Episode 78 - Dan Herer Shares Very Personal and Little Known Stories About His Dad, Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes.
And check out the all new digital version of The Emperor is out now, with dozens of links to original articles, historical documents and movies!
To our dear listeners: Happy 420 in advance! This is going be a strange one for most of us who are used to celebrating and sharing joints, pipes, bongs in the company of friends. These days NOT SHARING IS CARING and though it’s necessary and crucial (despite what some Republican governors are still insisting), it can feel so damn difficult at certain moments, especially on holidays. Last year at this time I was in San Francisco, a city that treats 420 like a national holiday. There were parades and people swarming the streets making all manner of merriment. This year it is a more solitary experience. Holidays in the time of COVID can strain the human spirit because they make you aware of all that isn’t happening and everything that you’re not participating in.
So, to counter that wistfulness I’m bringing you this interview with Dan Herer, the son of Jack Herer, the author of the 1985 classic: The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Dan and co-author Bruce Dietzen have created a magical brand new digital version of The Emperor with dozens of links to original articles, artifacts, historical documents and movies (yep, you can see “Hemp For Victory,” the film the US government made when it needed hemp during WW2 then denied making once the war ended). It’s a real treat, especially if you’re passing this 420 in quarantine or in solitude or if you’re in need of a green distraction to counter the blues that the entire world is feeling. Download it here for $9.99
If you don’t know The Emperor, it was the first book to tell the truth about cannabis and hemp. It came out in 1985, smack in the middle of the Reagan “Just Say No” era and it laid bare 80 years of lies and propaganda. It also documented how cannabis and hemp were among the most useful plants on planet earth and showed the ways that hemp could be used to replace fossil fuels and unsustainable building materials. It even featured Henry Ford and the car he built from hemp in 1941. Today Mercedes and Bugatti use hemp to make car doors more crash resistant (apparently when mixed with certain plastic fibers it is ten times as strong as steel.)
With over 700,000 copies sold it’s fair to say that The Emperor changed the world. It set the record straight, educated and inspired generations of activists, and helped lay the intellectual groundwork for medical cannabis legalization in California a decade later.
In our interview, Dan talks about what his dad was really like (I’ve always thought he was a salty character—the rat-tat-tat fury of his writing makes that clear), his fierce opposition to cannabis until a woman friend changed his mind, and how being locked in jail for 15 days inspired the book’s creation. I hope you enjoy this interview and this photo montage that Dan put together for the Brave New Weed podcast community.
Bonus: Here's a special report on COVID-19 and Cannabis created by Dr. Junella Chin, my partner and the Chief Medical Officer of our online education company, MedicalCannabisMentor.com. It answers many of the questions she's getting every day from patients and adult use consumers around the country.
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