60 minSeason 1 • Episode 10
LatestAmerican culture changed fundamentally from the beginning to the end of the 1960s as the tastes, morals, and politics of the Baby Boomer generation came to define America. Jann Wenner, Grace Slick, David Wild, Leonard Steinhorn, Tom Wolfe, Douglas Brinkley, Tom Hanks, and more describe how beatniks, Haight-Ashbury, Andy Warhol, Timothy Leary, hippies, and Hell’s Angels became counter-cultural touchstones that still resonate today.
The space race, the cold war, "free love," civil rights and more: The decade of the 1960s shaped our history -- and changed the world. In collaboration with Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, CNN explores perhaps the most transformative decade of the modern era in a 10-part documentary series and brings new insights into how those events shaped today.
Production
Tom Hanks' narration makes CNN history feel like cinematic event.
Editing
Seamless weave of Cronkite footage and modern perspective.
Writing
Balances heroic narrative with uncomfortable truths.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Hanks and Goetzman spent three years licensing footage from over 50 archives, including Soviet state television rarely seen in Western docs.
The series premiered in 2014, exactly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act — timing that CNN marketed heavily, though some critics called it 'commemoration over investigation.'
US
