Psychedelic Women

By Rainbow Valentine

Producer/Host, Rainbow Valentine was born into the inner circle of the San Francisco counterculture which didn’t seem unusual until she grew up and discovered not everyone’s family and friends were&nb... more

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FAQs about Psychedelic Women:

How many episodes does Psychedelic Women have?

The podcast currently has 23 episodes available.

Psychedelic Women episodes:

December 05, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture Bonus ep 6: The Psychedelic Breast: Deep Diving with Dr. M on ep 10, The Psychedelic Healer
In this bonus episode host, Rainbow Valentine, continues to put the psychedelic puzzle pieces of her culture together as Dr. Maria Mangini, PHD, co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress, nurse practitioner and psychedelic historian, tells RV and listeners about her friendship with Nicky Scully, subject of Episode 10 and takes us down some serious counterculture rabbit holes. Topics include insider Grateful Dead trivia, Timothy Leary, the Emerald Tablets movement, Goldfinger the smuggler, Esalen, Millbrook, Fred and Bill Wahpepah, the Sundance Ceremony, a gem called the Seva Diamond, a secret room stuffed with psychedelic goodies, women’s colleges and the Academy Award winner in Dr. Maria's theater program and much more…

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1h 2min
November 25, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Smuggler Family Album Ep 6: Go For It, Mr. Ungovernable!
“You can smuggle anything except for drugs and guns…” These were the rules laid down by a Brazilian beauty queen to her Uraguyan Jewish husband, who smuggled everything from hi-fis to Hindus. In this episode of Smuggler Family Album, host Rainbow Valentine chats with her Brazilian drummer friend, Pedro Strasser, whose father (also named Pedro) was a smuggler during the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s. Everyone in the counterculture smuggler scene or those interested in the smugglers of yore, will relate to/be fascinated by Pedro Jr.’s memories of his scrappy smuggler dad’s innovative creativity and entrepreneurial spirit as he moved everything but drugs and guns, in his handmade yacht, in order to support his wife, kids and art.

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55min
November 07, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture Ep 10: The Psychedelic Healer
How many counterculture brides can say that Janis Joplin sang at their wedding? At least one and her name is Nicki Scully and host, Rainbow Valentine’s mom made her wedding rings. Shamanic healer, Nicki Scully was an LSD-taking teenager who arrived in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, where she met and married Goldfinger, the infamous, one-handed smuggler who kept Nicki doped up and in a gilded cage before she left him for one of the managers of the Grateful Dead. In this gritty episode, Nicky Scully shares dark stories about surviving relationships with famous counterculture men, which gave her the tools to becoming a healer. Along with Nicki's stories, Rainbow Valentine gets into the history of women’s shelters, abortion laws in America and Janis Joplin’s veterinarian… plus that time Nicki took LSD and delivered a baby without midwifery training, let alone the internet. If you like counterculture history don’t miss the trippy true stories shared by Grateful Dead family member/shamanic healer, Nicki Scully.

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53min
October 24, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Smuggler Family Album Ep 5: The True Saga of Goldfinger PART 2
What do you call a deranged smuggler who asks you to stash a brick of gold
under your pillow for 6 months? A friend or an acquaintance? Rainbow Valentine’s mom’s art patron, Goldfinger, was a one-handed smuggler who regularly moved thousands of pounds of hashish from Lebanon to the US before being busted by the CIA, which only turned him into a fugitive. Goldfinger was a bigger-than-life real outlaw in the SF counterculture scene of the 1960’s and 70’s...but then he disappeared in the 1980’s; everyone assumed he was dead but none of the psychedelic pioneers knew how he died.
The second part of the saga of Goldfinger reveals brand new, never-before-heard information about the notorious, one-handed, counterculture
smuggler, including details on his outlaw life in Europe, how he died and the
major secret he kept from everyone in the SF counterculture scene; never
revealed… until this episode.

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55min
October 10, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Smuggler Family Album Ep 4: The True Saga of Goldfinger Part 1
When your parents tell you about a real one-handed smuggler
named Goldfinger who lost his hand in a smuggling trip gone wrong, there’s only one thing to do: dive deeper. In The True Saga of Goldginger Part 1, Rainbow Valentine talks to psychedelic woman/counterculture, groundfloor member, Raechel Donahue (wife of Big Daddy Tom Donahue), about Goldfinger - the larger-than-life, counterculture smuggler who disappeared in the 1980’s and may or may not be dead… Raechel reveals all she remembers about the unhinged outlaw who traveled everywhere (including court) with a duffle bag-chemistry lab and eventually became a fugitive after running over a movie star’s kid, smuggling thousands of pounds of illegal drugs and being taken down by the CIA and Lebanese airforce.

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42min
October 03, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture: Bonus Ep 5: Surprised not Surprised: Deep Diving with Dr. M on eps 5, 8, 9 and Bonus 2.
A lo-fi, stripped-down convo with Rainbow Valentine and Dr. Maria Mangini, PHD, co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress, Hog Farm Member & psychedelic historian. RV and Dr. M talk about the true stories in Eps 5, 8, 9 and Bonus ep 2, including RV’s mom’s shocking revelation about Dizzy
Gillespie, human trafficking, teenage hysteria of Beatlemania, the Lovin'
Spoonful’s pot bust, peyote, the Medicine Ball Caravan, creative hiding places for illegal drugs and more.

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57min
September 18, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Smuggler Family Album Ep 3: High Society
Don’t everyone’s parents small-talk about MDA chemists
bleeding out while fine dining or argue about which LSD chemist had a live/work space in a defunct nuclear silo and reminisce about a one-handed, fugitive smuggler named Goldfinger? If you grew up with the psychedelic pioneers of SF’s 1960’s like Rainbow Valentine, then yes, probably during breakfast your elders can harken back to that big Lebanese hash deal brought down by the CIA in 1967 or tell you about the Orange Sunshine LSD chemist's funeral ; but if you didn’t grow up in the inner circle of the counterculture, you get to be a fly on the wall as Rainbow Valentine hears true tales of High Society aka the counterculture outlaws of yesteryear who paved the way for listeners to pop an adult gummy, roll a doobie and stream this episode.

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39min
September 12, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture Ep 9: The Acid-Rock Radio Pioneer Part 2
Can you imagine process-serving the Beatles? Raechel Donahue, SF's acid-rock radio pioneer, was a psychedelic second away from doing just that because she and her husband, Big Daddy Tom Donahue, produced the Beatles very last concert in North America and it didn’t go quite as planned. And that’s just the first 5 minutes of this episode which includes Raechel’s life in swinging 60’s London where it was common to see Led Zepplin hitchhiking, the Rolling Stones buying baby clothes and smuggling pot in Pampers was routine. And have you ever heard of the Medicine Ball Caravan aka Woodstock on Wheels? Produced by Tom and Raechel Donahue, who tells us about the epic roadtrip documentary (edited by a young Marty Scorsese) that took 150 hippies and rock stars across 1970’s America to play psychedelic music festivals in small red towns. Plus, we learn he history of Frito chips and hear stories about the Record Plant, Sly Stone, Trident Studios, a psychedelic wedding at the Jefferson Airplane’s mansion and a psychedelic funeral...all told to us by Raechel Donahue, the Anne Frank of Rock'n'Roll, as Big Daddy Tom Donahue called her.

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1h 5min
August 29, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture Ep 8: The Acid Rock Radio Pioneer Part 1
Imagine life without free radio. If you lived in America before 1967, that was reality… there were no free radio stations until a group of misfit artist visionaries high on LSD decided to recreate their psychedelic record parties onto the airwaves. In this episode, RV talks to her mom’s pal, Raechel Donahue - the pioneering woman who trained and employed the first women in America to be radio engineers and DJs and turned free acid rock radio a reality called KMPX (precursor to KSAN). Raechel Donahue, DJ, filmmaker, voiceover actor, wife and widow of Big Daddy Tom Donahue, tells us about San Francisco beatnik life before it morphed into hippies. Stories about her adventures bellydancing, go-go dancing, modeling for a gay Holocaust refugee who invented the thong bikini and how horse racing, LSD and Tourette’s syndrome led to the birth of rock radio in America and the greedy corporate overlords who tried to squish them.

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1h 2min
August 22, 2025 Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture: Radiate Bonus Ep 4: Everybody Can but Do They? Deep Diving on eps 4, 5, 6 with Dr. M part 2
Part 2 of a deep dive into Radiate episodes 4, 5 and 6 with RV and Dr. Maria Mangini, PHD, co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Council, nurse practitioner and member of the Hog Farm Commune. Be a psychedelic fly on the wall as Dr. M tells RV the story of the Wild West Festival, an epic failure of a music
festival that was supposed to be the West Coast counterpoint to Woodstock, plus the physiology of women’s fertility, the origins of San Francisco’s
Carousel Ballroom, the Fillmore West, Winterland, the counterculture’s response to anti-dancing laws in San Francisco in the 1960’s and more.

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42min

FAQs about Psychedelic Women:

How many episodes does Psychedelic Women have?

The podcast currently has 23 episodes available.

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