The Cannabis Connection

Sean Ryan is a longtime California cannabis cultivator, entrepreneur, and founder of Murphys Ridge, a veteran-owned craft cannabis farm and brand focused on quality, wellness, and culture. With decades of cultivation experience, Sean is passionate about living-soil growing, supporting the cannabis community, and building a business rooted in authenticity and purpose.
 
 As a T3 complete paraplegic, Sean brings a unique perspective on resilience, perseverance, and living life to the fullest. Through his journey in business, fitness, travel, and adventure, he hopes to inspire others to overcome challenges, keep pushing forward, and never stop exploring what life has to offer.

Shawn Colligan is a Santa Cruz, California native and cannabis industry pioneer. Born and raised on the Central Coast, he co-founded Lemon Tree and secured his own residential agriculture cannabis license in 2019. Over the years, he has collaborated with artists including Young Dolph, Kool John, and B-Legit, while earning recognition and awards at events such as High Times.

Drawing on deep roots in both cultivation and culture, Shawn brings authentic insight, industry experience, and a local perspective to the cannabis conversation.

Aaron Zeeman, better known as Professor Potgrower, is a Hawaiʻi Island
 cultivator, breeder, author, and cannabis culture writer who has spent
 more than 30 years in Hawaiʻi. He is the founder of Big Island
 Genetics, author of The Hemp Ritual Handbook: A Slightly Disrespectful
 Guide to Cannabis Culture, and a contributor to SKUNK Magazine. His
 work focuses on Hawaiʻi’s legacy genetics, the people and culture that
 preserved them, and what has been gained — and lost — as cannabis
 moved from prohibition into the modern legal era.

Our guest today is Danny Sheehan. Danny is a constitutional litigator who has worked on some of the most important cases in modern American history. From the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal to Iran-Contra, Danny now serves as Chief Counsel, President & Co-Founder of The Romero Institute.  

We explore the importance of mobilizing the citizenry to vote this coming November. We encourage everyone to join the Voting Rights in America town hall on September 19 at the 418 Project in Santa Cruz to empower the community and educate people about the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering, and voter suppression in the United States. 

Local leaders like Ami Chen Mills and Ryan Coonerty, along with environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill, will share the stage with Danny, plus an incredible music lineup featuring Phreeborn, Random Rab, and immersive visuals by Liquid Lit. 

Our goal is to mobilize and educate a local force to reach out to connections across the country, helping people vote and turn out at the highest possible percentage of registered voters so their voices are heard this election cycle.

Today, we welcome Kerry Hurley, NorCal Weed Gal, an Emerald Triangle native and cannabis culture historian. At 16, she consciously decided to become a regular cannabis consumer to avoid the pitfalls of alcohol, drugs, or other addictions, like shopping. As a teen, Kerry noticed that every adult had a "vice" and wanted to design her life to avoid waking up at 30 and finding herself with a life-altering addiction. Kerry's parents were both civil servants and very responsible hippie cannabis consumers, so weed seemed like the safest choice. 

With divorced parents, Kerry is a Sonoma / Trinity hybrid. Kerry writes about her life experiences weekly on Substack, along with stories from locals and industry leaders whom she interviews, about the history of our nation's War on Weed and how it affected life in the Emerald Triangle. Kerry has a background in sales and marketing for companies like McAfee, Comcast, NBC, and Clifbar. 

At the 2026 Women in Cannabis Expo, Kerry was recently honored with the High Impact Award for her writing and Entrepreneurship.

This week, we welcome Brian Applegarth, who is in town to celebrate Wo/Mans Alliance for Medical Marijuana WAMM and its place in Santa Cruz and California cultural history, adding it as a cultural landmark to the Cannabis Trail. The Cannabis Trail is a California cultural tourism initiative that preserves and shares the people, places, and stories that helped shape California cannabis history. 

Brian Applegarth is the owner and founder of Applegarth Intelligence, also known as A-Intel, a destination stewardship intelligence practice helping organizations understand change and strengthen their capacity to steward places with greater awareness, responsibility, and care. His work was forged at the intersection of cannabis, hemp, travel, culture, hospitality, and place. He is the founder of The Cannabis Trail and founding chair of the Cannabis Travel Association International. For more than a decade, Brian has helped shape cannabis and hemp tourism through destination programs, museum exhibitions, cultural storytelling, place-based inquiry, and the creation and launch of the California State Fair Cannabis Awards and Exhibit. Today, his work includes preserving and interpreting cannabis history as an important part of California’s broader cultural history.  

Richard Jergenson lives in the Emerald Triangle in the beloved community of Willits. Richard is a product of Berkeley, the baby boomer generation, and the 1960’s counterculture, as well as a co-founder of the Protopipe business, over 50 years ago. 

Richard is a natural archivist; as a young historian from the 1960’s Richard began saving and storing the amazing posters, books and cultural icons of the times, which continues to be a lifelong passion. The Counterculture Museum and Archive is now a treasure trove of the rich cultural era of the 1960's, 70's, and 80's, and still growing as Richard's generation is letting go of treasured memorabilia. 

Richard's archived history collection has been exhibited at multiple Emerald Cups, Cannafest in Eureka, created the Emerald City Popup Museum in 2020 & 2021 and was curated at the “Cannabis in Mendocino County: our Story” exhibit with panel discussions in 2023. (Mendocino County Museum)

Richard is a member of the California Cannabis Historical Society and the Counterculture History Coalition. Richard is working to create museum locations for important counterculture stories and archive collections. 

Richard continues to add to the counterculture & Cannabis Archive. It includes the 100-year prohibition history as well as artifacts from the Back to the Land movement here in Northern California - the Emerald Triangle and beyond.

The time is at hand to share the incredible history of Cannabis and its meaningful contribution to the counterculture, as the Back to the Land culture is rapidly disappearing due to post cannabis legalization growing laws and boomers aging out. We look forward to sharing Canna-history knowledge with all of you. 

Today on The Cannabis Connection Show, we welcome back Grant Palmer, CEO of Canna Cruz Dispensaries. Founded in 2008, Canna Cruz has grown into California's number one privately owned, vertically integrated dispensary chain, with five locations in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Aptos, Salinas, and Seaside—plus its own cultivation, manufacturing, and distribution. Canna Cruz Salinas took home 1st place in Best Dispensary, Central California, at the 20th Anniversary Emerald Cup.
Grant has a unique and crucial perspective on listening to customers at the point of sale, and we explore deepening the understanding of what customers are looking for and how best to align as a farmer to sell your crop and contribute to mutual success for all.

Canyon Creek Family Farms is a legacy, small outdoor family-owned and run farm in the Trinity Alps, Trinity County. Owner-operators Michael and Lorien Curran have a combined 50+ years of cultivation experience; this is Michael’s 32nd season growing cannabis here in Canyon Creek, where he was born and raised. Using organic and regenerative farming techniques, native soil, and alpine snowmelt, we grow unique strains for solventless extraction and flower for our small-farm collective brand POET, or Producer Owners of the Emerald Triangle. This year, we took home 2 gold and 1 silver medals at the California State Fair, and this past weekend, the same gold-medal-winning Grapefruit Starburst rosin, processed by Master Makers, took first place at the Hashathon Cup.

This week on the show, we welcome Michael Strupp to discuss his work pheno-hunting and cultivating some of the finest, award-winning cultivars in California. 

My personal goal this week was to investigate the source of this year's award-winning Dutch Treat cultivar, which captivated my imagination and evoked the nostalgic glory days of some of my first smokes, trim rooms, and grows. 

Michael and I explored his roots, cultivating the legendary Bubba Kush (U2 Mendo Cut), Mendo Purps, Grape Ape, and his early crosses, such as Maui OG. We shed light on his approach, "sifting for diamonds," in phenos of more modern cultivars like Viper Cookies. 

The long-awaited origin story of this legendary, award-winning cut of Dutch Treat is revealed: it has traveled across oceans and survived eras of cannabis history in the Emerald Triangle to come full circle and shine at the California Cannabis Awards on Saturday, July 18, at Cal Expo. 

Discover the Dutch Treat saga and stay for the good vibes from this legendary friend of Cannabis and keeper of the flame. 

Michael Strupp, a.k.a. Mendo Mikey Lion, was born and raised on the Mendocino Coast in the heart of the Emerald Triangle. He first started cultivating at the age of 15 and developed a love and passion for The Plant that has turned into a career in the cannabis industry.  Michael has primarily been cultivating indoors since 2006. He and his partner launched their Brand Woodwide in 2019. Known for his pheno hunting and breeding projects, Michael and Woodwide bring a unique plant-first focus to the California recreational market.