 It was like it was like I was connected with everything around me All of a sudden I just started questioning everything I'd ever been told You know by the time by the time I got high that very first time When it started to hit me And I'm like wow. All right, so we wanted to start an episode talking about the forum era because I Was a part of the forum era, but you guys were a part of different forums than I was on So you had a lot of interactions with different characters and a lot of them are You know kind of legendary dudes and and you've had interactions with guys that are really really good archivist That I have not had the pleasure of interacting with so I wanted you both to kind of talk about your introduction to the forums I mean, it's gonna be two different Stories so Rahul you want to start what was your introduction to the forums? You know early 2000s I Discovered that people had started using the internet for weed and I was shocked You can imagine right I mean I'd I'd Anyway, I looked around I was doing a business trip out to Amsterdam and and I knew that's where the weed was so I figured I should try this new tool and try and find stuff about coffee shops and stuff and and You know that was basically it. I was scared. I was scared to be on any site that talked about weed back then You know the early 2000s were time before proxy Servers were out there and so, you know having having anonymity of any kind on the web was really a pretty fuzzy idea for For most people and you know a lot of people just went up there boldly You know with a you know fake name and and keeping their fingers crossed that nobody's gonna Put a sniffer on the line and start tracking traffic and grabbing IPs But you know it really wouldn't be it was you know just painfully simple for for tech people to to really get some useful information back then if they wanted to You know, I I finally got over my fear and said, you know screw it. I'm going up there and My landing Spot of choice was mr. Nice, so I've been I've been kind of looking at different forums out there for You know the community how people treated each other the knowledge level, you know Figured it out real quick that a lot of these places were organized around specific companies so that they were you know, they were just the marketing Communication site for their customers and and the company themselves and but you know There was bias in every one of these places and sure Mr. Nice had a great, you know had a great story about you know, this is straight the original stuff from Neville You know in a world of imitators We got the original stuff and we're the only place that still makes it the way they they always were Co-signed by Howard Marks too by Howard Marks, right? And and you know who had nothing to do with Neville, you know back doing that stuff But but you know, I mean super cool guy and you know our IP we all miss it but um, yeah, I mean, you know, it was the best story out there and What I didn't realize is that there were like wars going on between these Between these different forums for the different companies, you know, since he Mr Nice had had people who were going on like rate what appeared to be like rating parties to other people's forums going and posting a Bunch of troll noise and stirring up trouble and running away, you know, it was the equivalent of You know kids at a school dance, you know afraid to go talk to the girls on the other side of the But you know, they were all defending their their legends, you know, their myths that that you know, the story The the foundation story between our seed lines is cooler and and older than the found a Foundation story for your old seed lines. And you know, that's really nothing's changed, you know in 20 years with that regard You know the story cell picture cell, you know, it's just now Before all we had to worry about was the story being alive. But now these days. I mean the pictures are Geez man, it's like they don't even need a plant to start with by the time they start photoshopping everything up like that Yeah, I mean with AI that's actually a thing now like the AI can develop cannabis plants So all these guys like they don't really even have to put any effort into testing really. Oh, you need a new picture here AI Done So I don't know. I mean Mr. Nice was a great place. Um, but you know, these It's volatile up there. You're dealing with people who are, you know, taking a chance with their their safety and and You know their livelihoods and by posting up there on the on the internet trying to make a connection with somebody else who you know Who's into the same stuff they are and it's uh, you know, sometimes people get really stressed out They they they start worrying and getting paranoid about their security up there And you see people just kind of flip out and run away You know, it happens it happens even today. Oh, yeah, you know But um, yeah, Mr. Nice was great I know that most most old-timers were up on overgrow and Cannabis world and some of these other forms. I I came in Right when overgrow was about to get raided. So I was like, yeah, I started sniffing around I was like, hey, maybe this is it. Maybe this is the time. Yeah, right. I Almost signed up. I might have even created a profile just just before they got raided. I'm not yeah Yeah, yeah, so you came you came in about the same time. I did then right around 2006 2007 era Uh, yeah, as far as reading, you know, yeah online reading stuff like that. Yeah, no accounts No, no log, okay. Yeah PM. No nothing just pure pure What do you call it stalking or yeah lurking lurking? I was a big time lurker. That's the man cyber creep is what we call him I mean the call echo what what Raho was saying. Um, I also I did not know very much about computer technology Or how it was tracked and I always felt like it was a risk And so I was sort of like scared to look at overgrow in cannabis world But I was also like a fly to honey or something like I couldn't resist So yeah, I just tried to avoid like trading or doing business on there Or like telling too much about my personal life because like I remember like to speak of Mr Nice or Howard Marks I remember reading his autobiography and he said one of the worst things he ever did Was set up like a switchboard in Amsterdam that he thought was going to be smooth to like Clear all his calls through That just allowed the American government to listen to everything else I was saying yeah It was like the worst decision I ever made but I was trying to consolidate things And so I had no idea about it ends or VPNs or any of that stuff that Raho was mentioning back then I was not computer savvy in that sense So I had no idea if like an interested party could just pop up and see my address Yeah, but Overgrow and cannabis world were kind of different in the sense that I would say that like overgrow Had like a wider range of participants So it had like way more like shit posting teenagers yelling at you But then it also had like Sam skunk man and Camara and like different really heavy hitters at the time posting on the breeders, you know the breeders lab and and that kind of thing and you know Magi you were you know, you were showing off some of the art that You know existed back then that like growers would put on their their products and you know Sam was showing off his collection You know one time of all the different art that he had collected of you know the localized and stuff And so that I found fascinating Cannabis world had a little bit more like adult discourse It was smaller and it was policed a little bit better as far as not police like by cops, but police by like members Yeah, where they didn't allow quite as much rudeness and quite as much like, you know throwing poo at one another And and all that and you know It was interesting then too because it really documented well like the switch from Amsterdam to Switzerland When breeder Steve and Shaunty and a bunch of those guys transferred from Holland over to The big Swiss and that was in a lot of people's cases. That was the first time they ever saw large grows Yeah, you know like greenhouses full acres of that type of thing I mean there was obviously some select people that had done that themselves but for the most part people first saw that on cannabis world and You know and we learned a lot I mean and that was also to what Raho was saying Sam skunk man had about four or five different handles He was know it all for sure. He was jingles. He was Sam skunk man And you started getting people that got started getting very vocal about their version of their narrative Yeah, and pushing that narrative very hard and what we've learned over time with the forums is that the people that are often and early they You know typically that becomes sort of like, you know cannabis lore Yeah, right and there's a lot of people that might add more nuance to it But the people that were willing to get out there and type it up and put their story out first It carried a lot of weight that people were willing to do that We we had an example earlier before you popped on where we were talking about the chem dog story and we popped up an old a graph of like, you know Kim 91 Kim D and then maybe Kim for I think and it was like the tree of lineage of things that have been crossed to it And what was related to it and stuff and that lore has been there for ages and even you know The other day we brought it up that the things are always fluid and changing as we learn new things. So yeah So it was a good example of it Yeah, I definitely and you know one thing that I think we should mention too is that So I live I live in Mendocino County, which is like Tons of people grow weed. So yeah, I was able to hang out with folks And talk weed a lot all day long. It's just part of my daily life But the forums what was so attractive about the forums in my opinion was it was the first time that like nationally and internationally People could talk and there was a lot of people that started talking from You know places that were much more sketchy back then Police states if you will states that didn't have any medical didn't have any recreate didn't have any of that Yeah, and so for a lot of those people the only place they felt safe to talk about it was online They didn't talk about it with their friends. They didn't talk about it with their neighbors There might be a tiny percentage of people that even knew what they were up to But if they were weed nerds, they had this burning desire to chat about it And online provided a semi anonymous way to shoot the shit about cannabis And it was really interesting for a lot of people Because before then it was just small circles and groups and you know and friendships And you know, you really didn't see how the other half was living And pay phones and pay phones So mad jag what was your what was your first form experience? What what brought an old vet like you onto the scene to to mess with the the newer generation? Well, when Arizona went medical I got my green card in 2012 And because I was more than 25 miles from the nearest dispensary I was able to it said licensed to cultivate so I could grow my six plants in my backyard or 12 whatever it was and I felt relieved because I was doing it semi legal. I mean you're supposed to have an enclosure with eight foot walls and One inch thick metal door is some crazy. Yeah regulations, but I decided mine was safe enough close enough And I started searching online I had Done quite a bit of research already on weed just to see what was on the internet probably starting back I don't know. I would go to a store in Sedona. They had a t1 line And a t1 was like fast. Yeah, that's the best This is during dial-up days and the dial-up at home if you were trying to even look at one photo You would wait a minute. So in single naked lady took forever So going going to the this video store that also had t1 lines They had little booths where you could get on the internet and it was fast I could do in one hour what would take me five at home. Yeah, and of course, I think it was nine dollars an hour More to use their t1 and somehow I then I started Well, that was the early stuff but later once I got my license in medical. I thought Wonder what the seed world is like and I started looking around and I found mr. Nice forum of mr. Nice seeds and Some of the original people on there like sensimea And a few others became sort of friends, you know, I talked to them on On the forum there And that's where I met Raho. He had a different handle at that time And one thing led to another then I went I discovered icy mag and I joined in 2012 and the same year and A little time went by and then I think it was elmer bud It was either raho raho. You remember it was either you or elmer They've invited me to this other forum called for for myself. I can say that the the thing that was so crazy for me about Um, mr. Nice specifically was I think it was I can't remember if it was oh nine or 2010 But all of a sudden Neville popped up on there and started answering questions Yeah, and I was like, oh my god, you can just talk to him And you can ask him all these burning things that I wanted to know about and then There was people like, um, he went by dog list, but there was uh, you know or tega There was some other various like heavy hitters from that zone that like once they realized neville was on there They joined too Yeah, and then yosemite sam from amsterdam and then So as as some of those real people started joining There was an era there from probably I don't know 2009 to maybe 2011 or something Where all of a sudden for me being a younger guy compared to those guys you could listen to some of the giants talk about Maple leaf or talk about this or you could ask neville questions directly about some of his lines and he'd give you answers and where he got the And you know, seattle greg was posting on there about the nl and all of a sudden you had this collection of You know of sort of like what I call like first generation You know growers and breeders and hustlers and movers and shakers all communicating and you could read what they were talking about to each other Yeah, it's still there. That's that's such an awesome well And uh, so you know and and then so I kind of felt like I was a fly on the wall And I started screen, you know, I started saving basically every neville post and every You know, and of course it starts all the arguments in the back and forth and like the are you telling the truths and like the Do you remember this the right way type of deal? um, and but yeah, that that was what was so fascinating to me about mr. Nice was that all of a sudden all these cannabis like legends Uh pretty much everyone with the exception of sam Yeah, no sam would have we would have we were talking about the wars earlier Like me and a few others would go invade ic mag and and do the jib jab means like the fake kung fu ones Uh representing neville and it would be like arguments between neville and sam And we would post those on ic mag and they'd come back on mr. Nice and post theirs over on ours. It was like, uh, yeah Full on war Matt that was the first that was the first time I saw you matt, you know met more it met you online anyway and uh You know, I but you know, not so you're right That was a magic moment at at mr. Nice when neville came back there and you know the ability of any member to just pop in and asking questions and You know like just and the attraction the how how people could not stay away like you mentioned chimera and um, you know matt was there of course, um Who else in dogless? hempy Heavy and big and big herb and there was a big herb was definitely there There was a lot of people that were that were involved and like kenga kenga vita And when I when I first got when I first started really meeting people in amsterdam I realized that like There was a bunch of older guys that had beefs with each other that didn't get along exactly And they had their versions of events and then they would just continue said war on whatever forum got created Of this is my story and then they'd be like no no no, that's ridiculous. This is what happened You're so full of it and there was these camps that would form on like Matt and I joke about it of like which shady character do you believe more? Yeah, because you could poke holes in any of us really to some do yeah, you know And uh, but yeah, that was dogless dogless was ortega You know, um, and you know, he gave neville four or five super important lines Um that still remain there's a lot of mystery to them Um, but just watching those older guys communicate with each other and dropping things that that were maybe normal to them But were gems to us Was it was a pretty magical time that era of mr. Nice forums was pretty cool Yeah, yeah, and and of course like like you mentioned there were other other people that Weren't big shots at the time but turned into big, you know people that that we've all heard of today Um and had valuable things and valuable insight, you know to add to like, you know What what what was santa cruz like in that early late 60s early 70s era? What was this going on in some different depth to things and so there was some really? intelligent cannabis conversation going on Uh in those years right there that was pretty cool Yeah, a lot of it sadly some of those old neville posts have been Disappeared Yeah, they're getting they're getting cleaned up to to help with the clutter Yes, I I think yeah anything anything contrary, you know, um Last night. I did you see that when I I think I texted to you last night not so it was a screenshot of a post from shanti Saying that um nordl is super skunk. Oh, yeah, he did that on ig two days ago or something like that Was that confusing to you at all? Uh, it wasn't so much confusing I mean the the problem that you have with anyone not just shanti but with anyone is that You get their version of what's going on and do you have others that will Can corroborate like what they're talking about, you know, and it's like, you know I know for a fact we know for a fact that shunt that neville sold a huge amount of seeds to to shanti And that they worked together and did various things together for a period of time And so there's this no seed company that i'm aware of has ever admitted that they've ever lost anything ever Simon Simon has admitted. He's lost the parents to cali mist. I believe But it just in in in general in general, you know, like that's shocking This is what's crazy is you guys is that like if you go on sincey seeds website right now They still have neville photos from the 80s Yeah, as their description, you know for their picks for their descriptions of their lines and those and those photos were taken 1988 1989 and 1990 Yeah, and they're still the same once that's not even the worst part though I mean then you read the stories and it makes it sound like the drunkers climbed their way through the himalayas to get Meet the farmers, you know, and they personally brought it back, you know, they're in a cia helicopter, you know I mean, it's just it's never was insane neville was the only one to admit. Yeah, we lost that. Yeah, this died Yeah, this changed that was my fault And the rest of them almost universally are like that makes identifying things difficult because um, you know, they people obviously don't want to admit that they lose certain things because they want those modern sales Right, but you know that it goes beyond that though I mean let's assume that the cuts got lost But so what did they have to dig through to replace it, you know, or they you know Of course, they never admit that they lost anything. Okay, so we'll take that for granted and then then we assume Okay, they won't admit it, but we know they've lost something So what did they have to work with to to pick the replacements themselves? You know in the case of neville, he did, you know, he a lot of the the posts that were deleted were talking about Indicas and his breeding work with indicas Yeah, and uh, which is is interesting because I haven't seen that insta post that you're talking about where they're they're claiming that that Nordle is Super skunk, yeah, but you know, you can see that this is one of those things where that's partially true You know, so the parents of super super skunk afghan t and and skunk one Are contained in nordle. Yep. Sure. No doubt But do we think it's pure afghan t plus plus skunk one? Probably not No, I mean, oh how we wish it was right, but it's not And neville and those old posts that are now missing it talked about How he mixed he crossed all of those maple leaf Cuttings together. Yeah, you know, he had the orte 15 the afghan s afghan t And big bud kush four and one that was a big big bud like Yeah, he called it big bud, but it was not the big bud string right correct So it's like I go ahead go ahead. Not so I always view shanti is a bit like the The the bridge troll or the sphinx that wants you to answer the three riddles And and so, you know, you're like just give it to me clear and he'll just like, you know, he'll dance around the topic You know, and so, you know, we know One of the interesting things that we found out is that we weren't exactly sure how large the collection that he bought off neville was And apparently it's so large that people involved think that he couldn't even get through it in a lifetime if he wanted to Wow So then it really just becomes about like does he have the eye and does he have the selections because he has the genetics It's just He you know, how many mothers does he have how many fathers does he have is he pulling them out of f2's? You know, I agree completely, but there's actually something even more And does is he even doing the selecting himself anymore? Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly. I mean because I don't know. I've seen some I've seen some people working Ortega and Some other some other fresh seeds from them that don't look The the phenos that I saw, you know 15 well 10 10 years ago Or not in there anymore. Yeah, I was like, dude I don't know what to tell you if if we would have known if I would have known That basically every five or 10 years the seed game Completely changes and what you thought would be available for a long time has now disappeared forever You know matt and I were looking at we I have a friend with a freezer That got out of the game and gave all of his seeds to a good friend of ours And most of most of those seeds are from 2009 to 2012 And matt and I were just shocked that like maybe 1 of those seeds are still available today if you wanted to buy them Yeah So, you know the the neville era the sensi era the the serious era like all these different seed companies Maybe they have the same stock for four or five years Right and then something happens like we know that shanty got raided in in switzerland. What did he lose then? What did he have before? What did he have after in a lot of those cases? Um, they don't it doesn't benefit them in any way to like be completely upfront. So then they're not You know, yeah Yeah, and and I've been we've been trying to get shanty to admit for years if nordl was his version of superskunk Yeah, and he never would Up until you remember. Do you remember? Raho when this strain came out because it was originally another strain that he had listed And I think it was just called afghan skunk at the time and he said i'm changing this to nordl in honor of I can't remember what it was fucking in honor of maybe the mr. Nice movie coming out Yeah, it was the code name that um, howard marx used to describe a load of hash But I think it was because the movie was coming out in uk and he renamed it in honor of the movie because in the movie They make that a big deal. Okay I remember correctly that was context of that too because I met uh neville Briefly a few times and one of his partners in the 90s in amsterdam And after he left scentsy he had to call superskunk ultra skunk Because scentsy had trademarked the names to most of his genetics Yeah, and so therefore scentsy owned the name superskunk And so from the time he I mean, I remember because I bought some ultra skunk. He had to call it ultra skunk And so in in that case if shanti was going to sell his version He literally couldn't sell superskunk the only people that can sell superskunk in holland are scentsy seeds Gotcha Because they bought they owned the um, they they trademarked almost all the names Yeah, to be honest, I'm kind of shocked. He didn't like throw devil in there and shit and like all the other stuff That are like afghan skunks, you know So there's so I do give shanti a little bit of slack in the sense that he has to be It's hard to it's hard to say some of these things because there are there is some legality And that's what's kind of going on now too is people are starting to try to patent names in america In different areas in different regions and being like, oh, well, we have this name um, and you know, uh, but it's interesting too like, um You know like the one name that they didn't pat for some reason. They don't have a patent on nl5 haze But they do on superskunk Yeah, that's probably the old manatee has something to do with that. Yeah, yeah the cantaluminati And then yeah, and then and then he went and then they patented all the nl names You know, so they had to call the nl stuff different work That's why that's why I believe was it dutch passion matt They had to call their nl2 version oasis. Yeah, I believe so we'll find out we'll find out they they seem to be open to talking and Yeah, I will say dutch passion Out of all the dutch companies i've ever reached out to dutch passions Like been open to sending me their old catalogs scanning them in like helping with the archive So i'm stoked to interview them because they have an actual genuine interest in the culture And I remember like they they were actually have been at the forefront of some cannabis technology I want to ask them about their artificial seeds. They were the first to push artificial seeds and in selvos and some of their cloned clonal strains as artificial seeds and It it disappeared. I don't know if they only tried it in europe for a while But it was it was so far ahead of its time This is like 2012 when they were doing artificial seeds. So I even think they were the first person I ever saw us talk about feminized work I think there are some of the first that were selling feminized Before americans, you know people like umat or csi or i think they coined the term feminized They coined the term some of the first people that were involved on the american side of things I think I first saw it from dutch passion offering up You know feminized They coined the term I didn't know anybody ever made some of the sold some of those artificial seeds. Which is basically uh Tissue culture right and in a tiny little capsule. Was that sweet the idea? Yeah, some sort of merry stem or whatever It's some kind of clonal tissue. Yeah I remember chimera was talking about that and I was like, yeah, this is another thing. I'm never gonna see Yeah, yeah, I was super stoked when they started doing it. But the problem is because it's a It's it is tissue culture not everyone can get these things to quote unquote germinate, you know I mean it takes real genuine care And yeah, you don't just throw it out in the yard and set up the sprinkler, you know, I mean The idea was that you like yeah, the idea was that you could hopefully like plant it under dirt and it'll just grow But I mean people have enough time hard time popping normal seeds let alone artificial seeds You know, well, he was talking about that stuff about the same time that he was doing his massive clone collecting Um all over north america. Um, who's that chimera? Yeah. Yeah, he was talking about Oh, we're gonna make these artificial seeds. It's gonna be tissue culture and we'll preserve them forever You know, it gave everybody the idea that he was gonna be The dude repository of all this precious germ plasm for the rest of the world You know, and he's gonna out of the goodness of his heart I will say that when I was reading on the breeder's lab on overgrow That chimera was one of the most intimidating people on there at the time I was probably in my early 20s then and uh, the depth of like breeding knowledge that he had like in the education that he had and sort of like the ego and dismissiveness that he had like it, uh, it really made me Um, but it also made me it intimidated me for for lack of a better term I was like am I how am I but then there's this weird part where the older I've gotten I definitely think we need you need to know some of that But breeding is as much art as it is science to me and you really have to have the eye And some luck maybe and really and really test it smoking wise and see what's going on because it's not just strict science What you're after is invisible Well, we were talking about we were talking about this the other day It's so it's it's a great point, you know off all these all these multi-million Dollar bankroll Genetics operations that are trying to come up with the next big thing in cannabis, you know What have they produced? Every year a new batch of winners comes from from, you know from banjo playing moonshiners in the hills Yeah, well wait everything that was done the year before And yet you got these boys in their white lab coats and you know with the with the gas chromatographs You know looking at the dna and what are they coming up with? Yeah No, I mean when matt morham did his when matt did his uh actually talking about that I will say that I saw an interview with shanti that made that I kind of totally agreed with him where he said That his cbd work is very scientific and it's very documented and it's very by the book and it's very that way But he said the cannabis side is almost all judgment and art Yeah And I found that very interesting observation that he felt like the science of getting these cbd cbg cvn type things It was very very documented based and it was very very testing based and he said the cannabis side is still the eye It's still looking and hunting You know part some of the goals of that of that um cbd or the hemp market is to come up with Strings that will will produce from seed Consistently low levels of of thc with you know those those threshold levels of cannabinoids that allow them to legally grow it And and it's and it's really it's it's tricky to do that and then once they once they Figure out how to isolate, you know certain ratios and they're they're trying to Explore that and create, you know strains in seed that can produce other cannabinoids, you know to the exclusions of others All of this made Necessary by regulation of course, you know if you could just grow You could separate the different cannabinoids and have one plant that grew them all but you know because the the law differentiates between hemp and And uh regular drug cannabis and you know, they have to treat these things differently, but yeah I mean one thing that's interesting about that too And it was like my second favorite part of that shanty interview was that he said That one of the differences between what he was doing with his crew and others is that a lot of others were working with hemp to breed cbd and cbn and cbg stuff And he was trying to breed that stuff from drug cultivars and bring it out in the regular lines that had already been bred for Consumption and I thought that was an interesting approach, you know, he wasn't necessarily trying to breed it from hemp He was trying to bring it out in the lines that already existed From the cannabis side of things Yeah, I don't know. I've grown some of his lines that look like they might have had some hemp I would concur. Yeah This is completely off topic and I'm not trying to derail it but uh rajo your new avatar is the stuff of nightmares But to get back on to get back on target for a second One of the things that I do think was revolutionary about The forums opening up Was it really was the first time that people outside their own friend groups in the cannabis space could start communicating with each other And people from different parts of america or europe or australia or wherever Could start talking about something in ways that had never happened before and so despite all the The attacks and poop throwing and wars that got started over things and people being mean behind their keyboard It really did advance a lot of things and it really did give a base Um for people to start discussing things in public Um because at the time that all those at the time that all those things first came out I think overgrowth started in the very late 90s If I recall correctly only california Had medical at that time. Yes. Um, so it was just in the infancy of you know, not being totally illegal everywhere Yeah And you know and it started to slowly spread but I do think that um You know and there's a lot of people we could probably talk about like like, you know Everyone laughed when I said hempy the reason why everybody laughed was because he was a You know, he was argumentative, you know and people had personalities and people like vik high or You know people were famously like my god. You say the wrong thing to tom hill 20 years ago Uh, and he would just tear your head off 20 years ago. I see you back then, you know like that in that in that era And so there started being the first like weed internet personalities And then when people like sam scum man got online or people like come here like there was like heroes that started Yeah, um, and it was also the first era to me Where visual aspects of cannabis became very important Like when people started posting their stories around Um, you know blueberry. Yeah, and people started posting these crazy I mean, that's where your passion for it started, right matt You start going online and looking at these posts and you're like, what is that thing? Yeah, the purple what is this story and what is this name and why does it look so Mutant and why is it blue and why does it have all these purple leaves and Especially like pre cookie. It was wild looking cannabis. Oh, yeah, I was you know And people started exchanging legends and like I still have things saved You know from you know, kengavita and these different guys talking about the different kenga tiva kenga tiva see that's what i'm talking about the mate mangling it but posting these moham You know, uh, these these different moham phenos and where people got things and these on these old school photos and You know stuff from switzerland and all that and it started giving people a view into other people's gardens almost for the first time Yeah outside of friend groups What's this mad jug from from raco? I was gonna ask if either of you know raco. I don't know him personally, but I know who he is sure. Okay Says his join date was 2006 But this is these are photos from 2004 of a 79 affi and a pakistani 1982 oh nice. Yeah The different structures look at him one looks like urkel. I bet that's a pakky on the left. I would guess Yeah, the left is the afghani. Oh, wow Well, look at my dumb ass. Fuck. I was thinking the same thing. Yeah Wow, that's very cool The one on the left looks like baba to me A little bit Deep chunk Yeah, I I just see urkel looking at that bad boy He has that same overly leafy structure And you know, it's funny actually I got a picture of g13 the other day And ran it by neville's old partner and he's like, yeah, that is g13 That's exactly how I remember her and it was from an old cat and it wasn't even a catalog It was an old magazine clipping Uh, I think from high times or head magazine one of the two and it was of neville's grow room And had g13 had a few shots of nl5 But that also got neville's old partner to tell us That g13 was apple smelling green apple smelling, which I never knew and I've always heard burnt rubber All this other stuff But I've never heard it directly from any source that had it, you know, like what the the scent profile was and he says green apple Huh, that's fun. Yeah, that's good. I can hear that as you know I can interpret that as being kind of salary citrusy Maybe, you know with a little bit of that that acidic bite not necessarily citrus, but Um, I don't know the other thing has some too The other thing I found crazy about the forums is like you jump on and you see some threads that would get locked And then you'd be like, oh, why did that get locked and you jump on there? And then there's like all these spicy arguments that go back and forth about About what's true and what's not and there's people that you know, that was kind of the first time where your popularity in some instances Like led people to whether they were going to believe you or not And people would start poking holes in stories And it's also this same era Where a lot of the people have told a bunch of stories on various forums at various times And some of those legends don't line up And it's like all their own words. And so in 2004, this is what I wrote and then in 2010 I kind of changed it and I wrote this and now in 2018. I'm talking about this and now Today I'm talking this Yeah, and it's interesting because it puts down on not not on paper necessarily, but it puts down To some degree a record Um, you know, there's some things like I see mag like you guys were mentioning even on mr. Nice It puts it down on a record until someone in the managerial Capacity on the forum decides to either walk or eliminate certain posts because it doesn't fit a narrative Yeah, so it's not perfect Because definitely on ic mag. There's been there's been things that have gone off the reservation if you will And uh the thread or certain comments disappears Yeah, and I I try to remind that to people who are researching nowadays They it's it's hard to remember a few things if you're like, let's say you you showed up 2016 past, you know 10 15 after that what you're looking at is a very It's just a small sample of the forums that were available like ic mag thc farmer roll it up But there were a lot more forums than that a lot of private forums like we talked about There were there were other just smaller forums couch lot cafe, you know Pot pimp there were there were a bunch of them out there And those are long gone seed depot gone and you're seeing a small section and Most of these forums were run by people Selling either a seed bank or had a seed bank carrying many breeders or were run by a breeder themselves and 99 of the time You were it was very clicky So you'd have people who were asked kissy to the owner of the forum They would become the moderators and it would become a lot of cheerleader ra ra stuff. I felt like And it happened everywhere even on my forum, you know like that I ran It was it was very riot centric because that's just the way it worked out, you know But people are seeing a very small screenshot So if you're coming into the forum era now trying to go back research You're missing a lot of context and a lot of data Is mainly what I'm trying to say Yeah, people uh people delete posts. They threads are locked or or posts deleted Sometimes You know entire threads are are removed. Yeah, do you guys do you guys remember the crusty buckets? Oh, yeah There was these canadians on there that were growing like in in grow rocks and they were growing like very few plants But they were growing two to four pound plants inside on this crazy hydroponic nft method called crusty buckets and there would be some forums There would be some threads that would just go on for hundreds of pages Yeah A combination of people asking tons of questions or the original poster posting updates You know people started posting like grow picks and you know like I bought these seeds from this group Follow along as as I pop these things and see what I find And you know and and a lot of like matt's right in a lot of those cases It was it was specific to like who the breeders were on the various forums Yeah, but I have a bunch of cool picks from mr. Nice of various people trying out different seeds or some of those old timers coming on and You know posting stuff that they had And then you're like, oh that person saw that in that era. Wow. Yeah, okay I'm gonna really like pay attention to what he's speaking about because you know, there's not very many references to it Do either of you guys remember bite me from mr. Nice. Oh, yeah I can't find him and I've been trying to find him. I know you guys have other old friends out there So put the word out for him. He was such a nice gentleman an old smuggler And he's responsible for one of my best selling lines of all time And I've never been able to thank him but he was a wonderful wonderful dude Yeah, so in florida see what I can find there was a guy on there named big sir Who used to post a lot about apparently he was from central central california Same general santa cruz type of region and you know He offered up a lot of his opinions on like what was around and what he was seeing and what haze was like and like different You know just different stuff like that and whether it's true or not It's always valuable to get different people's opinions On the same era because people have different memories and different experiences too It's uh, it's a little sad when you see people like, you know, I'm not gonna say big sir Because I'm not sure if this applies to him But you know older guys telling stories from way back And and they're active and they're up there, you know every week or you know every couple of months They'll they'll show up and they're talking about what they're doing and Over time that they just start kind of dropping off showing up less often until finally they just don't come back Yeah, you know seen enough of those The just the really old stories kind of like what What we're you know, jaggy and I started talking about when we came on here are The older ones are are disappearing at a rapid rate. So I'm glad you guys got us on here. I don't I don't like to think of myself as being in that category of a You know a perishable item past the sell-by date on the shelf, but Yeah, I mean I used to ask this is probably 20 years ago now, but I used to ask my grandpa Like what it was like getting old And he was he says, you know, it's the weirdest thing ever he goes in my mind I'm like 28 with a bunch of wisdom Yeah, until I drop something on the floor and then I bend over to pick it up and I'm like, oh I'm old And it's crazy too because it's like that to me like, you know, I grew up in the 80s The 80s doesn't seem all that long ago. But boy It's getting farther away all the time and you know the like the first and second generation even of of cannabis growers in America That span the 60s and 70s those, you know, that's You know, there's there's less and less, you know viewpoints and then the 80s even there's less and less viewpoints And so that kind of history Like that's why I think this is so cool of what we're all doing is like getting some of that oral history down Whether it's written down or whether it's like, you know talked about on on like this is pretty important Or a strain or a strain index online that you know, one of those things really One of the craziest things about this was like being able to talk to magag about like Skunk one from the late 70s or early 80s. Yeah, like that's wild To me because having someone that had actual experience growing it then Like and growing a good amount of it and being able to see what it was really like Incredibly rare Not only that to me It's it's not just having someone with experience that grew it back then But someone that had experience growing other stuff and had experience with cannabis and different The different experiences cannabis had to offer already before growing skunk one So they they could sense those nuances those fine difference and smells That to me is what what separates This story specifically from a lot of other people's old tales. Yeah, I grew skunk one in 85, you know, it was skunky Yeah, exactly Yeah, this this is having someone with with the nose and the eye that was there that is as Interested in the genetic aspect too. That's as nerdy as all of us and and as Advanced as an archivist as he is. I think that was that was key and it was really important to to have that One of the things that super humbles me in cannabis is that It seems like the early raw work that people do ends up being the best And then they get older and more experienced and they try to make it better and they make it worse Yeah, you know and you know Neville admitted that like he got the haze and you know The f ones were the coolest thing he ever did with them and the more work He put into it He goes none of the poly hybrids were nearly as nice as like the first crosses I made Yeah, and he's like I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried and then I had to agree that like The first stuff I did was better than anything I did after that Hey, can I ask you guys A little nl question. Sure. Have you ever found an nl. Pheno that was high in terpenaline? Yeah, uh, I want to say yes in nl. Five by two I agree and a lot of the nl. Five by two repro's that came out from old stock Uh have a lot of mild to moderate terpenaline nose Interesting. So pakistanis have it as well chatrally. So it's it's in the afghan pakistani lines Okay, so, you know that terpenaline is so So strongly associated with nevels haze Yeah, right and I've heard you guys talk about that once you get it in in a line It's it's damn near impossible to breed it out if you decide you don't want it in there anymore um Just kind of curious because you know, I think a lot of people associate that terpenaline with haze a Right because yeah, you don't really get those phenos in an ssa h or a mango or any of those other Skunk nl haze Combos that are around. You don't get that heavy. You get it from nevels, right? So People think okay. Well, what's the difference between nevels and everything else haze is the main thing And so they immediately attribute that terpenaline to the haze But i'm wondering if it would just was the female that he used to make Nevels haze that had a terpenaline dumb You know northern lights mama. So the interesting part about that is that if you believe nevels tale about nl5 He grew a bunch of the seeds and they were a big mix of indica sativa Hybrid phenos that were all over the place and crazy And there was this one phenol he found that almost looked pure afghan and that's the one that he picked to breed with But the seed line itself was definitely a afghan sativa mix And so it's entirely possible that in nevels selection of nl5 There was some genes in there that combined with other genes could pop out that terpenaline in plants Sure So see matt's gonna get excited about this because I I remember nevel statements differently than what you're saying not So, uh, oh, yeah, let's hear it. Yeah So I mean you're saying that um What What did you say? Oh, he went through the the seeds he got right? So there were two at first he wanted cuttings And seeds from the original nl crew and he had a falling out with those guys who knows what it was about Maybe money. I don't know Um, and and he wound up going to kind of somebody in the nl crew orbit Not the original guys and to to get those seeds was that Seattle greg was the guy in the orbit So I believe Seattle greg was the original guy that he was getting him from okay And if I remember correctly It was dawn downs the indian That he got it from the second time and that he was around them that he wasn't he wasn't a veteran His son had served or something and he you know, they they kind of the anyway It's it's got all the hallmarks of of one of those old bullshit legendary stories, but um, You know the the the main thing is is that neville? Neville blew his deal with the original guys and wound up going to kind of a side periphery guy to get the seeds that he would ultimately work with And and those seeds, you know that neville said that he concluded that hit the the the five the cutting he kept as nl five He believed in Oh, you just dropped out five by two He differentiated he called the us The us five cut He said that there were only two true true breeding male lines in in everything that he got it was the nl one And the nl two were the two male lines that he had he had to work with I remember that and he called that the nl one a pure afghan and he called the nl two a kush Yeah, a kush type, you know, but it's mainly on the smell of juniper But and he said that the rest of them were a big hybrid mix and a mess Yeah, yeah, but they were labeled. I think he might have said that they they came labeled as this and that and the other thing And they tended to run true to what the description said they would I might be mixing that up, but I think that's what he wound up saying that, you know, some some would be more Narrow leaf than the others, you know, based on what they've been out crossed with hybrids But as I understood it nevel he had the five clone right from from greg and crew Well, he got it. He got that later after he had done his own selection of of nevels five Regardless when he got it He didn't like theirs so much according to him and he made his own cross that he called nl five using the steve murphy afghan And what his mazar or the steve murphy afghan? Crossed to the hawaiian cross to his mazar or something like that So there's a cool story They agree when they finally when when they got the nl five clone that they had selected from america and he got to amsterdam Apparently they sent it over in a terrarium full of plants And in order to get the clone over there They took a pair of scissors and they cut off all of the serrations on every leaf of the Nl five no no greg. Um, I asked greg this story He said no they took it to a florist who made a flower pot type thing and they just stuck that in there He said he didn't know anything about the serrations Interesting. Maybe there maybe it is. Yeah, they might have the florist might have done it One thing that the floor is better at all that greg mentioned that that matt and i never knew whether to believe or not was greg always greg said in this one post one time on mr. Nice in fact that The nl one was actually steve murphy afghan that he had gotten from steve murphy Combined with a nevel afghan. He got from nevel Right and people speculate all the time about which of nevel's afghan that was that was used to make the cross And nevel never answered the question So, you know for anybody to say it's this one or that one, you know what there's no evidence to support it You're just there's one there's like one or two people I can ask that may know but not more than that and even they I doubt they'd know that one right Yeah, but that's that's one of those ones that the people who are saying those things say it with such conviction That it sounds like that, you know, they were there when it happened, but yeah, you know, it's so yeah, the nl one is supposed to be You the the steve murphy afghan times some other affies from nevel apparently Who knows what what it was? um It was the purest and the interest the interesting part about the interesting part about that is that You know, if you look at like nevel's nl one Um, every time he tried to make a back cross or every time he tried to stabilize something that was from clone He always used nl one pollen to start the process Yeah, because he said that it was the only pure afghan line he had that was reliable Um and everything else he had that was an amazing afghan. He got mostly in clone form Not so we'll devolve every show into a show about nevel Every I mean we were talking, you know sign sign me up. What the hell he's like he's like forums. Yeah, let's do it We can and it does suck because we were also mentioning to get it back to the forums The reason why we sort of lost nevel on mr Nice was him and shanti behind the scenes kind of got into a tiff with each other over Money and access and seeds and this and that and nevel got mad and left I will I will actually say exactly what happened because I was there and he told me exactly and he's no longer with us So I'll tell people his opinion because he was very adamant about this. He said he sold shanti the seeds When he did for I want to say 250 thousand dollars or 150 thousand dollars of that one I can't quite recall And he felt that when he came back in 2010 That shanti had more than made a fair share of profit and that he felt he was still owed Even though that wasn't a part of the deal he felt he was still owed that money Because shanti had capitalized very well on his work Well, not just his work, but his name his name and that that was the main thing Yeah, his reputation is everything He'd been making it sound like those two were you know back in the rooms together doing selections and Shaking the males, you know, I mean listen that wasn't happening. You know shanti working with nevel stuff Occasionally they'd exchange a message or so, you know, like how do I find a skunk one plant that doesn't suck Yeah, nevel would say well, you know, if you figure it out, let me know Yeah, and he was just in and at the same time The the opinion of a lot of people there was that shanti was not as upset or not as stoked With all the attention nevel was getting That seemed to be the general superstar. Yeah, he was coming back online. You're like, oh my god One thing that we could maybe ask magi agon and raho when you guys first started getting online and first started looking at forums What was the kind of information or the kind of stuff you were seeing that like really excited you? Or like changed, you know, like because I mean it's it's different for all of us, you know But like what was like, you know, when you're perusing different threads and seeing different things where you after history Where you're excited by some of the new stuff you were seeing people post Was that the ability just to connect and start direct messaging with others because it sounds like you guys built your friendship Um off of the forums, you know Something interesting about the forums that we haven't mentioned is that um There's a good number of people as myself too that were um banned I was banned from ic mag and I was you know, I was Actively you have done to get banned. I was actively recruiting super nice people and people who I liked For another forum and it was a small forum and Since we're talking about forums Then one day I came to go get on ic mag and it wouldn't let me on And I found out from other people were there saying oh, you're you're your threat is still here old school, Arizona I said, but I can't get in there. So I talked to I actually emailed tom hill somehow Remember how I did yeah, tom should straighten things out send tom in there And that we keep the voice of reason And I got back in and oh wow and he did something I don't know what it was and it lasted for about two more weeks and then I was gone again for good One of the people The only way it happened. But one of the people that I was recruiting or asking if they'd like to join this other forum Narped on me and uh Well, how how how else would it happen? Yeah, so and I never figured out who that was Or they were in dms like they always did But anyway, I waited a year and then I went back on Under a different name and I was concerned that maybe they were tracking ip addresses and they go Oh, here's magic trying to sneak back on but they weren't and I've been on since then I go on about every six months I went on today because my ex-gro partner. I was telling matt earlier Release the information about the book he wrote called you're the magic And it's it's a fictional story that uses our experiences and he uh so I at some point at some point did you meet like um You know Paul Newman out in the desert on a motorcycle and save his life with some water and he Rewarded you by giving you a tab of something that you don't know what it was Did that happen? Did that really happen? this fictional account The not that one there's My it's my ex-gro partner and he's he is using the name mad space capital j a g And I just posted a little link on there to my magic dot com website because Five people have the right to use the name magic and I and I talk about that on my website Because they were people who who grew with me and they they deserve it Especially him because he did it for two years with me and the two big years when we grew skunk it was john And he he lives in talus and he has for years 40 years now. I think and um He's not worried about being exposed or talked about so I'm mentioning it now and Um, I hope his book gets uh, you know a lot of traffic. I'm sure it's killer Yeah, so anybody listening right now, you know, um When this book is out, please give it. Please give it a look. It's from a One of the people right now on amazon, I believe What's it called? The year year of the mad jag. Okay. Yeah, and what's the author's name? Uh john slater s l a to r there you go and it's j on just john slater John john worked in the bbc for 10 years before he came to the us and when I tried to get him on the on a On a particular forum since we're speaking about forums he was The fact that he was into movies and film All sorts of people got very paranoid and say yeah Well, what if he starts taking our photos and posting them and putting them in a documentary? So he didn't he wasn't allowed to join Because he had too much and it's so ridiculous You know when somebody when somebody first comes on the forums just like john Did you know back then the author? It's it's weird, you know, because you're first all of a sudden you're inundated with real live people's opinions about these products And maybe you've been looking at high times or whatever All you've seen is advertising information. Yeah glossy pictures You know, maybe some pretty girls You know, they they mix it all up to to hit you from every angle And and then it's got an exciting story about some Adventurers climbing up into the freaking Himalayas and battling the Yeti to steal his seed stash And I mean it just goes on and on and you and you and you believe it And then you get there and there's half of the crowd on on the forum that you've decided to read Is saying That's all lies and the other half of the crowd is saying it's all true, you know But you immediately realize that you know, it's neither it's neither all or all are All true or all false, but man That's kind of an eye-opener and and then you know the whole experience of like Like group dynamics, you know, where people will align up around one color, you know, we're the we're for the red seeds You know, no, we only grow blue seeds around here It's uh, it's just just a horrible thing but Well, not to answer your question. I got on because I wanted to see What was out there in the whole weed world? I knew it from my perspective and the people I knew in Arizona, but and Other places, but I just had no idea that it was so expansive And when I saw mr. Nice seeds and all the things that were possible I bought some seeds in the uh auctions. They had Yeah, they were in switzerland. I believe they were nailed from switzerland and Um, they got through fine. So it was kind of cool. That was were they were they in straws? Oh, wow, I think they were They weren't in the hollow board yet the the card Yeah, no one of the one of the ways that shanty like those guys like to send things Would they would put seeds in like a plastic straw write the name on the straw and then Burn or seal the ends of the straw itself Yeah, and and uh, that's just why I asked because I've gotten straw You know corrugated seeds I've got lots of lots of straws from shanty and I ordered um from him before the auctions Even if we want to date stamp it and you know before you even started auctions and and I got them in straws even then did you did you ever used to get um Shanti's old private email lists of his seeds I was I was trying to dig up one for not so because he'd never seen one of his old like when you were um If you're one of the breeders that was on the site during like that nevel era He would share a list with some people of the like one-off crosses and stuff He made you know, you could buy but he wanted some people Yeah, so like I've been trying to find one of these old lists because I had a bunch but I don't have them anymore Speaking of uh, just to just to fill in a little bit speaking of magic talking about getting banned um There was uh, there was a lot of ways that people got banned Some of it was you started talking about a narrative that the owners or people that were connected to the owners of the site didn't agree with Uh, that could happen Sometimes it was just you would get on and start talking your truth And then you'd be immediately crapped on by a bunch of different people calling you a liar and calling you names Let's face it. Like a lot of cannabis people like, you know, social interaction is not our strong suit, right? So you get online and you start typing you out your truth or whatever and then a button Then 20 kids are insulting you and telling you your dick And you get mad and then you start saying ruthless things back and then You know, yeah, that's the mat the mat version, right? Is uh And and you know, and then you get banned for you know, your thread gets locked because it goes beyond let's talk about facts to like Let's let's throw insults at one another until somebody cries Yeah And so, you know forums were like and there's also that you know, you talk about the keyboard warrior thing Where anonymous people getting annoyed with each other Can spit some pretty you know pretty heated stuff back and forth Um, and you know, sometimes it's very difficult How do you you know? There are some legitimate long-term liars and scammers that have used the forums to advance their interests And then there's also people like mad jag or others coming out of the shadows just telling truth And how sitting there in front of your computer. Do you differentiate between the two? It can become quite hard and some of the scammers are extremely personable Yeah, some of them are elders in the community and and you know, like you want to to trust your elders because that's how We're a lot of people are raised, you know And then there's people like, you know tom hill or or hempy or different people where if you cross them the wrong way They're just gonna like, you know, uh, they're just gonna write out a Written evisceration They didn't have a lot of patience. There was a call who went by the name weird I think matt we talked about this. But yeah, he he was always giving tom hill a hard time In the early years that I was like 2012 13 14 Um, and tom would just let it happen. But then when he came back like you said he would just Pound the guy, you know, and there was some thought that weird was actually a woman. I'm not sure that's true, but He was very intelligent. He wasn't just like yeah Saying you're a liar tom or whatever But he he just wouldn't let go. There's very much a bulldog and tom earned a new He earned a new fan the other day You know, oh, sorry matt go ahead. No, it's okay. Yeah, he just earned a new fan on instagram the other day that is Convinced that he's gonna prove that tom's haze is a hybrid somehow. I don't know great Another another don kiyoti there. Yeah, I think it windmills. Yep Um, and yeah, it's hard a lot of times people in cannabis are better with plants than they are with other people Yeah, and so you start interacting with other people, you know, and and it you know forums. It's like it's hard to stick to the facts People get upset people don't like being called a liar. People don't like being called this or that or whatever And then there's people that just doubt Um, or they get they read other stuff and they get their facts wrong Well, you know the the weird thing is like how long do you have to be online before you have your first experience that it's like Oh my god, something I was absolutely positive was the truth is not true You know because that happens with with you know pedigree provenance stories It's and it but it takes a while you show up and and you're you know, you're a virgin You believe everything you've been told by the marketing of every seed company ever. Yeah all of a sudden Right watching especially on cannabis world where Sam skunkman was know it all for sure Watching those arguments about skunk one and haze go down Uh, you know, you're like, well, what do you believe? Which people there's all these people that are absolutely certain that this person's full of shit And this person's absolutely certain that they weren't there and they're full of it and people get defensive and It would just go on and on and on and on Well, I mean the pages. Do you know the story of white widow very well the two competing stories? Uh, well one of them is that let's see. There's a brazilian sativa Manga rose And a corolla a There's a random afi in there somewhere in one of the stories. Yeah, and and the corolla Yes, so and then it's that's verner Right or or ingamar the shame Ingmar there you go. Ingmar or shanti one of those two Both of them claim to be the the creator correct Um, and I believe shanti has a little bit more detail in his in his description about how it came to be The other one is just kind of like well, I woke up one morning and I pissed out white widow Yeah, it was um, it was it was like a hash bean if I remember correctly And one of the in ingamar to shaman story was that a bean in a hash if I remember correctly There's something called the plank pl a n c k some kind of columbia or not maybe it wasn't columbia something like brazilian And they and I think he did say corolla as well And I believe he traveled the india to get his as well just like shanti did and they both magically came back with this Same exact or not exact, but similar parentage hybrid with the same exact name My experience at the same time the people in amsterdam tended to believe ingmar And the people online tended to believe shanti Uh, it's definitely indisputable that shanti is the first person to release a seed line to the public using that name And and it does appear that the you know All the hybrids You know and and things like that that started dominating the cups like the white widow and the and the great white shark and And and white white right and you know even like peacemaker. Yeah, peace peacemaker is actually great And that's ingamar's No, I don't think so. Yeah ingamar's peacemaker. That's that's original maker. Yeah I think these guys all ripped each other off and I think so too Most of people trying to find a good guy on that list is just it's it's you know I don't I don't I don't condemn for it or anything, but there's a lot of money involved I mean there You know, I remember because I was a young kid I was you know, I was a young adult that I'll say, you know, barely barely legal if you will and Getting those high times and they would have these high glossy photos of all the winners You know 95 96 97 all that and you'd see the ak 47 and the white widow and the right rhino and the great white shark and and they won and they were like the best weed out there and you know Those kind of strains started dominating. So it was like they probably made milk They probably sold just umpteenth million seeds Based off those spreads so many people from america coming to holland looking for those exact strains that they saw in high times so there was a lot of monetary battling going on Over you know over access in that in that regard marketing the marketing legends were were the difference between You know first and last um Yeah, I mean I would any and even even when we if we're talking about the forums to trail it back to that again Like the I would say that the forums are really what made dj short and his blueberry work famous It's what made the original brothers grim with the cindy 99 and uh and all that very famous You know vick highs worked back then um, some of some of the smaller breeders that were just getting started um a good long 200 page thread on something could spark a career On some of those early forums because there wasn't that many people doing it I mean, I remember looking at all that blueberry work and being like I never see a weed that looks like that That's crazy looking. Yeah, let's go spend a couple of thousand dollars and then does it smell like fruit? Does it smell like it looks? Why does it look like that and then there was a time we've talked about this on a previous podcast But we I used to go to these parties Um that were basically a gathering of a lot of these people that had met online In northern California using a bowl. Is that how the party went and Yeah Not quite but I thought this is a different podcast is uh, no not quite but they But everything when I was hoping to find a bunch of like ancient varieties there and like everything was crossed with Blue work white work Sweet tooth, you know, it was all those early 2000s famous, you know breeder steve dj short Um, you know white widow white family all that because that was with the big seeds of the time And it was also pre reversals and pre feminized work So it was all kind of normal stuff You know, I was hoping to find a bunch of ancient stuff and it was all the most at the time the most modern You know all the most modern lines the new new the new at the time the hype Right, you know the hype blue widow You know, um, you know everything by sweet two three Um everything by louis, you know everything by uh blockhead All that kind of stuff any seeds hara hwana Yeah, cindy 99 the first edition of of brother's grim when it was sly and mr. Soul those guys were very famous on the early forms Yeah, and then they then they disappeared and it's like the the demand for their seeds increased when they were no longer around Which had that that whole uh phenomenon of You know Creating a whole bunch of new people You know making their f2s f3s of of cindy 99 and discovering holy crap. This stuff breeds true Or like the the dutch flowers group Um, they were some of the first people that were they would they would write online Like what I consider now to be like professional ad copy Uh, you know of their strains and it was very done and it was designed to elicit emotions And feelings and they would write extensively about how amazing it was Yeah, and they would do that for weeks or months and get everybody hyped and tell them They didn't have enough seed to give everyone and then they would release their seed online and it would sell out instantly And they would do that every time huh How about the first first um seed sellers that were massive like world of seeds Where you could go on there in great britain and they had they had every other seed company You know they represented Just hundreds and hundreds. I remember one of my first was seed madness That was real big from the uk with seed madness. They had everyone remember heaven stairway Yeah, that was that was earlier before the uk slam heaven I didn't realize it at the time But heaven's stairway was tied into both over growing cannabis world And so when they got rated Both of those forums went down Yeah, because I didn't realize it at the time, but that was that was the that was the group They were all the same it was all different facets of the same the same group same group I think it would be interesting to talk to richard calreasy and now um, if he would Um, his name is well known. I don't mind saying it, you know the old owner of heaven stairway um It would be very interesting to talk to him because he would have a lot of answers about dutch flowers And a lot of other companies that are very vague because he worked with everyone The only time I've ever got info on dutch flowers oddly enough was from charles scott reefer man and he was who kind of Gave me info on it, but I don't want to repeat it because I don't even know if it's true coming from him But I will say that like dutch flowers They would write this ad copy and they would just write like descriptions of strains that went on and on and on and on And by the time you were done reading it You were just ready to spend a thousand dollars out of your pocket as soon as they would let you to get as many of them As you could and then they'd sell out and you couldn't get them and there'd be people online laughing that they got some and all stoked And it was like Unbelievable how much they were willing they were able to build momentum for each seed drop Yeah, and they reminded me of That reminded me of alien genetics when they came out on the farm and like in 2011 2012 13 Like it was just like every drop they did was just like thousand dollars a pack $2,000 a pack every time and nobody knew who they were but nobody cared, you know It's it's really expensive and there's not enough for everyone But we're gonna drop it at this time and you can all fight over it And it would really and it was like it's a it's a cool way of like how human nature works when you hear something That's rare and desirable and you see other people Posting about how bad they want it and you want it. It's only going to be there for a minute And you're just like take my money, please. Yeah. Yeah, it was really clever Herbie's head shop As the artist uk cannabis seed bank back then too. Yeah, I'm looking at a list. I have all these bookmarks in my Firefox and some of these hypersomias in spain. I bought some from and You bought a bunch from them and they didn't pop right hypersomias I I know I got my first packet came with a footprint on it. No, that's right. That's right Mad flat and these people were nice enough to I didn't even have a way of making a digital photo to send to them But they they believed me and they sent it again and I got them but somewhere in the post office, you know just You can tell you can tell that herbie's a good guy from that picture of them on their ads with the dreadlocks and everything He looks real cool That's got that's got to be herbie, right? Right. I thought that was him So, uh, yeah, I mean and then then you had these people who wrote these legend stories, right? Like like the origin of skunk one It's like a novel, you know, it's like a short. It's like a short fiction book I've got an empty seeds did them since he seeds had great long Yeah, it was like I remember I remember jesse's pretty well for mr. Nice. Yeah I thought jesse wrote those and the thing is the sincey ones were almost identical Yeah, which made me think holy crap. Was he actually working for both both sides of the battle? You know, what is it wouldn't that be funny? Yeah If you remember jesse jesse posted fake pictures of uk cheese as the head picture for uk cheese, too It was the little quijo I always get it wrong. I always say it's white skunk, but it's like white Skunk one something rather but yeah, white widow cheese or something He had a whole series on mr. Nice where he would come out with a lot a lot of the original strains and these extremely long and detailed stories told with utter confidence about where they came from Yeah, and uh, you know it You know, it's uh, sometimes they say like in news. It's better to be first than to be right Yeah, you know And that is the case online as well get your tail out there And and and get repetition going on and defend it and then eventually it'll burrow in and become part of the fabric of the story Candidate's earworms And then and then some people on uh on your podcast will invite you on to explain How that story doesn't make any sense anymore You know, you know, what's funny is one of the decisions that matt and I made about the podcast and the reason we started talking about Old stuff from the 70s and 80s first Was because there was less people that were going to get super offended and fight with us instantly About telling what we know because it goes against what benefits them or they're making money on some angle on it or whatever Um, there's uh, there's very there's only so many people that are actually interested in cannabis history Most of them are interested in making themselves look good and making money CSI often reminds me That we are weirdos because we actually give a shit about what's in our weed Like we are the we're the actual weirdos that care enough to archive To really delve into what's in strains and then what's in those parents What that's weirdo people stuff and we're those people and he reminds me all the time matt Not everybody cares like that. It's kind of weird that we care like that so it keeps some perspective, you know So, yeah It's a minority a dying minority that are uh, genuinely interested in strains. It could be growing minority You know, why does it have to be a dying minority? Because I I really know I I'll disagree on that one strongly because I use this analogy all the time But like I kind of think cannabis right now is where like wine was in the 70s Where it's like people know for the most part they know about light and red And what they know about red is red goes with like pot roast and it's like deeper and like men drink it And white wine goes with fish or it's like your lady likes it. It's not as like it's not as robust And then that's really what people knew mostly about wine in the 70s, right? And then you fast forward with 30 or 40 years of education And people are talking about I like my cabinet savignon from this appellation and napa or this part of mendicino county Or I like it from here and these guys that make wine these vintners are my favorites And there's so much depth now and you have like so many days that come to the table at fancy restaurants and explain the nuances of these expensive bottles they want you to buy And so I think cannabis will go in that direction for some Percentage of the market. There's going to be a great desire for Information it's just we're in its infancy And so now people are fighting over the history Um, you know because it's going to become more important and people are going to want, you know marketing stories, too You know, they're going to want to sell their version of things Makes sense to me market trends. Yep So all everything you just said sounds right on You know, the question would be is that percentage that are connoisseurs that that are willing to spend the extra for the good stuff If you compare it to the to the alcohol Business model, you know that the majority of people are going to buy, you know the cheap beer that that you know, they get the best bang for the buck Other people, uh, you know become, you know, like to get the good stuff They they drink in moderation and savor it and you know make a big deal out of it Whatever same thing with same thing with cannabis except um You know, there's just there's so much Cannabis and alcohol aren't aren't the same, right? I mean you drink you drink a gallon of one kind You drink a gallon of the other you're you're going to be just as dead either way But you know with cannabis the differences are so great between one strain or another so it's it's not exactly the same You know, it's not like 10 10 hits of bad weed is not the same as one good hit Yeah And there's and even if it's just a small percentage that's interested in what we're interested in that has the potential to still be millions of people Spread out over over, you know a wide area of humans, you know Well, that's where those numbers grow is by the general the increase in number of people who smoke in general Yeah, right. I think that the 20 percent if we're going to think that 20 percent are ever going to give a shit about about quality um You know, then that that number how do we grow that number of 20 percent so that you know an army of of old school Hill hill You know boys from the hill can just keep making a living off of their special their special stuff I have thoughts on that too because Coming from like being like a grateful dead hippie when I was young and all that like When I was younger the only place you could get organic food was basically like crunchy co-ops And odd places right and then I'd like to say that it was like us that pushed it forward But we really didn't who really pushed it forward was like there was some yuppies and some wealthier people And they're like, you know, I drive a european sports car. I wear these really nice shoes. I wear tailored suits Why don't I have a nicer grade of food? You know and and and there's going to be a whole group of people that get into it And they're going to want a nicer grade because everything they also have in life is nice Right, right. Like that's just how you know, they have nice wine. They have nice shoes. They have nice belts. They have a nice car They live in a nice zip code You know all those different types of things and You know that some percentage of them are going to get interested in in cannabis And they're going to want high-grade cannabis because they get high-grade everything. Yeah You know, and that's why they're the reason why you can go into any grocery store these days And there's at least a small organic section You know, yeah, well and plus, you know one difference between food and cannabis is food food would be Described as an essential right you have to have it to live cannabis is not Um, necessarily unless you use it for medicine that True, but again, you know, you don't need italian leather shoes to live. You had a lot of people buy them Yeah You know, well, and if they don't fit you have to acquit also Yeah Those Bruno molly Well, I don't know what I'm talking about Out of my price range this might have to get edited but matt I have to bail in a second Oh, that's all right. We're good right now. We have about an hour and a half in and I know rajo's got a bill soon too Yep All right, so let's uh, let's record some kind of exit Okay Go ahead not so If we're gonna record an exit, uh, I will just say That the forums were amazing because they were the first time that worldwide Cannabis enthusiasts got to insult each other share information throw poop at each other Fight about what the truth was and share their personal stories outside their own little friend group And for good and bad it totally changed how cannabis people interacted with each other It made a bunch of friendships. It made some enemies It turned something from very local for most people into Nation or even internationally wide It forged a bunch of friendships over a long period of time of people that met through forums and Direct messages and stuff like that. And so technology Combined with loosening laws in america that made people feel slightly more comfortable to get on and talk about things Is really what sprung forward Um, you know, uh a lot of information exchange Um, and I don't think any of the four people on here talking today would be talking without that internet advancement For lack of a better term. That's why we're We we've met each other. Yeah all four of us, you know, except me You know, so I I say that you know that that change was a sea change because it brought together a lot of disparate groups of weed enthusiasts and allowed them to Make friends or argue or both or whatever and and push information and history forward So um, it's uh, it's been a massive positive in my opinion and the massive number of new strains hybrids Really was fostered on forums, you know where people exchange seeds And sent you a private message and said well, I've got these and you got those and then next thing, you know They're being crossed with another one and proliferating crazily It also one thing I should say too that made me think of it when you were speaking is that It used to be before the forums and before the internet that it was only a very few number of seed bank seed companies that were allowed to sell stuff And when the forums came about a lot of private hobbyist breeders started being able to exchange their work with each other And as madjag said that Was revolutionary and pushed forward hybrids in a way that no one expected because it went from a few dozen companies To literally thousands of people exchanging their work with each other Of their own private projects and and getting famous and some people got famous But even if they didn't it just spread the germ the germ plasm around all over Yeah Sam and Rob Clark both told me that the only when I was asking them at a later date The only seed company or seed bank that they Felt was legit was seedsman In in Amsterdam seedsman Just for whatever it's worth Yeah, well, they've sold a lot of stuff through seedsman and uh, and they aren't one of the more legit houses out there That's for sure. You know, I think that the the internet Allowed us to grow the community. I mean not so you were a deadhead You know went out on tour, you know bought bought whatever you bought on shakedown street and Got friends probably still from those days. I didn't I never was a deadhead You know, I I liked their music, but I never went and saw them tour and I I hate that I missed that But you know, it seems like with jerry gone and that We all know that that that movement that served a function of Propagating and preserving genetics You know people brought their best to the show because they wanted to show off to their friends and You know, I mean it wasn't just to make money to get to the next show or whatever It was, you know, there was pride associated with that and competition Um, when those when those events stopped You know, I guess I guess the internet kind of took its place. It did I agree. That's a great point. Yeah, and and you know and that took it to places like way beyond We could have ever gotten to in those parking lots and cell phone numbers or you know However, the old connections were maintained Yeah, pay phones and beepers, you know This this summer will be 25 years that I've lived in mendicino county And I absolutely would not live here if debt had friends that I knew from From shows and tour had not lived here and invited me out. Yeah 100% So, I mean this, you know, the health the health of the community as it exists today Is because of forms um, you know and and I I like to differentiate between community and industry, you know, the community is all the people that kept this stuff alive When it was illegal everywhere and and and getting caught could be the end of, you know, ruin your life literally um, you know, all those people who who did the work when when the when the The the consequences were so grave, you know, those people are part of the community and the industry I think we all know what the industry is, you know, it's it's it's the big business that that hopes to get rich off the back of of that legacy and You know, I'm not I got nothing against big business, but um You know, it's it's It seems that the to the community and and the type of things that the community has has worked towards And values is is in a collision course or in direct conflict with the industry Right that the the industry is all about money and that that drives, you know Production practices wait, you know way down in a negative way for quality Standardization everything turns everything homogenization, right? Everything is the same you get the same mediocre crap everywhere you go and um, you know, that's I don't know. So I'm a i'm all about the community versus industry and and the communities wouldn't be here without the internet That's a great point art art and economics have always been uncomfortable bedfellows right Nice, is that a quote or did you just make off the top of your head? I just it's definitely not me, but I just spun it off the top of my head. You know, yeah Oh, that's right on All right, you guys got anything you want to get in for this week Mad jag is your mustache bigger this About the same. Yeah It's handsome. That is a handsome mustache though. I'm very much so I Shade my beard off a few episodes ago because you're right It makes you look much older and I am much older. So it makes me much much older There might be an episode coming up where the beard leaves and it's it's him and I with full stashes. So we'll see Yeah, handle our stashes I'll have to do mine just into a mustache. I've never had one just mustaches ever As far as you guys know, I've got a full mustache right now There you go. I know you are an apparition you are a specter ghost Disembodied voice disembodied voice on a yeah interesting, but Everyone always super appreciate everyone listening and everyone's time and okay. Yeah, don't end the show yet So mad jag What was your partner's friend again? His name John Slater John Slater Yes, slater and it's called year of the mad jag awesome All right, everybody. He's got a whole um an ic mag. He's got a whole thread So fantastic. You can see it and read a chapter and the rest of it. You can get very easily so He's not gonna hard copy publish it. He's working on the second one right now. That's going to be more um real like a biography and It was like it was like I was connected with everything around me All of a sudden I just started questioning everything I'd ever been told You know by the time by the time I got high that very first time When it started to hit me And I'm like wow I got high