A YouTube baking influencer made her late father the star of the first episode of her new podcast by smoking cannabis grown in a pot of his ashes.

What appeared to be an attention-grabbing stunt by Rosanna Pansino – a social media star with more than 14.6 million followers – was intended to be a serious examination of grief and its effects on loved ones, she insisted during the 54-minute episode of her Rodiculous podcast.

She titled the opening episode Smoking My Dead Dad.

“The blunt we smoked was delicious – it tasted so good,” Pansino, whose real name is Rosanna Reardon, declared after taking several hits of the joint, the first of which prompted a lengthy fit of coughing.

Pansino’s father, Michael Reardon, who appeared in many of her baking videos as Papa Pizza, died in December 2019 after a long battle with leukemia. Her sister Molly and mother, Jeanne, joined her on-camera to toast his memory with the remnants of a bottle of whiskey he brewed.

“Before he passed, he told me and my mom what he would like us to do with his ashes, and at first my mom was a little bit hesitant,” Pansino said.

“She thought: ‘This is kind of hippie – people are going to judge us.’ But as time’s gone on we just really think that it is the right time to do what dad wanted and to honor him the way he wanted.”

The podcast featured a lengthy interview with an internationally recognized expert on grief and grief counseling, David Kessler.

“Losing dad, just because he was one of my best friends, it was just different,” Pansino said. “I thought over time the sadness would fade, but grief is always with me – it feels like it’s permanently attached to me.”

Pansino, 39, described her father as “a kind of Willie Nelson” character and recalled how they shared a cigar together on her 18th birthday. That shared moment, she said, resonated with smoking cannabis grown in his ashes.

“I think I’m just like my dad,” she said. “He was a social butterfly – I think that definitely rubbed off on me.

“He taught me to respect life and not be wasteful. Don’t take shit from anyone, and just because you’re small doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference. My dad was a badass and quite a little rebel, and I will be following in his footsteps.”

Pansino rose to celebrity with her YouTube channel called Nerdy Nummies, which she launched in 2010 and named for her struggles with dyslexia as well as being a “nerdy, awkward kid” in school. She said following chapters of her new weekly podcast were unlikely to be quite so dramatic.

Addressing her followers as “little rebels”, she said: “This episode is going to be different than my future episodes, but I wanted to dedicate my very first episode to my dad, Papa Pizza.”

The podcast also featured prominent advertisements for Pansino-endorsed products, including cocoa and cannabis gummies.