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In Episode 66 of the Legacies Podcast, host Tom Ritchie sits down with Matt Hart, Lead Educator and Brand Consultant for FIKA Cannabis. Matt shares his diverse creative journey, starting with his accidental breakout music career under the moniker *The Russian Futurists*, where sending out 25 CDRs to the UK launched international tours in Europe. He discusses his subsequent nine-year broadcasting career as a radio host at Toronto’s independent station Indy 88 and the CBC. Finally, Matt details his transition into the cannabis space, explaining how FIKA Cannabis focuses on a design-forward, considered retail model to educate consumers and mainstream cannabis culture. He and Tom share stories of music nostalgia, vinyl collection weight, greening out, and the future of cannabis in entertainment.
Tom Ritchie Says: Welcome to Legacies, everyone! I’m joined this week by Matt Hart. We’ll unpack his incredible background across music, broadcast radio, and cannabis education in just a moment. First, a reminder that Legacies is powered by AVEO, leaders in sustainable vape hardware. Matt, we’ve been chatting outside the pod for a while. How are you holding up in this brutal Toronto weather?
Matt Hart Says: I’m good, man, but sweating profusely! As a ginger, hot sun is pure poison to my constitution—I get sunburned by flash photography. My people belong in wet, mossy caves, not baking on Toronto concrete!
Tom Ritchie Says: I’ve got my dogs in the studio today, and when I asked if they wanted to go for an afternoon walk, they looked at me like, ‘Are you insane?’ The heat is unbelievable. We were originally connected through Katie at Sister Mercy.
Matt Hart Says: Katie is an old pal of mine. She told me, ‘You have to meet Tom, but his podcast audio could use some love!’
Tom Ritchie Says: You came in and said, ‘Your show is mildly shitty, let me fix it!’ Looking at your resume, you’ve had an extraordinary creative journey: an international music career as The Russian Futurists, nearly a decade hosting on Indie88 and CBC, and now serving as Lead Educator for FIKA Cannabis. Once and for all, is it pronounced ‘FEE-ka’ or ‘FY-ka’?
Matt Hart Says: It’s officially ‘FEE-ka,’ the Swedish concept of pausing for coffee and connection. But for months, I walked around calling it ‘FY-ka’ with supreme authority, so half the company adopted my incorrect pronunciation!
Tom Ritchie Says: Take us back to how your music career launched. You essentially recorded everything yourself, right?
Matt Hart Says: During college, I started writing and producing indie pop under the moniker The Russian Futurists. I sang every vocal, played every instrument, and programmed every beat. A buddy had an early CD-R burner, which was cutting-edge technology at the time. I burned 25 CDRs and mailed them to major UK music publications like NME and Uncut.
Matt Hart Says: To my shock, the UK music press went crazy for it. Members of Blur and R.E.M. started singing my praises publicly. Suddenly, promoters from across Europe were contacting me to book international tours. I had to scramble because I didn’t even have a live backing band, let alone know how to perform my own studio arrangements on stage!
Tom Ritchie Says: Why did you choose to send your initial music demos to the UK rather than Canadian labels?
Matt Hart Says: Because Canada suffers from a cultural insecurity complex: our media rarely acknowledges domestic art as cool until someone in London or New York validates it first. I had minimal press in Canada initially. But the moment foreign magazines put me on their radar, every outlet from the Toronto Star on down suddenly claimed they had championed me from day one!
Matt Hart Says: Signing record deals in Spain, Sweden, and the UK allowed us to tour Europe extensively. Touring Seville, Spain is leagues better than driving through a Saskatchewan blizzard between Regina and Saskatoon! After recording an album in New York with a Grammy-winning engineer that was met with a collective industry shrug, I realized my musical chapter had reached its natural conclusion.
Tom Ritchie Says: How did you transition from touring musician to on-air radio host?
Matt Hart Says: When Indie88 was launching in Toronto, program director Adam Thompson gave me a shot. I told him straight up: ‘Give me a microphone, and if I’m bad, fire me.’ I stayed on air for nearly nine years. People attend broadcast schools to study radio hosting, but you can’t teach personality. Either listeners connect with your voice and banter, or they don’t.
Tom Ritchie Says: That mirrors The Tragically Hip documentary. The Hip leaned unapologetically into Canadian geography—songs like ‘Bobcaygeon’ turned Canada into a fifth band member. But touring this country is a logistical marathon with twelve-hour drives between major cities.
Matt Hart Says: In Europe, you can play Luxembourg, drive four hours into the Netherlands, and hit Belgium the next evening. In Canada, crossing northern Ontario alone takes two full days of highway monotony. The Hip embraced that regional identity, but it’s an exhausting reality for touring artists.
Matt Hart Says: I suffered from terrible stage fright when performing songs, but onstage banter was effortless. I would invent absurd fibs between songs: ‘Hey everyone, this next track is currently number one on the pop charts in Burkina Faso!’ One night, a fan came up after the set saying she was from Burkina Faso, and I had to quietly slip out the back door!
Tom Ritchie Says: Did you watch the recent Yacht Rock documentary?
Matt Hart Says: It’s brilliant! Learning that Christopher Cross wrote ‘Sailing’ while tripping on acid driving 110 miles per hour completely shatters the myth that soft rock is tame. People think of yacht rock as wealthy country club music, but it’s actually for folks in cutoff jean shorts drinking beer on pontoon boats.
Tom Ritchie Says: Kids today will never understand the struggle of waiting an hour by the radio with a blank cassette to record a song off Energy 108, praying the DJ wouldn’t talk over the intro!
Matt Hart Says: My cousins had BET, so I recorded music videos onto VHS tapes and dubbed the audio onto cassettes. When Ol’ Dirty Bastard released ‘Brooklyn Zoo,’ my dubbed cassette sounded like two boots tumbling in a clothes dryer! Modern hip-hop is heavily saturated with auto-tune trap, but legends like Method Man are still tearing it up without even using profanity in their verses.
Matt Hart Says: My 13-year-old son and his friends are rediscovering 90s boom-bap, MF Doom, and The Alchemist. Vinyl has had a massive commercial resurgence, but after moving heavy wooden crates filled with dusty bargain-bin records, I gave up the turntable aesthetic. Modern streaming and digital sampling win on convenience every time.
Tom Ritchie Says: Was Indie88 completely independent compared to media conglomerates like Bell, Rogers, and Corus?
Matt Hart Says: Yes, it was privately owned by an independent family from Barrie. They gave us incredible creative latitude to experiment. People assume the CRTC has federal regulators listening with red buttons to censor profanity, but broadcast enforcement is almost entirely complaint-driven. If listeners don’t file formal complaints, nobody intervenes.
Matt Hart Says: I developed several parody podcast concepts, like What Was I Just Saying? for conversational ADHD rabbit holes, and Harsh Tokes for cannabis consumption mishaps!
Matt Hart Says: I recently experienced a brutal green-out. My tolerance was elevated, so I decided to make a homemade firecracker edible using concentrated kief from my grinder. I didn’t account for how dense compressed kief is compared to fluffy ground flower. An hour later, I woke up on the couch in a full-blown existential crisis—revisiting eighth-grade report cards and questioning every life choice for sixteen straight hours!
Tom Ritchie Says: You have to respect edible dosages! I accidentally gave my wife two 10mg THC capsules instead of her usual 5mg balanced caps. She woke up the next morning feeling like she had run a marathon in outer space. Distillates and edibles process through 11-hydroxy-THC in the liver, which hits completely differently than inhaling flower.
Tom Ritchie Says: How did you transition from broadcasting into retail cannabis education with FIKA?
Matt Hart Says: My cannabis involvement started at 17 in Peterborough, Ontario. When a local entrepreneur opened the town’s first head shop, conservative locals protested. I wrote an impassioned defense in the local newspaper, which led the owner to invite me to handle his PR. I visited his house once and discovered a massive 15-foot anaconda taking up half the living room. When I asked about it, he casually told me he was raising it to harvest leather for cowboy boots!
Matt Hart Says: Years later, winding down radio, I connected with the leadership at FIKA Cannabis. In the legacy era, nobody knew cannabinoid percentages or terpene profiles—you bought a bag of ‘skunk’ from an illicit dealer. Today, consumers want to understand myrcene, caryophyllene, and entourage effects. I stepped in as Lead Educator to translate complex cannabis science into approachable, engaging retail hospitality.
Tom Ritchie Says: When I joined Ample Organics in 2017, we partnered with post-secondary institutions like McGill and Niagara College to build accredited cannabis curricula. The transition from illicit street culture to academic rigor happened at light speed.
Matt Hart Says: The future of cannabis lies at the intersection of lifestyle and entertainment. Strict provincial regulations like the AGCO’s rules handcuffed marketing, but we’re seeing positive baby steps—dispensaries are finally allowed clear glass windows instead of blackout window coverings, and packaging transparency is improving.
Tom Ritchie Says: Look at sports and culture: Jason at Sports Cannabis is collaborating with professional athletes, and Olympic pioneer Ross Rebagliati shared his story back on Episode 3. Athletes are openly discussing cannabis for post-workout inflammation, sleep, and mental clarity.
Tom Ritchie Says: Will cannabis ever replace alcohol sponsorship at major concert venues like Budweiser Stage?
Matt Hart Says: Cannabis will gain major traction at outdoor summer festivals with consumption lounges and mobile dispensaries. However, cannabis will never fully replace alcohol because alcohol is an energizing social disinhibitor. If you go to a high-energy rock concert, you aren’t looking to sink into a couch; you want to get hyped. Cannabis is built for chill acoustic sets, relaxation, and introspective music.
Matt Hart Says: Mixing alcohol and cannabis often leads straight to the spins! Normalization is advancing through cultural mainstream figures—whether it’s Joe Rogan sharing a blunt with Elon Musk or Snoop Dogg launching branded lines. As soon as full commercial integration is permitted, major brands will saturate the entertainment space.
Tom Ritchie Says: When traveling internationally, many consumers forget how aggressively border agencies treat cannabis.
Matt Hart Says: I was actually banned from entering the United States for five years! It wasn’t for smuggling drugs—it was a technicality regarding P-2 touring visas for an indie rock tour. US border authorities interrogated me for twelve straight hours. Border agents have unilateral authority to seize and search smartphones, and any mention of working in Canadian cannabis can result in lifetime entry bans.
Tom Ritchie Says: I nearly had a heart attack at the airport in St. Maarten. I had a single gram of cannabis tucked in my pocket when drug-sniffing customs dogs appeared near the bag check. I nonchalantly walked outside toward the runway fence, lit a cigarette, and dropped the flower into the brush. International borders are zero-tolerance zones.
Tom Ritchie Says: Matt, this has been an incredible conversation. Where can our audience follow your projects, music, and educational writing?
Matt Hart Says: You can find me educating across FIKA retail locations and reach me directly via email at mattartan@gmail.com. Check out The Russian Futurists on your favorite streaming platforms!
Tom Ritchie Says: Matt, thank you for bringing your authentic wit, musical history, and retail education expertise to Legacies!
Matt Hart Says: Thanks so much, Tom. This was an absolute blast!
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Lead Educator & Brand Consultant
Matt Hart is a music artist (The Russian Futurists), former radio host on Indy 88 & CBC, and Lead Educator for FIKA Cannabis.
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FIKA is a premier Canadian lifestyle cannabis retail brand. Renowned for its highly curated, design-forward shopping environment, FIKA offers a...
Learn More About Partner ↗Matt Hart explains that Canadian culture often hesitates to fully embrace domestic artistic talent until those artists receive acclaim in larger international markets like the United Kingdom or the United States.
By sending out 25 CDRs to prominent UK music publications, which quickly gained critical praise from members of bands like Blur and REM, leading to international touring opportunities and record deals in Europe.
Matt Hart serves as the Lead Educator and brand consultant, utilizing his communication skills from radio broadcasting and creative marketing to develop educational programs and consumer engagement strategies.
