The Hippies Impact on Now - SOUL Listens: S.F.S.U.’s Professor Peter Richardson
Channel: SOUL Documentary
Date: 10/08/2021

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S.O.U.L. Listens to, S.F.S.U.’s Professor Peter Richardson at Northwestern University’s Counterculture Conference  

Professor Richardson and S.O.U.L.’s Evan Hirsch discuss the many contributions modern society owes the Counterculture. In this perspective expanding interview Professor Richardson shares how the counterculture’s influences can be seen today in everything from recycling and organic foods, to cannabis legalization and ending the war on drugs, as well numerous other areas of human civilization the world over today. This despite being maligned and marginalized then, and still today. As an example the Hippies were scorned and scoffed at for their beliefs that capitalism would ultimately lead to humanity’s downfall, and yet these are the same conclusion a study by MIT, titled the Limits of Growth, came to 1972. Where their research concluded that capitalism’s philosophy of unlimited growth would lead to the complete collapse of human civilization by 2040. (As a side note: a recent Harvard study found the research done by MIT was spot on, and that mankind is way ahead of that 204O date.) Maybe there was more to the Counterculture and the Hippies than sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll after all?

Professor Richardson Bio:
Peter Richardson coordinates the American Studies and California Studies programs at San Francisco State Univerity.

Dr. Richardson has written critically acclaimed books about the Grateful Dead, Ramparts magazine, and Carey McWilliams, the prolific Los Angeles author who also edited The Nation magazine from 1955 to 1975. His work has appeared in the print or online editions of the New York Times, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle, and other outlets. A frequent book reviewer, he received the National Entertainment Journalism Award for Online Criticism in 2013. 
After receiving his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Richardson became an assistant professor at the University of North Texas, where he received tenure in 1997. Two years later, he returned to the Bay Area to join the Public Policy Institute of California. For five years, he edited policy reports on the state’s governance, economy, and population. In 2005, he became the founding editorial director at PoliPoint Press, which published trade books on progressive politics and current affairs. After it closed, he served as the economics editor at the University of California Press.

In 2015, Dr. Richardson returned to full-time teaching in the School of Humanities and Liberal Studies. Most of his classes focus on California culture, and he has appeared in several documentary films and podcasts on related topics. Heavily involved with the Bay Area Book Festival since its inception, he also chaired the California Studies Association and continues to serve on its steering committee.
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2017 was the 50th Anniversary of the historic Summer of Love in San Francisco, and S.O.U.L. was invited to document the examination of the social and historical implications of that pivotal period at this first-of-its-kind academic conference hosted by Northwestern University’s Center for Civic Engagement and the California Historical Society.

This three-day, interdisciplinary academic conference celebrated and reexamined the Summer of Love and its associated events, contexts, and implications. The conference’s major theme was community; exploring how that idea and reality was renewed, explored, interrogated, and reimagined in a multiplicity of ways during the Summer of Love. Broad divisions of that theme include building community; portraying community; analyzing community; healing community; and envisioning community; through a wide variety of means and mechanisms, from activism to the arts, from esotericism to drugs.

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S.O.U.L. Listens:
Spend a relaxing day expanding your mind with S.O.U.L., as luminaries share their visions for what is possible when we shift our value system to one that supports our thriving. 

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S.O.U.L. is a team of content creators whose purpose is to help inspire and guide our conscious evolution through educational videos, documentaries, and music.

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