Hey Nate. Hey Felix. So the other day I met up with a guy in rural Connecticut and he had this vicious pack of cute dogs. Their names were Ponyo, Camarada, and Hulk. Great names. So they're about 13 and 12? Yeah. Oh, well. I can't pay for that. There's no insurance. Hulk, I imagine, was not actually very big. No, no. He was the smallest one of them all. But anyways, the guy I'm here to meet, his name is Hector Gerardo, but he goes by Freedom. Freedom? Yes. Okay. And Freedom brings me to a table with a bunch of items on it laid out kind of like a table at a flea market. Uh-huh. Let's start with the plants. You can see right here, this is the sea. You have like a few leaves. And we're looking at hemp plants. Freedom is a hemp farmer. Yeah. They're on stalks that are about the same height as a human. Yeah. Look at this. My height. Six feet. Yeah. So the top, the flower part, looks like weed. It does. No, bono. So Ponyo's trying to eat the leaves. He's got to wait for them to be cooked into brownies first. Anyways, you know, this is like definitely a generalization, but I will say that people that are into hemp, they are really into hemp. Like Freedom is really excited to tell me that it can be processed and made into 25,000 different things. Tables, any type of clothing. Shoes, sunglasses. utensils, plates, straws concrete you name it you name it, everything you can make even BMW is experimenting with hemp for bioplastic parts in cars what? I haven't even gotten to those necklaces and hoodies that were super popular back in the 90s I think I had one of those hemp necklaces when I was in that phase of being a teenager see, you're a hemp enthusiast too, Nate Just got to go back to your roots Exactly I got to put on my Dave Matthews CD This is Outside In A show where Curiosity and the Natural World Collide I am Nate Hedgie Here with producer Felix Poon And today an episode from 2024 All about hemp What is it? What happened to it? And why does it sound like a weird infomercial Whenever you try and talk about it? I mean, Nate, we only have 24,989 uses left to go, Nate. God, this is going to be a long episode. Rope, jewelry, water bottles, paper, roofing, boring, paints, biofuel, wallets, backpacks, Sorry, everybody. This is just the episode. It's just Felix listing things. Dog shoes, shampoo, bedding, dog collar, dishes, yoga pants, Netflix, and TV. www.shopify.nl shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with shopify by your side starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with shopify by your side hey this is outside in a show where curiosity and the natural world collide i am nate hedgy here with felix poon who's here to tell me all about hemp so there's a question i think we need to get out of the way first before i keep talking about hemp. Okay. Want to take a guess what that is? Something to do with weed? I've been making a lot of weed jokes. Yeah. So some hemp super fans will go out of their way to tell you that hemp is not the same thing as weed. But that's only kind of true because from a scientific standpoint, they are literally the same species of plant, cannabis sativa. There's just one really important difference, and that is how much THC that each plant produces. And THC is the chemical compound that gets you high. Legally, anything with less than 0.3% THC is considered hemp. And everything above that is considered marijuana. But that 0.3% is not some type of magical number that we find in nature that really delineates the two. That, by the way, is David Suchoff. He's a professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at North Carolina State University. And David says that the difference we do find in nature that separates the two, it comes down to one gene. So there's a gene that codes for an enzyme called THC-asynthase, and there's a gene that codes for CBD-asynthase. And so if a plant contains just one copy of that THC-asynthase gene, it will now produce much more than 0.3% THC, and then it becomes marijuana. Now, to make things a little bit more complicated, it turns out that CBD-asynthase produces a little little bit of THC. And it does it at a ratio of about 26 to 1, meaning for every 26 molecules of CBD it produces, it's going to push out one molecule of THC. And so that's why CBD hemp, even if it doesn't have the gene for THC production, will still produce a little bit of THC. In fact, it will produce enough if given enough time that it will go above 0.3%. Okay, so hemp is just weed that doesn't get you high. Well, there are companies that are exploiting loopholes in the law to concentrate the THC from hemp and put it into gummies and drinks that people are getting high from. That said, it is kind of like this thing that Taylor, our executive producer, he told me this fun fact because he's our resident pepper enthusiast. Did you know that bell peppers are actually the same species as jalapeno peppers? Really? They're just bigger and less spicy? Yeah, they have a recessive gene that makes them not produce capsaicin. And so they're not spicy, even though their cousin jalapenos are the same species. Okay, Nate, so now it's time for Hemp History 101. Woohoo! I mean, hemp is one of the oldest fibers we've ever used in human history. Older than cotton? Older than cotton, yeah. John Fike, a professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Virginia Tech, says that hemp was first domesticated in what's present-day China, and from there, its usage spread to the east. Into Japan by a land bridge about 18,000 years ago. It spread to the west. At least a thousand years or more before the rise of Islam in the Middle East I mean this stuff goes way back Just think about ancient cave art showing people hunting with spears Yeah. In some of those paintings, it was probably hemp rope that was used to tie the arrowheads to the shafts to make those spears. And I bet you they never let that hemp grow too old, right? No, they probably did. How do you think they got the inspiration to make this artwork? But anyways, hemp became essential for building boats and entire navies because it's a lot stronger than cotton is. I mean, it was so important that King James I required by law that property owners in the American colonies had to grow this stuff. At least 100 plants of hemp on their property. Wow. Your strength of your empire is built on a navy. You know, the stronger the material you've got, the more powerful you may be. So like Paul Revere had like hemp growing in his backyard. I mean, maybe, but definitely George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did. I mean, George toked weed, don't you know that? I did not. Is that true? It's a reference to the movie Dazed and Confused. He grew that shit up at Mount Vernon, man. Mount Vernon, man, he grew it all over the country, man. He had people growing it all over the country, you know? The whole country back then was getting hot. It's a great movie. And before wood pulp became a thing in the 1800s, do you know what most paper was made from, Nate? Oh, let me guess. It's a tough one I don't know if you're going to get this Hemp? Precisely, hemp But then came the 1930s Smoking the soul-destroying reefer They find a moment's pleasure But at a terrible price Divorcery Violence Murder Suicide And the ultimate end of the marijuana addict Take back Hopeless insanity Do you know what this is a trailer of, Nate? I do, actually. The aptly titled Reefer Madness. Yeah, it's become this kind of weird cult classic that you watch just for the over-the-top depiction of pot use, right? Marijuana, the burning weed with its roots in hell. But it was originally produced by this church group to warn parents about the supposed dangers of weed and like Freedom, the guy visited in Connecticut, he said he watched a movie with his mother-in-law. And she goes, you know, that's why you don't smoke weed. You see that? You see that? What's happening to that guy? You see that? Oh my goodness. So marijuana was effectively banned in 1937 and hemp got lumped into it as well because it was probably just easier to ban it all because like we talked about, it's basically the same plant. Like how are you going to enforce figuring out like, Is this marijuana or is this hemp? Right. But it has had its ups and downs over the decades, though. Like, the U.S. government lifted the ban temporarily during World War II because Japan blocked the supply of fiber that was coming from the Philippines. The USDA actually made one of those wartime newsreels about it. It was called Hemp for Victory. This is Manila hemp from the Navy's rapidly dwindling reserve. When that is gone, American hemp will go on duty again. Hemp for mooring ships. Hemp for tow lines. And of course, in the 90s, hemp was pretty popular in those necklaces and hoodies. Yep. And then attitudes changed over the past couple of decades after a wave of states legalized marijuana, right? Mm-hmm. And apparently then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was a huge proponent for legalizing hemp. Really? He even wrote an op-ed in 2018 calling for its legalization that he published on April 20th. 420. Nice job, Mitch. Right? Anyways, so the ban was finally officially lifted in the U.S. by the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, better known as a 2018 farm bill. I mean, this is where things get tricky because marijuana is still a federally prohibited drug. Right. Like Freedom, for example, he's just trying to grow hemp. The thing is that you have to be careful in the States because you have to test your plants. Because even though marijuana is usually like 15 to 30 percent THC, the government defined hemp at a much lower threshold. So Freedom has to make sure that his hemp never goes above 0.3 percent THC. It's a tiny amount. But if you get past that, then you got to burn your crop. Even if you're not using it for CBD or weed, it's just fiber. You got to burn it. I'm tempted to make a joke about Freedom burning his hemp. Yeah. But it actually sounds like a real bummer for hemp farmers. I mean, yeah, it's a huge waste. Yeah, massive waste. I mean, to be fair, Freedom would probably not get high off of this because the THC levels, You know, 0.4% THC. That's still kind of nothing. Yeah, right. It's like drinking a lot of kombucha to try to get drunk. Is there alcohol in kombucha? Yeah, ask Lindsay Lohan. She got busted for that. I had no idea. So once hemp was taken off the ban list, what do you think most hemp farmers made hemp for? Oh, if I was to go to any kind of like weed adjacent shop, I would see bottles full of CBD oil. Yeah. CBD for pets. CBD for my aches and pains. CBD, CBD, CBD. So early on when the farm bill first passed, there was a lot of interest in CBD hemp. Say hello to just CBD gummies. Customers use CBD by British Cannabis. We're really happy we tried CBD. CBD for the people. I'm just curious. Like, okay, everybody's seen CBD oil everywhere. Like I can literally give my dog CBD oil to help with his anxiety. but like does it work because it didn't work for me so yeah great question so david said there is a drug that is fda approved it's prescribed specifically for a type of seizure disorder in children okay and it has been proven to be effective there but beyond that like there are no other fda approved uses and studies are pretty mixed on whether it works for other things yeah Which is maybe why the CBD fad sort of backfired. So everybody grew and there was a demand, but that demand wasn't really real. This is David Suchoff again. And it was a big bubble. That bubble burst. We saw a lot of companies go bankrupt. We saw a lot of farmers who were given contracts not have those contracts honored. And then at the end of the day, what we saw is farmers with barns full of dried hemp just sitting there. And I grew 100 plants here in that mountain right there. CBD plants. But I lost a lot of money on that one. But if there was a silver lining to this bubble bursting, it's that the industry can pivot to the other uses that we can get from hemp. Right. Because hemp is a super versatile plant. To understand why, it comes down to the fact that it's a dioecious plant. Dioecious? Yeah, meaning that there are male and female plants. So if you plant them both, the male fertilizes the females and makes seeds or hemp hearts that you can buy in the grocery store. So if I'm growing hemp for grain, then I need males and females in the field. Have you had hemp hearts, Nate? I feel like I've seen them at every Whole Foods. as like the thing I'll sprinkle on a salad. They're supposedly very healthy for you, lots of antioxidants. Okay, but if you're growing hemp for CBD. I only want females I don want males Males don produce a lot of cannabinoids so we do not want any males And then if you growing hemp to make clothes or rope or whatever That an instance where we really don care if there are males or females in the field We're not growing for the flowers. We're not growing for the cannabinoids. We're growing for the stems. That's where the fibers are located that we use in textiles, apparel, nonwovens, and so on. But a big reason why people really want to make everything from hemp is because it's a carbon sink. It is. They call it the earth purifier. Yeah. Why is that? Because an acre of hemp can produce more oxygen than a whole forest. Is that true? Really? I mean, yeah. Think about it. Like, they call weed weed for a reason. Like, it grows like a weed. Think about how long it takes to grow a forest of trees from nothing. Like, reports do confirm that an acre of hemp sequesters more carbon than an acre of trees. I guess that makes sense. Which is why there's a lot of buzz in the construction world right now for something called hempcrete. Hempcrete? You serious? Yes. And I'm going to tell you all about hempcrete and whether this hempcrete hype holds any water after the break. My wife knows that my happy time is at night cooking dinner. I love playing around with spices, making roux, trying to master that chef dice where they somehow cut the onions into little tiny pieces without chopping their fingers off. But sometimes you need inspiration. Sometimes it's tough to get to the grocery store. HelloFresh has you covered. 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It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Welcome back to Outside In. I'm Nate Hedgie with Felix Poon. You know, one of the reasons you can go on and on and list 25,000 things you can make out of hemp is because it's a fiber. Like you could probably list like 25,000 things you could make out of cotton. But unlike cotton, there's this whole other category of stuff that you can make hemp into, and that's construction materials. which matters because construction and building materials, they are responsible for up to 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World's Green Building Council. So if we find better alternatives, we might be able to make a big difference on our emissions. So what are we talking about here? Are we talking about thatching roofs with hemp or building decks out of hemp? Yeah, I mean, basically all of the above, right? because, I mean, you can use hemp to make a bioplastic and just like any plastic, you can shape and mold it into whatever you want. It's really strong enough? So, I mean, compared to plastic, like it is biodegradable, so it's not going to last like thousands and thousands of years like plastic would. Right. So it's not as strong in that sense, but it is strong enough to like perform in similar ways. Stand like a bunch of people partying on a deck. Yeah. But I want to tell you about one very specific way it's being used that I think is pretty cool. Basically the stem of the hemp plant, the inside of the stem, broken up into basically like wood chips mixed with a lime-based binder and water. So this is Danny Dijarlais. He's the industrial hemp construction project manager with the Lower Sioux Community. And so it's an all-natural wall insulation. So think of your typical like fiberglass insulation and drywall in your typical homes. You know what I'm talking about, right? Right. So that's what it's a substitute for. It's not load-bearing, so it has to be sprayed or packed into a wood or steel frame. Or some companies make these prefabricated blocks, but they have to mix in other stuff to make it load-bearing. Either way, it gets pretty rock hard, so that's how it got its name, Hempcrete. But you can't build a building out of Hempcrete. in the same way that you can't build a building out of just drywall. Right. Like there has to be other stuff. Yes. That's a silly name. Sorry, if you're not using it as concrete, you're using it as insulation. It should be hemp-silation. I will, yeah, let's officially submit our complaint to the National Hemp Board. So hempcrete is mold-resistant, fire-resistant, whereas fiberglass melts when you expose it to high temperatures. Yeah. hempcrete doesn't which many a youtube video will attest uh benzomatic propane here and a nice piece this is three and a half inches thick okay so here we go and the hempcrete is fine and so so i guess like hemp salation and i'm gonna call it hemp salation because hempcrete is a terrible name this hemp salation it sounds like it's a better more safe form of insulation than the stuff we're normally using. Well, yeah. So there are, like any building materials, pros and cons. So the pros, advocates say hempcrete is non-toxic. Studies say it can help regulate the humidity in your house, and it can help you save on AC by keeping your house cooler. But the cons, it doesn't insulate as well as fiberglass. So you need thicker walls to get the same insulation value. Plus, That because it just really new in the US it hard to come by and it more expensive like 20 to 30 more expensive than a conventional build according to Danny So it expensive financially but the cost of the environment is way lower Yeah, and that is why people are excited about it. And to understand how it's a carbon sink, I want to take you through a little virtual tour of how the hemp plant gets turned into hempcrete. So this tour starts with tossing your hemp seeds into the soil. And then boom, hemp plants pop out of the ground. We cut it down around 90 days after. 90 days? That's really quick. The amount of CO2 it absorbs, 3 to 9 tons per acre, is way more than trees do. So they harvest it. And then it has to sit in the field and ret, which is just a fancy word for rot. Then they use a machine to break up the stem, turning them into mini wood chips. Basically the size of a dime up to a quarter. Of course, running these machines does emit greenhouse gases. But anyway, the next step is for these wood chips to go in the mixer and get mixed with water and lime. Basically looks like oatmeal. It's not like soupy or creamy. It's basically like a, you know, a really dry oatmeal. And then they test it. So we'll grab a ball, a big handful of the mix that we have in there. And we'll compact that ball in between both of our hands. and will kind of push down on the top of the ball. So depending how the ball breaks, they'll know if it's a good mix or not. And that job of breaking the balls, there's a dedicated person for that. They're called the Mix Master. The Mix Master, that's a cool name. Yeah, our Mix Master. He takes care of all of that. Sounds like he's a DJ or something. That's the coolest name in the hempcrete world is your Mix Master. And his job is to break balls. Yeah, that's a missed opportunity. They should call him the ball breaker. I don't think this is going to make it into that. Why not? But come on, the godsend. So CO2 is emitted during the production of hempcrete, but studies say that it's more than offset by the carbon sequestered by the plants during photosynthesis. So it looks like a really promising climate solution, But I will caveat this and say both John Fyke and David Suchoff, those industrial hemp scholars that I talked to, they say hempcrete just hasn't been around long enough for us to really know. Like we need more studies to really confirm. So it's got potential, but we're not 100% sure yet. Right. But there is this one other cool thing. And that is that it's a potential rural jobs driver. Like, even if none of the sustainability stuff ends up being true, Danny says it wouldn't matter because working with Hempcrete for the past couple of years, they've been able to bring more jobs to the Lower Sioux community. And they're about to open up a brand new facility to process hemp. And that's going to mean even more jobs for the community. I'll tell you what, Felix. My neighbor here in rural Montana just got a job at a hemp company that opened up in a really small rural town in Montana. So I know what you're talking about. It does actually create jobs for the tiny town that I live in. There you go. Hey, we're putting up new houses here in our community by our community members. You know, we're not having to pay these outside contractors to come in. I think that's a really big part right there. We're kind of taking back part of our community right there just by doing that. I just imagined a senator cutting the ribbon in front of a new rural hemp plant, taking a big whiff and saying, it doesn't smell like weed. It smells like jobs. That's great. We produced this episode back in 2024, and there are a couple of updates we need to share. Yeah, first, there's a new study out that says we've been undercounting the emissions from construction. Instead of 11% of global emissions, these researchers say it's closer to a third. Dang. Yeah. On that note, the Lower Sioux community has officially opened their hempcrete facility. They say it can process more acres of hemp than they have the capacity to grow, so they're looking to local farmers to source more hemp. And if you've been paying attention to the news, you may have heard about a law banning CBD that takes effect at the end of the year. So this law, it closes that loophole we were talking about, the one that concentrates the THC in hemp and puts it into gummies and drinks that get you high. But critics say it goes too far in the other direction. They're hoping there's still time to amend the law. But as it stands, it could wipe out 95 percent of the hemp extract industry. So that is it for the show. You know, Nate, as we were making this episode, we polled our Facebook group what they think of when they hear the word hemp. One person said they think of those necklaces everyone made in the late 90s. Someone else said those hideous pullovers from the 90s. They weren't that hideous. And a whole bunch of other people think of weed. You can let us know what you think when you hear the word hemp. Or if you've got any other thoughts on this episode, you can email us at outsidein at nhpr.org. Like, if you really didn't like my CBD take, I am open to your angry emails. I'm sure it worked for you. You can tag us on social media. We're at Outside In Radio. And you can join the conversation in our private Facebook group. Just search for Outside In to find us there. This episode was reported, mixed, and reported. Sorry. Are you high? Take two. This episode was reported, mixed. I think you are. This episode was reported, mixed, and produced by me, Felix Poon. It was edited by Taylor Quimby. Our staff includes Justine Paradis, Marina Henke, and Jessica Hunt. Our mix master is Rebecca Lavoie. She's NHPR's director of On Demand Audio. Our resident ball breaker is Taylor Quimby. I'm your host, Nate Hedgie. Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Mike Franklin, Jules Gaia, Dusty Dex, and Rocket Jr. Special thanks to Fitzum Tariku, director of the Building Science Center of Excellence, for talking to me about hempcrete. And a sad update about one of Freedom's dogs. Freedom texted to let me know that Kamarada passed away just a couple of weeks after my visit. May she rest in peace. Outside In is a production of NHBR. Temp for victory. What is healthy spirituality and how does it help us thrive? We explore these questions on the new season of With and For, hosted by me, Dr. Pam King. With and For bridges psychology and spiritual wisdom to help you thrive, featuring conversations with experts like self-compassion pioneer Kristen Neff and author-activist Parker Palmer. So go ahead, follow With and For, hosted by Dr. Pam King, wherever you get your podcasts. improving and even saving lives. Follow Tomorrow's Cure wherever you listen to podcasts.
