*This Conversation is featured in Gossamer Volume Eight: the Space issue, which is on [newsstands](https://www.gossamer.co/stockists) and [available to order now](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-eight-space).*

I’m extremely tall—that’s what most people know me for. I’m left-handed. I used to be a DJ and now I do podcasting. I have a good amount of bro in me, unfortunately, which I try to take advantage of.

“Bro” was a derogatory term for a long time, and something that I was against myself. Where I grew up—in Orange County—it was a blanket term for an idiot who only wanted to do X Games sports. Now that I’m an adult, I realize that a lot of people in the world are bros. Now people who do X Games sports are having intellectual conversations and raising awareness about issues. I don’t know, maybe being a bro isn’t so bad. Anyone could be a bro. They could have bro tendencies without being a terrible person. Ladies can be bros. And when they are bros, I call them bro.

[[1]]

I’m drawn to a sense of humor more than anything. If you have absolutely zero humor, then I have nothing in common with you. But I’m also wildly fascinated by people who have no sense of humor. I try to look at that as a challenge. How can I get this person to break and maybe let their guard down
a little bit? 

We all use different things to advance in the world socially. For me, I knew that people would like me more if I made them laugh. I used comedy to make friends, and bond with other people. These are the people I’m more entertained by, I suppose. Not exclusively, especially now that I’m older and a little smarter. But when I was younger, that was the main filter I would use to find friends or romantic partners.

I’ve always been into music. I played guitar and stuff, but never started a band or anything like that. I was never an excellent musician, I was always okay. But I liked music. In my early twenties, I started throwing parties, and I quickly realized the people I paid hundreds of dollars to play music poorly and get drunk were making as much money as I was, but doing way less work. I figured I might as well just start DJing myself. That way I didn’t have to pay other people to do it.

[[2]]

That’s how most people start doing things—it’s how I started podcasting. You listen to a podcast and say, “I could do that” or, “There’s something going on here I think could do better, so I’m going to give it a try.” DJing was one of those things, and it worked out.

I was a professional DJ for about 10 years, from when I was like 24 to 34, with varying levels of success. Once I was able to quit my day job and DJ full time, that’s when I started taking it more seriously. I got into producing music and going on tour and DJing in a way where I could make a living doing it.

Luckily, digital DJing came along around when I started, so I didn’t have to spend decades collecting records and finding my craft. I was able to buy some software and get it going even though I did start DJing the old fashioned way. To me, DJing as a career definitely has a shelf life. You can be a DJ well into your older years, but it doesn’t happen very often. And then you have to be the old guy in the club, which is something that I wasn’t exactly down to do. It’s a young person’s game.

[[3]]

I got into podcasting maybe eight years ago, but it was always just a hobby, a side thing. I had two podcasts prior to *[How Long Gone](https://howlonggone.com/)*: one about food, and one called *[Tall Tales](https://talltalespodcast.tumblr.com/)*, which was similar to what I’m doing now but more focused on interviewing people who were in the music industry. I used it to grow my profile in hopes of it translating to more DJ bookings. I had no plans to turn it into a business. But through the repetition of doing it for years and years, I got better at interviewing people, having conversations, and, hopefully, being funny. In the last few years, it’s become an actual profession. I now focus on podcasting full time.

*How Long Gone* started as a quarantine boredom, don’t-know-what-to-do kind of thing. My co-host [Chris Black](https://www.instagram.com/donetodeathprojects/?hl=en) and I already had a rapport from podcasting together before, and working on some creative projects here and there. Our main goal was just to be entertaining. We weren’t trying to change the world. We weren’t trying to be political. We weren’t trying to do anything super intellectual. We were just trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and thought it would be nice to have a little way to turn the brain off and be entertained.

> We took advantage of an unfortunate situation in which a lot of people who are normally very busy suddenly had a whole lot of time.

So that’s what we did. We found a hosting platform that doesn’t cost any money and we would just call each other on FaceTime three times a week to talk about whatever was going on in the world. When we first started, we literally just hit record, hit upload, and were done with it. If we were going to record three episodes a week, it had to be very streamlined and very easy for everyone involved. There’s no video. You don’t have to be camera-ready. You don’t have to have a glam squad. You don’t have to show up at a studio at a certain time. We didn’t want it to feel like homework, or really like work at all. And that worked. Now we’ve done over 300 episodes in less than two years, which is a shitload.

*How Long Gone* grew quickly because we were able to have a lot of conversations with guests who also had nothing else going on. Everyone had the time. We took advantage of an unfortunate situation in which a lot of people who are normally very busy suddenly had a whole lot of time.

[[4]]

Of all the people who we’ve tried to get, nobody has ever really shut us down. We’ve had people say, “I want to do it, but I just have to wait for the right timing.” And there are dream guests who we haven’t really tried to reach out to yet, like Paris Hilton, Liam Gallagher, Ina Garten. Hopefully one day we’ll get to the point where we can get the pick of the litter of whoever we want to talk to, but it just comes down to right place, right time.

I’m really fascinated by people who almost always give a bad interview because I want to see if I could get a good one out of them. Barack Obama’s an amazing speaker and anyone in the world could have an hour-long conversation with him that you’d want to listen to. But somebody who’s really difficult or annoying—like Kanye West, for example, is a very hard person to interview—that’s who I want to talk to. I’m not even a particularly big fan of Kanye West, but I like the idea of doing the Kanye West interview where he shows a side we didn’t know was there.

The higher the degree of difficulty, the more impressive something is. I model that after comedians who dig a hole for themselves for the sheer enjoyment of the difficulty of digging themselves out of that hole. I want to increase the level of difficulty to entertain myself, and because that’s also when people really start to pay attention. It’s like fishing. Nobody cares about pulling up a mackerel. We want to get a great white shark, because that’s going to be interesting.

![MS JasonStewart294](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/7uq1ir58EsbEEbOWGg7SsL/fa470dea344b64d521e5ceb5696b20c3/MS_JasonStewart294.jpg)

The first year, I was doing a lot of podcast production work for other shows. I spent a lot of time editing and producing, telling people what works and what doesn’t. I saw the benefit of editing and post production, and how you can turn a truly awful podcast into something halfway listenable. Since I was already doing it for other people, I thought, *What would happen if I took our podcast that I already think is good, and made it shiny and professional?*

It is a lot of work, but when it’s work for myself and I’m holding myself accountable, it ends up being very rewarding. The hardest thing for me is self-editing. But I’ve learned the benefit of not just editing, but going back and listening to every conversation you’ve had. Kind of like how an athlete will watch their games with their coach and learn how they need to change what they’re doing.

> I grew up straight edge. I never did drugs, never drank, never did anything.

It’s very difficult to do at first, to watch yourself fail. And the hardest thing for a lot of people is to listen to their own voice. It’s revolting for many—myself included. It was really difficult. But once you push through and you’re like, *Okay, I fucked up here, hopefully next time you won’t make that mistake.*

I noticed that the cadence of the way Chris and I spoke to each other changed. You almost start editing your conversation in real time. We developed a style where we can go back and forth. I know when he’s going to finish his thought and I can hop in right at that moment, kind of like double dutch jump rope. You begin to intuitively know when something is done and it’s time for something else to go in next.

Anything that happens outside of the podcast and on its own naturally is cool, but we’re not going to chase it down. But we do love making merch. We both love clothing, and we’ve been historians of band merchandise. It was a big part of our formative years. Now every time I smoke weed and come up with a fun design for a t-shirt, instead of me just making it in Photoshop, sending it to my friends and them being like, “That’s cool,” I send it to Chris, and he’ll be like, “That’s cool, let’s make 300 of these shirts and sell them on our website.”

[[5]]

I started smoking weed in my early twenties. I grew up straight edge. I never did drugs, never drank, never did anything. I never even smoked a cigarette until I was like, out of high school. I was not a party person. I was not cool. I related a lot more to people who were straight edge. Then my friends stopped being straight edge, and eventually peer-pressured me into weed use.

We would smoke weed in my car in front of my mom’s house, listen to music, and stay up all night having conversations. I had a shitty old Honda Accord that we called the “Dank Tank” because we would sit inside, play stoney music, and have the terrible, cliche, stoner conversations that you have when you are a late teen learning about the world. Like, “Oh my god, have you heard this band?” Having our Pink Floyd, blacklight poster moments. We would watch standup comedy and get super high, and then eventually make a bunch of food. All the things I love ended up being better with weed. Comedy is funnier, food tastes delicious, and music sounds better. So I enjoyed it.

[[6]]

Once I got older and life was not just a fun game and I had to actually do things, like pay rent and survive, weed was not a big part of my life. I actually took a break from it for a long time because I was getting paranoid and wasn’t enjoying it. This was during the time of my life that I was DJing and partying and drinking. Weed was not a social drug for me.

Then I started forcing myself to get back into it. I weighed the pros and cons of alcohol and weed and realized I didn’t get hungover on weed, and I only overate and ate poorly when I was drunk. I realized I was a better person with weed than with alcohol. So I forced myself to push through the paranoia and the existential dread and the freakouts that you have, and slowly started reintroducing it back into my life. That was about 10 years ago. Now I’m in a great place with it. It’s something I do pretty much every night. I still don’t smoke a lot of weed—I smoke every day, but a small amount. It doesn’t take much to get me where I want to be.

> I smoke every day, but a small amount. It doesn’t take much to get me where I want to be.

I’m definitely into the new weed world. I like all the options, I like the innovation. The more people work at it and invent new things and try to perfect it, the better it’s going to be. When you’re younger you’re like, “I’m going to make weed brownies, and I’m just going to eat them and cross my fingers,” and you end up crying and calling your mom and apologizing for the fact that you’re about to die. That’s really bad. But now you can control exactly how much THC is in each little gummy, take as much or as little as you want, and find out which strains and brands work the best for you. I think that’s amazing.

A lot of people in my life who are so not the type to smoke weed, who are prone to paranoia or negative thoughts, especially with drugs, are now able to be like, “Hey, I found this edible and I just eat a two and a half milligrams, and it helps me sleep at night.” That’s a lifesaver.

[[7]]

There’s a brand called [Wyld](https://wyldcanna.com/) that makes a marionberry-flavored edible that is just so delicious. The generally popular, cute hipster ones, like [Rose Los Angeles](https://www.roselosangeles.com/) and [Pure Beauty](https://purebeautypurebeauty.co/), are always going to be some of my faves. I love Rose edibles, I love how they’re partnering with chefs and farmers to make new interesting flavors. And Pure Beauty has really cool packaging and does cool collaborations with brands. I like their little joints that look like cigarettes, those are really good.

Weed branding and packaging and products were never cool. It was always like a Sublime-inspired, stoner-looking bong with a dragon on it or something like that. There’s never been anything minimal about weed shit. It’s always been very specifically styled. Now enough people are like, “Hey, I’m into weed and I also care about design.” Coincidentally, my fiancée’s brother owns a bong company called [Session Goods](https://sessiongoods.com/) that approaches weed from the minimalist industrial design space.

![MS JasonStewart233](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/7jO2ekGAl477aKqaErC6qX/1ce9ab0abeb78bbae5d05fbc43bf96e6/MS_JasonStewart233.jpg)

Smoking weed and being vegan when I was younger were probably the two biggest catalysts for me getting into cooking. I had to learn how to cook vegan food because my mom was just like, “I don’t know what the fuck that is. Have fun. Go nuts. But I’m making this for dinner. If you want something vegan, you have to make it yourself.” And, like I said earlier, weed makes food taste really good.

Every night it was just, *I have a refrigerator full of this stuff. What can I make out of it?* It became a fun game to play. I have fun doing it from a creative point of view, but I get equal enjoyment out of feeding my friends and loved ones, just seeing the look on their faces, like, “Damn, this is fucking good.” It really made me happy. Same with the ability to have a home-cooked meal that’s also super stoney. You don’t have to go to Taco Bell to get that experience. You can have it in your house. And it’s made from real ingredients that aren’t going to make you feel terrible. That’s a feeling that hasn’t gotten old for me. I guess food is a love language of mine. That’s how I show my love, through the food that I cook.

The food industry has always been really archaic. The way people spoke and the things they said about others were kept behind closed doors. When I first started my food podcast, I wanted to be honest and talk about food the way I would with my friends. I had nothing to lose. I wasn’t a member of the food industry. I was like, *I’m just going to talk shit and say whatever the fuck I want.* The challenge of doing that is doing it in a way that doesn’t make you look like a complete asshole. That’s been the hardest part for me with *How Long Gone*, too. Once you grow in size and influence, you realize you have some responsibility for what it is that you’re doing and saying.

> Once you grow in size and influence, you realize you have some responsibility for what it is that you’re doing and saying.

You have to have a come-to-Jesus moment if you achieve a certain level of success. As I get older and wiser, I’ve been trying to choose my words more carefully. Sometimes Joe Rogan will say, “Hey, don’t listen to me. I’m a comedian. I don’t know shit. These are just my jokes. I’m just having fun.” But if he says a restaurant is stupid and you shouldn’t go there, that could close a business.

Even though the podcast has grown a lot, we’re still not massive. So it’s not something that we’ve really had to sit down and consider. But hopefully we will get to that point one day. Cancel culture and being canceled—that’s been going on since the dawn of time. As time progresses, if you want to keep doing something, you have to be evolving. Everything is going to change. The rules of how the games are played change.

[[8]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Jason Stewart](https://www.instagram.com/themjeans/?hl=en) photographed by [Maggie Shannon](https://www.instagram.com/maggiehshannon/?hl=en) at his home in Los Angeles. 

*If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. You can also pick up a copy of the issue it originally appeared in—Gossamer Volume Eight: the Space issue—which is on [newsstands](https://www.gossamer.co/stockists) and [available to order now](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-eight-space).*

The podcast host on bad interviews, super stoney home-cooked meals, and why DJing is a young person’s game.

MS JasonStewart129

> I don’t know, maybe being a bro isn’t so bad.

![MS JasonStewart131](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/2MF1CnjsdchYzXxRDgsMAg/626a64b7b704a612f0c667e77c4b9e98/MS_JasonStewart131.jpg)

MS JasonStewart161

![MS JasonStewart135](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/65xtzKXybpfa1JWq8zvp7K/6a3390aa523fa9faaf57d406b723de00/MS_JasonStewart135.jpg)

MS JasonStewart110

MS JasonStewart072

> I’m really fascinated by people who almost always give a bad interview.

![MS JasonStewart063](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/31g8FtvHTwGHYzscLoCm5F/892d951decc4589049e525b7bee90b1f/MS_JasonStewart063.jpg)

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MS JasonStewart157

![MS JasonStewart241](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/39xMC1fjD4Ie9dSsLCIvVK/9315ea573aea6a2cdd9569c7ddc760a7/MS_JasonStewart241.jpg)

MS JasonStewart251

> Smoking weed and being vegan when I was younger were probably the two biggest catalysts for me getting into cooking.

![MS JasonStewart032](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/4N4KTmmy3H5LUzfSwEDfoh/2d070529367975af115268986c472668/MS_JasonStewart032.jpg)

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The podcast host on bad interviews, super stoney home-cooked meals, and
why DJing is a young person’s game.

Jason Stewart

*This Conversation is featured in Gossamer Volume Eight: the Space issue, which is on [newsstands](https://www.gossamer.co/stockists) and [available to order now](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-eight-space).*

In August 2021, I opened [Gorilla Rx](https://www.gorillarxwellness.com/), our dispensary on Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles. The store aesthetic came from my years working in the natural food industry. I wanted our store to be different from traditional dispensaries, and I loved being in the vitamin section at the Whole Foods and GNCs of the world. I wanted it to be a place in the community where elderly folks would feel like they were going into a vitamin store. And I wanted our place to break down the stigma of the experience of visiting a dispensary.

That meant having a home goods and lifestyle section, collaborating with community businesses, and showcasing real cooperative economics. [Reparations Club](https://rep.club/), for example, had their books and albums in our store. If you come in, you will see and feel a community in action. We stock a large selection of Black-owned, woman-owned brands. Your individual action of purchasing that product will help that person feed their family and enable them to create more and do more for others. To me, that’s what the spirit of cannabis has always been, long before it was regulated. No matter what color or race or gender you are, we want you to be a part of this.

[[1]]

I am a serial entrepreneur. Gorilla Rx is my fourth business. I never thought I wanted to open a dispensary. My family has always believed in alternative medicines that grow from the earth. Chlorophyll is the compound that’s closest to human hemoglobin, so if you’re iron-deficient, it’s a blood-builder. It goes directly to your liver and it detoxifies. So I launched Gorilla Life, a chlorophyll beverage line. In 2007, I launched a cannabis-infused version called Chronic Tonic.

When I learned about California legalizing in 2017, I planned to expand my cannabis-infused beverage line. I moved quickly, because I thought I’d have nine months to get our manufacturing license. In that process, I learned about the Social Equity Program. I went into retail cannabis with the specific goal of creating a model of cooperative economics, to show people that they do not have to take predatory and sharecropper agreements.

I come from an entrepreneurial family. In the early 1900s, my grandfather had the first Black-owned bar and hotel in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He kept the first dollar bill he earned on his nightstand. After migrating to Leimert Park, Los Angeles in the early ’70s, my grandfather had a gardening business. I would watch him at the dining room table doing his books and ledgers, which always intrigued me.

[[2]]

My parents focused on community development and started programs for those coming out of prison, and for women who had suffered domestic violence. My mother even had a birthing center. Sometimes during the late hours of the night, someone needing help would knock on our door and my dad would answer. We didn’t have much food in our refrigerator, but I would watch my dad give his last dollars to a community member who was in more need than we were.

I got the best of the capitalism side and the socialism side. Our community-first model at the dispensary comes from that. For three years before we opened, our space operated as the headquarters for our education, training, outreach, and organizing efforts.

> Our core values are based on our family values.

Gorilla Rx is a family business. My 29-year-old daughter Kika Howze is my marketing director. She was my only child for 12 years, and then I had her two younger sisters. In eighth grade, she joined Usher’s nonprofit program as an ambassador, and then moved to New York to work with his management company at 17. After five years there, she worked for Team Epiphany, which is a Black creative advertising agency. But COVID brought her back to Los Angeles.

Obviously, we share the same values. She’s been able to develop our brand. My nephew Aaron is the store manager. My niece Amina is an assistant manager. My other niece is my inventory manager. My godsister works in the store. That was how we built our foundation. Our core values are based on our family values. That’s how we hired. I was able to just post on social media. People who came to work for us were people from the community who wanted to be there.

[[3]]

For me, a typical day starts at about 4:30 AM. I’ve got to wake up my children for school by 5:15 AM, so those 45 minutes are probably the only time I have to myself. I ground myself and get my prayers going. Then I drive my kids to school for an hour and a half on two different sides of Los
Angeles.

We have offices above the dispensary, and that’s where I spend most of my time. About 40% of my day is focused on government relations, but that’s down from 70%. When I opened the dispensary, I didn’t realize how deeply I would need to be involved in politics, and I’ve never had a business where that was a prerequisite to succeed.

I’m on the board of the Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA) and on the legislative committee for the California Cannabis Industry Association. I’m also the president of the Social Equity Owners and Workers Association. All of that means I’m engaged very directly on a leadership level in local politics regarding equity and social justice.

[[4]]

As a child, my family moved every two years. My dad was pursuing multiple degrees, and we would move from state to state as he attended different colleges. We always lived in the inner city, no matter where we were. Struggle was at the heart of our environment, but we always found joy. As an adult, that ability to be flexible and spontaneous and thrive amidst struggle has proven to be a benefit in the cannabis industry.

It’s been over five years since Proposition 64. As community members, we have yet to see the benefits of the Social Equity Program. In the six months after opening my doors at Gorilla Rx, I had $650,000 collected in taxes. I’m taxed at 37% from the city and the state. I’m representative of cannabis businesses across the board, but there is a very stark difference between Social Equity operators and the rest of the industry. Aside from the barriers to entry in this business, once we get into the cannabis industry, we’re not well-resourced. We don’t have banking, we don’t have these huge accounts that would allow us to scale to the point of profitability three years in. We have to pay taxes to the city every month, and taxes to the state every quarter.

> I never thought I’d have to sue the city of L.A. and organize a movement.

And so we’ve been fighting at the State Senate level and also at the city level to eliminate the excise tax specifically for Social Equity operators.
A year and a half ago, I helped organize a coalition of equity organizations across the State of California, and we formed the California Cannabis Equity Alliance (CCEA). We’ve hired a lobbyist, we pooled our money together, and we’ve been lobbying at the assembly and at the State Senate level. Give us an advantage, allow us to reinvest back into our communities. I have more than 30 employees. That $650,000 I paid in taxes could have gone to medical care, to hiring more employees, to raises.

I got caught up in this retail route because I didn’t realize the fight for licensing would take four years. I did not realize I would have to become a political activist in order to win. I never thought I’d have to sue the city of L.A. and organize a movement.

![Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2565](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/3vQ8k4SOuUeKg4qNd96ctO/29e1c3318c4d5e32a5104599fcecb4af/Jennelle_Fong_x_Gossamer_Kika_Keith_High_Res_MGL2565.jpg)

In my life, cannabis has always had a very spiritual connection. Growing up, my family lived by Rastafarian principles. We used cannabis in ceremony, and smoking was always a moment in my household that created peace and grounding. My mother would call it “holy” instead of calling it “weed” or “cannabis” or “marijuana.” Since my parents moved in Black Panther circles in the 1960s, there was a need in our household to take moments to be still and ground ourselves as a family. During COVID, there’s been more anxiety and depression than ever, and more of a need to find balance and peace and remove stress. That’s what I saw my parents use cannabis for. And I think that’s incredibly crucial, especially in these times.

We have 3,000 SKUs in our store, so we invite the brands to bring in their specialists and do budtender training. We also spend a lot of time with the farmers now. I’m about to take a course on endocannabinoids and dig in deeper to understand the plant. There is so much information, and so many new products that come out every single day. It is such an exploratory time in this industry.

Before legalization, I didn’t like the way dispensaries felt. I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t know what I was going in for, and that there weren’t people who could give me any information. I felt bad that I didn’t know what I was asking for. So we’re all learning as we move. We’ve hired cannabis wellness advisors that work with us and train the team. Every month we do team trainings on new products and new science.

[[5]]

The Mayor of London visited my dispensary for a tour. He’s looking at ways to decriminalize cannabis in London and we were the dispensary the City of Los Angeles selected as an example of a model “for us and by us” dispensary. I’m okay with big business and multi-state operators, but there has to be room for a cottage industry just like there has been for the craft breweries. So far, there have not been models of how that could work.

We sued the City of Los Angeles, so to be selected by that very same city to say, “This is the one model that is exemplary of L.A. cannabis at its best,” that’s what the hard work is for. And that gives great credence for us to be able to replicate this model in inner cities across the United States.

> Very rarely do you hear the David and Goliath story in a real way, and especially not a David and Goliath story starring a Black woman.

It’s a great victory. And though I love to give myself a pat on the back, it has taken the whole community. Very rarely do you hear the David and Goliath story in a real way, and especially not a David and Goliath story starring a Black woman. My whole team here has been fighting for this moment, and to be recognized for that was incredible.

The cannabis industry must be diversified. Too much blood has been spilled on our streets, too many people who are still incarcerated, too many children left without their mothers and fathers to this day. Either willingly or under pressure, people in the cannabis industry need to talk about the effects of the War on Drugs and create opportunities for those who have been affected. No matter what statistic you look at, Black people have always been disproportionately harmed. My hope is that we are actually able to have race-based and race-conscious legislation that gives equity and justice to communities that were most harmed across this country.

![Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2736](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5ojd1s2d2P6Tk0yZlJAed2/12009b93d5fcc30591de92c10bdc78cb/Jennelle_Fong_x_Gossamer_Kika_Keith_High_Res_MGL2736.jpg)

I believe we can set a precedent, and then we’ll see the same in healthcare, in food justice, in homelessness. Once we start showing that there is a way to create equity where everyone wins and there are success stories, we can then transfer that across the board and really start healing our inner city communities, especially.

Right now, we are in the process of securing the property next door to open up a training center for equity applicants and operators along with those who were incarcerated and face barriers to entry. We’ll teach them the retail side of the cannabis industry, and give them the skills that they need. To me that’s the future.

[[6]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Kika Keith](https://www.instagram.com/bigkika/?hl=en) photographed by [Jennelle Fong](https://www.instagram.com/jennellefong/?hl=en) at [Gorilla RX](https://www.gorillarxwellness.com/) in Los Angeles. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

The Gorilla Rx owner on cannabis politics, the Mayor of London, and running a community-first business.

Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2603

> The spirit of cannabis has always been no matter what color or race or gender you are, we want you to be a part of this.

![Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2720](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5uL1OmKpVILcA1xMyrmaVq/4c4c77752a007e6d28ac2808b9780bda/Jennelle_Fong_x_Gossamer_Kika_Keith_High_Res_MGL2720.jpg)

Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2583

![Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2743](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5ZBi48NC7PHIgL3QLcIj1e/9faeb985fa8fba06487745dbf4e51fb3/Jennelle_Fong_x_Gossamer_Kika_Keith_High_Res_MGL2743.jpg)

Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2740

Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2791

![Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2937](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/2CC10CxJ4xNCzMU89oQrWW/3c4d93ac54205716ad41a5bdc8dddfd1/Jennelle_Fong_x_Gossamer_Kika_Keith_High_Res_MGL2937.jpg)

Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2803

![Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2851](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/1mzTB0C7AgYV7pXXWTS5a3/1f95fc43627ac7aacad0bc530bba4f39/Jennelle_Fong_x_Gossamer_Kika_Keith_High_Res_MGL2851.jpg)

Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2911

Jennelle Fong x Gossamer Kika Keith High Res MGL2882

Kika Keith

I grew up in Texas, just outside of the beautiful and wonderful city of Austin. I grew up in the suburbs with a very standard white Southern family upbringing. Just middle class suburban living. 

And then, when I was 11, I got diabetes. Sometimes diabetes is genetic, but sometimes it can just happen, which is what happened to me. For six months, you’re super sick and nobody really knows why. You’re losing all this weight. You’re having all these horrible symptoms, like nausea, all the time.

[[1]]

What’s happening is that your immune system is slowly destroying the cells in your pancreas that make insulin. They’re called beta cells. You need beta cells to live. You need insulin to live. You don’t really realize you’re sick until almost all of them are destroyed. And once they’re gone, they’re gone. They don’t grow back.

That’s very different from type 2 diabetes. I think it’s important to make this distinction. With type 2 diabetes, you still have beta cells. You’re still making insulin. You just have what’s called insulin resistance. Usually your body’s in rougher shape, and your cells are less receptive to absorbing insulin, but it’s a very different disease that just has the same name. Without insulin, when you eat carbs or sugar, carbs get broken down into sugar which just stays in your blood and builds up to really toxic and corrosive levels. Insulin takes the sugar out of your blood and delivers it to your cells. So when you don’t make any insulin, you have to inject it manually. But synthetic insulin isn’t as good as the real stuff.

[[2]]

When you get the diagnosis, it’s sudden. I was in the hospital for five days, and then they gave me a crash course. Like, “Okay. For the rest of your life, you’re going to have to maintain these complicated calculations all the time, and pay for this expensive drug, and always be prepared.” Imagine going on a seven-day backpacking trip and you have to keep your insulin cold. What if you get lost? There’s just all these factors. My parents, especially my mom, dove into the research. Reading all these books, trying to basically learn how to become an expert manager of type 1 diabetes, because I was a kid. You’re usually a kid when you get this.

For the first couple of years, she really took care of things, calculating everything. If you take too much insulin, that’s really dangerous. You can overdose really easily. And when you do, you have to eat carbs to counter it. Eat sugar, drink juice. But if that happens at night, for example, you can die.

> For me, living with type 1 diabetes means that every five minutes, you’re reminded that you’re going to die. 

My parents would wake up every couple of hours and test my blood in the middle of the night. It’s tough, but I think, like anything, you just learn how to do it. It’s not like that anymore. It’s been 17 years. The technology’s getting better and more expensive. Now it can alert you when you’re given too much. But as an 11 year old, who mostly had a very privileged and easy, beige life, this was the first speed bump. It was a big one, but it was really beneficial in the end.

For me, living with type 1 diabetes means that every five minutes, you’re reminded that you’re going to die. Or that if you don’t pay attention to it and manage it, it can kill you really soon. I really feel like diabetes is what led me to pursue a life making art. I think the experience of becoming aware of my mortality at an early age encouraged me to ask myself important questions like, what do I want to do with my time? I don’t want to do a job that isn’t exciting. I don’t want to ever go to work and feel like I just have to get through it to live my life. I really wanted to see if I could find a way to make my occupation something exciting and engaging and enriching for me.

[[3]]

No one in my family practices art, though I would consider my mom a very creative person. I don’t think she thinks so, but she is. In high school, I was interested in science. Maybe because with diabetes, you have this understanding of what’s happening in your body—the cause and effect between “I eat this” and “I feel this way and my blood sugar is this.” I was really interested in the way things worked. Especially weather and forecasting. 

In Texas, there are these enormous storms that happen in the spring, where the drops of rain feel heavy and there’s hail and tornadoes and lightning. Just witnessing that force got me really interested in meteorology. But there aren’t meteorology or forecasting classes you can take in high school. Instead, I took advanced chemistry classes, and art classes to fill my time. My high school had a ceramics class that I took. I would just mess around. It really wasn’t a passion. The first time I touched clay, I was like, “I don’t like how this stuff dries out my hands. It’s hard to understand.” I did a lot of photography, which I really loved, and was maybe a bit easier to learn than ceramics. But I went to college thinking I would be a meteorologist. 

I was lucky. I had two great professors who introduced me to ceramics, and completely changed my entire view of what ceramics is and what it could be. I really fell in love with the combination of chemistry and tactility that ceramics orbits. It was the most scientific art that I’d ever experienced. I didn’t look back.

[[4]]

I went back to Austin after a year of college and continued my education in ceramics there. I got a job with a potter, [Lisa Orr](https://www.instagram.com/lisaorrpotter/?hl=en). She was amazing. She had all these wild glazes. She told me about the interaction between sodium and copper that made this special turquoise blue—just instructing me on the chemical reactions that can happen within a glaze. We had all these conversations about the handmade pot. I learned from her that pottery was a language you could learn and communicate with. Like, how heavy is this cup? How wide is the lip? How tall is the foot? These things were like stanzas in a poem that you could bend and shape.

You can make the lip unusually wide and fat. Then, when someone puts their own mouth on it, it’s this surprising moment, like, “Whoa.” It’s invasive. Or you can make a handle that’s intentionally uncomfortable. When someone picks it up, they pay attention to it because of the inconvenience. Most people don’t think about cups. It’s a tool, everyone has one. You get them at restaurants, but really there’s a lot of room for trickery and cheekiness in messing with the archetype of the cup. You could really mess with people.

[[5]]

For me, the paintings and the sculptures I’ve had in my life, they’re so cool when I first get them. I hang them up and look at them, and it’s like, *Wow*. Then, very quickly, they just become a part of the wall. I’m not trying to trash painting or sculpture, but it’s the objects I interact with daily that over time really make you think, *What is this thing?*

Or when a cup breaks and you’ve had it for 10 years. You’ve imbued it with these memories. Like, “I had this cup of coffee with this person who’s dead now.” Or, “I was holding this, drinking out of it when I got this good news.” Or, “I got this when I lived here. And this person, my friend, made it.” These objects can hold so much memory and emotion. It becomes so enlightened and there’s so much substance available when you interact with something. I fell in love with that. That’s when I started making inconvenient cups more intentionally.

> I went into grad school loving the cup, and loving how it could exert friction on someone’s daily life.

![000020160007](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/2t1ttNve7PQgpGCHdH8GHV/82517f2c220353e993690463145e3ee7/000020160007.jpg)

I went to Alfred University in New York for my master’s degree. Alfred is a well-known ceramic school. It has hundreds of people working in clay, and all these hard-hitting professors who specialize in different areas. They have a department of ceramic engineering, which focuses on the science side and where they do really technical things. That school and the people I met there really honed the hunger I had for ceramics. 

I went into grad school loving the cup, and loving how it could exert friction on someone’s daily life. I had this cup that had an egg on the side of it. And when you take a drink from it, the egg pokes you in the face. I really loved that. Loved it. It made you pay attention to the moment, to what is this typically mundane experience. I wake up, I have coffee every morning. Because of its frequency, I lost how important those mornings were. I think this is the crux that goes back to diabetes. Every moment is precious. You have to take advantage of them because this will end, you will lose this. I was trying to make these cups that I would give away or sell to my friends. They’re not easy. They’re sort of like this weird object that you can’t help but grab. You’re attracted to it like a bug is to a flower. Like, “What is that thing? I want to pick it up.” This is a cup. And then you use it. You can’t help but pay attention to that experience.

> I really am seeking to ... inject whimsy and playfulness and hopefully lightheartedness and joy into moments that can lose their potency.

![000020160002](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/gAqgP7WaMBdMcpd6hbruJ/9713b4d8f061718be37272f7aa2a3873/000020160002.jpg)

Those mundane moments—that’s what comprises so much of life. It’s so important to me to pay attention to them, to have awareness, and to appreciate them, because 95% of your life is going to be these routines you do every day. During my time getting a masters, this philosophy expanded into furniture because it was the same thing. A chair has an archetype. It has these parts. A seat that’s this high, arms, and a back. Just like a cup has a body, and a foot, and a rim, and a volume. Furniture is the same thing. 

Every day you sit in chairs. You don’t really think about them. I wanted to make chairs that were like creatures, that looked like they were swallowing you, or had eyeballs that rolled around so that you couldn’t help but play with them. That was a breakthrough. Like, *Oh, I can make ceramic furniture and cups and basically continue on this path of my feeble attempt to enrich people’s lives through functional objects.*

[I’ve made some pipes before](https://www.artsy.net/artwork/nick-weddell-gorglaxs-pipe), but I wouldn’t say it’s a core branch of my practice. But just like a cup or a chair, a pipe is a tool that you interact with in an intimate way. You hold it and you put your mouth on it, and it’s a device used in an experience or a ritual that may or may not be daily. Just like any other daily ritual, I really am seeking to enhance those moments, to inject whimsy and playfulness and hopefully lightheartedness and joy into moments that can lose their potency.

![000020160031](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/4A8tj2wVzojtyJrnLQmGev/c7624a96af2f9e52a6b770ee1f0117d3/000020160031.jpg)

I grew up in Texas when it was a very not cannabis-friendly place. My parents are very against any kind of drug use, even though I don’t really consider cannabis in that category. They don’t know that I’ve ever smoked. I think they’d probably be extremely disappointed to know that I have. They might read this and find out that way, and that’ll be interesting.

I never smoked or drank in high school. That was not a thing I was allowed to do at all, and not a thing I felt like I wanted to do. My friends would and I would say, “Great,  do your thing, but I’m just not interested in that.” Part of it was also fear. With diabetes, you have to constantly be aware of what’s happening. So to do anything that changes the experience of how you’re feeling can be dangerous, or so I thought. What if you get super low and don’t feel it? You could die. 

> I looked up and the stars were shifting and swirling. It was terrifying.

When I was 19, I went on a big road trip with one of my good friends at the time. We started in Texas and made a ring of national parks. We befriended this pair of old couples in Arches National Park in Utah. They were from Colorado. One of them, Lenny, grew weed in his front yard. He had this gruff voice and gave us a nug of it in a little bag. He was like, “I want you boys to be careful.” 

I was like, *Well, we better try this because we’re on this trip. We’re about to go into the desert in New Mexico and camp out. I’m with my trusted friend. I’m far away from anyone else. I have food in case something goes wrong.* That’s when I smoked for the first time. 

It was a horrible, terrifying experience. Everything my parents had told me was right. Puked everywhere. In the sand in White Sands National Park, crawling on my hands and knees away from our tent. Puking for 10 minutes. And then I sat up and it felt like gravity had shifted. I was terrified to look behind me because I “knew” I was going to fall backwards along the surface of the earth and get shot into space. I looked up and the stars were shifting and swirling. It was terrifying. 

I didn’t smoke again for two years. But slowly, towards the end of college, I started again in a more careful way. I think the weed we got from Lenny was way too strong. I had roommates who were big smokers and eventually I just tried in a much more controlled way. I smoked the littlest bit. It was so wonderful.

I was never an all day smoker, but in grad school I would work late into the night. Occasionally I would smoke at 10 PM, and then work until 4 AM. I really enjoyed the focus and creativity it gave me. It dulled enough noise to where I could really sink into what my hands were doing with the work. Explore things. But after grad school, I slowed down, and now I would say I’m not a smoker. I think it was great for me for several years. It really helped with stress and my creativity and productivity, but maybe two years ago, I stopped. It just changed. It didn’t make me focused or able to work for eight hours in a really productive, beautiful way. Instead, it made me nervous and really anxious and paranoid. Before it was this guide, and now it’s this foe.

[[7]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Nick Weddell](https://www.instagram.com/nicks_ceramics/?hl=en) photographed by [Jessica Levin](https://www.instagram.com/jessicawlevin/?hl=en) in Chicago. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

The sculptor on growing up with diabetes, using ceramics to highlight the mundane, and why he didn't smoke for two years after trying weed.

000020230005

> For six months, you’re super sick and nobody really knows why.

![000020230009](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/71kwtOmm58lXwFWlHBwodB/154efdb0de729bf970bfbc56901ed3f5/000020230009.jpg)

000020160006 2 (1)

000020230008

![000020160036](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6mdiALBj74TzgVkrSYNPcU/fe4a4194c9b0998a698dbbfc53bd6735/000020160036.jpg)

000020160030

> There’s a lot of room for trickery and cheekiness in messing with the archetype of the cup.

![000020160011](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5ZNOvsxazXaIsY0T3MUhFU/8a882f4221f024814d3be61a29facfc4/000020160011.jpg)

000020160015

000020160023

000020160018

Nick Weddell

My mom and dad met in college in the Upper Peninsula, at Northern Michigan University. My dad is Black and my mom is white, and my grandparents on my mom’s side were not receptive to my father. My father was a victim of the crack epidemic, so he wasn’t very present in my life. There are a lot of stereotypes surrounding Black fatherhood and my mother’s family held onto those.

Because I was raised by a white mother, one of the first ways that I learned about race was at my grandparents’ cabin. Like they did with all their grandchildren, they put a life vest on me and threw me into the river. I was able to swim, so I *couldn’t* be Black. That was the way my grandfather accepted me. That was my upbringing. I had to practice erasure of my cultural background. I had to perform in a way that was not stereotypically “Black.”

[[1]]

> I was constantly trying to find somewhere I fit, until I realized that I didn’t really fit anywhere. So instead I tried to make my own space.

I was raised in Detroit, which is the Blackest city in America, but we spent a lot of time in the suburbs. I was always the only Black kid in my youth group, in the churches we belonged to, in the restaurants we ate at. But when I was at home in Detroit, I wanted to be a part of the community that was reflective of me.

My grandmother, my father’s mother, was stable, nurturing, and a devout Christian. She would take me to church every weekend. She would buy all of my school clothes. But she is a devout Apostolic Pentecostal woman, and I am queer. On the one hand, she was the most developmentally important person in my life because her love was nurturing, solid, and secure. But also she had her own beliefs that made me feel unloved. I was constantly trying to find somewhere I fit, until I realized that I didn’t really fit anywhere. So instead I tried to make my own space. That really informs the work that I do now, because I just want to make space for everyone to feel like they can be their best and most authentic selves.

I found a lot of joy in school, because I was good at it. I loved math. My dad was brilliant—I was always competing with his school records. Because he was so sick—he was in rehab most of my life—I wanted my grandma to be able to see her lineage and her legacy in me. To show her what he was able to create.

![IMGL8223](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/11ghSceFNdtd7hx0vHfxQk/80d95a271e7fa55e6f87f7869c110144/IMGL8223.JPG)

I was always trying to prove myself on both sides. Trying to heal my grandmother while trying to prove to my white family that I was good enough. They are conservative, Republican, military people. I’m a queer, free-spirited progressive who works in cannabis. I spent a lot of time trying to win people over, but I wanted to be able to be myself—to not have to conform to anybody else’s standard.

I identify as a Black, biracial, queer woman who is also a fat woman—a woman of size. I’m pretty fluid in my gender identity and my perspective around gender. I like to lead with social identity markers because they illustrate my experience navigating the world. I am incredibly liberal and progressive when it comes to my politics, and I am an educator, a coach, a mentor, a developer, and a nurturer. I’m a quintessential big sis.

> I was looking for an industry that would allow me to use my passion ... to build pathways to generational wealth for my own legacy.

I started my career in educational access work. I worked as a college advisor in Battle Creek, Michigan. From there, I went to Teach for America. I taught for two years in St. Louis. I was still advocating for educational access and sending kids to college, but I started wondering: *What happens when they get there? Are they finishing college? Are they just landing in a lot of debt? How is the institution treating them?*

So I moved into student affairs, and worked as an administrator at the University of Delaware. I oversaw a strategic plan for supporting underrepresented students, which focused on building welcoming and inclusive learning environments as well as training our staff to be able to support them. 

While I was at the University of Delaware, I got my MBA. I then moved into diversity, equity, and inclusion training at the corporate level. I developed a curriculum for cultivating racial equity in the workplace that has now set the standard for the learning and development industry. But I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That’s how I landed in cannabis. I was looking for an industry that allowed me to use my passion for justice, equity, inclusion, and community, to build pathways to generational wealth for my own legacy.

[[2]]

That’s when I met [Common Citizen](https://www.commoncitizen.com/). Being able to transition into a regulated operator and see what this industry can do at scale has been one of the most rewarding learning experiences of my life. I report directly to our CEO, Michael Elias. He has a heart of gold. Mike acts with integrity, and with his values and belief in doing what’s right by patients and by his team. He cares more about the people who work for us than anything.

We have Citizen Culture Groups, which are employee resource groups based around identity. Our Honoring Women CCG, which launched during Women’s History Month, opened a pantry at our headquarters so we can come together to provide canned goods, shoes, and clothing to employees in need. Each month we prioritize different items. Mike wants to make sure if you don’t have a car, we’ll figure out a way to get you a car. If you don’t have a place to live and need to move, he’ll try to figure out how to get affordable housing. He cares about his people. And he inspires me.

But he’s also a businessman. As a leader in capitalism—because that’s the system in which we operate—he does a good job of including other perspectives while also thinking about long-term strategy and short-term wins to support his team. I really respect his leadership and—he told me to stop saying this—I aspire to be a leader like him.

[[3]]

I’ve integrated myself into every value stream, from citizen resources and our recruitment and retention strategies, to how we’re measuring diversity indicators around leadership, to what it looks like to prioritize and offer contracts to diverse suppliers in order to increase the representation of women-, queer-, and minority-owned businesses throughout our supply chain. This also extends to our operations side, which includes our [Principle product line](https://www.commoncitizen.com/principle), where 100% of our wholesale profit goes into the community. 

Common Citizen is the largest vertically integrated wholesale distributor of cannabis flower in the state. We have a huge hybrid greenhouse with over 70 acres of cultivation. We are a grower, we’re expanding our processing footprint, and we have eight retail locations across the state. I’ve been able to integrate throughout the entire organization and be an evangelist for social equity. 

With the profits from Principle, I’ve developed three micro-grant programs that distribute funds throughout the state in different communities. The first, For the Culture, focuses on increasing accessibility to the arts. The second, the Principle Community Impact Award, is targeted towards nonprofits that build community-led infrastructure development, political empowerment and expungement, home ownership, and workforce development—the four markers identified by the McKinsey Racial Wealth Gap as key drivers for advancing racial equity around wealth. 

> Failed startups led by white men raise, on average, $1.3 million. But startups led by Black women receive, on average, about $36,000.

The third, the Common Principle Startup Accelerator, is a prototyping, milestone-based grant. We invite startup-stage entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas for the opportunity to receive business model training and executive coaching. Once they build that model, they’ll be able to implement their prototype using the $5,000 micro grant. And at the end of the year, we’re inviting all of our accelerators to pitch their business model for $50,000.

Failed startups led by white men raise, on average, $1.3 million. But startups led by Black women receive, on average, [about $36,000](https://www.wired.com/2016/02/its-embarrassing-how-few-black-female-founders-get-funded/). Our vision at Common Citizen is to reinvest $1.3 million into the community by 2023, and draw attention to those gaps.

We just did a community engagement activation back in Battle Creek, where I was a college advisor, and five of my former students came to learn about our micro grants. I found out that at least one of my former students works in our cultivation. That was a full circle moment for me.

[[4]]

I’m a Pell Grant, full-ride scholarship kid from the University of Michigan who also inherited a shit-ton of debt. I didn’t have a safety net. I was scared of wanting kids, scared that I would mess them up. We’re all going to mess them up in our own ways, but I didn’t want to be violent and abusive. That’s something that comes with the cycle of poverty—rage in the household.

I’m finally at a place where I can say I want some kids. I had a lot of trauma loops and reactions I had to heal. I also now know I’m not going to be raising my children in poverty. I know where I’m headed. I’m going to be able to leave my kids with a legacy. I’m going to be able to provide for them so they don’t end up in the same place I came from. Coming to that realization has been transformative.

Where I’m at right now is building sustainable healing habits so that when the kids come, my partner and I will be able to teach them the same. For me, that means a lot of movement practice, getting my body in shape to be on the ground, playing with my children, being present.

[[5]]

I’m embracing that God blessed me with this big body because I’m meant to take up space. Clothes and adornments play into those things. I’m six feet tall. I never wore heels. Then when I was in California at [The Smoker’s Club Festival](https://www.thesmokersclubfestival.com/) in L.A., I went to a swap meet and bought two pairs of kitten heels. And I was like, *Okay, I’m going to learn to wear these shoes*. Because I’d been telling myself I couldn’t wear them because I’m already tall. But now I’m walking in whatever. Just playing and trying to learn to walk in them, playing with how I dress, learning my style.

My [Curvy Cannabis Series](https://goodfatlife.sounder.fm/episode/24-curvy-cannabis-crusader)—a campaign to increase the representation of fat women in cannabis marketing, which also provides a space for healing and connection—was one way I learned to be able to see myself, look at myself, and love myself. We did boudoir photo shoots that centered cannabis products, but a lot of the facilitative dialogue that happened were women sharing stories of trauma.

> A lot of my healing has been around the idea that I’m here to take up space, and I don’t have to be invisible.

I never wore lingerie before I did Curvy. The most impactful moment for me was when I was looking at myself in the lingerie, and I was like, “Look at how my armpit fat hangs over. I hate it.” I asked my friend, “Do you have this?” And she was like, “I don’t have that, but I have this.” She had the wings. There are all these things that we’ve been taught to hate about ourselves, and we all have our thing, but here we are looking stunning, there to celebrate each other. It has taught me to embrace my body.

Curvy is actually kind of how Common Citizen found me, because we were featured in their documentary [*Somewhere Higher*](https://www.nowness.com/series/nowness-shorts/somewhere-higher-cannabis). I was able to pay 10 plus-size models through that. Even though over 60% of women are size 14 or up, we’re only included in about 2% of marketing. We’re less likely to get gigs. We’re less likely to be included. We are literally taught to be invisible. 

![IMGL8163](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/UP9zUVedX46JpIN1sq8bt/6672fdf4c6005d75a447098d02fa87a1/IMGL8163.JPG)

A lot of my healing has been around the idea that I’m here to take up space, and I don’t have to be invisible. It’s about embracing yourself in all of your fullness. I had to teach myself to love myself. I don’t care how you view me anymore. It’s about how I view myself. 

I think that in order to be courageous you need to be authentic and true to who you are. You have to be very clear on what your values are, what you want to accomplish, who you are, and behave with integrity in staying true to those things. To me, courage is acting with integrity around who you are in every space.

> I think the core of how I take care of myself is knowing how valuable I am.

My idol in this industry is [Mary Pryor](https://www.instagram.com/iammarypryor/?hl=en). I think that she has the most courageous, strong, and clear voice. She’s not going to tolerate BS. She’s going to be very direct about what’s right and wrong. She’s cultivating pathways for so many people who are unseen and unnoticed within this industry. I really value her intention, thought, and care for our community. She reaches back. She’s not in Detroit—she’s in New York—but she reaches back and makes her presence known. We have a Black Women in Cannabis Facebook chat, and she engages there to let folks know she’s an available resource. I really value what she stands for and how she does her work. How freely she gives herself to ensure her mission of increasing inclusion in the industry. And how she moves. She moves fast.

My community is my support system. Oftentimes people say that as you elevate, you lose relationships—and I’ve gone through a lot of transitions in mine—but there are consistent people who pour into me, love on me, and celebrate me, and it’s reciprocated. Having those relationships helps me stay balanced and recognize that sometimes it’s about the people around you and not necessarily always about the work that you need to get done.

I think the core of how I take care of myself is knowing how valuable I am. When I was young in my career, I overworked myself and didn’t know how to communicate my boundaries. I had imposter syndrome. I always needed to be performing. I needed folks to see how valuable I was to them, because I didn’t see the value that I had already in me. I had to learn that I need to fill myself first.

[[6]]

That means getting my mind and my spirit right so that I can be grounded. I’ve started to prioritize better eating and nutrition to make sure that I’m giving myself energy so that I’m not exhausted. I move right, making sure that I’m increasing my flexibility, stamina, and strength in my body.

Another big part of that balance for me is maintaining therapy. I microdose psilocybin. I was doing it every three days, but started doing it daily to make sure that my mind is just ready and wired and intact. If all of those things aren’t integrated, you’re not going to experience joy in your journey. It’s going to feel like work and labor. 

Everything I do is what I was brought to this world to do, and an opportunity to make an impact at the scale I’ve always wanted to. I get to have a lot of fun in what I do, and I’m kind of like a celebrity at work. They treat me with respect. They value my perspective—and I work to win them over—but we’re a team, and I love it. I’m living the dream, honestly. I wake up happy.

[[7]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Jess Jackson](https://www.instagram.com/iamjesshuman/?hl=en) photographed by [Bre'Ann White](https://www.instagram.com/breannwhite/?hl=en) in Detroit. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

Common Citizen's Director of Social Equity and External Affairs on learning to love her size, increasing equity in cannabis, and creating generational wealth.

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![IMGL8090](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6fl6oCJwlUIhTfJZshcsZn/f416c921c773a826924720d12a1da7da/IMGL8090.JPG)

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> I’ve been able to integrate throughout [Common Citizen's] entire organization and be an evangelist for social equity.

![IMGL8015](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/OS3ZE02FBG3fKvPZa6AQi/7d564f68273314cea02fe412f6c83fa4/IMGL8015.JPG)

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> Another big part of that balance for me is ... I microdose psilocybin.

![IMGL8354](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/2HX0JZ1I23zGc4kBjoxF8p/48354fd87927a079b3ffe9c5e3db8dfb/IMGL8354.JPG)

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Jess Jackson

[[1]]__3. Start Rolling__

Pick up your paper with both thumbs and both index fingers, careful not to spill. Slowly roll your flowerand paper back and forth between your fingers until it starts to feel like a firm cylinder, almost like a cigarette. You’ll know you’re done when the mixture is packed together enough that it keeps its round shape on its own. This step takes practice, but you'll quickly get the hang of it.

![How To Roll a Joint - Roll](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/45AFT5yhgdnz8QrfTH109D/75d36f5410e1cc76af24347868c31532/How_To_Roll_A_Joint_-_Roll.jpg)
__4. Tuck and Seal__

With your tight (but not too tight) cylinder of flower sitting in the bottom crease, tuck the bottom of the paper over the flower and into itself. Your flower should be completely surrounded by paper. After you’ve rolled the flower almost to the top of the paper, lick the edge along the gum line. Carefully finish rolling as the now-sticky end forms a nice seal for your just-about-finished joint. Most people naturally turn their joints into more of a cone shape, but don’t feel pressured to. Do whatever feels right to you.

![How To Roll A Joint - Licking](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6FoSFH4bKo94kK1TsRl0Kj/5b5f90eb0cde29bb834ed8520f37aeea/How_To_Roll_A_Joint-Licking.jpg)

[[2]]

![How To Roll a Joint - Smoking](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/1HigSdPcN3zR7vAWgsMoos/8b468ed2885da36a17f7bdc32dbf15e9/How_To_Roll_a_Joint_-_Smoking.jpg)

*Like this guide? Get [a full set here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/pamphlets-sensible-guide-series), for all your stoner education needs. (They also make a great gift.)*

Step-by-step instructions to rolling a joint.

How To Roll A Joint Hero

How To Roll A Joint - Mobile

How To Roll A Joint - Smoking Preview

__1. Break It Up__

Using a grinder, sharp scissors, or your fingers, break up about half a gram of weed (a couple of small buds, basically) into a neat pile. There’s really no such thing as too fine, but you definitely don’t want your weed to be too big. Aim for about the size of minced garlic.

__2. Fold And Pour__

Place your rolling paper on a flat surface, gum-side up across the top. Now fold the lower half in half again, so you have two creases: one in the middle and one a quarter of the way from the bottom. (This extra crease is not required, but it helps.) Pour your nicely ground bud evenly along the lower of the two creases. It’s okay if it’s thicker in the middle; like batter, it’ll roll out.

How To Roll A Joint - Fill

__5. Shake, Shake, Shake__

Pinch one end of your joint (the wider end if you rolled a cone) and using a flick of your wrist, shake it back and forth to pack it even tighter. It should look like you’re rudely signaling for the bill at a restaurant. (Alternatively, you can use any long, thin object to push the flower down.) Once it feels nice and firm, give the end a little twist or feel free to carefully tear off the excess paper.

You now have a nice, personally rolled joint to smoke with friends, family, or, of course, alone.

How To Roll a Joint - Shake (Right)

There are many ways to roll a joint. We have found this way to be the easiest to teach and to pick up. Don't worry, we’re sure your way is also great!

How To Roll A Sensible Joint

Gossamer looks at the world—travel, design, art, culture, and food—through a green lens.

*This article is featured in [Gossamer Volume Seven: Touch](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-seven-touch). Subscribe [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/annual-magazine-subscription).*

It’s a little known fact that a male octopus’s eighth leg is actually its penis. The very name—derived from the Greek word *októpus*, meaning “eight foot”—has led us down the garden path. I’ve lived my whole life believing an octagon has eight sides, my 83-year-old nanna is an octogenarian, and *an octopus has eight goddamn legs*—it’s basic linguistics.

But now, at the auspicious age of 33, I have to accept that I’ve been suckered. There’s nothing “octo” about the male octopus. They have seven tentacles and a specialized limb for transferring sperm. In other words, the eighth leg is a penis.

To put that in context, the name “octopus” is the species equivalent of referring to a human male as a triped. I simply refuse.

This deceptive appendage, called a hectocotylus, was first recorded by Aristotle around the year 347 BC in one of the earliest surviving scientific studies. The ancient Greek philosopher left Plato’s Academy following his mentor’s death, swapping the city of Athens for the island of Lesbos where he spent two years observing the marine life of a lagoon at the island’s center.

It was here that Aristotle, father of Western logic and apparent octopus voyeur, first surmised the use of the octopus’s eighth leg in the mysterious act of cephalopod sex. He was, of course, widely disbelieved. It wasn’t until 1827, some 2000-odd years later, that Aristotle was proven correct.

It’s not hard to see why it took so long for biologists to catch up. The hectocotylus looks and acts like a leg on a regular day. It can bend, it can stretch, it can exert suction. But at the sight of a slinky lady octopus, the hectocotylus can, in some species, stretch to twice its
regular size. If we’re talking ratio to body length, it’s a crime against octopus everywhere that we hold the donkey as the gold standard of gonopodia.

But alas, we must collect our minds from the gutter. As one of the most antisocial creatures on earth, size for the octopus is about survival. While sex for humans certainly has its own set of challenges, sex for the octopus comes with a very real threat of cannibalization.

The fear of being consumed—literally, not metaphorically—by the object of its affection is so great that some species of cephalopod have evolved a mating ritual so stealthy that they can avoid touching their partner at all.

The male argonaut octopus, for example, is so averse to physical intimacy that he instead tears off his penis-leg, sperm clenched tightly in his tentacled fist, and gives it to the object of his affection like some kind of macabre Valentine’s gift. In other words, an argonaut octopus would rather wrench off its own penis than touch another living creature. Is that not the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?

The more I think about it, the more I wonder—are these octopuses desperately lonely? Studies have long proven they have extraordinary minds, but it appears that evolution has dealt them a cruel hand: intelligence and vulnerability in equal measure.

Have their exposed, fleshy bodies made them so terrified of the world around them that they can’t, even for a fleeting second, indulge in the tender touch of their own kind? Do their suckered limbs and bulbous bodies long to be wrapped in the tentacles of another?

Unfortunately, we may never know the answer. More than two millennia after Aristotle’s observations in the lagoons of Lesbos, we still have so much to learn about this wildly intelligent, yet fiercely private creature.

For now, I choose an alternative narrative. One where octopuses are the ultimate romantics, sacrificing life, limb, and loneliness in the quest for love and lineage. In my 33 years of dating, I’ve yet to receive a Valentine’s gift as memorable.

[[1]]

V7 High Minded: Tentacles 2

High Minded: Tentacles

*This article originally appeared in [Volume Four: the Inside issue](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-four-inside). Subscribe [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/annual-magazine-subscription).*

Symmetrical stacks of shimmering, rectangular boxes. Holographic labels promising total, complete, maximum, sparkling, advanced, and optic whitening and cavity protection. This is the toothpaste aisle at the supermarket, a candy store of personal hygiene.

Scanning the rows upon rows of boxes puts me into a trance. It’s as satisfying as biting into a frosty ice cream bar. Maybe I’m just a sucker for good marketing. I think my favorite is Crest Complete Whitening Plus Scope, a double helix of mint mouthwash splitting the blue and green box down the middle.

When I was a kid, my mom bought Aquafresh, red and blue stripes of gel sandwiching one of white paste emblazoned across the front like a patriotic banner. That’s the box that probably began my obsession: the supernova graphic behind the friendly Aquafresh label promised to make the monotony of tooth brushing “EXTREME,” while clouds of soft, foaming bubbles scrubbing away at my teeth would burst into “ACTION.” Toothpaste is among life’s most banal necessities, and yet the packaging is pure magic: stare at the boxes for long enough and the goopy paste inside the soft, fat tube becomes a faded memory. Now it’s glamorous, now it’s bursting with freshness.

The packaging didn’t always look this way. In the early 1900s, it was called “dental powder” and came in squat metal tins decorated with ornate labels that pledged to “cleanse” your teeth, to make them “beautiful.” But even then, the labels conveyed a sense of urgency, reminding us to be hypervigilant over the health of the bones protruding from our faces, like tiny tombstones. In the 1950s, “dental powder” turned to “dental cream,” accompanied by “Colgate” printed in *TRON*-like letters on a solid red background. But the product itself remained in flat, one-dimensional boxes well into the eighties: Crest packages were dull, metallic grey, and the futuristic Colgate font of the fifties had been replaced by a more rounded, friendly mark—hardly the slanted, aggressive lettering we see now.

Today, the graphics glitter, and though the same primary colors are deployed across almost every brand (red, blue, white, and sometimes green), they are now more vivid, more blindingly cheerful, like a grin pulled too tight across an anxious mouth. Toothpaste advertising is both scary and reassuring, leaping off the shelf to scream—CLEANS! GUARDS!—at you while declaring that under its care you will be disease-free, you will achieve purity. Every brand—the Sensodynes, Aims, and Arm & Hammers, too—evoke feelings of cleanliness, vowing to repair (rejuvenate, strengthen, restore) what we didn’t even realize had been damaged. Almost every box across every brand features the word “fresh” or a graphic that resembles an exploding firework.

Sometimes there’s an extra flourish to make the toothpaste look professional. Take the Colgate Total box, another favorite: a white pinstripe background breaks up the red block reserved for the logo, and to the right, a shimmery multicolored oval surrounds “Total,” a little gold clock floating behind it. This one protects not just your teeth, but your cheeks and gums too, a police officer for your whole mouth.

Assurances of a clean mouth are one thing, but there’s more at work here: toothpaste packaging creates a deeply satisfying pattern of order. It’s symmetry. It’s organization. There is a simple geometry to the boxes—sharp rectangles, fluid ovals, and neat text bordered by a string of bubbles or a gold stripe. Maybe I have no control over the trajectory of my life. It’s possible that only fate or angels can decide what path I take. But toothpaste offers the illusion of agency. Here is my stubborn message to the universe: I will bring structure and order into my home with this juicy tube of toothpaste. I will scrub my teeth until they sparkle.

This is the strange spell cast by the toothpaste box. Toothpaste packaging isn’t selling toothpaste. It’s selling one of the most appealing and delusional ideas in the world: that what we buy can bring our troubled human brains any kind of peace. That perhaps we are all just one toothpaste tube away from joy.

[[1]]

gossamer philotheus nisch inside toothpaste 2019 copy

High Minded: White Lies

*This article is featured in Gossamer Volume Seven—the Touch issue— subscribe [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/annual-magazine-subscription).*

“Wink” belongs to that particular category of words destined to lose their meaning once repeated. Say it twice and it’s no longer a verb but an absurd salad of hard consonants—the sort of syntax drummed up for the sake of a children’s book. It reads like a sound: onomatopoeia for the gesture itself. The actual practice is no less bizarre. Consider your use cases: it’s a mode of ocular flirting; a non-verbal alternative to “I’m kidding” or “I’m lying;” a disconcertingly tender, silent greeting. It can be romantic, sinister, snide, or playful—and a worthy accompaniment to “U up?”

The beloved half-blink is also an undeniable cousin to the twitch. When executed poorly, it appears less like a mode of silent communication and more like a brain malfunction. But miraculously enough, the wink maintains its cultural allure.

Speaking frankly, I am a subpar winker. Shutting one eye seems to require nearly all of my facial muscles—a spasm that appears more cartoonish than sly. Moreover, it would seem that I am left-eyed, in as much as my right winks translate more accurately as sour flinches of pain.

The type of winker I am most pointedly taken with, though, is the wily, subtle kind. The sort of person who folds a wink softly into grooves of dialogue, who makes you wonder if it actually happened in the first place. There’s a certain romance to subtext of all forms: bits of informational embroidery, scrap phrasing. And in New York, where exhibitionism reigns supreme and confrontation masquerades as commonplace rapport, that sort of small, conversational footnote—the wink—often feels all the more precious.

While there’s no definitive biological consensus on the fundamental appeal of the wink, there are some relevant findings. In the 1960s, a biopsychologist named Eckhard Hess discovered that our pupils dilate when we zero in on something to which we feel sexually attracted. Several years later, nonverbal studies researcher Dr. David Givens determined that rapid blinking (or Hugh Grant’s signature eye flutter) operates as a sign of arousal. More recently, in 2015, Match.com polled over 5,600 single people across the United States about their texting habits and a whopping 53 percent said they used the “winky face” reliably when flirting. This is, of course, not the same as the *actual* practice of winking, but illustrated or otherwise, the gesture has its salacious undertones.

The wink isn’t merely amorous in nature. It can be conspiratorial, too. According to body language expert Patti Woods, a wink often indicates shared knowledge. “It says, ‘You and I have a secret we both understand; others do not,’” she explains. And by that token, the gesture is an admission of a mutual, private history.

It’s that thing that happens at parties, in rooms humming with other people, all of them bobbing and weaving and telling secrets. That thing where you meet someone’s gaze—maybe your person, maybe not—from across a chasm of other upright bodies. There’s no particular sentiment being communicated here, no transmission of information. It’s just a quiet acknowledgment that someone else is keeping tabs. You’re seen, therefore you are.

On the subject of across-the-room eye contact, the titular character in Noah Baumbach’s *Frances Ha* puts it best: “It’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them.” That’s what’s in a wink.

Broadly speaking, as a writer by trade, nonverbal cues aren’t exactly my forte. But this past year, I meandered my way into a form of writer’s block so persistent it felt structurally sound—like I could live inside of it, shades down. I had everything and nothing to say, and for the first time, words seemed dull and flimsy held up against the harder-earned edge of real life. And therein lies the magic of the wink: language can be a game of diminishing returns. We need not have words for everything.

The wink has a special economy. It’s the giddy affirmation of communion, but without the untidy business of language mixed in. It’s romance devoid of clichés; friendship sans qualifiers; a joke that’s all punchline. Or perhaps it’s just a muscular tick.

*Reading this feature would be even better with the actual magazine. Order your copy [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-seven-touch).*

[[1]]

Stoned thoughts on winking, and saying everything in the blink of an eye.

V7 High Minded: Winking 2

Saying everything in the blink of an eye.

High Minded: Winking

Volume Eight Space Man

Deep Green Slides 

Dusk by Lauren Coleman

Dusk Geray Mena

Gossamer Dusk 

boxstack2s

Gossamer Dusk CBD and CBN tincture is a unique formulation of cannabinoids and terpenes engineered to help you rest. 

Features

Jason Stewart

Kika Keith

Nick Weddell

Jess Jackson

How To Roll A Sensible Joint

High Minded

High Minded: Tentacles

High Minded: White Lies

High Minded: Winking

High Praise

Young, Dumb, And Fun

Street Appeal

Turn Your Table

For people who also smoke weed.