“The Grateful Dead viewed the very idea of planning as being some kind of fascist concept” says Sam Culter, the Dead’s tour manager from 1969 to 1974. Cutler is the guy who finally turned the Dead into a business, but it was an uphill battle the whole way. “The business model was made essentially by a kind of strange hippie default mechanism that worked in mysterious ways.” In this episode, stories from inside the strange hippie default mechanism. Emmett sits down with Sam Cutler and the stories get… pretty unbelievable.

Credits:
America’s Dead is produced by work by work: Scott Newman, Jemma Brown, Kathleen Ottinger, Alex Kapelman, and Ben Montoya. Additional production from Josh Agajanian. The show is mixed by Sam Bair and Josh Hahn. Our theme music is by Jake Longstreth, John Nixon, Aaron Olson, and Ryan Adlaf of Mountain Brews and Richard Pictures. The show art is created by Andy J. Pizza. Special thanks to Joe Dawson at Sonos.