Cannabis and Satire with Paul Krassner

Discussing cannabis and satire as Vivian McPeak is joined by legendary American satirist and marijuana advocate Paul Krassner. Krassner was a child violin prodigy and was the youngest person ever to play Carnegie Hall, in 1939 at age six. Krassner is firmly secular, considering religion "organised superstition," though his parents were Jewish. Paul majored in journalism at Baruch College, the transitioned into performing as a comedian known as Paul Maul. Paul was active in politically edged humor and satire in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was a founder of the Youth International Pary (Yippies) in 1967 and a member of Ken Kessy's Merry Pranksters for prankster activism. In 1963, he created what Kurt Vonnegut described as "a miracle of compressed intelligence nearly as admirable for potent simplicity, in my opinion, as Einstein's e=mc2." Vonnegut said "With the Vietnam War going on, and with its critics discounted and scorned by the government and the mass media, Krassner put on sale a red, white and blue poster that said FUCK COMMUNISM. At the beginning of the 1960s, FUCK was believed to be so full of bad magic as to be unprintable... By having FUCK and COMMUNISM fight it out in a single sentence, Krassner wasn't merely being funny as heck. He was demonstrating how preposterous it was for so many people to be responding to both words with such cockamamie Pavlovian fear and alarm."