High Times Founder Tom Forcade Pt. 1
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ABDULLAH: This podcast is for adults 21 years of age or older. We talk about cannabis history and advertise cannabis products. If you're not 21 come back when you are Audio Logo: Spoke media. ABDULLAH: Hey, how's it going folks? It's Abdullah BEAN: And Bean ABDULLAH: And welcome back for yet another edition of Great Moments in Weed History. On this show, my partner Bean and I are both cannabis journalists and media makers go through one of the more fascinating points in the very, very long history of cannabis. I myself have no prior knowledge of the story we're about to hear. I'm going to be hearing it fresh just like you are and Bean has researched and written the story he's going to be telling it to us. We're going to smoke some weed and we're going to have some fun, so join us. Bean, what do you got going on for us today? BEAN: Oh, today's story is a rocket ship ride. And it is about somebody who has had a profound impact on my own life, whose work in the world of, we'd set me on this path and changed the course of my life, but who I'd never had an opportunity to actually meet everybody in weed knows what this person accomplished. But very, very few people know this person's story. So it's with a lot of joy and anticipation and a responsibility. I think that I am here to share it with you and I cannot wait. ABDULLAH: I can't wait to hear it. I have a couple of ideas as to who we might be talking about, but I'm going to wait till you tell me a little bit more. All right. So I've got this joint role here. It's looking pretty good, so we're pretty much ready to go, BEAN: But maybe some of our listeners are not quite ready to roll or join it up or blunted up or got the bowl pack. So hit pause if you need to get yourself prepped. Because like I said, this is a rocket ship of a story. You don't want to be fumbling around what you're doing. You want to be settled in, ready to spark it up with us. Once you got that accomplished, ABDULLAH: I think we might be ready BEAN: For yet another BOTH: Great Moment in Weed History. AUDIO LOGO: Spoke Media. ABDULLAH: Okey doke, I'm going to spark this thing up. Why don't you kick us off Bean. BEAN: The hero of today's Great Moment in Weed History, let it brief, deeply troubled, but ultimately triumphant life, often underground and rarely more than one step ahead of the law at once a weed smuggler, a renegade publisher, a political revolutionary, a social misfit, a cosmic prankster, and a protol punk. He once described his life goal as quote “going all the way, whatever that may bring.'' ABDULLAH: All right, so I'm pretty sure we're talking about the founder of High Times Magazine. Is that right? BEAN: Uh, I think I gave you one too many clues. Yes. We are talking about Tom Forcade, founder of High Times Magazine. Obviously a place where I worked for over 10 years, starting in 2002 very proud to be a part of that tradition, particularly when you understand the real roots of this magazine and what it came out of and what it symbolized for the people who started it. And for so many people who, who have cared about it along the way. ABDULLAH: I definitely know some pieces of this story that I've heard over the years. I definitely know that he had a really interesting, a really accomplished, really turbulent life. So I'm excited to hear the rest of this story. Let's go. BEAN: I think before we get into his life story, I just should mention, you know, I broke any association with high times two years ago. Uh, I guess the easiest way I can put a bow on this is to say a magazine that was founded by this completely radical person is now being run out of a hedge fund office. ABDULLAH: It's a shame. So it's important to remember people like Tom Forcade. It's important to remember the sentiment with which magazines like high times were actually started. BEAN: His dream that cannabis would be accessible to everyone is closer than it's ever been. And I think that's the important legacy. ABDULLAH: So with that said, let's get into the story. BEAN: All right. Born on September 11th, 1945 Gary Goodson, that was his original name, grew up in conservative Phoenix, Arizona, where he came of age surrounded by the desert, perpetually seeking thrills and deeply obsessed with airplanes, weapons, and drag racing. His souped up 1940s era at dune buggy. So in 1963 he enrolls at the University of Utah. He chooses business administration as like his pretty decidedly square major. He goes steady with a conservative Mormon girl. Um, and so he just sort of seems like, oh, he's going to be sort of a working class hero with a wild streak, you know, just like his old man just off-campus while he's there, he is witnessing the birth of an underground newspaper called the Utah Free Press, which was sort of the local Oregon of this growing underground media scene in the United States. ABDULLAH: Interesting. So in Utah, this was happening and even more conservative place. So how did the Utah Free Press come to be? BEAN: Yeah, this is really, really interesting and central to this story. And there's a great book called Smoking Typewriters that documents all of this underground press movement in the United States and ABDULLAH: No relation to the typewriters strain that's really popular right now, uh, out there for anyone who's actually smoking typewriters right now. BEAN: Wow, that's a great plug for the book. Um, so what happens is somebody develops this process called photo offset printing. Um, the technical parts are not that important, but it makes it much, much, much less expensive to put out a newspaper. All these independent newspapers start to pop up. People realize I could put a newspaper out, it's not that expensive. And now I can say whatever the fuck I want. ABDULLAH: Wow. It's like a second revolution of the printing press. Like, you know, the made it easier, it sort of facilitated, uh, all these smaller organizations to be able to put out a paper. It's like the fucking internet. BEAN: It's like a pre-internet and in the same way it opens the discourse to a lot of people who were kept out of it simply by the barrier of expense. And at the same time, we're talking about 1966 when the Utah free press, uh, comes up and, and, and when Tom facades in college and, and encounters this, there's also this youth uprising just starting to happen. So it's like perfect timing. So the Utah Free Press offices, which are just off campus in addition to putting out this radical underground paper, they also serve as a local safe haven for leftists of all stripes. And remember this is in Utah, ABDULLAH: There's leftists in Utah. Where are they hanging out? BEAN: At the Utah Free Press offices. And so, you know, spurred on by this offset printing revolution, the wildly transgressive newspapers that comprise the underground press of the time all shared a pension for disseminating ideas that fell far outside the mainstream, particularly in terms of sex, drugs, politics, religion, and you know, the inherent wisdom of attempting an overthrow of the government. So in all in 1966 in a really short span, he earns his university degree after just two and a half years of study. He is brilliant. He marries his college sweetheart, this Mormon a woman, he gets a square job and he signs up for the air national guard because he wants to learn how to fly a plane mainly and he wants to get out of the draft for Vietnam. So at the time if you could get in the air national guard and you’re defending America, ABDULLAH: You don't have to go abroad to war. BEAN: Yeah. That's what George W. Bush did before he just ditched even the National Guard. ABDULLAH: Yeah, that's right. I remember that. That he served in the national and then bailed on his duty BEAN: Once he got out of it. But so, and he really wants to learn how to fly planes and that's going to come back into our story in a little bit. ABDULLAH: Ah, okay. If we're talking about weed and planes, we'd only be talking about smuggling and smuggling constitutes some of the most awesome stories in recent weed history. I think, uh, you know, since the invention of planes, it's been used to move drugs all over the world. Uh, and I'm guessing that's gonna factor in at some point otherwise right now, uh, he's still kind of on the straight and narrow. BEAN: Yeah. He's sort of living this double life where Gary Goodson got this square job, just got married, just graduated college and essentially joins the air national guard, like kind of a squares pad that you could take.