WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.700 You know, when you picture the ultimate corporate 00:00:02.700 --> 00:00:06.000 boardroom back in the 1950s, it's just this incredibly 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:09.359 specific aesthetic. Oh yeah, the gray flannel 00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:12.960 suits, just perfectly symmetrical rows of desks. 00:00:13.179 --> 00:00:15.960 Right, exactly. Everyone is marching to the exact 00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:19.329 same highly regimented drum beat. It's an environment 00:00:19.329 --> 00:00:22.230 engineered for total conformity. Completely rigid. 00:00:22.410 --> 00:00:24.690 You wore the suit. You followed the rules. Then 00:00:24.690 --> 00:00:27.010 you fast forward to today. You walk into the 00:00:27.010 --> 00:00:29.730 headquarters of some multi -billion dollar Silicon 00:00:29.730 --> 00:00:31.989 Valley tech monopoly. And what do you actually 00:00:31.989 --> 00:00:34.390 see? A lot of barefoot shoes. Yeah, barefoot 00:00:34.390 --> 00:00:37.670 shoes. People drinking organic kombucha, wearing 00:00:37.670 --> 00:00:40.390 casual Friday gear on a Tuesday. And they're 00:00:40.390 --> 00:00:42.909 talking endlessly about decentralized networks 00:00:42.909 --> 00:00:45.170 and disruptive community building. It really 00:00:45.170 --> 00:00:47.810 is. It's the ultimate cultural Trojan horse. 00:00:48.049 --> 00:00:50.689 It totally is. So today we're taking a deep dive 00:00:50.689 --> 00:00:53.170 into the massive stack of historical sourcing 00:00:53.170 --> 00:00:55.810 on the hippie movement. We are totally bypassing 00:00:55.810 --> 00:00:57.909 the lazy cliches, you know, the tie -dye shirts 00:00:57.909 --> 00:00:59.950 and peace signs. Right, getting past the Halloween 00:00:59.950 --> 00:01:02.570 costume version of it. Exactly. We want to uncover 00:01:02.570 --> 00:01:05.409 how a localized youth movement transformed into 00:01:05.409 --> 00:01:08.010 a global phenomenon, collapsed under its own 00:01:08.010 --> 00:01:11.769 massive weight, and then secretly re -emerged 00:01:11.769 --> 00:01:13.890 to reshape the society you and I live in right 00:01:13.890 --> 00:01:15.689 now. Because the blueprint for our modern world 00:01:15.689 --> 00:01:18.469 wasn't drawn up by a bunch of MBAs. No, it wasn't. 00:01:18.549 --> 00:01:20.950 It was drafted by people living in renovated 00:01:20.950 --> 00:01:24.310 school buses, wearing 19th century theater costumes 00:01:24.310 --> 00:01:27.290 and actively trying to destroy the very concept 00:01:27.290 --> 00:01:29.989 of that corporate boardroom. It's just a staggering 00:01:29.989 --> 00:01:32.969 narrative arc. We're tracking how an ideology 00:01:32.969 --> 00:01:35.489 completely dedicated to dropping out of society 00:01:35.489 --> 00:01:38.489 somehow ended up hardwiring itself into the 21st 00:01:38.489 --> 00:01:41.030 century. OK, let's unpack this because we really 00:01:41.030 --> 00:01:43.469 want to understand the explosion of the 1960s. 00:01:43.150 --> 00:01:46.670 We have to ask where the hippie actually came 00:01:46.670 --> 00:01:49.230 from. And the origins, surprisingly, don't start 00:01:49.230 --> 00:01:52.049 in San Francisco in 1965. Not at all. They trace 00:01:52.049 --> 00:01:54.450 back decades, and they span entire continents. 00:01:54.750 --> 00:01:56.370 Right. To find the behavioral roots, we actually 00:01:56.370 --> 00:01:58.510 have to go all the way back to 1890s Germany. 00:01:58.760 --> 00:02:01.420 Which sounds completely counterintuitive, but 00:02:01.420 --> 00:02:04.260 it makes perfect historical sense. You have this 00:02:04.260 --> 00:02:06.780 thing called the Wander Vogel movement, which 00:02:06.780 --> 00:02:09.379 translates to wandering bird. Wandering bird. 00:02:09.379 --> 00:02:11.939 I love that. Yeah. It was this massive German 00:02:11.939 --> 00:02:15.080 youth movement that arose as a direct visceral 00:02:15.080 --> 00:02:18.680 reaction to rapid urbanization, you know, the 00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:20.979 choked realities of the Industrial Revolution. 00:02:21.199 --> 00:02:24.439 Just escaping the factories. Exactly. Thousands 00:02:24.439 --> 00:02:27.219 of young Germans started actively rejecting city 00:02:27.219 --> 00:02:31.460 life. emphasized hiking, camping, folk music, 00:02:31.860 --> 00:02:34.939 and this sort of pagan, back to nature spiritual 00:02:34.939 --> 00:02:37.039 lifestyle. They were basically searching for 00:02:37.039 --> 00:02:39.379 authenticity outside of the newly industrialized 00:02:39.379 --> 00:02:41.840 machine. I mean, it's like finding out a modern 00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:44.219 tech trend was actually invented in the 1800s. 00:02:44.379 --> 00:02:46.539 It really is. And those German immigrants eventually 00:02:46.539 --> 00:02:48.919 plant those behavioral seeds in the United States. 00:02:48.979 --> 00:02:50.560 Right. They arrive in Southern California in 00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:53.139 the early 20th century and open some of the very 00:02:53.139 --> 00:02:55.699 first health food stores. Yeah. And that back 00:02:55.699 --> 00:02:57.919 to nature lifestyle directly inspires a group 00:02:57.919 --> 00:03:00.080 in the California desert known as the Nature 00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:02.979 Boys, who, by the way, actually became the inspiration 00:03:02.979 --> 00:03:06.719 for the 1948 hit song Nature Boy sung by Nat 00:03:06.719 --> 00:03:09.120 King Cole. Oh, wow. So they have this organic 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:12.050 back. to nature lifestyle, simmering in the 40s. 00:03:12.490 --> 00:03:15.669 But I mean, Nature Boy is a far cry from hippie. 00:03:15.949 --> 00:03:18.689 Did the name evolve later? It did. And it evolved 00:03:18.689 --> 00:03:20.810 from a completely different subculture on the 00:03:20.810 --> 00:03:23.530 other side of the country. The etymology actually 00:03:23.530 --> 00:03:26.870 traces back to 1940s Harlem. Wait, really? Yeah. 00:03:26.870 --> 00:03:29.229 It comes from African -American jazz and jive 00:03:29.229 --> 00:03:32.349 slang. The words hip or hep meant being in the 00:03:32.349 --> 00:03:35.030 know, being sophisticated or fully up to date 00:03:35.030 --> 00:03:37.689 with the underground culture. Ah, so to be hip 00:03:37.689 --> 00:03:40.509 was to be aware of a reality that the mainstream 00:03:40.509 --> 00:03:43.129 sort of square society was totally blind to. 00:03:43.349 --> 00:03:45.330 Exactly. But I have to push back on the timeline 00:03:45.330 --> 00:03:47.370 here a bit. If the behavioral ingredients, the 00:03:47.370 --> 00:03:49.289 organic food, the hiking were simmering in the 00:03:49.289 --> 00:03:52.009 1890s, and the literal name was coined in the 00:03:52.009 --> 00:03:55.370 1940s jazz clubs, why did it take until the mid 00:03:55.370 --> 00:03:57.770 1960s for the hippie to actually coalesce into 00:03:57.770 --> 00:04:00.169 a distinct identity? Like, what was happening 00:04:00.169 --> 00:04:02.689 for those 20 intervening years? What's fascinating 00:04:02.689 --> 00:04:06.129 here is the bridge between those eras. And that 00:04:06.129 --> 00:04:09.430 bridge was the beat generation of the 1950s, 00:04:09.550 --> 00:04:12.830 the beatniks. Oh, the beatniks? Right. The early 00:04:12.830 --> 00:04:15.930 hippies absolutely inherited the language, the 00:04:15.930 --> 00:04:18.269 poetry, and the countercultural values of the 00:04:18.269 --> 00:04:21.649 beats. But there was a massive tonal shift. John 00:04:21.649 --> 00:04:24.230 McIntyre, who managed the Grateful Dead, he noted 00:04:24.230 --> 00:04:27.649 that the beatnik scene was black. cynical and 00:04:27.649 --> 00:04:30.069 cold. Yeah, they were the guys sitting in dark 00:04:30.069 --> 00:04:33.529 smoke -filled coffee shops wearing black turtlenecks, 00:04:33.529 --> 00:04:36.589 snapping their fingers to jazz and just looking 00:04:36.589 --> 00:04:39.250 deeply miserable about the state of the post 00:04:39.250 --> 00:04:42.110 -war world. Precisely. I mean, they were rejecting 00:04:42.110 --> 00:04:44.470 the 1950s nuclear family, but they were doing 00:04:44.470 --> 00:04:46.649 it with an overwhelming sense of doom. Right. 00:04:46.769 --> 00:04:48.910 The great contribution of the emerging hippie 00:04:48.910 --> 00:04:51.189 culture was that they took that exact same rejection 00:04:51.189 --> 00:04:53.810 of society and injected it with a massive projection 00:04:53.810 --> 00:04:56.350 of joy. They completely replaced the cynicism 00:04:56.350 --> 00:04:58.850 with bright, vibrant optimism. But to make that 00:04:58.850 --> 00:05:01.689 profound shift from cynical beats to joyful hippies, 00:05:02.170 --> 00:05:04.230 they needed a catalyst. You know, a new setting. 00:05:04.329 --> 00:05:06.490 And honestly, a new sacrament. Yeah, they absolutely 00:05:06.490 --> 00:05:08.509 did. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:05:08.879 --> 00:05:12.500 In the early 60s, you have novelist Ken Kesey 00:05:12.500 --> 00:05:15.180 and his group, The Merry Pranksters. They buy 00:05:15.180 --> 00:05:18.180 a school bus, paint it in wild colors, literally 00:05:18.180 --> 00:05:22.060 name it further, F -U -R -T -H -E -R, just travel 00:05:22.060 --> 00:05:24.019 across the country. Spreading the gospel, basically. 00:05:24.259 --> 00:05:25.980 Exactly. And they start throwing these parties 00:05:25.980 --> 00:05:29.379 called acid tests, which were explicitly designed 00:05:29.379 --> 00:05:32.779 to spread the use of LSD. And we should clarify 00:05:32.779 --> 00:05:35.240 why they were called tests, because that's important. 00:05:35.620 --> 00:05:38.019 The organizers were deliberately testing one's 00:05:38.019 --> 00:05:40.420 ability to handle the profound psychological 00:05:40.420 --> 00:05:43.300 shift of a psychedelic experience. Because it's 00:05:43.300 --> 00:05:46.100 not a party drug. Right. LSD dissolves the boundary 00:05:46.100 --> 00:05:48.139 between the self and the outside world, what 00:05:48.139 --> 00:05:51.339 psychologists call ego death. So the test was 00:05:51.339 --> 00:05:53.220 whether you could surrender to that communal 00:05:53.220 --> 00:05:55.759 experience without panicking. And that psychedelic 00:05:55.759 --> 00:05:58.279 experimentation found a physical home in an incredibly 00:05:58.279 --> 00:06:01.990 unlikely place. An isolated, old -time in Nevada 00:06:01.990 --> 00:06:04.610 called Virginia City at a place called the Red 00:06:04.610 --> 00:06:07.509 Dog Saloon. Yeah, the Red Dog Experience. Right. 00:06:07.649 --> 00:06:11.430 In 1965, a collective organized this experience. 00:06:11.790 --> 00:06:14.790 You had early psychedelic rock bands like the 00:06:14.790 --> 00:06:17.410 Charlatans playing live. But what makes this 00:06:17.410 --> 00:06:20.490 a real turning point is how they fundamentally 00:06:20.490 --> 00:06:23.509 broke the fourth wall of entertainment. Completely 00:06:23.509 --> 00:06:25.790 shattered it. There was absolutely no line between 00:06:25.790 --> 00:06:28.529 the performers... and the audience. That blurring 00:06:28.529 --> 00:06:31.269 of the lines is the mechanical core of the entire 00:06:31.269 --> 00:06:33.069 movement. I mean, they weren't putting on a concert 00:06:33.069 --> 00:06:34.790 where you sit quietly in a chair and watch a 00:06:34.790 --> 00:06:37.329 professional entertain you. No, they were demanding 00:06:37.329 --> 00:06:40.569 active participation. Yes, they were pioneering 00:06:40.569 --> 00:06:43.509 a new way of interacting, trying to create a 00:06:43.509 --> 00:06:46.910 single tribal organism. And when those people 00:06:46.910 --> 00:06:49.129 returned to San Francisco, they brought that 00:06:49.129 --> 00:06:51.790 tribal communal energy with them right into the 00:06:51.790 --> 00:06:53.970 ballrooms in the streets. And the visual aesthetic 00:06:53.970 --> 00:06:55.819 of the hippie. didn't just appear out of nowhere 00:06:55.819 --> 00:06:58.279 either. It wasn't designed by some high -end 00:06:58.279 --> 00:07:02.480 fashion house. It was incredibly DIY and born 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:04.879 of just pure necessity and opportunity. It's 00:07:04.879 --> 00:07:07.129 such a great story. Yeah, local San Francisco 00:07:07.129 --> 00:07:08.850 theater, the Fox Theater, goes out of business. 00:07:08.970 --> 00:07:12.089 Yeah. So these early counterculture kids just 00:07:12.089 --> 00:07:14.389 walked in and bought up all their old 19th century 00:07:14.389 --> 00:07:17.029 costume stuff. Just racks and racks of it. Suddenly 00:07:17.029 --> 00:07:18.850 you have people walking around Haight -Ashbury 00:07:18.850 --> 00:07:22.790 dressed in these absurd, beautiful, ornate Victorian 00:07:22.790 --> 00:07:25.670 military jackets and velvet gowns. And then you 00:07:25.670 --> 00:07:28.189 combine those scavenged Victorian costumes with 00:07:28.189 --> 00:07:30.230 the introduction of liquid light shows at the 00:07:30.230 --> 00:07:33.329 dance halls. Artists would literally take boiling 00:07:33.329 --> 00:07:36.370 oil and colored dyes, put them on overhead projectors, 00:07:36.569 --> 00:07:38.410 and pulse them to the rhythm of the music. That 00:07:38.410 --> 00:07:40.290 they weren't just projecting colors to be pretty, 00:07:40.410 --> 00:07:42.230 right? That wasn't the point. Not at all. The 00:07:42.230 --> 00:07:44.930 mechanism here was intentional sensory overload. 00:07:45.329 --> 00:07:47.629 By visually mimicking the chaotic, breathing 00:07:47.629 --> 00:07:50.709 nature of an LSD trip, they were trying to overwhelm 00:07:50.709 --> 00:07:54.329 your 1950s logical brain. Wow. The goal was to 00:07:54.329 --> 00:07:56.490 create so much sensory disruption that you had 00:07:56.490 --> 00:07:58.829 no choice but to let go of your rigid, individual 00:07:58.829 --> 00:08:01.319 identity and just merge with the crowd. This 00:08:01.319 --> 00:08:03.939 visual chaos, the bright clothing, the communal 00:08:03.939 --> 00:08:06.379 living, it was an active deliberate rejection 00:08:06.379 --> 00:08:09.439 of the gray flannel suit. It was a visual protest 00:08:09.439 --> 00:08:11.480 against the establishment. Exactly. And that 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:14.579 protest took on a very specific tactical tone 00:08:14.579 --> 00:08:18.839 in late 1966 when California officially criminalized 00:08:18.839 --> 00:08:22.860 LSD. Now, historically, when a marginalized group's 00:08:22.860 --> 00:08:25.839 sacrament or lifestyle is criminalized, you expect 00:08:25.839 --> 00:08:28.060 a riot. You expect anger and violence. Sure, 00:08:28.180 --> 00:08:30.100 that's the standard reaction. But instead, they 00:08:30.100 --> 00:08:32.460 staged the Love Paget Rally in Golden Gate Park. 00:08:32.909 --> 00:08:35.769 The organizers explicitly stated they weren't 00:08:35.769 --> 00:08:38.509 there as criminals or violent protesters. They 00:08:38.509 --> 00:08:41.470 framed the entire event as a celebration of transcendental 00:08:41.470 --> 00:08:43.730 consciousness and the beauty of the universe. 00:08:44.049 --> 00:08:47.350 It was just a brilliant tactical maneuver. By 00:08:47.350 --> 00:08:50.289 responding to criminalization with radical joy, 00:08:50.549 --> 00:08:52.470 they completely disarmed the authorities. I mean, 00:08:52.570 --> 00:08:54.289 you can't violently crack down on people who 00:08:54.289 --> 00:08:56.029 are just handing you flowers and playing flutes. 00:08:56.129 --> 00:08:58.470 You really can't. It solidified their brand of 00:08:58.470 --> 00:09:01.379 peaceful resistance. But history shows us that 00:09:01.379 --> 00:09:04.379 when you create a vibrant, localized utopia, 00:09:04.820 --> 00:09:07.100 it never stays a secret for long. It definitely 00:09:07.100 --> 00:09:11.360 does not. By 1967, that localized utopia was 00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:14.100 broadcast to the entire planet. The media catches 00:09:14.100 --> 00:09:17.179 on. The singer Scott McKenzie releases the massive 00:09:17.179 --> 00:09:19.860 hit song, San Francisco. You know, be sure to 00:09:19.860 --> 00:09:22.419 wear flowers in your hair. And suddenly, it is 00:09:22.419 --> 00:09:25.440 the summer of love. an estimated 100 ,000 young 00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:27.759 people from all over the country run away from 00:09:27.759 --> 00:09:30.259 home and just flood into the Haight -Ashbury 00:09:30.259 --> 00:09:32.279 district. And the physical infrastructure of 00:09:32.279 --> 00:09:34.919 that small neighborhood simply could not sustain 00:09:34.919 --> 00:09:37.899 that kind of population density. It's exactly 00:09:37.899 --> 00:09:40.620 like a niche open -source software project. Oh, 00:09:40.799 --> 00:09:43.100 how so? Well, you have a few dedicated developers 00:09:43.100 --> 00:09:44.960 building something beautiful and functional for 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:47.820 themselves. But then a massive tech blog writes 00:09:47.820 --> 00:09:50.379 about them. A million users flood in overnight. 00:09:50.620 --> 00:09:52.919 And because there's zero server infrastructure 00:09:52.919 --> 00:09:55.240 built to handle that kind of traffic, the system 00:09:55.240 --> 00:09:58.299 catches fire and burns to the ground. That analogy 00:09:58.299 --> 00:10:00.720 is spot on. That's what happened to Hate Ashbury. 00:10:01.340 --> 00:10:03.279 Their cultural servers crashed under the weight 00:10:03.279 --> 00:10:06.399 of a hundred thousand runaway teenagers. The 00:10:06.399 --> 00:10:09.139 original vision was totally compromised by scale. 00:10:09.620 --> 00:10:13.100 That massive influx of naive, penniless teenagers 00:10:13.100 --> 00:10:16.840 led directly to skyrocketing crime, malnourishment, 00:10:17.320 --> 00:10:19.980 severe drug addiction, and disease. It became 00:10:19.980 --> 00:10:22.580 a legitimate public health crisis. It got so 00:10:22.580 --> 00:10:26.860 bleak that by late 1967, a prominent guerrilla 00:10:26.860 --> 00:10:29.539 street theater group called The Diggers held 00:10:29.539 --> 00:10:32.419 a mock funeral. Now the Diggers had been providing 00:10:32.419 --> 00:10:34.340 free food and running free stores in the neighborhood, 00:10:34.700 --> 00:10:36.759 but they were disgusted by what the scene had 00:10:36.759 --> 00:10:38.620 become. They saw the writing on the wall. So 00:10:38.620 --> 00:10:40.480 they literally carried a casket down the street 00:10:40.480 --> 00:10:42.480 for a death of hippie parade. It's the ultimate 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:45.080 paradox of cool. The moment a counterculture 00:10:45.080 --> 00:10:47.139 becomes popular enough to attract the masses, 00:10:47.700 --> 00:10:50.779 the media inevitably packages it, dilutes it, 00:10:51.059 --> 00:10:53.000 and destroys the authenticity that made it cool 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:55.240 in the first place. Right. The Diggers were symbolically 00:10:55.240 --> 00:10:57.279 burying the movement because they felt the media 00:10:57.279 --> 00:10:59.440 had murdered it. But the wild thing is, while 00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:01.820 the physical hub of Haight -Ashbury was dying, 00:11:02.580 --> 00:11:05.039 the cultural peak was still ahead of them. You 00:11:05.039 --> 00:11:07.840 jump to August 1969 and you have the Woodstock 00:11:07.840 --> 00:11:09.980 Festival in upstate New York. Half a million 00:11:09.980 --> 00:11:12.820 people. Half a million. Just massive. And despite 00:11:12.820 --> 00:11:15.360 the pouring rain, the deep mud, and the severe 00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:18.720 lack of food and water, the ideals of peace and 00:11:18.720 --> 00:11:21.159 human fellowship actually held up. They shared 00:11:21.159 --> 00:11:24.220 what they had. It was the dream realized on a 00:11:24.220 --> 00:11:26.789 massive scale. Woodstock proved the concept could 00:11:26.789 --> 00:11:29.850 work, but that utopian high was immediately followed 00:11:29.850 --> 00:11:32.990 by a devastating, violent plunge. Just four months 00:11:32.990 --> 00:11:36.289 later, in December 1969, that dream essentially 00:11:36.289 --> 00:11:38.710 died in California at the Altamont Free Concert. 00:11:38.850 --> 00:11:41.429 The contrast is just staggering. It really is. 00:11:41.750 --> 00:11:44.129 The organizers of Altamont made the disastrous, 00:11:44.309 --> 00:11:47.169 fatal decision to hire the Hells Angels biker 00:11:47.169 --> 00:11:49.870 gang as stage security. and they paid them in 00:11:49.870 --> 00:11:52.210 beer. Which is a terrible idea. The atmosphere 00:11:52.210 --> 00:11:54.190 was incredibly tense and aggressive from the 00:11:54.190 --> 00:11:56.529 start, and it culminated in an 18 -year -old 00:11:56.529 --> 00:11:58.690 man named Meredith Hunter being stabbed to death 00:11:58.690 --> 00:12:00.549 by a Hells Angel right in front of the stage 00:12:00.549 --> 00:12:02.529 while the Rolling Stones were playing. When you 00:12:02.529 --> 00:12:04.759 take the darkness of Altamont... and you combine 00:12:04.759 --> 00:12:07.940 it with the horrific Manson family murders that 00:12:07.940 --> 00:12:10.320 happened earlier that same year, the American 00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:12.759 public was deeply shocked. Yeah, it was a brutal 00:12:12.759 --> 00:12:15.759 wake up call. The era of innocent flower power 00:12:15.759 --> 00:12:19.700 optimism was definitively over. The central unified 00:12:19.700 --> 00:12:23.679 1960s zeitgeist was waning. But the ethos of 00:12:23.679 --> 00:12:26.080 the hippies didn't just vanish into thin air, 00:12:26.419 --> 00:12:29.899 it scattered globally. And as it scattered, the 00:12:29.899 --> 00:12:32.559 movement essentially fractured into two distinct 00:12:32.559 --> 00:12:35.159 paths. Right, you had those who wanted to completely 00:12:35.159 --> 00:12:38.179 drop out of society and those who wanted to actively 00:12:38.179 --> 00:12:40.779 confront it. Let's look at the dropouts first. 00:12:41.279 --> 00:12:44.200 We see an incredible dedication to alternative 00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:47.139 lifestyles and mobility. Hundreds of thousands 00:12:47.139 --> 00:12:49.200 of young people took what was called the hippie 00:12:49.200 --> 00:12:51.899 trail. Yeah, this was a massive overland hitchhiking 00:12:51.899 --> 00:12:54.100 route stretching across Europe and the Middle 00:12:54.100 --> 00:12:57.200 East, usually ending up in India or Nepal. They 00:12:57.200 --> 00:13:00.299 traveled with almost no luggage, relying entirely 00:13:00.299 --> 00:13:03.120 on local hospitality and their own resourcefulness. 00:13:03.360 --> 00:13:05.500 And back in the U .S., those who stayed mobile 00:13:05.500 --> 00:13:07.659 were building elaborate, fully functional homes 00:13:07.659 --> 00:13:10.240 onto the chassis of old school buses and delivery 00:13:10.240 --> 00:13:13.259 trucks. They created this sort of nomadic shadow 00:13:13.259 --> 00:13:15.179 community that sustained itself by following 00:13:15.179 --> 00:13:17.360 festivals and renaissance fairs. Just entirely 00:13:17.360 --> 00:13:20.809 off the grid. Exactly. And this total freedom 00:13:20.809 --> 00:13:23.870 of movement mirrored their philosophy on relationships. 00:13:24.429 --> 00:13:27.269 They fully embraced the Beat Generation's sexual 00:13:27.269 --> 00:13:30.149 openness. The concept of the open relationship 00:13:30.149 --> 00:13:32.730 became widely accepted, pushing back against 00:13:32.730 --> 00:13:36.250 that rigid 1950s idea that human connection and 00:13:36.250 --> 00:13:39.210 love must be legally reserved for a single person. 00:13:39.450 --> 00:13:41.169 But then you have the other side of the fracture, 00:13:41.590 --> 00:13:44.200 the political wing. Groups like the Yippies, 00:13:44.480 --> 00:13:46.779 the Youth International Party, led by highly 00:13:46.779 --> 00:13:49.100 theatrical figures like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry 00:13:49.100 --> 00:13:52.250 Rubin. And they were loud. Very loud. We should 00:13:52.250 --> 00:13:54.230 be clear, when you look back at groups like the 00:13:54.230 --> 00:13:56.690 Yippies through a purely historical lens, it's 00:13:56.690 --> 00:13:58.429 fascinating. Regardless of where anyone stands 00:13:58.429 --> 00:14:01.269 on their actual ideology as an exercise in political 00:14:01.269 --> 00:14:03.590 theater, their tactics were incredibly effective 00:14:03.590 --> 00:14:06.230 at hijacking media attention. Oh, their mastery 00:14:06.230 --> 00:14:08.149 of the media was undeniable. They understood 00:14:08.149 --> 00:14:10.350 that the evening news craved spectacle, so they 00:14:10.350 --> 00:14:12.750 provided it. Exactly. They were famous for stunts 00:14:12.750 --> 00:14:15.909 like marching on Washington in 1967 and attempting 00:14:15.909 --> 00:14:18.990 to literally levitate the Pentagon using psychic 00:14:18.990 --> 00:14:22.029 energy to protest the war. Which is just incredible 00:14:22.029 --> 00:14:25.610 imagery. Or during the 1968 Democratic National 00:14:25.610 --> 00:14:28.289 Convention in Chicago, they protested the political 00:14:28.289 --> 00:14:31.730 machine by nominating an actual literal pig for 00:14:31.730 --> 00:14:34.970 president named Lyndon Piggies's pig. You can't 00:14:34.970 --> 00:14:36.870 ignore a pig running for president. You really 00:14:36.870 --> 00:14:38.990 can't. But my question is, how does a movement 00:14:38.990 --> 00:14:42.370 whose foundational slogan was turn on, tune in, 00:14:42.429 --> 00:14:46.409 drop out, manage to organize such highly publicized, 00:14:46.909 --> 00:14:49.389 coordinated and frankly brilliant political activism? 00:14:49.720 --> 00:14:52.559 Dropping out and organizing seem contradictory. 00:14:52.759 --> 00:14:55.039 This raises an important question, and the answer 00:14:55.039 --> 00:14:57.539 lies in the specific mechanics of their philosophy. 00:14:58.159 --> 00:15:00.259 Historian Ronald Cray views the hippie movement 00:15:00.259 --> 00:15:03.419 as the last spectacular resurgence of utopian 00:15:03.419 --> 00:15:05.980 socialism. Break that down for us. How does utopian 00:15:05.980 --> 00:15:08.360 socialism actually function? The core mechanism 00:15:08.360 --> 00:15:10.820 of utopian socialism isn't about transforming 00:15:10.820 --> 00:15:13.240 society through traditional political revolution, 00:15:13.500 --> 00:15:16.279 like storming a capital or by lobbying to pass 00:15:16.279 --> 00:15:19.519 new laws. The goal is to build a counter society, 00:15:19.779 --> 00:15:22.679 a fully functioning ideal community right in 00:15:22.679 --> 00:15:25.299 the middle of the current corrupt system. Ah, 00:15:25.460 --> 00:15:27.399 so they're building the new world inside the 00:15:27.399 --> 00:15:30.279 shell of the old one. Exactly. When the diggers 00:15:30.279 --> 00:15:32.320 created free stores where people could just walk 00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:34.519 in and take what they needed without money, or 00:15:34.519 --> 00:15:36.899 when hippies pooled their resources to buy land 00:15:36.899 --> 00:15:39.639 and start communal organic farms, they were trying 00:15:39.639 --> 00:15:42.460 to completely bypass the capitalist system. That 00:15:42.460 --> 00:15:44.639 makes a lot of sense. Their political activism 00:15:44.639 --> 00:15:47.059 was just as much about physically demonstrating 00:15:47.059 --> 00:15:50.240 a viable alternative as it was about protesting 00:15:50.240 --> 00:15:53.159 the status quo. To them, dropping out was the 00:15:53.159 --> 00:15:55.679 ultimate political act. They weren't ignoring 00:15:55.679 --> 00:15:58.570 the system. They were actively making it obsolete 00:15:58.570 --> 00:16:02.230 in their own lives. But by the mid -1970s, the 00:16:02.230 --> 00:16:05.309 military draft ended, the Vietnam War wound down, 00:16:05.450 --> 00:16:07.769 and the mainstream media completely lost interest 00:16:07.769 --> 00:16:10.570 in the counterculture. The era of the hippies 00:16:10.570 --> 00:16:13.490 seemed, on the surface anyway, to be over. But 00:16:13.490 --> 00:16:15.649 they didn't disappear. They just assimilated. 00:16:15.929 --> 00:16:18.309 And the unseen legacy of that assimilation is 00:16:18.309 --> 00:16:20.549 staggering. When you actually trace the historical 00:16:20.549 --> 00:16:22.950 through lines, you realize they built the foundation 00:16:22.950 --> 00:16:24.830 of the world we operate in today. So what does 00:16:24.830 --> 00:16:28.120 this all mean? I want you, the listener, to just 00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:30.480 look around your daily life. Do you shop at a 00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:33.059 massive organic grocery chain? Do you buy locally 00:16:33.059 --> 00:16:35.919 sourced vegetables? A lot of people do. Right. 00:16:36.460 --> 00:16:39.299 That entire multi -billion dollar industry started 00:16:39.299 --> 00:16:42.559 as tiny, radical, hippie health food stores and 00:16:42.559 --> 00:16:46.019 food co -ops in the 60s and 70s. Does your office 00:16:46.019 --> 00:16:48.200 have a casual Friday or allow you to wear jeans 00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:50.519 and sneakers to work? You can thank the Hickeys 00:16:50.519 --> 00:16:53.659 for actively, aggressively inspiring the decline 00:16:53.659 --> 00:16:56.440 of the mandatory business necktie. It permeates 00:16:56.440 --> 00:16:59.139 everything. Look at modern entertainment and 00:16:59.139 --> 00:17:02.080 festival culture. Those original chaotic Ken 00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:04.720 Kesey acid tests and the tribal dance halls in 00:17:04.720 --> 00:17:07.259 San Francisco evolved directly into the massive 00:17:07.259 --> 00:17:09.740 highly organized temporary cities we see today 00:17:09.740 --> 00:17:13.180 at events like Burning Man or huge industry mainstays 00:17:13.180 --> 00:17:15.839 like Bonnaroo and Coachella. The DNA is identical. 00:17:15.920 --> 00:17:18.039 It is. But the most mind blowing connection we 00:17:18.039 --> 00:17:20.359 found is the cyber revolution. You have authors 00:17:20.359 --> 00:17:22.579 and historians like Stewart Brand and John Markoff 00:17:22.579 --> 00:17:25.119 arguing that the entire personal computer industry 00:17:25.119 --> 00:17:28.220 and the architecture of the Internet are deeply 00:17:28.220 --> 00:17:30.619 fundamentally rooted in the anti -authoritarian 00:17:30.619 --> 00:17:33.710 communal ethos of the hippie culture. It is a 00:17:33.710 --> 00:17:37.089 profound connection. To understand it, you have 00:17:37.089 --> 00:17:39.829 to look at Stuart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog. 00:17:40.190 --> 00:17:42.529 Back in the late 60s, as thousands of hippies 00:17:42.529 --> 00:17:44.630 were moving to rural communes to build their 00:17:44.630 --> 00:17:47.450 utopian societies, they realized they lacked 00:17:47.450 --> 00:17:49.710 the practical skills to survive. Right. They 00:17:49.710 --> 00:17:52.069 didn't know how to build a well or wire a solar 00:17:52.069 --> 00:17:54.789 panel. You can't just meditate a house into existence. 00:17:54.849 --> 00:17:57.829 You actually need tools. Exactly. So Stuart Brand 00:17:57.829 --> 00:18:00.269 created the Whole Earth Catalog. It was essentially 00:18:00.269 --> 00:18:02.880 an analog search engine, a massive book, reviewing 00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:05.720 the best tools, books, and technologies for self 00:18:05.720 --> 00:18:08.480 -reliance. It empowered individuals to share 00:18:08.480 --> 00:18:10.940 information outside of traditional gatekeepers. 00:18:11.140 --> 00:18:13.599 So it was a catalog of knowledge. Yeah. And as 00:18:13.599 --> 00:18:16.279 computer technology emerged in the 1970s, the 00:18:16.279 --> 00:18:18.880 exact same people who read the whole Earth catalog 00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:21.500 realized that computers were the ultimate tool 00:18:21.500 --> 00:18:24.220 for decentralized information sharing. If you 00:18:24.220 --> 00:18:26.200 look at the mechanism there... The leap makes 00:18:26.200 --> 00:18:28.700 perfect sense. They went from sharing farming 00:18:28.700 --> 00:18:31.240 techniques in a paper catalog to building the 00:18:31.240 --> 00:18:34.200 very first digital bulletin board systems. If 00:18:34.200 --> 00:18:36.819 we connect this to the bigger picture, the pioneers 00:18:36.819 --> 00:18:39.339 of early cyberculture viewed the Internet as 00:18:39.339 --> 00:18:42.259 a digital commune. They engineered it to be a 00:18:42.259 --> 00:18:44.980 decentralized, free flowing exchange of information 00:18:44.980 --> 00:18:47.940 where no single corporate or government entity 00:18:47.940 --> 00:18:50.859 held the power. Wow. They were building the exact 00:18:50.859 --> 00:18:53.299 same utopian community in cyberspace that they 00:18:53.299 --> 00:18:55.829 had tried and failed to build. physically in 00:18:55.829 --> 00:18:58.690 Haight -Ashbury. And their influence even trickled 00:18:58.690 --> 00:19:02.309 deeply into our modern spiritual lives. The hippies 00:19:02.309 --> 00:19:05.390 popularized Western adaptations of Buddhism and 00:19:05.390 --> 00:19:08.430 Hinduism, normalizing practices like yoga and 00:19:08.430 --> 00:19:10.480 meditation for the average American. They were 00:19:10.480 --> 00:19:13.160 searching for personal spirituality outside of 00:19:13.160 --> 00:19:15.680 rigid, organized institutions. Right. It's even 00:19:15.680 --> 00:19:19.039 given rise to modern mock religions like Judaism, 00:19:19.579 --> 00:19:21.619 which is inspired by the neo hippie character 00:19:21.619 --> 00:19:24.319 in the movie The Big Lebowski and promotes a 00:19:24.319 --> 00:19:26.700 modern, highly relaxed form of Taoism. I mean, 00:19:26.779 --> 00:19:28.900 they quite literally changed how we eat, how 00:19:28.900 --> 00:19:31.579 we dress, how we compute and how we pray. They 00:19:31.579 --> 00:19:33.839 set out to completely reject the establishment. 00:19:34.190 --> 00:19:37.230 But the great irony of history is that in their 00:19:37.230 --> 00:19:39.789 quest to build alternatives, they provided the 00:19:39.789 --> 00:19:42.089 exact blueprints for the modern technological 00:19:42.089 --> 00:19:45.029 and cultural establishment. It is an incredible, 00:19:45.390 --> 00:19:48.670 highly improbable journey. We started today in 00:19:48.670 --> 00:19:51.789 the 1890s with German youths wandering the woods 00:19:51.789 --> 00:19:54.839 to escape the suit of the city. We tracked that 00:19:54.839 --> 00:19:57.079 back -to -nature energy to the slang of jazz 00:19:57.079 --> 00:20:00.180 clubs in 1940s Harlem. And then onto a school 00:20:00.180 --> 00:20:02.440 bus. Yeah, we watched it climb aboard a brightly 00:20:02.440 --> 00:20:05.079 painted school bus driving across America right 00:20:05.079 --> 00:20:07.720 into the chaotic, brilliant, and deeply tragic 00:20:07.720 --> 00:20:11.099 explosion of San Francisco in the 1960s. And 00:20:11.099 --> 00:20:13.240 finally, we saw how that same communal energy 00:20:13.240 --> 00:20:16.079 hardwired itself into the cyber revolution in 00:20:16.079 --> 00:20:18.319 the aisles of your local organic grocery store. 00:20:18.500 --> 00:20:20.759 It's a powerful reminder that culture isn't a 00:20:20.759 --> 00:20:22.819 passive weather system that just happens to us. 00:20:22.890 --> 00:20:25.630 It is actively built, violently dismantled, and 00:20:25.630 --> 00:20:27.750 quietly recycled by people who simply decide 00:20:27.750 --> 00:20:30.230 they want to live differently. Absolutely. We 00:20:30.230 --> 00:20:31.970 want to thank you so much for taking this deep 00:20:31.970 --> 00:20:33.829 dive into the source material with us today. 00:20:34.130 --> 00:20:36.069 But before you go, we want to leave you with 00:20:36.069 --> 00:20:38.769 a final thought to mull over, building on a really 00:20:38.769 --> 00:20:40.650 fascinating point from the historical texts. 00:20:40.849 --> 00:20:42.490 Yeah, the sources mentioned that many hippies 00:20:42.490 --> 00:20:44.569 were heavily criticized in the following decades, 00:20:44.930 --> 00:20:47.769 accused of selling out and seamlessly blending 00:20:47.769 --> 00:20:51.849 into the 1980s yuppie materialist consumer culture. 00:20:52.200 --> 00:20:55.119 So consider the ultimate paradox here. You have 00:20:55.119 --> 00:20:58.700 a subculture completely fiercely dedicated to 00:20:58.700 --> 00:21:01.740 anti -consumerism, free love, and the absolute 00:21:01.740 --> 00:21:04.829 rejection of material wealth. Yet that very same 00:21:04.829 --> 00:21:06.910 movement eventually gave birth to some of the 00:21:06.910 --> 00:21:09.369 most profitable, highly capitalized industries 00:21:09.369 --> 00:21:12.470 in the history of human civilization, from multi 00:21:12.470 --> 00:21:15.730 -billion dollar organic food empires to the absolute 00:21:15.730 --> 00:21:18.049 data hoarding monopolies of Silicon Valley. It 00:21:18.049 --> 00:21:21.170 really makes you wonder. It does. Did the hippies 00:21:21.170 --> 00:21:23.589 truly succeed in changing the capitalist system? 00:21:23.970 --> 00:21:26.450 Or did the system simply look at the rigid, boring 00:21:26.450 --> 00:21:29.769 1950s boardroom, realize it was losing its appeal, 00:21:30.130 --> 00:21:32.049 and figure out exactly how to package, price, 00:21:32.190 --> 00:21:34.900 and sell the hippie Rebellion right back to us. 00:21:35.180 --> 00:21:36.480 Something to think about the next time you're 00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:38.799 drinking an incredibly expensive organic kombucha 00:21:38.799 --> 00:21:41.259 in a corporate beanbag chair. Thanks for listening 00:21:41.259 --> 00:21:43.039 and we'll see you on the next deep dive.