The Plant Lady: A podcast by Jackie Bryant and San Diego Magazine

Oops...I did it again

Mar 02, 2023

Some of you are longtime listeners/readers; I am eternally grateful for that. It’s been a wild ride through Covid, the ups and downs of media (especially during that near-decade I was freelancing), and, of course, the incredible whiplash of the ever-legalizing cannabis industry. I’m extremely excited to announce that I’ll be launching an interview-style podcast about weed, called The Plant Lady, on San Diego Magazine’s podcast network beginning March 15. It’s doubly exciting because, as far as I can tell, there aren’t too many regional lifestyle magazines out there (let alone national magazines outside of cannabis media) that have a podcast dedicated to the kind herb. This is as mainstream as it gets, and it signifies that however difficult things remain in the cannabis world, times are indeed changing around it.

My career as a writer and journalist didn’t begin with cannabis writing, though, for most of it, cannabis was always a component. It wasn’t until the last five or six years that it became a primary focus of mine. I’ve covered a variety of beats over the years, and in San Diego, specifically, initially I made my name as a food writer. I covered restaurant news for the local Eater for several years and wrote about food and drinks regularly for Ranch & Coast, San Diego CityBeat, Thrillist, Modern Luxury San Diego, Edible San Diego, the San Diego Union-Tribune, PACIFIC and I’m sure more I can’t even think of at the moment.

Over time, I transitioned out of food writing, especially restaurant writing, gravitating towards cannabis, instead. As a topic, weed was much more exciting to me with wider coverage options: as a legalizing substance, it isn’t, in my mind, enough to just cover it as a lifestyle topic. That realization opened and leveled up my reportage to tackle other types of stories, like policy, criminal justice, business, legal issues, the environment, and labor, all through the lens of weed. I even hosted a season of my own podcast, also called Cannabitch, which is still available across the world wide web.

I have a long history with the magazine I am the managing editor of now, San Diego Magazine. I think my first freelance piece with them was in 2015 when I became a fairly regular writer for their travel section while contributing the odd lifestyle or food piece here or there. At the time, the magazine was owned by a notoriously conservative guy who employed a more conservative staff, and they were a bit weed-phobic, as many mainstream publications remain. Eventually, they *let* me (and a few other writers here and there) pen a few weed stories, like this one about a Humboldt weed-tinged road trip, a wine and weed road trip through Sonoma and Mendocino, and this story about David Bronner of Dr. Bronner’s, which is based right here in San Diego County, in Vista. He has a long history in cannabis (and other entheogenic plants) activism.

Anyway, I was grateful for the limited opportunities to write about weed for the mag over the years. Once they lightened up, I figured, I’d be there, ready to seize the moment.

sandiegomag

A post shared by San Diego Magazine (@sandiegomag)

And here I am. Written into my contract with the magazine is the explicit order that I am to host my very own cannabis podcast under the San Diego Magazine banner. Over the last few months, and while becoming increasingly more pregnant, I’ve been dutifully preparing promo materials and recording with guests like Ricky Williams, the aforementioned David Bronner, Luke Scarmazzo, Dr. Michelle Sexton, Al Harrington, and many others. The Plant Lady will not be limited to just San Diego and features guests from all over the country. Eventually, after I have this kid in a few months and get him acclimated to life on Earth, I hope to move into more narrative, reported, and storytelling-style formats, in addition to interviews.

I hope you’ll tune in on March 15 and every two weeks thereafter. You can sign up here to be reminded if you like. And, of course, Cannabitch: The Newsletter remains alive and well. I’m working on finalizing a piece about weed use and pregnancy, actually, so hang tight for that. As always, thanks for being here.

(The above copy is their wording, not mine, but I’m flattered nonetheless. If you happen to see the promo on social media, just note we had to use different plants for the background and scrub the copy of any weed language, lest we jeopardize the magazine’s Instagram account seeing as Meta is still mega against cannabis content. We are not trying to be lame, I promise. It hurts my heart, too.)

HILARIOUS BONUS CONTENT:

One of my favorite pastimes is trying to take weed stuff mainstream, only to have it hilariously slapped back down. I wrote about that a little bit here, the last time a cannabis story of mine was assigned, reported, and near printing, only to be stymied at the last minute. I still freelance very occasionally, usually by assignment, if the rate and/or topic are right. I accepted a magazine assignment a couple of months ago that paid really well and would be easy enough for me to do, only to receive this a few weeks later: