This week Jordan takes a detour from the cannabis industry to take a look at the science of it all.  Dr. Angela Bryan conducts research on marijuana at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies marijuana’s connection to teen risk behavior, it's effects on cognition and even why it might make you hit the gym more often.  And while cannabis is legal in Colorado, there are still all kinds of restrictions that have meant Dr. Bryan and her team have had to get creative. Their biggest innovation? A mobile laboratory known as the Cannavan -- though if Dr. Bryan had her way, it totally would have been called the Magic Mystery Machine. 

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In this episode, Jordan gets deeper in the nitty gritty of baking with marijuana. He talks with Lauren Kaufman, who helps oversee the kitchen at Love’s Oven in Denver, about the nuances of working with weed and why requires so much more precision than normal baking.

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Years ago, a terrible accident left Hope Frahm without taste buds. To cope, she began baking for friends, which led her to cooking school and jobs in top restaurant kitchens. Today, she’s the corporate executive chef for Love’s Oven in Denver, where she creates recipes for a popular line of marijuana infused edibles. In this week’s episode of Working, she talks with host Jordan Weissmann about how in some ways the accident that left her unable to taste has made her better at her job. 

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 Our series on workers in Colorado’s legal cannabis industry keeps on burning. This week, Jordan talks with Max Platt, a cannabis extraction technician at Denver’s Concentrated Love about the physically demanding art of making professional-grade hash for a living. 

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Technology continues to change the way we live and work. Which is why The Secret History of The Future—the new technology show from Slate and The Economists—is digging through the past to find lessons for our future. Subscribe to Secret History of the Future via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

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This week, Working with Weed goes to the top of the command chain at a dispensary. Jordan speaks with Alex Levine, owner and Co-CEO of a company called Green Dragon. Green Dragon is one of the largest recreational dispensary chains in Colorado with 12 locations statewide. They are definitely an example of what a weed company looks like in a fully legal system. Forget the image you have of stoners goofing off and getting high on the job. Green Dragon runs on corporate efficiency and straight up professionalism. Alex talks about how he got into the marijuana business, what he does to set their operation apart and just how much the legal marijuana world has changed since starting the company and having to operate all in cash. 

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Can you imagine what it would be like to spend 10 hours a day sitting at a table, cutting the leaves off marijuana buds? Working’s season on the legal cannabis industry continues with a job you’ve probably never thought about—weed trimmer. These folks are for pruning each bud to make it look nice, aka give it “jar appeal”. Most trimmers work in crews that hop from grower to grower which means, when it comes the cannabis industry, they’ve pretty much seen it all.  Listen to Matthew Mitchell, as trimmer fort Cure Colorado,  talk about the weirdest things he’s encountered on the job and his technique for quickly trimming  bud. 

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What’s it really like to grow and sell legal weed for a living? In the new season of Working, we’re finding out by visiting Colorado to talk with people employed in the state’s cannabis industry. On the first episode of the series, Jordan talks with Lazarus White, an assistant manager at Terrapin Cares Station in Boulder, about the day-to-day of running a dispensary. Turns out it’s a great job if you like long, heart-felt conversations with customers—but not so much if you like to wake and bake. 

In this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, we get different perspective on dispensary life from Britney Pittel—who tells us what it’s like when unhappy customers try to return bud, and how there’s still a surprising amount of stigma against the industry.

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This week on Working, Jordan sits down with Jake Dell who is the latest member of his family to take over New York’s famed Katz’s Deli.

When you own a restaurant that has been beloved since 1888, your work is never done. Jake tells us about what goes into making sure their pastrami always tastes amazing, how the business has and hasn’t changed in 130 years ago and just how often people reenact the iconic “I’ll have what she’s having” scene from When Harry Met Sally. 

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This week, Jordan talks with Victor J. Webster of Brooklyn’s East River Tattoo, who specializes in striking, large-scale pieces of body art inspired by Polynesian traditions. Victor discusses why working in black ink is trickier than you think, how tattoo machines actually work, his techniques for coaching clients through pain, and how he strives to draw inspiration from foreign cultures without simply appropriating them. While you’re listening, check out his work on Instagram. 

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