. Which feels like it's possible now. Yeah, definitely more. You know, as soon as these other states realize it, they can make a lot of money at it. Yeah. I mean, Colorado, I think, did it a lot better than California. Yeah.

They're pulling in huge amounts of revenue. Yeah. It's a state, like big surpluses. I know. So. Well, now I don't know if I want to, if I want to go to a, diner. I guess at the end of this podcast, people are going to want to get high and go to a diner.

I think the thing to take away from it, though, and what I wanted people to know from listening to this podcast is that whenever you smoke weed, that bud has been passed through human hands. Yeah. And there's been some person who has put a lot of time and effort into growing it and shepherding it through that process and hiding it from the cops and, like, keeping its secret from the thieves. and those workers with the scissors have trimmed that weed. And now even though it ends up in a shiny, nice bag, that feels very nebulous.

It's like there's a lot of human energy that goes into that. So it's like we should just appreciate it a little more. I feel like I should smoke everything I've got in my place now. Yeah, let's go. And stop acting like it's just this extra stuff that my kids are probably stealing. Well, Sam, this is great. And I'm so glad, you know, you're here because you're doing great work. Thank you, Tom.

The second part is that your family, but really, you are doing amazing work. And it's at a time when it's very difficult to have really talented people stick it out and uncover great stories and do this kind of stuff, you're doing it. And I know it's not easy, but you're so talented at doing it. You're going to be a big success, and you'll come back in. and talk about the next thing. I appreciate that. And I have to say, you were very supportive

of my early reporting process. I remember on my first trip up to Mendocino, I was in my Jeep with a loaf of your bread, and that's what I was eating on the way. That's right. And then remember when my car caught on fire and I called you and I was like, Tom, I need a place to stay.

That's right. Your whole car caught on fire. Yeah. Yeah, and you live with me for like a month or something. Yeah, like a month. I don't remember that you being there for a month. I was there, yeah.

Hanging out in the pool. Yeah. It was nice. It is nice. But yeah, but you're a big presence, but you're also fun to be with, so I didn't realize it was a month. Appreciate that. Yeah. Well, enjoy this jalapeno cheddar loaf.

Oh, we will. And you're going to be heading back east on a road trip, so that's pretty cool. We're hoping to be cool if you caught up to your grandparents. Your grandparents. I know. they just left. They just left, and they're driving across. We're going to have to go real fast.

Catch up with them. Yeah, I know. Yeah, your grandfather's going to put the pedal once he gets to St. Louis. It's going to be his cruise. All right, thanks for doing this. Yeah, thanks for having me on. We got it, Tucker. There you have it, kids.

The great Sam Anderson, make sure you listen to the podcast. So good. And I can't wait for his next one. He's got great ideas, and he's going to continue writing. It's nice when you have young, hungry people going out there and telling these stories. It's so great. It's great to watch it develop,

and it's just damn entertaining. So go check out that podcast. Thank you for going to tompapa.com, the book, the tour dates. It's all there. Hope you're enjoying your summer. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.