How gang violence is American violence: it shows alienation at all social levels
‘We do have this mounting violence in us.’
The enigmatic and wildly influential US journalist Hunter S Thompson first broke into the mainstream with his 1966 book Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs – a two-year-long insider’s view of the notorious California motorcycle gang. Given new life in PBS’s animated Blank on Blank series, this prescient 1967 interview by Studs Terkel finds Thompson describing how disaffection and unemployment spurred by changes in technology and the economy helped to create a wave of paranoia, alienation and violence among displaced Americans following the Second World War.
Director: Patrick Smith
Producer: David Gerlach

videoHistory
In Stalin’s home city in Georgia, generations clash over his legacy
20 minutes

videoHistory
In the face of denial, this film uncovers the hidden scars of Indonesia’s 1998 riots
21 minutes

videoSocial psychology
What happened when a crypto scam swept over a sleepy town in the Caucasus
18 minutes

videoValues and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes

videoHistory
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes

videoWar and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes

videoFairness and equality
‘To my old master’ – a freed slave answers the request to return to his old plantation
7 minutes

videoInformation and communication
‘Astonished and somewhat terrified’ – Victorians’ reactions to the phonograph
36 minutes

videoVirtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes