Counterculture

Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" act ignited an obscenity case in the '70s. We listen back to two archival interviews with the late comedian, and David Bianculli reviews a new HBO documentary about him.

Stephen Kinzer's new book 'Poisoner in Chief' is about the CIA's secret experiments with LSD in the 50s and 60s in search of a drug that could be weaponized to control the minds of enemies. It's also about the man who who led it.

Ang Lee's film focuses not on the 1969 music festival itself, but on one of the people whose lives were changed by it: Elliot Teichberg, a closeted gay man who offered up his parents' decrepit motel as a home base for the festival's producers. David Edelstein reviews.

Novelist Robert Stone has written a new memoir that begins with a stint in the Navy in the late 1950s, continues through his work as a journalist in Vietnam and then includes his counterculture years in the 1970s, taking hallucinogenic drugs, cross-country road trips, and hanging out with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. His memoir is, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties. Stone's novels include Dog Soldiers (which was adapted into the film Who'll Stop the Rain), and Outerbridge Reach.

Phil Patton, author of Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile. It's a cultural history of the Volkswagen Beetle, the most produced and best-known car of all time. Patton writes for The New York Times, Esquire, Wired and ID. He also wrote Dreamland: Travels inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51.

It's been more than 40 years since David Bowie created the gender-bending Ziggy Stardust and released the now-classic album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. With it, Bowie helped invent glam-rock. In conversation with Fresh Air's Terry Gross from 2002, Bowie was in the midst of making the following year's Reality, and here talks about leaving characters in his songs, his love of Tibetan horns, and his childhood desire to write musicals and play saxophone in Little Richard's band.

Writer Ken Kesey died Saturday 11/10/01 at the age of 66. Kesey was a leading figure of 60s counterculture. As the organizer of the Merry Pranksters, Kesey did as much as anyone to popularize the use of LSD and other hallucinogens. Kesey also wrote two of the most popular books of the era, Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He also the author of Demon Box, Caverns and other books.

The founder of the Mamas and the Papas, John Phillips. He died of heart failure on Sunday. He was 65. Phillips was the principal songwriter for the pop group which had a string of hits from 1966 to 1968 when the group broke up. Their hits included Monday, Monday, California Dreamin, I Saw Her Again Last Night and others.

Levy founded the new Citadel Underground press, which has been publishing new editions of books written by individuals from the 1960s counterculture. Levy was ten years old in 1968; witnessing radical social movements emerge as he grew up shaped the person he is today.

Writer Ken Kesey. Kesey was a leading figure of the 60's counterculture. As the leader of the Merry Pranksters, Kesey did as much as anyone to popularize the use of LSD and other hallucinogens. Kesey also wrote two of the most popular books of the era, "Sometimes a Great Notion" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." In 1986, Kesey wrote "Demon Box," a look back at his life since the 60s. Kesey has a new book, called "Caverns." It's a novel he co-wrote with the 13 members of his University of Oregon fiction class.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews a new David Bowie CD collection. The 46-song retrospective includes Bowie classics like "Space Oddity" and "Changes," as well as some music that's never been released before.

Rock historian Ed Ward looks back at the Woodstock Festival and tries to separate the facts of the 3-day event from the warp of nostalgia twenty years later.

Writer Geoffrey O'Brien. His new book, Dream Time: Chapters from the Sixties, is an exploration of the phenomena of the 60s, from strobe lights and miniskirts to Be-Ins and Transcendental Meditation. O'Brien attempts to capture the cultural, social and political ferment of the era, as opposed to an objective, historical accounting. O'Brien is also the author of Hard Boiled America," a survey of paperback crime fiction.

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg examines the idioms of Berkeley, California, one of the most liberal and tolerant communities in America.

Book critic John Leonard reviews Dream Time by poet and literary critic Geoffrey O'Brien. The book is a meditation on the turbulence of the sixties.

Writer Jay Stevens has a new book about the creation of LSD in the 1940s, research into its therapeutic and weaponized potential in the 1950s, and its role in the 1960s counterculture--fueled in part by the influence of people like Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and Aldous Huxley.

Robert Stone counts promises and peoples' failure to keep them, what we chose to perceive in others and how that perception can be deceptive, and the difficulty of behaving decently as themes of his novels. He describes himself as a "writer of his times," and his work often addresses topical issues. His latest novel is "Children of Light."