The Conversation, Cannabis & Christianity podcast

Brendan Delaney is a 15-year cannabis industry executive, consultant, and founder of Water Leaf Consulting. His career began in Northern California’slegacy market, where he operated multiple cultivation sites across Trinity and Mendocino Counties — experience that shaped his deep understanding of genetics, plant health, and real-world cultivation environments.

As the industry evolved, Brendan transitioned into licensed operations and went on to lead large multi-site cultivation and post-harvest programs, including serving as Vice President of Cultivation at Solar Cannabis Co., the first energy-independent commercial cannabis facility in the United States. Helater became Senior Vice President of Operations at Hennep Cannabis, overseeing end-to-end operations and scaling the organization through rapid growth.

Brendan is also a co-founder of Monarch Emulsions, a THC ingredient and formulation company focused on delivering consistent, stable, and high-quality water-soluble cannabinoid emulsions for beverage and infused product manufacturers.

Today, through Water Leaf Consulting, Brendan partners with operators across the U.S. and internationally to design facilities, optimize production systems, develop leadership teams, and build disciplined, scalable operations that deliver quality, consistency, and profitability.

The human body is a temple and within it a soft heart grows alongside a renewed steadfast spirit.

We are all sons and daughters, and thank you to Season Five guests!

Tim Barnhart

Jack Gorsline

Jose Pereira

Lena Franklin

Dr. Ruth Fisher, PhD

Dr. Xanqunnes Singh

Tressa Silvey

Dr. Lissa Skitolsky & Aaron Weil

Dick Wilkinson

Kevin Edmundson

Adam Peters

Matthew Kopelman

Jack Cross

Daniel Locke

George Monty

Dr. Anthony Ferrari, PhD

Brittney Cornwell

Lance Cutsforth

Alex Eckman

Odilia Hernandez-Underwood

Jaesen Kanter

Emily Knife

Megan Mbengue

Evan Bentz

Dr. Geoff Cutter

Gary Hess

Lee Simpson

Dr. Robert Brodnick

Angie Roullier

Terese Bowors

John Bailey

Dr. Jennifer Anderson

420 Chief Ryan Johnson

Mandy Lile

Mark Medal

Michele and Mark Medal

Juliana Roberts

James Tripp

JP Donahue

Justin Smith

Robert Davis is a creative strategist, systems thinker, and founder of the marketing incubator Official Agency in 1999, where he works at the intersection ofintelligence, design, narrative, and institutional alignment. With a background spanning cryptologic operations, early infrastructure technologies, brandarchitecture, and large-scale IP development, his work focuses on pattern recognition, governance clarity, and restoring coherence within complex systems.

Today, Robert applies this lens across strategy, writing, and creative production - examining how perception, narrative pressure, and structural incentives shape outcomes in culture, policy, and human behavior.

Boxing Day pie uses leftover turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce together to make a delicious pie for post holiday festivities. Pastry requires practice for most people, it is not east to make, nor is it easy to make look good. But worth the process of care and work to produce the savory result, just like our lives.

Very superstitious writings on the wall

Very superstitious, ladders about to fall

13-month old baby, broke the looking glass

Seven years of bad luck, the good thing is in your past

When you believe in things that you don't understand

Then you suffer

Superstition ain't the way.

-Stevie Wonder

Justin Smith grew up poor in the 1980s in a wealthy, status-driven East Coast suburb. Shortly before he was born, his father entered a manic-depressive cycle from which he would find no escape in this life.

As early as he can remember, Justin has been interested in finding better ways to help people get less defeated by unhelpful negative emotion. After earning a law degree and working in law and finance, he has spent much of the last decade studying the challenge of emotional and spiritual progress and refining a tool that he believes can make such progress feel less impossible.

Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

Alex Eckman is a cannabis chemist and entrepreneur with nearly a decade of hands-on experience in Michigan’s cannabis industry. He recently earned hisdegree in Cannabis Chemistry from Lake Superior State University, where he led original research on product safety in vape hardware. Alex is the co-founder of Higher State Brands, a startup developing cannabis tech tools and consumer wellness products. His work bridges industry knowledge with scientific thinkingto improve transparency, quality, and innovation in cannabis.

Michele and Mark Medal are lifelong searchers who have been down healthy and unhealthy paths in their 50+ years of learning how to live. Finding plant medicine was a turning point for both of them.

Michele had over a decade of sobriety and spiritual work behind her, but could not escape a lingering feeling that there was more to understand, more to herself.

Mark tried to find happiness in the bottle, in medication, in success, in pushing too hard and not enough. Michele and Mark have dedicated themselves to helping others find meaning in their lives.