Psychedelic Women

Producer/Host, Rainbow Valentine was born into the inner circle of the San Francisco counterculture which didn’t seem unusual until she grew up and discovered not everyone’s family and friends were pot smugglers, rock stars and artists activating for peace, justice and equality. Rainbow Valentine’s mom, her friend’s moms and her mom’s friends were the bedrock of the world famous 1960’s counterculture - they were the first women in history to have access to (and take advantage of) The Pill, LSD and Rock’n’Roll. Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture reveals never-before recorded stories of the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll of the paradigm-shifting 1960’s American counterculture.

Episodes

Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture: Radiate Bonus Ep 4: Everybody Can but Do They? Deep Diving on eps 4, 5, 6 with Dr. M part 2

August 22, 2025 • 41 mins

Part 2 of a deep dive into Radiate episodes 4, 5 and 6 with RV and Dr. Maria Mangini, PHD, co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Council, nurse practitioner and member of the Hog Farm Commune. Be a psychedelic fly on the wall as Dr. M tells RV the story of the Wild West Festival, an epic failure of a music festival that was supposed to be the West Coast counterpoint to Woodstock, plus the physiology of women’s fertility, the origin...

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Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture: Bonus Ep 3: Everybody Can But Do They? Deep Dive with Dr. M on Eps 4, 5, 6 Part 1

August 15, 2025 • 50 mins

Part 1 of a deep dive into Radiate episodes 4, 5 and 6 with RV and Dr. Maria Mangini, PHD, co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Council and member of the Hog Farm Commune. Listeners get to be a psychedelic fly on the wall as RV and Dr. M discuss the Grateful Dead’s origins, the downfall of the Quicksilver, the history of women in radio aka KMPX’s chick engineers plus an insider’s story of San Francisco’s epic failure of a music fes...

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Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture BONUS Ep 2: Radiate: Dizzying Revelations

August 8, 2025 • 46 mins

In a very intimate bonus episode to the Radiate story, RV’s mom shares what she calls “the gritty stuff”, revealing never-before-heard, shocking revelations about her marriage to mid-century modern jeweler/drug dealer to the Jazz greats, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis… Plus a teenage bullrider, a thief named Crazy Sal, murder and more. Pull up a pot bale seat at the Anonymous Artist’s table where in the 1960's, the inner circle...

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Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture BONUS Ep 1: Deep Diving with Dr. M into Radiate Eps 1, 2, 3

July 24, 2025 • 54 mins

A deep dive into Radiate Eps 1, 2, 3 with RV and Dr. Maria Mangini, PHD, co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Council and member of the Hog Farm Commune. In an intimate After-the-Episode Chat, RV and Dr. M. discuss the Hippie Family Tree, the Haight Ashbury, The Diggers, hippie kids, outlaws, rock stars, Margo St. James, Carol Doda, the Domino Club, San Francisco’s laws around nudity onstage and dancing, plus the SF politics that...

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Psychedelic Women: Smuggler Family Album Ep 2: Beat Poets, LSD Chemists, MDA & Murder

July 20, 2025 • 45 mins

In behind-the scenes convos with her former pot-smuggler parents, Rainbow Valentine takes a walk down counterculture memory lane with stories about beat poets, Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Alan Ginsberg, obscenity trials and banned books plus dining with smugglers, counterculture chemists, an airplane full of LSD VIPS, the history of Marin County, California’s sushi and an unsolved murder in the high end restaurant world of 1980’s San F...

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Psychedelic Women: Smuggler Family Album: Juanita the Bordello Chef

July 4, 2025 • 41 mins

In a new branch of Psychedelic Women, Rainbow Valentine presents Smuggler Family Album, conversations with her counterculture smuggler friends and family. In this episode RV’s parents (from the podcast Disorganized Crime) tell us about Juanita, a shit-talking restaurateur/brothel owner with a wild west heart of gold who ran her infamous restaurant from her bed; plus stories about the people and places of RV’s childhood in Sausalit...

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Psychedelic Women EP 6: Convos with the Women of the Counterculture: Radiate Part 6: The Psychedelic Lightworker

June 20, 2025 • 71 mins

In the final non-bonus episode of RV's mom's story, Psychedelic wisdom galore is dropped as Kathy Mason Lerner dishes more trippy stories from her decade on the groundfloor of the world-famous San Francisco counterculture between 1960 – 1970. True stories about the Beatles, Joan Baez, the CIA, the Charlatans, Stoneground, Altamont, the Avalon, the Jefferson Airplane, Howard Hesseman, a trip-to-Hawaii-gone-awry with the Quicksilver...

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Psychedelic Women Ep 7: Convos with the Women of the Counterculture: Psychedelic Eve: The First Woman on Earth to Take LSD

June 12, 2025 • 61 mins

On June 12th, 1943, Susi Ramstein became the very first woman on planet earth to take LSD and she took the tram home (while tripping). To commemorate Susie Ramstein’s tenacity, the world’s leading women-centric psychedelic organization, the Women’s Visionary Council, launched a new psychedelic holiday: Tram Day! In this episode (which drops on Tram Day) Rainbow Valentine talks to psychedelic historian, Dr. Maria Mangini, PHD and...

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Psychedelic Women Ep 5: Convos with the Women of the Counterculture: Radiate Part 5: Do You Believe in Magic?

June 6, 2025 • 59 mins

The late 1960’s in San Francisco unfold and it’s tumultuous. In 1967 the Summer of Love brought 100,000 wannabe hippie teenagers to the City hoping to join RV’s mom’s friend group and the scene starts to fall apart. RV’s mom is still in the center of the psychedelic revolution, working with KMPX, the first rock radio station in the country, Chet Helms and the Family Dog and the pioneering improv comedians at the Committee when a ...

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Psychedelic Women Ep 4: Convos with the Women of the Counterculture: Radiate Part 4: Kathy Sturdy, Psychedelic Bling Builder

May 30, 2025 • 61 mins

There’s an 1980’s song by the Jefferson Starship (formerly the Jefferson Airplane) called “We Built This City on Rock’n’Roll” and it’s about the ground-floor peeps of San Francisco’s 1960’s psychedelic revolution who literally did just that: built 1960’s San Francisco on Rock’n’Roll (fueled by LSD); and Rainbow Valentine’s mom was at the center of that inner circle; doing things like making bling for the Jefferson Airplane’s drumme...

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Psychedelic Women Ep 3: Convos with the Women of the Counterculture: Radiate Part 3: The Psychedelic Grace'n'Beauty Tutor

May 23, 2025 • 65 mins

It’s the early to mid 1960’s in San Francisco and the folk music scene is shifting to acid rock; the burgeoning subculture of psychedelic art, music and comedy is at its finest hour according to Rainbow Valentine’s mom who often found herself backstage between Janis Joplin and Pigpen after a day of teaching poise at sex-positive activist Margo St. James’s brothel or running errands for concert promoter, Chet Helms or The Committee ...

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Psychedelic Women Ep 2: Convos with the Women of the Counterculture: Radiate Part 2: The Bellydancing Bohemian

May 16, 2025 • 62 mins

After being unwittingly radiated in the biggest secret nuclear meltdown in America, Rainbow Valentine’s mom fled to San Francisco, landing in Beatnik central of the early 60’s where she married a famous, mid-century modern jeweler with access to Stanford-made LSD, became a bellydancing sidekick to a fire-eating Holocaust survivor, made bling for rock stars plus stories about Tijuana, Lenny Bruce, Dizzy Gillespie, the Coffee Galle...

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Psychedelic Women Ep 1: Convos with the Women of the Counterculture: Radiate Part 1: North Beach Babe

May 9, 2025 • 54 mins

In 1959 Los Angeles there was a nuclear meltdown larger than 3 Mile Island that was covered up and never cleaned up and its tragic fallout propelled host, Rainbow Valentine’s Future Mom, Kathy Mason Lerner, to flee to San Francisco where she landed in Beatnik Central aka North Beach, SF. There shemet a Beatnik jeweler to the Jazz greats who had access to LSD made by Stanford University and RV's mom's life on the groundfloor of SF’...

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Introducing...Psychedelic Women: Conversations with the Women of the Counterculture

April 24, 2025 • 2 mins

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