The Smoking Spot

Welcome to the Smoking Spot! This week's episode features Amanda's newest project: TRIPPER Magazine! The first cannabis tourism magazine for the wanderers, the weedheads and the canna-curious travellers. Light up and look around! Tripper is the path less travelled for the path less travelled. In fact, there is no path. We’re here for the weird and wonderful sesh spots, chasing graffiti acr...

Are you "noseblind" to some of the most popular scents? Amanda and Ryan dive deep into the world of long-chain musks, the secret ingredient behind fragrances like Another 13, Baccarat 540 Extrait, Cloud 2.0, and Juliette Has A Gun. Explore the fascinating phenomenon of musk anosmia, uncover why these scents drive some wild (hint: it's primal), and learn about the historical impact of...

Amanda and Ryan have been holding it down in the industry for over a decade, witnessing its evolution firsthand. Now, we're bringing our combined experience to the table—or rather, to the jar—with actionable advice for breaking into the business. We’ll show you where to start, how to stand out, what you should be earning, and how to recognize when it’s time to level up or move on. Whether you're r...

We disappeared for a hot minute but we're back! After taking a couple months to launch some new projects, Ryan Herron and Amanda Breeze are back in the studio with some new book recommendations for 2025 Weed: Cannabis Culture in the Americas by Caitlin Donohue Chill: The Wine Lover's Guide to Cannabis by Jackie McAskill Buzz Kill: The Corporatization of Cannabis by Michael Devillaer All the books...

Essentially a cheat sheet for how to start a vape brand. Cannabis purists step aside, the vape market is dominated by botanical terpene profiles, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Amanda Breeze and Ryan Herron discuss how vape brands can set themselves apart from their competitors and muse over the fact that most don't put the effort in. We talk about the restrictive effect descripti...

We sit down with Marge from the Bite Me podcast to discuss this summer's Camp Canna. Amanda tells us the (tragic) story of being disqualified from the stoner-lympics, Marge tells us why summer camp fosters the best community, and Ryan listens intently while mentally practicing his archery skills. Stick around to hear the ladies' rating for this year's camp and details on the next. Afte...

We sit down this week with David Jacob Kramer, author of Heads Together to talk about the underground press culture of the 60's and 70's. At a time when artists, psychedelic explorers, and activists came together to optimistically smoke pot and push back against government control, we saw an explosion of creative material hit the streets. As ephemeral as newsprint is, some of these publications su...

We're back from our hiatus with a round-up about the latest scent-based news. We talk about A.I. perfume and why they're going to suck for a while. Amanda presents some newly trending scents in fragrance production and we both explore what "Opal" might smell like. Stick around and hold your nose while we try to describe that teen-boy smell (body spray, that is). No worries, herb...

On this episode, Ryan and Amanda relive their tangie-scented trauma and talk about those big bright citrus profiles found in our favourite plant and the compounds that contribute to it. Despite the prevalence of Limonene-rich cultivars, we uncover why they don't always dominate citrus profiles as expected. Drawing from Leafly's compilation of limonene-dominant strains and Abstrax's ins...

Join Ryan Herron and Amanda Breeze as they delve into the complexities of ADHD and focus for both diagnosed and undiagnosed individuals. Together, they sift through available research and draw from personal anecdotes to explore the impact of plant medicine on those affected by ADHD. Discover how our brains respond to stimuli, the nuances of our reward centers, and the role of plant medicine in thi...

Amanda Breeze and Ryan Herron sit down with an owner of Crop Circle Chocolate for an in-depth look at the last ten years in the Oregon edibles market. Jeremiah talks us through what it was like diving in head-first and admits, "I didn't even know what a logo was until we needed one."  A decade ago, we were still eating mystery mg space cake and dreaming of the day we could open a box...

Amanda is fresh off the Literary Showcase and Ryan wants to hear all about it. We touch on Germany's recent legal push and Thailand's retreat back toward prohibition before settling in and talking about the Expo. The book fair of our youth has been reimagined to showcase our favorite plant! Amanda talks about the months she spent sourcing the cream of the crop of our industry's best au...

This week we've swapped out the pink couch for a boardroom table and invited the women making an impact on the Canadian industry to share their individual stories. With more knowledge than most C-suites, these founders cover everything from regulations to what it takes to gain major traction in the industry. Herb-inspired heartfelt moments are shared along with highlighting the shifts we'l...

Spice is tickling our taste buds this week on the vintage pink couch. Experts Amanda Breeze and Ryan Herron explore the Spicy wedge of the aroma wheel this week and delve into the nose-tingling and sneeze-inducing compounds found in our favorite plant. Dessert flavors are all well and good, but spice highlights the variety of life! We highlight some of our favorite spicy cultivars, smoke some Larr...

The cases are laid out neatly with brightly packaged prerolls and uv jars of flower. Refrigerators line the wall with bevvies with names like Mellow Melonade and assuredly, the budtender has dreads. Though suspicions mount, you can't get a look inside that bag of "Cookies OG". There's no THC percentage in sight, and you're a hop, skip, and jump away from Caesar's Palace....

For thousands of years, humans have reached for herbs that help them sleep, wake, focus, relax, and elevate their moods but it only takes a week working at a dispensary before someone inevitably asks, "Will this make me horny?" So where does our favorite psychoactive plant fit in? Experts Amanda Breeze and Ryan Herron laugh their way through the important question, is this an aphrodisiac...

Ryan and Amanda sit down on a variety of pink couches as they go over their last year of podcasthood. Before the two hosts go through their past year of projects, Amanda launches the Cannabis Literary Showcase and Ryan goes to see Santa Claus. We talk virtual formulation, finally finishing that f*ckng writing project, and how Scentelligence and the aroma wheel came together. We promise it's be...

Join hosts Amanda and Ryan as they sit down with Leafly Editor, David Downs, in an engaging conversation about the standout strain of the year—Permanent Marker. We explore Leafly's meticulous criteria for selecting the flower, shedding light on the intersection of data and sensory evaluation in their decision-making process. For this episode, each of us tracks down a sample of Permanent Marker...

Join hosts Amanda and Ryan in this fresh episode as they embark on a captivating journey with the esteemed cultivator, Brave Hearts. Together, they unravel the rich tapestry of craft cannabis history in Oregon, exploring the roots of the industry and its evolution from a breeder's refuge to the rosin capital of the world.  Brave shares invaluable insights into how small farms can carve their n...

Amanda and Ryan go backstage with Eric as he walks us through his colorful history of being a magician, what it's like performing for an altered audience, and the time a guest marched out of the theater in the middle of a set (spoiler alert: the rest of the party stayed for the rest of the show). Catch an intimate look behind-the-scenes of his mega-popular Smokus Pocus show and hear more on wh...

This week we sit down for a hosts-only episode to discuss the new white paper released by Abstrax. We discuss the role that flavorants play in cannabis, what the term Exotic has meant over the last decade, and dig into what these new discoveries mean for the future of the industry. Grab a jar of something tropical and hone your nose with this week's episode of the smoking spot.

Amanda and Ryan cram the big pink couch into Chris Romaine's travel van this week. We talk to Chris about establishing his brand, Kandid Kush while traveling the world in search of unique opportunities. This includes finding triploids in massive pheno hunts, catching Dengue fever in the Jamaican bush, and creating larger-than-life interactive art for The House of Cannabis at THC NYC. Roll up s...

This week Amanda and Ryan invite Adrian Stein of Dope Cocktails to join them on the big pink couch. We talk about how the hospitality industry gets weed wrong, the surprising number of sober bartenders, and how to craft a cocktail that turns heads before the first sip. Drip a drop of Terpenes into that night cap and give this week's intimate episode a listen!

We have the multi-talented Tom Different, founder of the Different Collective and Urbanistic, guiding us through the full spectrum of what he and his team offer. We talk about the epiphany of admiring cannabis through a microscope, why grading herb at the commercial scale is integral to the success of the industry, and why "getting stoned" is not quite the right terminology we should be...

This week we're joined by Amanda Day, owner of @ ⁠terpodactyl_media⁠  and director of the Oregon Leaf. We dive right into the scene at this year's @thissmokingjacket, talk sophisticated photography setups, and explore ways to battle impostor syndrome. Not to mention a special appearance by @ ⁠endo_thepit ! Reach into the back of the freezer, grab a gram of something nice, and listen in as...