Herbs: 'Planting Medicine,' Pot (Pacifica)

The herbalism and plant medicine show (KPFA)

"Planting Medicine" airs Tuesdays at 1:00 pm on KPFA.org (Berkeley) and KPFK.org (Los Angeles).

"Planting Medicine," formerly "Herbal Highway," enhances the community’s knowledge of herbal (plant) medicines by sharing voices of traditional, holistic healers and their shamanistic healing practices.

Hosted and produced by Emiliano Lemus (aka "Emilia No-Lemus") and Renée Camila.

Planting Medicine originates in the San Francisco Bay Area, each Tuesday at 1:00 pm on 94.1 FM in the Bay and 90.7 FM in the Los Angeles Basin and online at kpfa.org and kpfk.org.

Call the LA studio at (818) 985-5735 and the office (818) 985-2711. Listen LIVE.

• Available for listening after the show at kpfk.org/archive.
• Today's show: Medicinal Berries: Host Emiliano Lemus dives into the world of medicinal berries. Join them to learn about the special healing properties carried by these wondrous fruits.
• (Please don't call in with questions about drugs. This is a serious show about herbs and legal medicinal uses. And if you do call, don't laugh like Beavis & Butt-Head.)

15 Victorian drugs for kids and Brits

(Gaslight Diaries) Shocking plants (heroin, cocaine) and chemicals used as 'medicine' in England

World of herbs is bigger than pot

Good vs. Bad Bud: Differences to Notice

(Cannabis Guy) Oct. 10, 2025: Cannabis Guy breaks down the four signs of quality cannabis — look, smell, and feel. What frosty trichomes really mean, how terpenes reveal top-shelf flower buds, and how to avoid the classic signs of mids. From dull, dry buds to sticky, aromatic flower that burns clean and smooth, this is a complete guide to spotting good cannabis every time. Whether a grower, buyer, or just tired of getting burned by low-grade bud, this video teaches how to identify real quality legal pot.

• Chapter 1: The Look: Visual cues reveal most of a bud’s story. Good: vibrant greens and purples, orange pistils, shimmering frost of trichomes. Trichomes are cannabinoid and terpene factories. Structure and density—tight, compact buds = good growing conditions. Contrast with bad weed: dull, brownish, yellow, moldy, airy, or leafy. Warning: buds with seeds, excess stems, or gray fuzz.
• Chapter 2: The Smell: Aroma is a major quality indicator. Good: bold, distinct scents like citrus, pine, diesel, or berries—driven by terpenes with good preservation through proper curing. Bad weed: smells like hay, grass, or wet cardboard → poor curing. Stale, bland, or ammonia-like smells = old or wet-jarred weed → bacteria/mold risk.
• Chapter 3: The Feel: Texture reveals quality. Good: sticky, springy, and resinous—snaps when broken. The “snap” test is proof of proper drying and curing. Airy/hollow buds = poor lighting or low nutrients. The ideal feel = sticky, dense, but not brittle.
• Info: When it comes to bad vs. good, knowing how to tell good flower apart from trash is key. More

Good plant gone bad: Cocaine market now bigger

• VIDEO: Truth about dangers and possible benefits of homegrown marijuana (free of toxic pesticides in legal weed)

All day 'No Kings' coverage: KPFK.org

Aerial shot captures massive human sign, San Francisco, California, reading 'No Kings Yes on 50'

• KPFK 90.7 FM - Listen LIVE
• NBC 10 Boston: 50 protests across Massachusetts
• (APT) No Kings protests sweep the people's nation
• DC: Weak words of the Right Honorable Bernie Sanders
• HITLER vs. TRUMP: Why knowing history is so important! | TITUS: Doomed To Repeat (clip)

Regressive MAGA

(BTC) Trump keeps gov't shut down to cover up release of Epstein Files

with ranking member of the House Oversight Committee Robert Garcia

(MTN) Trump nigtmare as entire nation rises up against him: C. Leavitt

Alan Watts reveals 'The Secret'

Alan Watts: The More You Let Go, the More Life Gives You

(Buddhism Podcast) Stop SEARCHING for enlightenment. We are it? (The Buddha’s insight)

• Alan Watts, Buddhist Radio, Los Angeles (KPFK 90.7 FM)
• KFPK.org/archives (Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025, 8:00 am)

The Rubber Yacht of Hymie Cohen (poetry)

Kindle edition (Prof. Juan Cole)

Statue of Persian poet Omar Khayyam, University of Madrid, Spain

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam series of postcards by M. V. Dhurandhar (Wiki)

• 

  Why would a Persian poet need a yacht?

  What is a rubber yacht? - It is a plasticized dinghy.
• Who is Hymie? It is a religious slur for Jews derived from the Hebrew Chaim ("life"), pronounced /hai-ym/ or /hay-yim/. It is also used in the term "Hymietown," a nickname for Brooklyn, NY, and as a Jewish first name.
• Who is Cohen? - Common Jewish surname, reminiscent of a priest or someone descended from a priestly caste.
• In that case, what is The Rubber Yacht of Hymie Cohen? - It is a misapprehension and misunderstanding of the famous translated Persian text, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: new modern translation

Host Mitch Jeserich, Letters & Politics, KPFA.org, Berkeley

Professor Juan Ricardo Cole

GUEST: Prof. Juan Cole is a public intellectual, prominent blogger, and essayist, and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is the translator of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian.

• AUDIO: The history behind The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam

Kindle edition (Prof. Juan Cole)

Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) was a Persian astronomer and mathematician born in Nishapur in northeastern Iran, who lived and worked at the courts of the Seljuk dynasty.

Modern scholars agree that there is very little (if any) of the collected work of poetry known as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that can with certainty be attributed to the historical figure.

A tradition of attribution grew up in the centuries after Khayyam’s death, which culminated in the popular Edward Fitzgerald’s translation in the 19th century. More

• The 'Hymie' Incident: Jesse Jackson claimed comments were harmless (Los Angeles Times)
• Mitch Jeserich, Letters & Politics, kpfa.org, Aug. 5, 2025; Shauna Schwartz, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

'Pornography Wars' in US history (video)

Letters & Politics: The Pornography Wars

Assoc. Professor Kelsy Burke, U of Nebraska

(KPFA Radio) Streamed live from Berkeley, California, on June 23, 2023 (rebroadcast on July 21, 2025, in Los Angeles):

Host Mitch Jeserich with guest Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion Kelsy Burke at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is the author of The Pornography Wars: The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Obscene Obsession. KPFA.org #kpfa #kpfaradio #MitchJeserich #news

• The Pornography Wars | KPFA

Past, Present, Future of America’s Obscene Obsession

In the 1960s, sex researchers Masters and Johnson declared the end of the fake orgasm. Nearly two decades later, in 1982, evangelical activist Tim LaHaye foretold that the entire pornography industry would soon be driven out of business.

Neither prediction proved true. Instead, with the rise of the internet, pornography saturates the American conscience more than ever and has reshaped our understanding of sexuality, relationships, media, and even the nature of addiction.

American sociologist Dr. Kelsy Burke has spent the last five years researching and interviewing internet pornography's opponents and its sympathizers.

In The Pornography Wars, Prof. Burke does a deep dive into the long history of pornography in America and then turns her gaze on our present society to examine the ways this industry touches on the most intimate parts of American lives.

She offers a complete understanding of the major players in the debates around porn's place in society: everyone from sex workers, activists, therapists, religious leaders, and consumers.

In doing so, she addresses and debunks the myths that surround porn and porn usage while showing how everything from the way we teach children about sex to the legal protections for what can be published is tied up in the deeply complicated battles over pornography.

Sweeping, savvy, and deeply researched, The Pornography Wars is a necessary and comprehensive new look at pornography and American life. More

Something worse than porn?

• Mitch Jeserich, Prof. Kelsy Burke (KPFA.org, June 23, 2023/KPFK.org, July 21, 2025); Psychosos, YouTube; CC Liu (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Alan watts on the illusion of self (TV)

Maya, the Illusion of the Self: Alan Watts will transform YOU

(Simply Art - Inspire) May 2, 2025: Alan Watts unpacks the ancient concept of Maya — the illusion of the self (The Matrix) — in this 27‑minute remastered talk, set to soothing meditation music and complete with accurate subtitles. Discover how our sense of “I” is shaped by thought (thing) patterns, why letting go of the selfish ego can open us to deep peace, and practical insights for seeing through what is really an illusion.

🔔 Subscribe for more life-changing wisdom and spiritual insights. ► Subscribe to Simply Art - Inspire @simplyart-inspire. Maya, the Illusion of the Self - Alan Watts will transform US

Of course, I'm real! I'm a self with a soul!

What is maya? It literally means "illusion," "magic," or "appearance" [1, 2, 3] but has multiple meanings in Indian philosophies depending on the context. In later Vedic texts, māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem" [2, 4], the principle which shows "attributeless Absolute" as having "attributes" [3].

Māyā also connotes that which "is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal" (in opposition to an unchanging Absolute, or Brahman), and therefore "conceals the true character of spiritual reality" [5, 6].

The question becomes, Is this true of the [Five Aggregates clung to as] "self," "ego," "personality," or "soul"? Are they absolutes or conditioned phenomena coming into temporary being utterly dependent on supporting causes and conditions?

The Mahayana (Hindu-Buddhist) way of saying this is to state that self and all other phenomena are empty (Śūnyatā).

• Alan Watts, when there was a Zen boom, provided explanations and answers for Westerners wishing to understand Eastern philosophy and The Way, be that the Buddha's eightfold path or the Tao or the marga as found in the Vedas and Hinduism.
• Alan Watts (alanwatts.org), KQED; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

A Women's History of Ancient World

Host Mitch Jeserich welcomes British researcher, historian, and critic Daisy Dunn (about), an award-winning classicist and the author of The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World. Her website is daisydunn.co.uk.

• AUDIO: Women in the Ancient World | KPFA

The Missing Thread

Spanning 3,000 years, from the birth of Minoan Crete to the death of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome, a magisterial new history of the ancient world told, for the very first time, through women.

For centuries, men have been writing histories (his story) of antiquity filled with warlords, emperors, and kings. But when it comes to incorporating women, aside from Cleopatra and Boudica, writers have been more comfortable describing mythical heroines than real ones.

While Penelope and Helen of Troy live on in the imagination, their real-life counterparts have been relegated to the margins.

In The Missing Thread, researcher Daisy Dunn inverts this tradition and puts the women of history at the center of the narrative. These pages present Enheduanna, the earliest named author, Telesilla, who defended her city from attack, and the gay poet Sappho.

Here is Artemisia I of Caria, sole female commander in the Graeco-Persian Wars, and Locusta, Rome’s premier toxicologist. Cleopatra may be the more famous, but Fulvia, Mark Antony’s wife in Rome, fought a war on his behalf.

Many other women remain nameless but integral. Through new examination of the sources combined with vivid storytelling, Daisy Dunn shows us the ancient world through fresh eyes and introduces us to an incredible cast of ancient women, weavers of an entire world.

Around 4,000 years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over 1,000 years later, Sappho wrote great poems of gay longing and desire.

For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women — whether they were simply sitting at their looms knitting at home or participating in the highest echelons of power — were up to something much more interesting than most histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.

In this monumental work, Dunn reconceives our understanding of the ancient world by emphasizing women's roles within it. The Missing Thread never relegates women to the sidelines. It is populated with well-known names such as Cleopatra and Agrippina, as well as the likes of Achaemenid consort Atossa and Olympias, a force in Macedon.

Spanning 3,000 years, the story moves from Minoan Crete to Mycenaean Greece, from Lesbos to Asia Minor (Anatolia, Turkiye), from the Persian Empire (Achaemenid Empire) to the royal court of Macedonia, and concludes with Rome and its growing empire.

The women of antiquity are undeniably woven throughout the fabric of history (her story), and in The Missing Thread they finally take center stage. More

• PRESS: Daisy Dunn: author, historian, journalist
• The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World
• Guest Daisy Dunn, Host Mitch Jeserich, Letters & Politics (KPFA.org), Berkeley, CA, 10:00-11:00 am, April 24, 2025; Dhr. Seven and Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Calm herbs, Planting Medicine (radio)

Classes (Now and Then Herb School)

Sam Roberts (Now and Then Herb School) explores herbal preparations to treat FEAR.

Hear it in Berkeley on KPFA or Los Angeles on KPFK. What does the Nature's plant farmacy have to help us on our journey to calm and ease?

Planting Medicine airs Tuesdays at 1:00 pm (Pacific Time). The show enhances the community’s knowledge of HERBAL MEDICINE by sharing voices of traditional, holistic healers and healing practices.

• 
  LISTEN: Herbs for Fear | KPFA Planting Medicine – 1:00 pm, March 18, 2025 (heard on March 11th)
• Hear/download: Online Archives - KPFK
• Planting Medicine (KPFA program)
• The Herbal Highway Archives | KPFA

Hosted and produced by Emiliano Lemus and Renée Camila. Find archived episodes of The Herbal Highway hosted and produced by Emiliano Lemus and Renée Camila. Archived episodes: The Herbal Highway.

Why study herbalism?

Renée Camila, Mount Shasta, California

“I don't identify as an herbalist, healer, or have a particular interest in medicine.

“So initially I wasn't sure why I felt so drawn to participate in the first cohort of The Home Herbalist (previously the Now and Then Herbal Apprenticeship).

“Several years later, I continue to thank my lucky stars that I followed that impulse and connected with Sam, Renée, and the beautiful cohort I was privileged to be a part of.

Who has time to learn about sacred herbs?

“I think about conversations we had and lessons I learned from them just about every day. With deeply thoughtful, grounded, informative, compassionate, and soulful curriculum, teaching, and guidance, I don't hesitate to recommend this program even if, like me, you don't identify as an herbalist or healer.

“For me it was a loving investment in my own everyday relationship to plants, magic, and medicine on a personal level.

“Watching Sam and Renée follow their paths and cultivate meaningful work in community and relationship is a joy and an inspiration.”

Listen to show at KPFA or archive.kpfk.org

• CLASSES | Renée Camila | Herbalism and Birthwork
• CLASSES | Sam Johnson | Home and Hearth Herbs
• Pacifica Free Speech Radio, Berkeley and Los Angeles, archive.kpfk.org, 1:00 pm, March 11, 2025; Kellly Ani and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Alan Watts: Return to the Forest

Taoism is widely misunderstood in the West

Afterall, what is more important, mere knowledge or direct experience of the Truth? Should we all be Presbyterians in our booths and pews or Shamans, savage and wild, daring to venture out into that scary forest beyond the township? Who are we, Young Goodman Brown? In Asia, in the ancient culture of China, which is the cultural result of a fusion of three great philosophies -- Confucianism (for the home life), Taoism (for the left home life), and Buddhism (for the Middle Way that avoids all extremes) -- there is that same tension. Many of us want to be held by house and run a household, trapped and miserable, expecting to find happiness and fulfillment there. Of course. Where else would it be? It's all we see all around us. But there is another ancient source of happiness which, if successful, does produce fulfillment or can like nothing else. We might call that shamanism, the nonreliance on priests, intermediaries, and the consensus reality they dictate. Ultimately, each human must see for herself (or himself) can come to know things first-hand. Alan Watts, the great communicator to the West of Eastern philosophies, brings this idea together from various cultures, including the Hindu ideal of the sannyasin or vānaprastha. Watts also explains the deeper meaning of the mandala (a stockaded community, village or city, a ring of defense around the center). He was inspired by American mythologist Joseph Campbell.

NOTE: There are many more Buddhists in the world than get counted, and this is because communist China leaves over 1,000,000,000 (1 billion+) Buddhists uncounted for political and ideological reasons.

This is the same speech with different aural qualities for relistening.

• Alan Watts - KPFK 90.7 FM
• KPFK's Pacifica Online Archives (KPFK.org)
• In memory of Roy of Hollywood Tuckman, Something's Happening, kpfk.org; text by Dhr. Seven and Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Anti-Zionist, anti-genocide Jews (video)

Conversations with an Anti-Zionist Jew: Haim Bresheeth

(IHRCtv) Feb. 13, 2024: In this extended conversation, Prof. Haim Bresheeth-Zabner speaks about his Jewish family history and unique upbringing, reimagining the Middle East beyond Israeli apartheid, racist/Islamophobic settler colonialism, and Western hegemony. Prof. Haim is a teacher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. An former Israeli Jew and ardent anti-Zionist, his most recent book is titled An Army Like No Other: How the Israeli Defence Force Made a Nation.

Guest on 9/9/24: Professor Haim Bresheeth-Zabner in London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in film studies. He is Jewish, a scholar, and a MAJOR critic of Israel as the author of An Army Like No Other: How the Israeli Defense Force Made a Nation.

• AUDIO: IDF: A History of Israel's [Genocidal] Army of Occupation | KPFA FM, Berkeley
• ABOUT: Letters and Politics with host Mitch Jeserich (kpfa.org)

Few Jews dare to even dream of refusing the IDF

He wanted to be a "Refusik" and avoid joining and killing for Zionist Jewish genocide to build a settler colonial project in Palestine and call it "Israel," but he could not. He bitterly regrets it that he was not strong enough as a very young man, when he was forcibly inducted into Israel's killing machine, which he reckons was worse than the Nazi war machine the Jews survived in Germany. Many Jews had money back there but were not free to take it with them if they wanted to leave Germany. However, they were allowed to take it to one place in the world: Palestine. Were Nazis behind fashioning a genocide against Palestinians or "Arabs" as Jews hatefully dubbed them?

The stench of Israel's hypocrisy in dubbing its genocidal killing force, the IDF, the "most moral army in the world" became too much, necessitating this book, proving what racist, Zionist, white supremacist Israelis are, valuing their blood over all others all out of proportion to anything seen before in the history of war crimes.

• Jewish Network for Palestine
• Jewish Voice for Peace
• NOT IN OUR NAME: ifnotnowmovement.org
• IDF veterans against war: breakingthesilence.org.il
• ‎شرش | Shoresh | שר”ש‎ (@shoresh_us) • Anti-Zionist Jews
• CODE PINK: Women for Peace
• Orthodox Jews opposing Israeli crimes (nkusa.org)
• American Veterans for Peace
• Amnesty International
• Jewish-Palestinian protests against Israel in Gaza
• Pacifica Free Speech Radio, Berkeley

An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation

Prof. Haim Bresheeth-Zabner has 3.8 out of 5 stars with 21 ratings. This history of the IDF argues that Israel is a nation formed by its genocidal army.

A [Criminal] Army Like No Other: How Israel

The Israeli army, euphemistically dubbed the "Israel Defence Forces" (IDF), was established in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, who believed that "the whole nation is the army."

In his mind, the IDF was to be an army like no other. It was to be an instrument of might that might transform a diverse population into a new people.

Since the foundation of Israel, the IDF has been the richest, largest, and most influential institution in Zionist Israel's Jewish society, its settler colonial project to eject the indigenous people, paint themselves as the indigenous population returning from a short absence.

The IDF is the nursery of its social, economic, and political ruling class. In this fascinating history, Prof. Bresheeth charts the evolution of the IDF from the "Catastrophe" (Nakba), the persecution, ejection, and genocide of native Palestinians, to the continued assaults on Gaza.

(Corey Gil-Shuster) Religious anti-Zionist Jews: Whose land is this?

Posted June 8, 2024. Filmed before Israel's October 2023 war.

It shows that the state of Israel was formed out of war. He also gives an account of his own experiences as a young conscript during the 1967 War.

He argues that this army is embedded in all aspects of daily life and identity and that we should not merely see it as a fighting force enjoying a world-class reputation. It is the central ideological, political, and financial institution of Israeli society. Killing is its ambition.

As a consequence, everyone has to reconsider assumptions about what any kind of peace might look like.

• Guest Prof. Bresheeth, Host Mitch Jeserich, Letters & Politics, KPFA.org, Berkeley; Shauna Schwartz, Sheldon S., Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly