Allen Ginsberg stood up in a San Francisco gallery in 1955 and read Howl, a poem that put the Beat Generation on the map and landed its publisher in court on obscenity charges. For the next four decades, Ginsberg was the public face of American literary rebellion.

This episode follows him from his early life in Paterson, New Jersey, through the Six Gallery reading, the obscenity trial, and his later years as a countercultural elder statesman and unlikely member of the literary establishment.

• The Six Gallery reading that launched the Beat movement
• The Howl obscenity trial and its impact on free speech in America
• His relationship with Peter Orlovsky and Neal Cassady
• How he bridged the Beats, the hippies, and the punk generation