Hey. Watch this.
Over the past five years, Americans have increased their cannabis consumption from 3.4 to 5.5 million users… zzzz… yawn… blah… blah… blah…
Numbers in a vacuum are boring.
This is where Ellen Scanlon and How to Do the Pot come in.
Nobody watches TED Talks for a dry recitation of numbers. Brene Brown or Simon Sinek don’t rack up millions of views for the data.
It’d be like reading a Bloomberg terminal without CNBC to tell us what we’re looking at. Do you want to see a politician lose?
Which one is using statistics?
Humans. Crave. Stories.
Enter the main character of this one. Ellen Scanlon. Not the hero (heroine?) of the story, but the main character.
The guest is always the hero. She’s the common thread that weaves guests from all walks of life into the tapestry of a single podcast.
How to Do The Pot showcases Ellen’s laser-guided precision storytelling to take anyone’s experience around a sensitive subject and make for a compelling podcast.
After listening to several episodes to write this article, I imagine she could synthesize the data around a call center selling VHS workout tapes compelling.
But in this particular case, she’s set her sights higher.
On advocacy.
Advocating for safe, legal access to cannabis, and specifically how that access has the potential to help women.
The real genius is that she’s not using this platform to kick the door in.
Instead, she’s leveraging the story of others to crack the door a bit.
Don’t say no. Just be open to the possibility of maybe.
Wrapping numbers in compelling human connection. Masterful.
Let’s see how it’s done.
First Impressions of How to Do the Pot
I have nothing against cannabis. Candidly, I’ve used it as an adult occasionally and much more frequently when I was younger.
But even I’m trapped by a bias that, even though it’s now legal in several states, when I see someone focus so much time and energy on a subject like cannabis, especially when the project has a tongue-in-cheek title, it feels almost political.
Almost religious.
I thought this was just going to be a podcast about how to do pot. How to take it. How to pick your strain whilst wearing tie dye.
I try not to do too much research about the podcasts before the initial listen, so to say I was skeptical is something of an understatement.
Wrong again. I was wrong again. I need to quit jumping to conclusions.
I mean there’s a tiny bit of that. But that’s like saying both Mt. Everest and the beverage on your table both have ice.
Even though I’m not the core female demographic, I found myself just letting the show play on a long drive. While I had planned to listen to an episode out of fairness, I just kept listening.
As a member of three NPR affiliates, I’d have difficulty telling you this wasn’t an NPR podcast if it weren’t for the subject matter.
As an aside, since NPR cut its podcast budget this past year, I’m personally glad this show isn’t siloed off with public funding.
It’s an engaging podcast with an engaging host and a diverse group of guests from different walks of life. Host Ellen Scanlon creates this Venn Diagram of society with this little sliver of overlap orbiting cannabis.
There are more than 250 episodes at this point… and as soon as I started listening, I knew this podcast was going to be weaving its way into the queue of every flight or long drive for the rest of the summer (and likely well into autumn – 250 is quite a few shows).
The Production Style of How to Do the Pot
As I mentioned earlier, I listen to a fair amount of public radio. I’m familiar with the style. I think I have the cut of their jib down.
Ellen and her team are creating a show on that level. The flow from How to Do the Pot and This American Life, in terms of production quality, is indistinguishable.
Not that How to Do the Pot isn’t its own animal. It is.
How to Do the Pot began as a weekly scripted show about the benefits of cannabis aimed at women and women’s health. It remains true to that mission, but over the course of its 250 episodes, the team, with Ellen at the helm, has expanded the show a bit.
The show is produced in series of episodes as to not be listening marathons (though, I’m going to binge if I want to).
These largely fall within a few different categories.
- The core “Health” episodes. These are informational based and are geared toward the core women’s health mandate. Ellen estimated the audience to breakdown 70/30 skewing female to male.
- The “well-being” episodes. These are episodes on health topics, but aren’t gender based. They cover topics like stress, sleep, sex, etc.
- And the “Fun Episodes.” These are loosely about how cannabis fits in society and the cannabis subculture in general. You’d find discussions about strains, how to take cannabis (since there are so many different options at present), and subjects like that.
One of my favorite series the show has produced thus far is “The 1st Time I Bought Legal Weed.” If you’ve done it (as I have), it’s a right of passage and is relatable right off the bat.
Before getting into the nitty gritty of the show, you don’t really think about how ubiquitous cannabis is in the larger culture.
The variety of subjects leads me to believe more people have tried cannabis than have owned a white car.
There really is something for everyone, but the other subject matter that jumped out at me were the interviews between Ellen and a start up creator, or scientist, or someone from a “straight laced traditional background,” who found their way into this nascent industry.
Which brings me to my interview with Ellen. She was kind enough to sit down virtually to speak to me about her history and the podcast.
From the Creator’s Mouth
**Editor’s Note**Before getting too far into this section, as you’ll see in the video below, Ellen spoke to me from her balmy California office, while I spent our conversation in a heatwave in the swealtering Southern humidity.
I could give you the numbers. 95 degrees and 81% humidity, but those are just numbers. If the video of me sweating through a wrinkled t-shirt during our interview doesn’t tell a story… I don’t know what will.
You can even see the sun behind my right shoulder. That’s how close the sun is in the south.
But in all seriousness, it was a wonderful discussion that explains how this show started and why it’s so good.
Ellen came to cannabis after what I have to think is a pretty traumatic event.
“Well, I guess the real genesis is how I got into cannabis. And that is definitely health issues. I had a bad bike accident. I ended up breaking 16 of my teeth and had a lot of other challenges.”
Ellen Scanlon
She would go onto try a number of different treatments, both traditional and holistic, with varying degrees of success. Lingering issues opened her mind to the possibility of cannabis as a treatment for her personal situation.
The daughter of a lawyer and a product of the “Just Say No” cultural era, she was never comfortable with the idea of cannabis. The illegality was something gave her a good deal of pause.
That struck me that she’d end up, in 2024, producing and hosting a podcast devoted, primarily, to cannabis consumption.
Later, trouble with fertility, specifically endometriosis, which impacts 1/10 women, would lead her back to thinking beyond her own situation and seeing more connection with women’s health generally.
How might cannabis help women’s health?
The curiosity was sparked and the thesis of what would become How to Do the Pot was enshrined.
Ellen and her friend April Pride would then start the podcast when they agreed that audio was a format that was appealing. Ellen mentioned that she was a voracious consumer of audio books, so it was a natural fit.
I asked how Ellen got so good at storytelling. She told me that although she worked on Wall Street (that was a surprise), her job was to hit the trading floor three times a day to take the chaos that is a trading floor and distill it into a cogent narrative for large clients.
Now… that makes sense.
Couple that with an English Literature undergraduate degree and a passion for reading, and it couldn’t be clearer why that aspect of the show is so well done.
Another takeaway was that, early on, they worked with producers to really learn the craft of podcasting. This was always a passion project, but, in true Wall Street form, it was never a hobby.
It struck me as a mission. Which may speak to the longevity of the show. When you’re on a mission to deliver a message to a niche, and you’re doing it with purpose, you are less likely to burn out.
To her credit, Ellen also sung the praises of her team. It struck me that she knows that the show isn’t going to be as good without any member of her team filling their role. It’s a team effort.
Which makes sense when you’re producing a weekly show at such a high level.
I’m certain I took away more from this discussion than anyone.
We spoke about a number of subjects beyond podcasting and cannabis over the hour and the depth of Ellen’s knowledge of any subject didn’t just have a study or statistics, but even in casual conversation, there was a narrative arc.
I honestly can’t tell if she just thinks like that, or if she’s been doing this project at such a high level for so long that it’s become second nature.
I would bet my bottom dollar that whatever firm she worked for way back when made the right hire.
The Strengths and Weaknesses of How to Do the Pot
This show does just about everything right. It’s well produced. It publishes regularly. It’s well written, with excellent guests.
It’s topical. It has broad based appeal that has sought to expand the audience base over time.
The team members I’ve interacted with have been great, and simply having a team shows a level of humility and leadership in a show that you don’t always see in podcasting.
It’s a professional show through and through.
As long as you like or are at least curious about the broader subject, there’s nothing you aren’t going to like. Within the confines of a still taboo subject, I don’t really think there is room for improvement.
It’s the subject itself that is the only thing holding this team back.
Ellen said as much in our interview. Until (and perhaps even after) the Federal Government moves cannabis from schedule 1 (no medical use) to schedule 2 (recognized possible medical use) they are going to run into issues finding counter-parties to help them grow.
Advertising is difficult to secure, distribution is curtailed (I had to declare the video as 21+ and I have had problems throughout the editing process). While cannabis makes life easier in a lot of ways, the discussion surrounding cannabis can seem Sisyphean.
Through no fault of How to Do the Pot’s team, growth remains a murky area.
And that’s a shame.
Conclusion
I’m a fan of How to Do the Pot. Much more so than I am of the plant itself.
It’s a professionally produced, engaging, authentic show. Ellen and team cover so many angles that they force the audience to inadvertently realize how prevalent this cannabis plant is in our society.
It is one of those subjects that has touched almost everyone, but so few people are talking about it. Ellen even mentioned that in tackling this subject she’s taking a “risk.” She said she didn’t know how many of her business school cohort either used or would be comfortable with the topic.
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But as she said. “I hope they’ll learn something.”
I can say unequivocally that if they’re going to learn something, they’re going to learn it from Ellen and How to Do the Pot.
We’d like to thank Ellen and How to Do the Pot for the work they’re doing for advocacy in the field of women’s health.
If you’d like your podcast to feature in the Podcast Spotlight series, take a look here.