This week, we’re dropping a bonus episode of Breaking History—a follow-up to last week’s installment about how I see Socrates as the first punk rocker. What follows is an excerpt from my conversation with Reason’s editor-at-large and resident punk obsessive Nick Gillespie, who dives even deeper into the idea. Punk isn’t just a genre or a fashion or the sound of three chords played very, very fast. It’s an instinct—one that’s been shaping America long before CBGB reeked of cigarette smoke and cheap beer.
Together, we trace that instinct across centuries: from the political pamphlets of Thomas Paine to the free-speech battles at Berkeley, from Bob Dylan going electric to Steve Jobs designing a computer that flipped the world upside down. Punk, in other words, didn’t die when the Lower East Side cleaned up. It mutated. It went corporate. It went digital. And it never stopped being a thorn in the side of power.
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