FREDRIK GERTTEN, director, BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS

LINCOLN BANDLOW, attorney
documentary on how Dole tried to kill his previous film

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DOUG FINE, author, TOO HIGH TO FAIL:
Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution

 DON DUNCAN, CA Director, Americans for Safe Access

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Aired 07/29/12

I talk with FREDRIK GERTTEN, whose new film BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS documents the efforts of food giant Dole to keep his previous film BANANAS from ever being seen. We’ll be joined by his attorney, LINCOLN BANDLOW. The first film told the story of Nicaraguan plantation workers successful suit in Los Angeles against Dole for the health effects of its use of a banned and dangerous pesticide.

FREDRIK GERTTEN is an award winning director and journalist based in Malmo Sweden. Before founding his production company WG Film, he worked as a correspondent and columnist for radio, TV and press in Africa, Latin America, Asian and Europe. His films include Belfast Girls; I Bought a Rain Forest; Bananas; and his latest, Big Boys Gone Bananas.

LINCOLN BANDLOW specializes in litigating media, First Amendment, intellectual property and other entertainment related matters in the motion picture, television, publishing, broadcasting, internet and advertising fields. In addition to practicing law, Mr. Bandlow has been a visiting professor at the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California since the Spring of 1995. In 2012 he was named one of the Top 100 Entertainment Power Lawyers by the Hollywood Reporter.

 

Aired 07/29/12

I’ll be joined by DOUG FINE to talk about his new book,TOO HIGH TO FAIL: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution. As the economy continues to limp along for most Americans and California cities declare bankruptcy, one action — the legalization of marijuana — would save government billions per year while raising huge sums in taxes. According to TIME, the legal medicinal cannabis economy already generates $200M annually in taxable proceeds from a mere 500,000 registered medical users in just 16 states. 51% of Americans support full legalization (cannabis regulated for adults like alcohol), and 80% support medicinal cannabis legalization.

In the last few minutes, DON DUNCAN, CA director of Americans for Safe Access will give us a brief report on the LA City Council’s recent vote to ban all cannabis dispensaries within city limits.

 

 

Aired 07/22/12

Did you know that LSD is being tested as a treatment for alcoholism? Or that psilocybin is being taken to ease the anxiety of late stage cancer patients? In government-sanctioned studies.

Psychedelic substances have been used for ceremony and as medicine for millennia. Such properties were being cultivated and studied in the US in the 60s and early 70s until widespread and careless use of psychedelics and sensational media reports produced a backlash. I will talk with CHARLES GROB MD about the latest scientific research, including his own ground-breaking studies. And with JAMES FADIMAN about the vision, ideas and advice in his book, PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys.

CHARLES S. GROB, M.D, Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, conducted the first government approved psychobiological research study of MDMA, was the principal investigator on a research project in the Amazon studying the visionary plant brew, ayahuasca, and investigated the efficacy of psilocybin to treat anxiety in terminally ill patients. A founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, devoted to fostering research on psychedelics, he is the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader and co-editor with Roger Walsh of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics.

JAMES FADIMAN did his undergraduate work at Harvard and his graduate work at Stanford, doing pioneering research with the Harvard Group, the West Coast Research Group in Menlo Park, and Ken Kesey. A former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a professor of psychology, he currently teaches at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, which he helped found in 1975. He is the author of PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys.

 

Aired 07/15/12

The Supreme Court’s been in the news a lot lately. Several of the nine justices claim to be originalists, assuming to know what the framers meant when they wrote it, and that they meant for us to follow it for the most part as written for the life of the republic. Well. No less an authority than Thomas Jefferson said the Constitution should be rewritten every 19 years.

And my next guest has taken him up on that. KEVIN BLEYER — who’s won Emmys writing for THE DAILY SHOW and has worked on President Obama’s speeches at the White House Correspondents’ Dinners – has done what he calls “a page one rewrite.” Bleyer joins me on Free Forum to talk about his new book, ME THE PEOPLE: One Man’s Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America.