WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.200 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are 00:00:02.200 --> 00:00:05.740 focusing our lens on a writer who, well, who 00:00:05.740 --> 00:00:07.860 basically believed the only way to get to the 00:00:07.860 --> 00:00:11.580 truth was to ditch objectivity completely. Hunter 00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:14.000 S. Thompson. That's right. This is our deep dive 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.460 into the American journalist, the author, who 00:00:16.460 --> 00:00:18.460 really transformed himself, didn't he? From, 00:00:18.579 --> 00:00:20.980 you know, a journeyman writer into this huge 00:00:20.980 --> 00:00:24.000 literary phenomenon. His career ran from the 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:26.899 late 50s right up until he died in 2005. Yeah. 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:29.620 And Thompson, he's really more than just a writer, 00:00:29.679 --> 00:00:31.620 isn't he? He's like an explosion in the history 00:00:31.620 --> 00:00:34.579 of reporting. He often gets grouped with those 00:00:34.579 --> 00:00:37.240 pioneers of the new journalism movement. Right. 00:00:37.320 --> 00:00:39.659 The 60s and 70s crew. Exactly. People like Gay 00:00:39.659 --> 00:00:42.179 Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, 00:00:42.299 --> 00:00:44.240 Tom Wolfe. They all started using, you know, 00:00:44.259 --> 00:00:46.439 novelistic techniques, dialogue, getting really 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.920 deep into the story in ways that, well, newspapers 00:00:48.920 --> 00:00:50.820 just hadn't done before. It was all very dry, 00:00:51.060 --> 00:00:54.070 very objective back then. New journalism itself 00:00:54.070 --> 00:00:56.090 was a huge shift, wasn't it? Treating factual 00:00:56.090 --> 00:00:58.450 reporting like it could be high literature. But 00:00:58.450 --> 00:01:00.789 Thompson, he didn't just join that movement. 00:01:00.810 --> 00:01:03.270 He sort of detonated it from within. Totally. 00:01:03.350 --> 00:01:07.010 He replaced that idea of the neutral, detached 00:01:07.010 --> 00:01:09.709 reporter with this figure he called the raving 00:01:09.709 --> 00:01:12.109 beast. And that really brings us to our mission 00:01:12.109 --> 00:01:14.250 today, doesn't it? We want to unpack that journey. 00:01:14.469 --> 00:01:17.189 How did he get from standard journalism, relatively 00:01:17.189 --> 00:01:20.430 speaking, to creating this massive gonzo myth? 00:01:20.750 --> 00:01:22.629 Exactly. That's what we're digging into. We're 00:01:22.629 --> 00:01:25.530 looking at how his writing style evolved, that 00:01:25.530 --> 00:01:29.430 iconic style. We'll trace his pretty ferocious 00:01:29.430 --> 00:01:32.430 political activism, too. And maybe most importantly, 00:01:32.549 --> 00:01:36.599 analyze that constant tension in his life. The 00:01:36.599 --> 00:01:38.459 blurring line, which eventually just got erased, 00:01:38.700 --> 00:01:40.980 between Hunter S. Thompson, the man, and his 00:01:40.980 --> 00:01:44.359 chaotic alter ego, Roald Duke. Okay, and right 00:01:44.359 --> 00:01:46.239 at the heart of all this, you have to talk about 00:01:46.239 --> 00:01:49.180 gonzo journalism. So if new journalism meant 00:01:49.180 --> 00:01:51.519 getting closer, getting more literary, what was 00:01:51.519 --> 00:01:54.500 gonzo? Gonzo is. It's radical subjectivity cranked 00:01:54.500 --> 00:01:56.519 up to 11. If you think about new journalism, 00:01:56.620 --> 00:01:59.200 say, Tom Wolfe, right? He was all about being 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:02.000 the meticulous fly on the wall, observing, documenting, 00:02:02.239 --> 00:02:04.219 reconstructing things with incredible detail, 00:02:04.340 --> 00:02:07.180 like a novelist. Okay. Thompson, though, he specialized 00:02:07.180 --> 00:02:09.800 in being, as he put it, the fly in the ointment. 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:12.479 The gonzo journalist doesn't just watch the chaos 00:02:12.479 --> 00:02:14.900 unfold. They dive right into the middle of it. 00:02:14.960 --> 00:02:17.740 They become a central participant, often fueling 00:02:17.740 --> 00:02:20.360 the story through, well, their own chemical intake, 00:02:20.539 --> 00:02:23.719 their emotional state, their deliberate interference, 00:02:24.099 --> 00:02:26.360 frankly. So the writer isn't just shaping the 00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:29.560 story anymore. The writer is the story. Precisely. 00:02:29.879 --> 00:02:32.340 The whole idea behind Gonzo is that you can only 00:02:32.340 --> 00:02:35.259 truly understand a really chaotic situation by 00:02:35.259 --> 00:02:38.759 embracing that chaos completely. And Thompson's 00:02:38.759 --> 00:02:41.259 work, it defined this, especially those two big 00:02:41.259 --> 00:02:43.979 ones that sort of bookend his peak Gonzo period, 00:02:44.340 --> 00:02:47.139 Hell's Angels in 67. Which showed how far he'd 00:02:47.139 --> 00:02:49.340 go, right? Risking his own safety. Absolutely. 00:02:49.419 --> 00:02:51.080 Total immersion. And then, of course, the big 00:02:51.080 --> 00:02:53.580 one, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1972. 00:02:54.439 --> 00:02:56.319 That's the book that really codified the style, 00:02:56.419 --> 00:02:58.560 solidified the whole myth. OK, let's unpack that 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:00.750 then. How did Thompson, the journalist, the guy 00:03:00.750 --> 00:03:02.770 we know was studying Fitzgerald's sentence structure, 00:03:03.050 --> 00:03:05.830 how did he morph into this iconoclast, this old 00:03:05.830 --> 00:03:07.509 Duke figure? Let's start back in Louisville, 00:03:07.569 --> 00:03:10.629 Kentucky, where the chaos began, maybe? Hashtag 00:03:10.629 --> 00:03:13.069 two to five. The formative years and the apprenticeship 00:03:13.069 --> 00:03:16.169 of chaos. Well, he was born there in 1937, came 00:03:16.169 --> 00:03:18.969 from a middle class family initially. His father, 00:03:19.090 --> 00:03:21.610 Jack Thompson, was a public insurance adjuster, 00:03:21.629 --> 00:03:25.009 a World War I veteran. So a pretty solid conventional 00:03:25.009 --> 00:03:27.090 background to start with. But that stability 00:03:27.090 --> 00:03:29.629 didn't last long, did it? The sources really 00:03:29.629 --> 00:03:32.069 highlight how his father's death affected him. 00:03:32.289 --> 00:03:35.169 Thompson was only 14. Yeah, his father passed 00:03:35.169 --> 00:03:38.250 away at 58 from myasthenia gravis. It's a neuromuscular 00:03:38.250 --> 00:03:41.250 disease. And that loss, you can see how it just 00:03:41.250 --> 00:03:44.189 fractured the stability of his youth. His mother, 00:03:44.289 --> 00:03:46.689 Virginia, she was the head librarian at the Louisville 00:03:46.689 --> 00:03:48.949 Free Public Library. And the sources mentioned 00:03:48.949 --> 00:03:51.389 she became a, quote, heavy drinker after her 00:03:51.389 --> 00:03:54.189 husband died. So you have this picture of a stable 00:03:54.189 --> 00:03:56.250 kid suddenly thrown into instability. He has 00:03:56.250 --> 00:03:58.650 to grow up fast, maybe looks for structure elsewhere. 00:03:58.789 --> 00:04:00.949 And then immediately, dramatically rejects that 00:04:00.949 --> 00:04:03.289 structure. Yeah, that pattern seems to define 00:04:03.289 --> 00:04:05.110 his whole early relationship with authority, 00:04:05.310 --> 00:04:07.509 doesn't it? You see it right away with his education. 00:04:07.810 --> 00:04:10.090 He went to Louisville Male High School. And, 00:04:10.110 --> 00:04:12.289 you know, despite everything that came later, 00:04:12.409 --> 00:04:14.550 he was actually quite literary. He was in the 00:04:14.550 --> 00:04:17.730 Athenian Literary Association, which was apparently 00:04:17.730 --> 00:04:19.949 quite elite. But that didn't end well either. 00:04:20.110 --> 00:04:22.910 No, it ended pretty violently in 1955. Yeah, 00:04:22.949 --> 00:04:25.670 this was a huge turning point. He got kicked 00:04:25.670 --> 00:04:28.610 out of the Athenian for criminal activity. Specifically, 00:04:29.009 --> 00:04:32.240 he was charged as an accessory to robbery. He 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:34.860 was in the getaway car, got a 60 -day sentence, 00:04:35.100 --> 00:04:38.779 served about 31 days in the county jail. And 00:04:38.779 --> 00:04:40.720 that conviction meant he couldn't graduate high 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:43.620 school. You can't really overstate how much that 00:04:43.620 --> 00:04:46.259 first real run -in with the legal system must 00:04:46.259 --> 00:04:49.019 have fueled his later, you know, absolute contempt 00:04:49.019 --> 00:04:50.959 for the establishment. And losing those academic 00:04:50.959 --> 00:04:53.139 credentials, that directly pushes him towards 00:04:53.139 --> 00:04:56.720 his next big institution, the military. He enlists 00:04:56.720 --> 00:04:58.560 in the Air Force right after getting out of jail. 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:02.220 Served from 55 to 58. And even there, inside 00:05:02.220 --> 00:05:05.399 the strict military structure, the chaos, it 00:05:05.399 --> 00:05:08.100 finds him or he finds it. He lands his first 00:05:08.100 --> 00:05:10.920 proper writing gig by basically lying about his 00:05:10.920 --> 00:05:13.540 experience. Bluffed his way into being the sports 00:05:13.540 --> 00:05:16.060 editor for the command courier newspaper at Eglin 00:05:16.060 --> 00:05:18.779 Air Force Base. Just made up his qualifications. 00:05:19.180 --> 00:05:21.339 Amazing. And the Air Force cottoned on pretty 00:05:21.339 --> 00:05:23.480 quickly, it seems, based on his discharge papers. 00:05:23.639 --> 00:05:26.769 Oh, yeah. They recommended him for an early honorable 00:05:26.769 --> 00:05:29.329 discharge. And the reasons are just pure Thompson 00:05:29.329 --> 00:05:32.709 because he, quote, will not be guided by policy. 00:05:32.790 --> 00:05:37.250 OK. And even better, his, quote, rebel and superior 00:05:37.250 --> 00:05:40.449 attitude seems to rub off on other airmen. It's 00:05:40.449 --> 00:05:42.870 like they saw the future coming. That document 00:05:42.870 --> 00:05:45.629 basically predicts his entire career as this 00:05:45.629 --> 00:05:48.389 radical troublemaker. So after the military, 00:05:48.569 --> 00:05:52.600 does he settle down, find a steady job? And really, 00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:55.300 the pattern continues. He gets a job as a copy 00:05:55.300 --> 00:05:59.339 boy for Time magazine in New York. Fired. Insubordination. 00:05:59.540 --> 00:06:01.660 Of course. Then he lands a reporting job at the 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:04.600 Middletown Daily Record in New York State. Fired 00:06:04.600 --> 00:06:06.879 again. This time for damaging a candy machine 00:06:06.879 --> 00:06:09.120 during an argument. A candy machine? Yeah, and 00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:10.980 then arguing with a local advertiser who paid 00:06:10.980 --> 00:06:12.959 the bills. He just couldn't hold down a conventional 00:06:12.959 --> 00:06:16.079 job. But... And this is crucial, isn't it? During 00:06:16.079 --> 00:06:18.579 all this chaos, this getting fired, he's actually 00:06:18.579 --> 00:06:21.360 building the foundations. We focus on the drugs 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:24.339 and the drama later, but gonzo journalism doesn't 00:06:24.339 --> 00:06:27.680 come from nowhere. It's built on serious literary 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:31.180 craft. You mentioned he was typing out Fitzgerald 00:06:31.180 --> 00:06:34.420 and Hemingway. Yes, this is so important and 00:06:34.420 --> 00:06:36.980 often gets overlooked. While he was at time, 00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:40.060 getting fired, he was literally retyping pages 00:06:40.060 --> 00:06:42.800 from The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms. 00:06:43.079 --> 00:06:46.339 Why? Just to feel it. Exactly. He wasn't just 00:06:46.339 --> 00:06:48.959 reading them. He was physically copying the prose 00:06:48.959 --> 00:06:51.439 to absorb their rhythms, their sentence structures. 00:06:52.439 --> 00:06:54.019 Fitzgerald, you could argue, taught him about 00:06:54.019 --> 00:06:56.579 that big, sweeping, sort of melancholic narrative 00:06:56.579 --> 00:06:58.680 you need to tackle something like the failure 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:00.279 of the American dream, which becomes central 00:07:00.279 --> 00:07:02.439 to fear and loathing. And Hemingway. Hemingway 00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:04.839 taught him the opposite, maybe. Economy, precision, 00:07:05.079 --> 00:07:08.600 using those hard, concrete details, which, ironically, 00:07:08.759 --> 00:07:10.959 Thompson would later use brilliantly to anchor 00:07:10.959 --> 00:07:13.279 his wildest, most subjective flights of fancy. 00:07:13.639 --> 00:07:15.439 So it's this weird apprenticeship, learning grand 00:07:15.439 --> 00:07:17.800 narrative structure from one and clipped precision 00:07:17.800 --> 00:07:20.959 from the other. A real mix. Yeah. And all this 00:07:20.959 --> 00:07:23.939 time, he's moving around constantly, right? Gathering 00:07:23.939 --> 00:07:26.620 experiences, avoiding being pinned down. He goes 00:07:26.620 --> 00:07:29.519 to San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1960 for a magazine 00:07:29.519 --> 00:07:32.319 job that folds almost immediately. He ends up 00:07:32.319 --> 00:07:34.000 stringing for different papers. Then California. 00:07:34.079 --> 00:07:38.259 Then 1961, Big Sur. works for about eight months 00:07:38.259 --> 00:07:40.519 as a security guard and caretaker at a place 00:07:40.519 --> 00:07:42.779 called Slate's Hot Springs. This was just before 00:07:42.779 --> 00:07:45.459 it became the famous Eastland Institute. It was 00:07:45.459 --> 00:07:47.860 a real B -generation hangout. Henry Miller lived 00:07:47.860 --> 00:07:51.240 nearby. Thompson's soaking up that whole bohemian 00:07:51.240 --> 00:07:53.259 counterculture vibe. And he starts getting published 00:07:53.259 --> 00:07:55.199 a bit. Yeah, his first published fiction, a story 00:07:55.199 --> 00:07:57.600 called Burial at Sea, appears in Rogue magazine 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:00.120 around this time. And then there's that classic 00:08:00.120 --> 00:08:03.980 anecdote that shows his unique blend of tribute 00:08:03.980 --> 00:08:07.500 and sheer audacity. The 1964 trip to Ketchum, 00:08:07.500 --> 00:08:09.920 Idaho. To Hemingway's place. Exactly. He went 00:08:09.920 --> 00:08:11.740 there supposedly to write about Hemingway's suicide. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:14.519 And while he's there, as this sort of morbid 00:08:14.519 --> 00:08:16.459 souvenir, or maybe it was an act of aggressive 00:08:16.459 --> 00:08:18.519 homage to the writer he'd studied so intensely, 00:08:18.759 --> 00:08:21.439 he steals a pair of elk antlers right off the 00:08:21.439 --> 00:08:23.220 wall above the front door of Hemingway's cabin. 00:08:23.480 --> 00:08:26.189 Wow. He didn't just write about his hero's death. 00:08:26.389 --> 00:08:29.370 He took a physical piece of the legacy. Pretty 00:08:29.370 --> 00:08:31.870 much sums him up, doesn't it? That kind of appropriation. 00:08:32.070 --> 00:08:35.110 But the real breakthrough, the first proper deep 00:08:35.110 --> 00:08:37.750 dive that set the course for his career, that 00:08:37.750 --> 00:08:40.470 was the Hells Angels. Right. The nation commissions 00:08:40.470 --> 00:08:43.490 him in 65. Yeah, to write about the Hells Angels 00:08:43.490 --> 00:08:46.850 motorcycle club. And this is where the immersion 00:08:46.850 --> 00:08:49.970 really kicks in. He doesn't just interview them 00:08:49.970 --> 00:08:52.330 politely. He lives with them, rides with them 00:08:52.330 --> 00:08:55.580 for a whole year. He's living near Haight -Ashbury 00:08:55.580 --> 00:08:58.460 in San Francisco, literally across the street 00:08:58.460 --> 00:09:00.500 from the Grateful Dead's house, right in the 00:09:00.500 --> 00:09:02.600 thick of the emerging counterculture. And that 00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:05.080 level of getting inside must have fundamentally 00:09:05.080 --> 00:09:08.240 changed how he saw journalism. But the sources 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:10.379 say the relationship didn't end well. No, it 00:09:10.379 --> 00:09:12.419 was built on a kind of shaky truce, wasn't it? 00:09:12.460 --> 00:09:14.799 Mutual exploitation, maybe. The biker started 00:09:14.799 --> 00:09:16.519 feeling like he was going to make a fortune off 00:09:16.519 --> 00:09:18.960 them and demanded a cut of the book profits. 00:09:19.279 --> 00:09:22.070 And it got violent. It's extremely violent. The 00:09:22.070 --> 00:09:24.070 whole thing ended with Thompson getting what 00:09:24.070 --> 00:09:26.210 he called a savage beating, basically a stomping. 00:09:26.409 --> 00:09:28.629 It happened when he apparently tried to step 00:09:28.629 --> 00:09:31.029 in and stop a biker from beating his dog and 00:09:31.029 --> 00:09:33.250 then his wife or girlfriend. So his commitment 00:09:33.250 --> 00:09:37.169 to the story ended when his own maybe warped 00:09:37.169 --> 00:09:39.450 moral code clashed directly with his subjects. 00:09:39.649 --> 00:09:42.269 He didn't just report the violence. He experienced 00:09:42.269 --> 00:09:44.509 it. Yeah, it confirmed the risks of that extreme 00:09:44.509 --> 00:09:47.159 immersion. But the book that came out of it, 00:09:47.200 --> 00:09:50.019 Hell's Angels, published in 1967, was a huge 00:09:50.019 --> 00:09:52.519 success, critically and commercially. The New 00:09:52.519 --> 00:09:54.860 York Times loved it. Called it angry, knowledgeable, 00:09:55.200 --> 00:09:57.340 fascinating, and excitedly written, said the 00:09:57.340 --> 00:10:00.690 prose, crackles like motorcycle exhaust. So he'd 00:10:00.690 --> 00:10:02.850 proven he could deliver this immersive, high 00:10:02.850 --> 00:10:05.389 -stakes journalism. But the experience itself, 00:10:05.769 --> 00:10:08.110 the beating, maybe convinced him that the reporter 00:10:08.110 --> 00:10:10.129 couldn't pretend to be separate anymore. Their 00:10:10.129 --> 00:10:12.549 perspective had to be central. Hashtag tech three, 00:10:12.730 --> 00:10:16.830 the peak Gonzo years, 1970, 1973. Exactly. And 00:10:16.830 --> 00:10:19.029 the money from Hells Angels, especially the paperback 00:10:19.029 --> 00:10:21.649 rights, that's what allowed him to buy Owl Farm, 00:10:21.809 --> 00:10:24.269 his place in Woody Creek, Colorado, that famous 00:10:24.269 --> 00:10:27.460 fortified compound. His base of operations. Right. 00:10:27.519 --> 00:10:30.379 And moving there coincided with his real acceleration 00:10:30.379 --> 00:10:33.559 in his political views. The late 60s, the chaos 00:10:33.559 --> 00:10:36.340 of that era, really radicalized him. The 1968 00:10:36.340 --> 00:10:38.799 Democratic National Convention in Chicago seems 00:10:38.799 --> 00:10:41.620 key here. He was there, saw the police riots, 00:10:41.720 --> 00:10:43.720 the clashes with protesters. Oh, absolutely. 00:10:43.940 --> 00:10:46.360 He claimed that experience fundamentally changed 00:10:46.360 --> 00:10:49.200 how he saw authority, politics, everything. He 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:51.360 put it very bluntly. I went to the Democratic 00:10:51.360 --> 00:10:54.080 Convention as a journalist, he said, and returned 00:10:54.080 --> 00:10:57.500 a raving beast. The idea of being impartial just 00:10:57.500 --> 00:10:59.799 seemed ridiculous after that. Impossible, yeah. 00:10:59.960 --> 00:11:03.539 The system to him was clearly rigged, violent, 00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:07.559 and he felt only an equally beastly response 00:11:07.559 --> 00:11:09.659 in journalism could actually capture that reality. 00:11:10.159 --> 00:11:13.039 Which leads us straight into 1970 and his run 00:11:13.039 --> 00:11:16.179 for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. The Freak 00:11:16.179 --> 00:11:18.379 Power Campaign. This wasn't just a stunt, was 00:11:18.379 --> 00:11:20.740 it? It was serious political theater. Totally 00:11:20.740 --> 00:11:23.559 serious, yeah. It was a genuine attempt to take 00:11:23.559 --> 00:11:25.940 power locally and expose the hypocrisy he saw 00:11:25.940 --> 00:11:27.700 in Aspen, the gentrification of the establishment. 00:11:27.940 --> 00:11:30.460 And the platform itself was, well, it was pure 00:11:30.460 --> 00:11:32.559 Thompson. What were some of the planks? Okay, 00:11:32.600 --> 00:11:35.259 so you had drug decriminalization, but only for 00:11:35.259 --> 00:11:37.840 personal use, not trafficking. which was incredibly 00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:40.639 progressive for 1970. Then there were these really 00:11:40.639 --> 00:11:44.120 specific, almost bizarre, local ideas. Yeah. 00:11:44.299 --> 00:11:46.799 Tear up the paved streets in Aspen and replace 00:11:46.799 --> 00:11:49.100 them with grassy pedestrian malls. Seriously? 00:11:49.279 --> 00:11:52.360 Yeah. Ban tall buildings that block the mountain 00:11:52.360 --> 00:11:55.200 views. Disarm the police force. Give them mace 00:11:55.200 --> 00:11:59.220 instead of guns. And the kicker, rename Aspen 00:11:59.220 --> 00:12:02.259 Fat City. to actively discourage developers and 00:12:02.259 --> 00:12:04.940 unwanted wealth from coming in. It was this amazing 00:12:04.940 --> 00:12:08.440 fusion of counterculture ideals with really pragmatic, 00:12:08.679 --> 00:12:11.440 if radical, local policy. And he played the image 00:12:11.440 --> 00:12:13.419 game brilliantly, too, didn't he? The bald head. 00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:15.799 Oh, classic Gonzo move. He shaved his head completely 00:12:15.799 --> 00:12:18.360 bald white so he could constantly refer to the 00:12:18.360 --> 00:12:20.059 Republican incumbent who had a traditional crew 00:12:20.059 --> 00:12:23.879 cut as my long -haired opponent. Yeah. Just flipping 00:12:23.879 --> 00:12:25.580 the script, messing with expectations. Did he 00:12:25.580 --> 00:12:27.740 come close to winning? He actually won the vote 00:12:27.740 --> 00:12:30.980 within the city of Aspen itself. but lost the 00:12:30.980 --> 00:12:33.940 wider county vote. He later felt that the article 00:12:33.940 --> 00:12:35.899 he wrote about it for Rolling Stone, the Battle 00:12:35.899 --> 00:12:38.759 of Aspen, actually backfired. It gave the opposition 00:12:38.759 --> 00:12:41.159 too much notice, allowed them to mobilize against 00:12:41.159 --> 00:12:43.919 him. So the campaign itself created the perfect 00:12:43.919 --> 00:12:46.639 storm for his style to really crystallize. And 00:12:46.639 --> 00:12:48.500 the definition arrived almost immediately after, 00:12:48.600 --> 00:12:52.240 also in 1970. With the piece, the Kentucky Derby 00:12:52.240 --> 00:12:54.919 is decadent and depraved, published in a magazine 00:12:54.919 --> 00:12:57.440 called Scanlon's Monthly. And the story behind 00:12:57.440 --> 00:12:59.799 this one is legendary, right? Deadline pressure. 00:13:00.100 --> 00:13:02.299 Extreme deadline pressure. He was apparently 00:13:02.299 --> 00:13:04.340 completely blocked, couldn't write a conventional 00:13:04.340 --> 00:13:07.340 piece about the race. So in total desperation, 00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:09.980 he just started tearing pages out of his notebook, 00:13:10.240 --> 00:13:13.220 raw notes, observations, fragments, and sent 00:13:13.220 --> 00:13:15.299 those to the editor. And that desperation turned 00:13:15.299 --> 00:13:18.320 into innovation. Completely. The finished article, 00:13:18.440 --> 00:13:20.620 it barely mentions the horse race. Instead, it's 00:13:20.620 --> 00:13:22.799 all about the scene around the race. Yeah. The 00:13:22.799 --> 00:13:25.919 grotesque drunken revelry, the sheer decadence 00:13:25.919 --> 00:13:28.840 of the wealthy spectators. And he juxtaposes 00:13:28.840 --> 00:13:31.419 all that with a political background of the time, 00:13:31.480 --> 00:13:34.580 the Nixon bombing Cambodia, the Kent State shootings 00:13:34.580 --> 00:13:36.279 just happening. Sounds like a lightning strike. 00:13:36.480 --> 00:13:39.580 It was. Another journalist, Bill Cardoso, read 00:13:39.580 --> 00:13:41.720 it and immediately wrote to Thompson. He said, 00:13:41.779 --> 00:13:44.500 this is it. This is pure gonzo. If this is a 00:13:44.500 --> 00:13:47.059 start, keep rolling. And the name just stuck. 00:13:47.539 --> 00:13:49.779 It meant journalism that wasn't about objective 00:13:49.779 --> 00:13:52.820 facts, but about the reporter's internal reality, 00:13:52.980 --> 00:13:55.600 their psychic experience of the event. And crucially, 00:13:55.700 --> 00:13:58.320 that piece also marked the beginning of his long 00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:00.519 collaboration with the illustrator Ralph Steadman. 00:14:00.600 --> 00:14:04.059 Yes. Steadman's art was the perfect visual match 00:14:04.059 --> 00:14:07.259 for Thompson's prose. That wild, expressionistic, 00:14:07.399 --> 00:14:10.120 sometimes really savage style. He used lipstick, 00:14:10.279 --> 00:14:13.500 eyeliner, splattered ink. It just captured the 00:14:13.500 --> 00:14:15.460 manic energy, the visual chaos that Thompson 00:14:15.460 --> 00:14:17.480 was describing. And that partnership leads directly 00:14:17.480 --> 00:14:19.580 into his most famous work, Fear and Loathing 00:14:19.580 --> 00:14:23.039 in Las Vegas, which incredibly started as a tiny 00:14:23.039 --> 00:14:26.399 assignment. Almost unbelievable, isn't it? Sports 00:14:26.399 --> 00:14:29.240 Illustrated asked him for a 250 -word photo caption 00:14:29.240 --> 00:14:32.039 to go with pictures of the Mint 400 motorcycle 00:14:32.039 --> 00:14:34.580 race in the desert outside Vegas. And he sent 00:14:34.580 --> 00:14:37.919 them. He sent him 2 ,500 words of pure hallucinatory 00:14:37.919 --> 00:14:41.799 chaos. Sports Illustrated unsurprisingly aggressively 00:14:41.799 --> 00:14:45.639 rejected it. I bet they did. But Jan Wenner at 00:14:45.639 --> 00:14:48.700 Rolling Stern, he saw the genius in what Thompson 00:14:48.700 --> 00:14:51.940 called the jangled pages. He ran it in two parts, 00:14:52.039 --> 00:14:56.019 serialized it. And that book just exploded Thompson 00:14:56.019 --> 00:14:57.980 into the mainstream consciousness. It follows 00:14:57.980 --> 00:15:00.000 these two trips to Vegas with his lawyer, Oscar 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:02.419 Zeta -Acosta. The basis for Dr. Gonzo. Right, 00:15:02.440 --> 00:15:04.940 his 300 -pound Samoan attorney. But underneath 00:15:04.940 --> 00:15:07.100 all the drug -fueled mayhem, the book's actually 00:15:07.100 --> 00:15:08.980 doing something quite serious, isn't it? It's 00:15:08.980 --> 00:15:11.620 not just a drug memoir. Not at all. It's Thompson 00:15:11.620 --> 00:15:14.259 wrestling with the failure of the whole 1960s 00:15:14.259 --> 00:15:17.000 counterculture dream. Vegas becomes this symbol 00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:19.779 of where that dream went to die, replaced by 00:15:19.779 --> 00:15:22.679 crass commercialism and, well... fear and loathing. 00:15:22.820 --> 00:15:24.580 He's searching for the high watermark of the 00:15:24.580 --> 00:15:27.639 60s, realizing it's long gone. The New York Times 00:15:27.639 --> 00:15:29.820 got it. They called it the best book yet written 00:15:29.820 --> 00:15:32.200 on the decade of dope. But maybe his greatest 00:15:32.200 --> 00:15:34.740 journalistic achievement using this gonzo method 00:15:34.740 --> 00:15:37.559 came right after that. Fear and loathing on the 00:15:37.559 --> 00:15:41.200 campaign trail 72, taking on a presidential election. 00:15:41.500 --> 00:15:43.620 Yeah, this was Winner's idea, really. The voting 00:15:43.620 --> 00:15:46.340 age had just been lowered to 18, and Rolling 00:15:46.340 --> 00:15:49.419 Stone wanted to, as Winner put it, politicize 00:15:49.419 --> 00:15:51.899 our generation. They wanted an inside account 00:15:51.899 --> 00:15:54.759 of the 72 election, something like those popular 00:15:54.759 --> 00:15:56.980 Making of the President books by Theodore H. 00:15:57.039 --> 00:15:59.299 White. But Thompson delivered something completely 00:15:59.299 --> 00:16:02.200 different from White's respectful insider view. 00:16:02.419 --> 00:16:04.860 Oh, totally different. Instead of White's careful, 00:16:05.080 --> 00:16:07.830 objective... Thompson gave them a narrator full 00:16:07.830 --> 00:16:10.750 of contempt, paranoia, and fueled by God knows 00:16:10.750 --> 00:16:13.570 what chemicals. The literary critic Morris Dickstein 00:16:13.570 --> 00:16:15.750 had a great line about it. He said Thompson had 00:16:15.750 --> 00:16:18.350 learned to approximate the effect of mind -blasting 00:16:18.350 --> 00:16:21.009 drugs in his prose style. The writing itself 00:16:21.009 --> 00:16:23.629 felt like the frantic, wired energy of the campaign. 00:16:23.929 --> 00:16:25.470 And this is where we get that famous description 00:16:25.470 --> 00:16:27.470 of the book, right? The ultimate gonzo paradox. 00:16:28.029 --> 00:16:30.990 Exactly. Thompson covered the Democratic primaries. 00:16:31.529 --> 00:16:34.690 McGovern, Muskie. Humphrey all vying to take 00:16:34.690 --> 00:16:37.169 on Nixon. And Frank Mankiewicz, who was George 00:16:37.169 --> 00:16:39.950 McGovern's campaign director, described Thompson's 00:16:39.950 --> 00:16:42.909 collected Rolling Stone dispatches as the most 00:16:42.909 --> 00:16:45.730 accurate and least factual account of the campaign. 00:16:45.929 --> 00:16:47.730 Let's dig into that. Most accurate and least 00:16:47.730 --> 00:16:50.370 factual. How can it be both? He was making stuff 00:16:50.370 --> 00:16:53.070 up, wasn't he? Like the Muskie drug rumor. He 00:16:53.070 --> 00:16:56.129 absolutely was. He floated this rumor that Ed 00:16:56.129 --> 00:16:58.129 Muskie, who was a leading Democratic contender 00:16:58.129 --> 00:17:00.870 at the time, was secretly addicted to Ibogaine, 00:17:00.889 --> 00:17:03.350 this obscure psychedelic drug. There was zero 00:17:03.350 --> 00:17:05.309 evidence for it. It was a fabrication. So why 00:17:05.309 --> 00:17:08.849 do it if it wasn't true? Because. In Thompson's 00:17:08.849 --> 00:17:11.390 view, the factual reporting coming from the mainstream 00:17:11.390 --> 00:17:14.450 press was failing miserably to capture the real 00:17:14.450 --> 00:17:17.009 atmosphere of that campaign. The paranoia, the 00:17:17.009 --> 00:17:19.670 dirty tricks, the sheer desperation felt by those 00:17:19.670 --> 00:17:21.950 trying to stop Nixon. He felt the so -called 00:17:21.950 --> 00:17:24.630 objective truth that Muskie was probably a decent, 00:17:24.710 --> 00:17:26.970 if maybe slightly boring guy, was actually misleading. 00:17:27.170 --> 00:17:29.589 It didn't convey the emotional reality of politics 00:17:29.589 --> 00:17:33.130 in 72. So the lie about Ibogaine, bizarre as 00:17:33.130 --> 00:17:36.470 it was, somehow felt truer to the insane spirit 00:17:36.470 --> 00:17:39.049 of the times than the actual facts did. That's 00:17:39.049 --> 00:17:41.410 a Gonzo argument, yeah. He believed that conventional 00:17:41.410 --> 00:17:44.009 facts, especially those presented by the establishment 00:17:44.009 --> 00:17:46.869 media, were often the biggest lies of all because 00:17:46.869 --> 00:17:50.569 they sanitized reality. Gonzo With its strategic 00:17:50.569 --> 00:17:53.250 use of invention and hyperbole was his antidote. 00:17:53.309 --> 00:17:56.309 It aimed for a deeper, visceral truth, even if 00:17:56.309 --> 00:17:58.869 it meant bending the literal facts. It's an incredible 00:17:58.869 --> 00:18:01.170 tight rip walk. And that period, roughly 1970 00:18:01.170 --> 00:18:04.130 to 73, it's just an explosion of creativity. 00:18:04.430 --> 00:18:08.099 But that kind of intensity. It can't last, can 00:18:08.099 --> 00:18:09.819 it? Let's talk about what happened next. The 00:18:09.819 --> 00:18:11.839 decline when the persona started to take over. 00:18:12.119 --> 00:18:14.920 Hashtag, hashtag, bye. The consequences of fame 00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:17.200 and the blurred persona. Yeah, the years right 00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:19.599 after campaign trail 72, they mark a pretty clear 00:18:19.599 --> 00:18:22.299 downturn. A tragic one, really. His actual literary 00:18:22.299 --> 00:18:24.380 output, the new stuff, it just drops off a cliff. 00:18:24.559 --> 00:18:26.400 And pretty much everyone, friends, editors, the 00:18:26.400 --> 00:18:28.660 sources we have, they point to one major factor. 00:18:29.019 --> 00:18:31.859 His escalating drug use. Particularly cocaine. 00:18:32.259 --> 00:18:34.990 He started using cocaine around 1973. Around 00:18:34.990 --> 00:18:38.250 then, yeah. And people close to him, like Jan 00:18:38.250 --> 00:18:40.769 Wenner, his editor at Rolling Stone, they noticed 00:18:40.769 --> 00:18:43.630 a devastating impact on his discipline, his ability 00:18:43.630 --> 00:18:46.529 to focus, his actual creativity. Wenner said 00:18:46.529 --> 00:18:48.809 something quite stark about it, didn't he? About 00:18:48.809 --> 00:18:52.210 Africa. He did. He said, after Africa, he just 00:18:52.210 --> 00:18:55.509 couldn't write. And Africa refers to that 1974 00:18:55.509 --> 00:18:58.109 assignment Thompson had to cover the rumble in 00:18:58.109 --> 00:19:01.329 the jungle. The huge heavyweight fight in Zaire 00:19:01.329 --> 00:19:03.690 between Jordan Foreman and Muhammad Ali. And 00:19:03.690 --> 00:19:05.750 what happened there? Well, it's almost a perfect 00:19:05.750 --> 00:19:08.150 sad illustration of how the Gonzo model collapsed 00:19:08.150 --> 00:19:10.410 on itself. The whole point of Gonzo is immersion 00:19:10.410 --> 00:19:13.509 participation, right? Being there. But Thompson. 00:19:14.339 --> 00:19:17.680 He got so messed up, so intoxicated back at his 00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:20.359 hotel that he completely missed the fight itself. 00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:22.660 He missed the rumble in the jungle. Missed the 00:19:22.660 --> 00:19:25.480 whole thing and never filed a story. The persona, 00:19:25.720 --> 00:19:28.619 the lifestyle required to be gonzo combined with 00:19:28.619 --> 00:19:30.920 the drug dependency, it just overwhelmed his 00:19:30.920 --> 00:19:32.799 ability to actually do the journalism anymore. 00:19:32.980 --> 00:19:35.460 The chaos consumed the reporting. And that wasn't 00:19:35.460 --> 00:19:37.519 an isolated incident, was it? Vietnam the next 00:19:37.519 --> 00:19:40.849 year. Same pattern. 1975, Rolling Stone sends 00:19:40.849 --> 00:19:43.630 him to cover the fall of South Vietnam, an absolutely 00:19:43.630 --> 00:19:46.809 monumental historical event. And as Saigon is 00:19:46.809 --> 00:19:49.910 collapsing, Thompson basically flees the country. 00:19:50.269 --> 00:19:52.589 Refuses to file a proper dispatch. Another huge 00:19:52.589 --> 00:19:55.450 assignment. Another failure to deliver. Winter 00:19:55.450 --> 00:19:57.089 mentioned he sent something back. Yeah, Winter 00:19:57.089 --> 00:19:59.269 later clarified Thompson did send an unfinished 00:19:59.269 --> 00:20:01.549 dispatch, but said he spent most of his time 00:20:01.549 --> 00:20:03.829 in Saigon completely obsessed with his own evacuation 00:20:03.829 --> 00:20:06.349 plans, not actually reporting on the fall of 00:20:06.349 --> 00:20:09.329 the city. The irony is just painful. His main 00:20:09.329 --> 00:20:10.869 souvenir from covering the end of the Vietnam 00:20:10.869 --> 00:20:13.890 War was apparently this custom -made brass door 00:20:13.890 --> 00:20:15.990 plaque he'd ordered for his hotel room. What'd 00:20:15.990 --> 00:20:17.990 it say? Rolling Stone, Global Affairs Suite, 00:20:18.190 --> 00:20:21.170 Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. It's like the symbol 00:20:21.170 --> 00:20:23.170 of his importance, the artifact, became more 00:20:23.170 --> 00:20:25.750 real, more tangible than the journalism itself. 00:20:26.299 --> 00:20:28.740 And that plaque kind of perfectly symbolizes 00:20:28.740 --> 00:20:31.059 the whole problem, doesn't it? This persona he 00:20:31.059 --> 00:20:34.500 created, Raoul Duke, this wild, drug -addled, 00:20:34.539 --> 00:20:37.319 self -destructive journalist, it was now completely 00:20:37.319 --> 00:20:39.660 out there in the public mind. It was starting 00:20:39.660 --> 00:20:42.019 to overshadow the actual man, Hunter Thompson. 00:20:42.279 --> 00:20:45.319 Oh, completely. He deliberately created Raoul 00:20:45.319 --> 00:20:48.019 Duke, but the creation definitely started running 00:20:48.019 --> 00:20:51.259 the show. Thompson himself knew it, too. He talked 00:20:51.259 --> 00:20:53.259 about it quite openly in interviews. What did 00:20:53.259 --> 00:20:56.299 he say? There's a BBC interview from 1978 where 00:20:56.299 --> 00:20:58.859 he says, I'm never sure which one people expect 00:20:58.859 --> 00:21:01.799 me to be. Very often they conflict. I'm leading 00:21:01.799 --> 00:21:03.819 a normal life and right alongside me there is 00:21:03.819 --> 00:21:06.880 this myth and it is growing and mushrooming and 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:09.539 getting more and more warped. The public wanted 00:21:09.539 --> 00:21:12.200 the caricature right and the caricature needed 00:21:12.200 --> 00:21:15.519 constant fuel. Which links back to the substance 00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:19.140 abuse. Wenner tried to help him, didn't he? Offered 00:21:19.140 --> 00:21:21.529 to pay for rehab. He did. Wenner was genuinely 00:21:21.529 --> 00:21:23.690 worried, both for Thompson as a friend and for 00:21:23.690 --> 00:21:26.410 his career, but Thompson refused the help. Why? 00:21:27.210 --> 00:21:29.369 Did he think he didn't have a problem? Worse 00:21:29.369 --> 00:21:31.809 than that, really. His reasoning was this kind 00:21:31.809 --> 00:21:34.910 of dark, artistic fatalism. He honestly seemed 00:21:34.910 --> 00:21:37.069 to believe that the drugs, the chaos, were essential 00:21:37.069 --> 00:21:39.710 to his talent. He said it was a key to his talent, 00:21:39.829 --> 00:21:41.589 and that without it, he'd just have the mind 00:21:41.589 --> 00:21:44.099 of an accountant. He saw the dysfunction not 00:21:44.099 --> 00:21:46.960 as a bug, but as a necessary feature of his genius. 00:21:47.240 --> 00:21:50.839 That's tragic. So heading into the 80s and 90s, 00:21:50.839 --> 00:21:53.559 the major new works dry up. Pretty much. A lot 00:21:53.559 --> 00:21:55.339 of what got published in that era were collections 00:21:55.339 --> 00:21:58.799 of earlier pieces compiled into those gonzo papers 00:21:58.799 --> 00:22:01.799 volumes, like The Great Shark Hunt or Songs of 00:22:01.799 --> 00:22:04.519 the Doomed. Good stuff, but mostly retrospective. 00:22:04.599 --> 00:22:07.279 Did he attempt big new projects? He did. He spent 00:22:07.279 --> 00:22:10.839 a lot of time researching a book about feminist 00:22:10.839 --> 00:22:14.829 pornography. For Playboy, of all places. It was 00:22:14.829 --> 00:22:16.509 supposed to become a novel called The Night Manager, 00:22:16.710 --> 00:22:18.869 but it never got finished. He was still drawn 00:22:18.869 --> 00:22:21.950 to extreme subjects, but maybe the focus, the 00:22:21.950 --> 00:22:23.930 discipline to see a huge project through just 00:22:23.930 --> 00:22:25.750 wasn't there anymore. He did have that newspaper 00:22:25.750 --> 00:22:27.849 column, though, for the San Francisco Examiner. 00:22:27.970 --> 00:22:30.349 Yeah, a weekly media column. And his editor there 00:22:30.349 --> 00:22:32.730 had a fantastic description of Thompson's late 00:22:32.730 --> 00:22:35.190 period output. He said the column swung wildly 00:22:35.190 --> 00:22:37.730 between acid -soaked jubberish with a charm of 00:22:37.730 --> 00:22:40.589 its own and... incisive political analysis of 00:22:40.589 --> 00:22:42.349 the highest order. You just never knew what you 00:22:42.349 --> 00:22:44.210 were going to get. The signal to noise ratio 00:22:44.210 --> 00:22:47.329 was unpredictable. So let's circle back to the 00:22:47.329 --> 00:22:50.329 actual style of Gonzo writing. You mentioned 00:22:50.329 --> 00:22:53.670 he wasn't like the other new journalists, meticulously 00:22:53.670 --> 00:22:56.670 reconstructing scenes. Right. He said he almost 00:22:56.670 --> 00:22:59.230 never tried to reconstruct things after the fact, 00:22:59.349 --> 00:23:02.750 unlike, say, Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese, who were 00:23:02.750 --> 00:23:04.710 obsessed with getting dialogue and timelines 00:23:04.710 --> 00:23:07.769 exactly right. Thompson's goal was different. 00:23:08.059 --> 00:23:10.099 Tom Wolfe had a good take on it, didn't he? Yeah, 00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:13.579 Wolfe described Thompson's style as part journalism 00:23:13.579 --> 00:23:16.180 and part personal memoir and mixed with powers 00:23:16.180 --> 00:23:19.400 of wild invention and wolverine rhetoric. It 00:23:19.400 --> 00:23:21.160 was this hybrid thing. Narrative reliability 00:23:21.160 --> 00:23:24.000 wasn't the point. Emotional impact, rhetorical 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:25.980 velocity, that was the goal. Which must have 00:23:25.980 --> 00:23:27.859 been an absolute nightmare for his editor. Oh, 00:23:27.859 --> 00:23:30.099 you bet. Fact -checking Thompson. One editor 00:23:30.099 --> 00:23:32.740 called it a trip through a journalistic funhouse. 00:23:32.900 --> 00:23:34.779 They constantly had to figure out, OK, where 00:23:34.779 --> 00:23:37.299 does reality end and where does the riff, as 00:23:37.299 --> 00:23:39.319 they called it, begin? So how did they publish 00:23:39.319 --> 00:23:41.299 anything under the banner of journalism? What 00:23:41.299 --> 00:23:43.809 stopped it from just being fiction? This is the 00:23:43.809 --> 00:23:45.549 last really fascinating piece of the puzzle, 00:23:45.630 --> 00:23:48.750 the final paradox of his method. While the overall 00:23:48.750 --> 00:23:51.670 story, the sequence of events, might be completely 00:23:51.670 --> 00:23:54.630 embellished or even fabricated, the concrete 00:23:54.630 --> 00:23:57.509 physical details within that fabrication were 00:23:57.509 --> 00:24:00.329 often meticulously accurate. He was apparently 00:24:00.329 --> 00:24:03.309 a total stickler for numbers. for details like 00:24:03.309 --> 00:24:07.049 gross weight and model numbers, for lyrics and 00:24:07.049 --> 00:24:09.490 caliber. So he'd get the make and model of the 00:24:09.490 --> 00:24:11.769 car exactly right, or the specific type of gun, 00:24:11.869 --> 00:24:13.789 or the lyrics to a song playing on the radio. 00:24:14.299 --> 00:24:16.460 Even if the entire scene happening around those 00:24:16.460 --> 00:24:18.900 details was completely invented. Exactly. He'd 00:24:18.900 --> 00:24:21.519 anchor these wild, sprawling, chemically fueled 00:24:21.519 --> 00:24:24.019 narratives to these little islands of hard, verifiable 00:24:24.019 --> 00:24:26.920 fact. He gives the whole thing this weird, unsettling 00:24:26.920 --> 00:24:29.200 feeling of authority, of journalistic credibility, 00:24:29.440 --> 00:24:31.920 even when you suspect it's mostly bullshit. It's 00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:34.720 a really clever, subversive technique. Hashtag 00:24:34.720 --> 00:24:37.259 tag V, political legacy, final days, and spectacle 00:24:37.259 --> 00:24:40.230 funeral. And underpinning so much of that writing, 00:24:40.289 --> 00:24:42.210 especially the best stuff, was his politics, 00:24:42.289 --> 00:24:44.849 that fierce, lifelong iconoclasm. Absolutely. 00:24:44.930 --> 00:24:48.150 And central to that, always, was Richard Nixon. 00:24:49.410 --> 00:24:52.190 Thompson's hatred for Nixon was just monumental. 00:24:53.049 --> 00:24:56.069 He saw Nixon as representing, quote, that dark, 00:24:56.170 --> 00:24:59.349 venal, and incurably violent side of the American 00:24:59.349 --> 00:25:01.630 character. That obituary he wrote for Nixon in 00:25:01.630 --> 00:25:04.180 94. Oh, he was a crook. Published in Rolling 00:25:04.180 --> 00:25:07.299 Stone, it's still one of the most savage, vitriolic 00:25:07.299 --> 00:25:09.299 pieces of political writing you'll ever read 00:25:09.299 --> 00:25:11.900 in a mainstream publication. It's brutal. But 00:25:11.900 --> 00:25:14.119 his politics weren't simple left -wing, were 00:25:14.119 --> 00:25:16.400 they? They were more complex, rooted in this 00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:19.660 deep sense of individual liberty, like his stance 00:25:19.660 --> 00:25:22.119 on guns. That's a key point, and it confuses 00:25:22.119 --> 00:25:24.480 people who only see the druggie counterculture 00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:27.569 image. Thompson was a lifelong firearms enthusiast, 00:25:27.569 --> 00:25:30.029 owned a lot of guns, loved explosives, and he 00:25:30.029 --> 00:25:31.569 was a fierce defender of the Second Amendment. 00:25:31.730 --> 00:25:33.289 He believed it was crucial against government 00:25:33.289 --> 00:25:35.970 power. Exactly. He saw the right to bear arms 00:25:35.970 --> 00:25:38.549 as a fundamental check on state tyranny. This 00:25:38.549 --> 00:25:39.730 might surprise a lot of people. He was actually 00:25:39.730 --> 00:25:41.630 a member of the National Rifle Association, the 00:25:41.630 --> 00:25:44.170 NRA. Wow. So how do you square that? The guy 00:25:44.170 --> 00:25:46.569 railing against the white power structure and 00:25:46.569 --> 00:25:48.730 hanging out with the counterculture, but also 00:25:48.730 --> 00:25:51.329 an NRA member? I think it all stems from this 00:25:51.329 --> 00:25:54.799 bedrock distrust. of any centralized authority, 00:25:55.119 --> 00:25:56.799 whether it's the government trying to take your 00:25:56.799 --> 00:25:59.380 guns or the police conducting illegal searches 00:25:59.380 --> 00:26:02.259 or corporations polluting. It was all part of 00:26:02.259 --> 00:26:04.960 the same oppressive system to him. Which explains 00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:07.299 his work on the Fourth Amendment, too. Precisely. 00:26:07.420 --> 00:26:09.579 His support for the Second Amendment came from 00:26:09.579 --> 00:26:11.819 the same place as his passion for the Fourth 00:26:11.819 --> 00:26:13.880 Amendment protection against unreasonable search 00:26:13.880 --> 00:26:16.750 and seizure. He even co -founded an organization, 00:26:17.049 --> 00:26:19.410 the Fourth Amendment Foundation, specifically 00:26:19.410 --> 00:26:21.410 to help people who had been victims of illegal 00:26:21.410 --> 00:26:25.369 searches or police abuse. He saw it all as connected. 00:26:25.809 --> 00:26:28.329 Protect yourself from the state. And he put that 00:26:28.329 --> 00:26:30.289 belief into action later in his life, didn't 00:26:30.289 --> 00:26:33.630 he? With the Lizzle Amman case in Colorado? Yes. 00:26:33.710 --> 00:26:36.670 That was a really significant late career intervention. 00:26:37.599 --> 00:26:40.460 Lisa Laman was this woman in Colorado who got 00:26:40.460 --> 00:26:42.640 sentenced to life for felony murder, even though 00:26:42.640 --> 00:26:44.460 she wasn't even present when her accomplice shot 00:26:44.460 --> 00:26:47.119 a police officer. It's based on these really 00:26:47.119 --> 00:26:50.259 extreme accomplice liability laws. And Thompson 00:26:50.259 --> 00:26:52.839 got involved. He took up her cause passionately, 00:26:52.880 --> 00:26:55.380 wrote about it, organized public support, helped 00:26:55.380 --> 00:26:57.920 raise money for illegal defense. It showed he 00:26:57.920 --> 00:27:00.960 still had that power to mobilize people, to focus 00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:03.279 attention on injustice. Did it work? It did. 00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:05.980 Although Thompson died before the final ruling, 00:27:06.140 --> 00:27:08.500 her sentence was eventually overturned not long 00:27:08.500 --> 00:27:11.720 after his death. And many people directly credit 00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:14.359 the pressure and the spotlight he put on the 00:27:14.359 --> 00:27:18.200 case for that outcome. So guns, privacy. And 00:27:18.200 --> 00:27:20.740 drugs, of course. He was always a huge advocate 00:27:20.740 --> 00:27:23.160 for legalization. Oh, yeah. Served on the advisory 00:27:23.160 --> 00:27:25.420 board for NORMLNL, the National Organization 00:27:25.420 --> 00:27:27.579 for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, for over 30 00:27:27.579 --> 00:27:29.819 years. And his argument wasn't just let people 00:27:29.819 --> 00:27:32.380 get high. It was pragmatic, anti -authority. 00:27:32.380 --> 00:27:35.539 He said legalize drugs across the board. He drew 00:27:35.539 --> 00:27:37.839 the comparison to alcohol prohibition. Saying 00:27:37.839 --> 00:27:41.130 it just makes criminals rich. Exactly. Criminalization, 00:27:41.289 --> 00:27:44.109 he argued, just empowers illegal markets and 00:27:44.109 --> 00:27:46.230 gives the state more power to interfere in people's 00:27:46.230 --> 00:27:48.789 lives. You also see hints of other influences 00:27:48.789 --> 00:27:52.230 in his politics, Marxist ideas. Yeah, he definitely 00:27:52.230 --> 00:27:55.529 criticized white power structures. He expressed 00:27:55.529 --> 00:27:57.829 real affection for the old radical labor union, 00:27:58.009 --> 00:28:00.430 the industrial workers of the world, the IWW 00:28:00.430 --> 00:28:03.569 or Wobblies. He even said he agreed with Karl 00:28:03.569 --> 00:28:06.740 Marx on certain things. It's this unique blend, 00:28:07.019 --> 00:28:09.779 isn't it? Hard left social critique mixed with 00:28:09.779 --> 00:28:12.740 this almost extreme right libertarian focus on 00:28:12.740 --> 00:28:15.099 individual freedom and distress to the state. 00:28:15.700 --> 00:28:18.039 Very hard to pigeonhole. And that skepticism 00:28:18.039 --> 00:28:20.599 never waned, did it? Even after 9 -11? Not at 00:28:20.599 --> 00:28:22.819 all. He was actually one of the first prominent 00:28:22.819 --> 00:28:25.220 voices to publicly express doubts about the official 00:28:25.220 --> 00:28:27.740 story of 9 -11. He speculated in interviews that 00:28:27.740 --> 00:28:29.099 the U .S. government might have been involved 00:28:29.099 --> 00:28:31.259 somehow, though he admitted he didn't have concrete 00:28:31.259 --> 00:28:34.079 proof. For Thompson, the default setting was 00:28:34.079 --> 00:28:36.500 always deep suspicion of power no matter what. 00:28:36.599 --> 00:28:38.579 Living life at that pitch, with that level of 00:28:38.579 --> 00:28:41.400 intensity, paranoia, chemical intake, it takes 00:28:41.400 --> 00:28:43.299 a toll. His final years sound like they were 00:28:43.299 --> 00:28:45.940 marked by a real decline. They were. He was dealing 00:28:45.940 --> 00:28:48.140 with chronic health problems, had a painful hip 00:28:48.140 --> 00:28:50.500 replacement. He often talked about feeling old, 00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:54.140 bored, told friends things like, this kid is 00:28:54.140 --> 00:28:57.759 getting old. There was a sense of obsolescence, 00:28:57.759 --> 00:29:00.839 maybe. And his death itself, February 20th, 2005, 00:29:01.440 --> 00:29:05.140 age 67, self -inflicted gunshot wound at Owl 00:29:05.140 --> 00:29:08.180 Farm. The details are just bleak. Incredibly 00:29:08.180 --> 00:29:10.640 bleak. His wife, Anita, whom he'd married just 00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:12.519 a couple of years earlier, she was actually on 00:29:12.519 --> 00:29:14.279 the phone with him when it happened. She said 00:29:14.279 --> 00:29:16.359 later she heard him cock the gun, but thought 00:29:16.359 --> 00:29:18.450 it was the sound of his typewriter keys. Oh, 00:29:18.450 --> 00:29:21.029 God. And his grandson and daughter -in -law were 00:29:21.029 --> 00:29:23.410 apparently in the next room. They heard the shot 00:29:23.410 --> 00:29:25.170 but thought it was just a book falling off a 00:29:25.170 --> 00:29:28.190 shelf. The sheer, terrible banality of the end 00:29:28.190 --> 00:29:30.509 is such a stark contrast to the spectacle of 00:29:30.509 --> 00:29:32.390 his life. He left a note, didn't he? Football 00:29:32.390 --> 00:29:36.609 season is over. Yeah. It's short, brutal, and 00:29:36.609 --> 00:29:38.450 gives a pretty clear window into his mindset. 00:29:38.769 --> 00:29:42.970 It read, No more games. No more bombs. No more 00:29:42.970 --> 00:29:46.730 walking. No more fun. No more swimming. 67. That 00:29:46.730 --> 00:29:49.829 is 17 years past 50. You are getting greedy. 00:29:49.990 --> 00:29:54.069 Act your old age. Relax. This won't hurt. It 00:29:54.069 --> 00:29:55.890 sounds like an artist just finally rejecting 00:29:55.890 --> 00:29:58.150 an existence that wasn't giving him the intensity, 00:29:58.289 --> 00:30:01.009 the fun he felt he needed. But even in death, 00:30:01.150 --> 00:30:04.109 Thompson couldn't resist one last massive gonzo 00:30:04.109 --> 00:30:06.529 performance. The funeral. Oh, the funeral was 00:30:06.529 --> 00:30:09.430 pure Thompson. The $3 million spectacle, apparently 00:30:09.430 --> 00:30:11.730 paid for entirely by his friend Johnny Depp, 00:30:11.769 --> 00:30:14.269 who'd played him, well, Raoul Bouc, on screen. 00:30:14.509 --> 00:30:17.240 And the main event. The ashes. His ashes were 00:30:17.240 --> 00:30:19.059 loaded into fireworks and fired from a giant 00:30:19.059 --> 00:30:21.859 cannon at a private ceremony at Owl Farm, August 00:30:21.859 --> 00:30:24.779 20th, 2005. And the cannon wasn't just any cannon, 00:30:24.900 --> 00:30:27.220 was it? It was on top of that tower. Exactly. 00:30:27.359 --> 00:30:30.779 A 153 -foot tower shaped like that iconic Gonzo 00:30:30.779 --> 00:30:32.859 symbol, the double -thumbed fist clutching a 00:30:32.859 --> 00:30:35.140 peyote button. The same symbol he'd used for 00:30:35.140 --> 00:30:37.279 his freak power sheriff campaign back in 1970. 00:30:37.500 --> 00:30:39.539 It was literally building a monument to the persona. 00:30:39.759 --> 00:30:41.920 So it wasn't just a funeral. It was a final piece 00:30:41.920 --> 00:30:45.140 of performance art. Totally. Complete with fireworks 00:30:45.140 --> 00:30:47.720 red, white, blue, and green exploding to the 00:30:47.720 --> 00:30:50.259 soundtrack of Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the 00:30:50.259 --> 00:30:53.759 Sky and Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man. And the 00:30:53.759 --> 00:30:56.700 guest list was pure Thompson, too. Politicians 00:30:56.700 --> 00:30:58.960 like Senators John Kerry and George McGovern 00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:01.660 rubbing shoulders with actors like Jack Nicholson 00:31:01.660 --> 00:31:04.299 and Bill Murray. It was the perfectly choreographed 00:31:04.299 --> 00:31:07.480 final act, transforming his suicide into spectacle, 00:31:07.759 --> 00:31:11.680 ensuring his last dispatch was pure, 100 % gonzo. 00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:14.180 And the legacy, it definitely lives on. People 00:31:14.180 --> 00:31:16.380 still talk about him, still read him. Absolutely. 00:31:16.539 --> 00:31:19.299 Tom Wolfe, who was stylistically very different, 00:31:19.380 --> 00:31:21.240 still called Thompson the greatest American comic 00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:23.859 writer of the 20th century. And that Raoul Duke 00:31:23.859 --> 00:31:26.279 persona, it's echoed in characters like Uncle 00:31:26.279 --> 00:31:28.460 Duke in the Doonesbury comic strip. or Hunter 00:31:28.460 --> 00:31:30.539 Gathers in the animated show The Venture Bros. 00:31:30.819 --> 00:31:32.960 And there are scholarships now, too, right? In 00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:35.599 his name. Yeah, his widow, Anita, set them up. 00:31:35.960 --> 00:31:38.319 One supports U .S. military veterans studying 00:31:38.319 --> 00:31:40.819 at Columbia University, which feels fitting given 00:31:40.819 --> 00:31:43.259 his own military background. And another helps 00:31:43.259 --> 00:31:45.039 journalism students at the University of Kentucky. 00:31:45.259 --> 00:31:47.660 So his legacy is also about supporting future 00:31:47.660 --> 00:31:50.380 writers, especially maybe those coming from conventional 00:31:50.380 --> 00:31:53.599 paths, like Thompson himself did. Hashtag TagsEP. 00:31:54.640 --> 00:31:56.880 Outro and final thought for the listener. So 00:31:56.880 --> 00:31:59.319 wrapping this up, what's the big takeaway from 00:31:59.319 --> 00:32:02.240 this deep dive into Hunter S. Thompson? For me, 00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:04.420 it really throws that central tension of his 00:32:04.420 --> 00:32:07.480 life into sharp relief. On one hand, you have 00:32:07.480 --> 00:32:09.839 this incredibly successful revolutionary effort 00:32:09.839 --> 00:32:12.740 to make journalism subjective, artistic, that 00:32:12.740 --> 00:32:15.700 most accurate and least factual approach. But 00:32:15.700 --> 00:32:18.420 on the other hand, there's the constant. ultimately 00:32:18.420 --> 00:32:21.660 fatal struggle to keep any distance between the 00:32:21.660 --> 00:32:24.359 journalist doing the work and the extreme self 00:32:24.359 --> 00:32:26.559 -destructive persona he seemed to need to create 00:32:26.559 --> 00:32:29.259 that work. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. Thompson's 00:32:29.259 --> 00:32:31.740 work, it really forces you to think about deep 00:32:31.740 --> 00:32:34.140 immersion, about skepticism towards authority. 00:32:34.519 --> 00:32:38.220 His legacy, maybe, is showing us that the reporter 00:32:38.779 --> 00:32:41.000 Their biases, their feelings, their own chaos 00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:43.480 isn't just part of the story. It's unavoidable. 00:32:43.480 --> 00:32:45.619 Yeah. Especially when you're covering times like 00:32:45.619 --> 00:32:48.640 his of huge political and cultural upheaval. 00:32:48.720 --> 00:32:50.579 He basically turned the writer's perspective 00:32:50.579 --> 00:32:53.380 into a weapon. OK, so we'll leave you, our listener, 00:32:53.480 --> 00:32:55.420 with a final thought to chew on. We've talked 00:32:55.420 --> 00:32:57.779 about Thompson, the iconoclast, the fierce defender 00:32:57.779 --> 00:33:00.079 of the Second Amendment gun rights, the co -founder 00:33:00.079 --> 00:33:02.079 of the Fourth Amendment Foundation fighting illegal 00:33:02.079 --> 00:33:06.109 searches. He had this deep. almost paranoid hatred 00:33:06.109 --> 00:33:08.509 of centralized power and surveillance. Right. 00:33:08.650 --> 00:33:11.589 So how would Hunter S. Thompson, the man who 00:33:11.589 --> 00:33:13.829 demanded absolute personal privacy and freedom 00:33:13.829 --> 00:33:16.950 from the state, how would he view our world today? 00:33:17.009 --> 00:33:20.029 This hyper digitalized age with constant tracking, 00:33:20.230 --> 00:33:22.829 facial recognition, data harvesting, the balance 00:33:22.829 --> 00:33:24.970 between freedom, technology and privacy now? 00:33:25.130 --> 00:33:27.839 Yeah, that's a great question. Would the guy 00:33:27.839 --> 00:33:31.119 who stole Hemingway's antlers be out there championing 00:33:31.119 --> 00:33:33.480 encryption, waging war on big tech surveillance, 00:33:33.839 --> 00:33:36.220 seeing it as the ultimate big brother nightmare? 00:33:36.460 --> 00:33:40.640 Or would the sheer complexity and sort of overwhelming 00:33:40.640 --> 00:33:44.220 nature of modern digital control just paralyze 00:33:44.220 --> 00:33:46.119 the raving beast? Would he find himself unable 00:33:46.119 --> 00:33:49.079 to even file a dispatch on a world that's maybe 00:33:49.079 --> 00:33:51.240 become too weird, too controlled, even for Gonzo? 00:33:51.359 --> 00:33:53.140 Something to think about as you navigate the 00:33:53.140 --> 00:33:55.000 modern noise. That's all for this deep dive. 00:33:55.160 --> 00:33:55.920 We'll see you next time.