Summary: Welcome to the first episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast! This inaugural episode is really an introduction to the show, the host, hemp, CBD, and the people that use it. Join host Matt Baum and learn about hemp with help from the good folks at CuredByNature.com, CEO of Palm Organix Alex Herrera, and learn about how CBD can help those living with medical conditions like Crohn’s disease when he talks with ministryofhemp.com contributor Annalise Mabe . We want to hear from you too so please, send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email us at info@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Below you’ll find the full written transcript of episode #1. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Matt Baum: Hi, my name’s Matt Baum, and I’m excited to welcome you to episode number one of the Ministry of Hemp podcast, brought to you by America’s leading advocate for hemp, ministryofhemp.com. If you’ve been to the site, then you already know how cool it is. It’s full of all kinds of information, recipes, interviews, news, virtually anything that you want to know about hemp is there. It’s curated by my buddy Kit, who is an amazing journalist and does a wonderful job. Kit is going to be a frequent guest on the show. In fact, he is going to talk a little bit about what is hemp in a few minutes here. Before we get to that, with this being episode number one, I thought we should introduce some very basic things, starting with me, the host, and how I came to bring hemp into my life. Matt’s story My name is Matt Baum. I’m 43 years old. I’m also the host of the Two-Headed Nerd Comic Book podcast. If you’re a nerd, check that out. You’ll probably dig it. For the last 30 years of my life or so, I’ve been playing drums as a musician, I’ve been working professionally in kitchens as a cook, and taking side gigs as a copywriter and freelance journalist. What do all those things have in common? Repetitive motion, basically. Now I played in a lot of very loud bands, punk rock bands, hardcore bands. I also played in some much quieter bands, but the point being I was always hitting drums, hitting cymbals, and injuring myself. I never learned how to play. I never took lessons. I sat down at the drums and just started playing one day. And in doing so, some of my favorite musicians were guys like Keith Moon, Tommy Lee, guys that hammered their drums. I just thought they put on an amazing show, so that’s what I did. I beat the hell out of my drums. I put on a show every time. With that, I beat the hell out of my hands, too. When I wasn’t drumming and touring in bands, I was at home working in kitchens, cooking. The good things about being a musician and a cook is whenever you’re not touring, there’s always cooking jobs available. But with those cooking jobs comes a lot of chopping, a lot of peeling, a lot of hand work, a lot of small, minute, finger work that really wears on you, not to mention the cutting, the burns, and the myriad of other injuries you can sustain while cooking. Needless to say, my hands weren’t getting any better. And then one day, I got into a car accident. I got hit head-on by a woman that crossed four lanes of traffic. It would turn out that she was a cab driver that had had a stroke behind the wheel while driving. She side-swiped a cop car in front of me which probably saved my life and slowed her down a little bit before plowing into my tiny, little Honda Civic. I was young and I was stupid, so I didn’t have a safety belt on at the time. My head hit the windshield. My right hand went through the dash, and my knee went into the lower part of the dash. I was supposed to leave and go on tour two weeks later with the band and had to canc
