Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here. Just a few gen xers hanging
Speaker 2: doing our thing, being too cool for you, drinking mountain
Speaker 2: dew code red and that's it.
Speaker 3: Wow, look at you on fire already.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that. I could have done a
Speaker 2: lot better, but that was off the dome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but well, off the dome, that's probably a millennial
Speaker 1: or gen Z saying I got that from you, Well,
Speaker 1: I got that from Nol. Oh.
Speaker 2: Well, Nole's definitely a millennial. Yeah, he is a millennial
Speaker 2: through and through. As we'll see what the birth cohort
Speaker 2: that Nol and every one of his age cohort was
Speaker 2: born into are exactly alike, and they're different from everybody
Speaker 2: older and younger. And it's pure science that's proven that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the way, we're talking about Noel co host
Speaker 1: obviously of stuff they don't want you to know, among
Speaker 1: other great things that he's done, including former.
Speaker 3: Mini movie Crush co host.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't know if you were going to say
Speaker 2: that for a second. I was going to jump in
Speaker 2: and be like, uh, don't forget Movie Crush.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he hosted those minis with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, Andy was he produced him too, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he produced him for a while, and then I
Speaker 1: think Noel even took the reins and hosted two great
Speaker 1: episodes by himself. If anyone as a fan of John
Speaker 1: Cameron Mitchell, Oh yeah, Kesha?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, like Kesha was on Yeah.
Speaker 3: Two of the bigger gets on Movie Crush were nol episodes.
Speaker 2: Wow, what was Kesha's favorite movie?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm pretty great at remembering all of the
Speaker 1: guests that I had, but I don't. I don't remember
Speaker 1: Kesha or John Cameron Mitchell's.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well we'll look it up someday.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was something great.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember when Noel, when you made him producer, he
Speaker 2: let that go to his head. He started wearing like
Speaker 2: pastel blazers with the sleeves rolled up, and he was
Speaker 2: always like sniffing and like touching his nose. He was
Speaker 2: Uber producer for a while.
Speaker 3: He got an ascot, which was a little much, but.
Speaker 2: It started hanging with Bronson Pincho. So we're talking today
Speaker 2: about generations. That's why I mentioned that we're all Generation X,
Speaker 2: and I was being facetious earlier when I said this
Speaker 2: is all proven by science. Apparently it's not at all
Speaker 2: proven by science. It's really not particularly scientific. And the
Speaker 2: whole thing, actually, when you start to dig into it,
Speaker 2: was this sociological almost intellectual debate that got somehow manhandled
Speaker 2: and taken over by marketing who now use it to
Speaker 2: make money. Essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, see what I found interesting about this and I
Speaker 1: commissioned this one because it just the whole idea of
Speaker 1: generations fascinates me. But you know, you'll hear us say
Speaker 1: things like, well, it's all it was all a marketing
Speaker 1: thing basically to sell people stuff, and it's really people
Speaker 1: feel commonalities or there are commonalities and people around the
Speaker 1: same age because of these reasons. But that's also sort
Speaker 1: of being a part of the generation that you're dubbed.
Speaker 2: Right, there are actual, like decent explanations that sociologists have
Speaker 2: come up with, but they're not. The problem is is
Speaker 2: that you can't paint an entire group of people with
Speaker 2: that same brush, and that's what people try to do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then also those same market researchers that always hype
Speaker 2: and their generational researchers, even though they're not really scientists.
Speaker 2: They're market researchers. If they it would be so much
Speaker 2: more honest if they were, like, here's what a lot
Speaker 2: of kids, the cool kids are into today, start selling
Speaker 2: to them like that, not like this entire generation is
Speaker 2: like this specific group of well to do, white suburban
Speaker 2: kids essentially exactly. But it's so interesting to talk about,
Speaker 2: So let's talk about it a little bit, because there
Speaker 2: are generations that seem to have really like are paying
Speaker 2: attention to them? Really kind of started in the beginning
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century. That's when people started thinking about
Speaker 2: this kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So we're going to kind of go through since they've
Speaker 1: been dubbing generation specific generations here in the United States,
Speaker 1: we're going to go through them to begin with. And
Speaker 1: I think it's a good just sort of primer for
Speaker 1: when you're hanging out and talking about this kind of
Speaker 1: thing with other people. You'll know all this stuff. Because
Speaker 1: there was one or two that slipped in there that
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot about, like the Lost Generation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the first one, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they were born between eighteen eighty three and nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2: They came of age during World War One, which was
Speaker 2: like a massive catastrophe for the entire world for everyone,
Speaker 2: Like nothing had ever happened like that before in the
Speaker 2: history of humanity. Yeah, it was just a really big deal.
Speaker 2: And this was the group that came of age during
Speaker 2: that time, and they're called the Lost Generation. Gertrude Stein
Speaker 2: called them that. But there's they had a loss of
Speaker 2: friends and family to death in the war, loss of
Speaker 2: limbs to land mines, loss of faith and institutions and
Speaker 2: the traditional values that got everybody to World War One.
Speaker 2: It was a big deal, and those kids were the
Speaker 2: ones who went on to become the rebellious jazz age people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm glad we're saying where these came from,
Speaker 1: because that was one of the big kind of curiosities
Speaker 1: I had, was like, who even thinks of these names?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And in most of these cases we can trace it
Speaker 1: back to when a person said it first, like in print.
Speaker 1: Usually that doesn't mean they're the people who dreamed it up, sure,
Speaker 1: but specifically in this case, it was from the book
Speaker 1: The Sun Also Rises, and the epigraph Earnest Hymmingway quoted
Speaker 1: Stein saying, you are all a lost generation. So it
Speaker 1: looked that one looks pretty clear cut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the next sentence was too bad, So sad. Your dad,
Speaker 2: Hemingway had a way of turning a phrase. Yeah, who
Speaker 2: was next, Chuck? Who was after the Lost Generation?
Speaker 1: Well, the Greatest Generation from nineteen oh one to nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven. Yeah, and you're also going to notice that
Speaker 1: the years are going to fluctuate a little bit, because
Speaker 1: there's not a set science to any of this. As
Speaker 1: you said, even though there's this one dude that will
Speaker 1: learn later is like, we should just make it fifteen
Speaker 1: years moving forward.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, because the first show one was seventeen years
Speaker 2: and then this one's twenty six years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. This is obviously the generation. I guess it
Speaker 1: would be like our grandparents who lived through the Great
Speaker 1: Depression and were, you know, defended freedom against the Nazis
Speaker 1: in World War Two.
Speaker 3: And this is.
Speaker 1: One name wise that came about. The name came about
Speaker 1: much later. Well, I'll go ahead and say who ended
Speaker 1: up naming it, and then maybe you can take what
Speaker 1: the original name was. But Tom Brokaw wrote the book
Speaker 1: The Greatest Generation, and that was nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 1: that really took off and kind of stuck.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was a big deal. I remember when
Speaker 2: that came out. I can hear Tom Brokaw saying I
Speaker 2: can't do an impression of it, but I can hear
Speaker 2: him saying it and talking about it. But essentially he
Speaker 2: wrote this book about just profiling different veterans, I think,
Speaker 2: mostly everyday people, and essentially collectively said like, these are
Speaker 2: the people who grew up in the depression. They faced
Speaker 2: genuine deprivation in many many cases collectively too. And then
Speaker 2: they went on and were called to like, go fight
Speaker 2: the Nazis in World War Two, Right, so there's nobody before.
Speaker 2: Since that's done this kind of stuff, hats off to you,
Speaker 2: greatest generation. And they sat back and were like, we'll
Speaker 2: take this, sure, keep going, bro Caw.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: And since you didn't do what I set you up
Speaker 1: to do, I'll do that part. They were not always
Speaker 1: the greatest generation. There were these two generational theorists, theorists
Speaker 1: or theorists, Neil Howe and William Strauss, and they actually
Speaker 1: coined the term millennial, but they had previously labeled that
Speaker 1: generation the GI generation, the greatest generation. And then Brokaw
Speaker 1: came along. I used to do a bro call weirdly
Speaker 1: can you try now, I don't remember. It was more
Speaker 1: about cadence than the actual voice, because he always sounded
Speaker 1: like he was just out of breath or something like that.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: It was a breathing thing for him. It always felt
Speaker 1: like he was just about to inhale, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: quite get there, which is sad.
Speaker 2: Enough of that GI generation though, stuff or the GI
Speaker 2: generation I said it wrong. Let's get back to brokawn
Speaker 2: his book.
Speaker 3: I mean, what do you need to know?
Speaker 2: It was a huge book, came out in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I already said that.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, kit, I just wanted to make sure all
Speaker 2: of our teas were crossed and our eyes were dotted.
Speaker 3: Sure we could say it the third time, if that
Speaker 3: really you know, if you want to drive book sales.
Speaker 2: Hit it up.
Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety eight. Everybody very nice, still, dear.
Speaker 2: So let's move on to the next generation. This is
Speaker 2: called the Silent generation. This is where my dad was born.
Speaker 2: And he actually fits this bill pretty well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think my mom I can't remember the year, but
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure she was this silent generation as well.
Speaker 2: It makes sense. We're we're of that age that would
Speaker 2: that would make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just on the cusp of boomerdom. But
Speaker 1: silent Generation is I guess maybe so dubbed because they're
Speaker 1: between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, who got
Speaker 1: way more attention, and the Silent Generation was just sort
Speaker 1: of wedge there and like kind of quietly wedged there
Speaker 1: in the middle doing their thing.
Speaker 2: Yes. Also though they I guess the whole thing comes
Speaker 2: from a Time article or essay written in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: one anonymously weirdly, I guess, because this person was criticizing
Speaker 2: their own generation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe, but.
Speaker 2: They said they called them the silent generation. They said,
Speaker 2: it does not issue manifestos, make speeches or carry posters.
Speaker 2: It has been called the silent generation. And I think
Speaker 2: they mean by me, and like they were just basically saying,
Speaker 2: like that, our parents did all this amazing stuff and
Speaker 2: we're just we don't do anything. We're the silent generation.
Speaker 2: So that makes sense. And then also I guess the
Speaker 2: silent generation describes them. They're supposed to be cautious conformist.
Speaker 2: That's another reason they're called the silent generation. So that's
Speaker 2: you know, I guess it all kind of adds up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But again there.
Speaker 1: You know, I think Dave put this together and he
Speaker 1: points out, you know, Andy Warhol and Nina Simone and
Speaker 1: Gloria Steinem and Bob Dylan were all from this generation.
Speaker 1: So that's where the generation thin kind of falls apart
Speaker 1: a little bit, because you can always pick out individuals
Speaker 1: and say, well, they're nothing like they're categorized.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, that's definitely going to be a recurring
Speaker 2: theme in here. Yeah. I saw there's this New York
Speaker 2: article by Lewis Minard It's time to stop talking about
Speaker 2: generations where he says essentially all of the most important
Speaker 2: figures in like the Flower Power, anti War sixties hippie movement,
Speaker 2: almost all of them were from the Silent generation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, like almost one of the people who were
Speaker 2: the important figures driving this were actually Baby Boomers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, of course that's an X from forty six to
Speaker 1: sixty four, pretty wide swath there. And this they have
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting distinction is they're actually recognized by the
Speaker 1: US Census Bureau, the only generation to be kind of
Speaker 1: independently recognized, and they're the Baby Boomers. I think everyone
Speaker 1: knows this because there was a big baby boom after
Speaker 1: World War two, And this isn't something that was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: the media just got a hold of it, like there
Speaker 1: were a ton of babies born after World War Two.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty five, there were two point nine million,
Speaker 1: went to three point four the next year, and by
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four they peaked. Oh actually they peaked in
Speaker 1: fifty seven with four point three but sixty four was
Speaker 1: the last year in the United States, which is kind
Speaker 1: of crazy to think about with more than four million births.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, which is strange because I think the
Speaker 2: millennials didn't they have more than the boomers, or where
Speaker 2: they just barely second. Maybe they were second. Regardless, that
Speaker 2: is quite a baby boom. I think it's a fit.
Speaker 2: It's an apt Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are more millennials living millennials now, but
Speaker 1: I think that's just because the boomer die off.
Speaker 2: Gotcha. Okay, So there's we talked about this before. I
Speaker 2: don't remember when. Oh you know what, we did a
Speaker 2: whole episode on baby boomers. So I guarantee it was
Speaker 2: in that, did we Yeah we did. Huh. I think
Speaker 2: it was called Leave the Boomers Alone. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, all right, I don't think that's what it
Speaker 2: was called. I think we called it how baby Boomers work,
Speaker 2: because I don't think we were in that mindset.
Speaker 3: I think it was give them hell, right.
Speaker 2: But there's like a whole the later section of boomers,
Speaker 2: because it's like a twenty year basically like eighteen year group. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot changed in between the sixties and the seventies,
Speaker 2: and the ones that were born later on in the
Speaker 2: Baby boom who grew up in the seventies had a
Speaker 2: much different formative age than the older boomers who came
Speaker 2: before them and were like dropping acid and everything. These
Speaker 2: are the people faced with like America becoming super cynical.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, my sister is six years older than me,
Speaker 1: and she's a year she was sixty five, so she
Speaker 1: was a year off from being quote unquote boomer and
Speaker 1: she's I mean, she's solid Generation X if you ask me, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another problem too. What about people on the CUSP,
Speaker 2: like xennials.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean supposedly CUSP cus born people identify with
Speaker 1: both to a certain degree, but I don't know. My
Speaker 1: sister doesn't have much boomer in her right.
Speaker 2: Right, So that group that your sister just barely missed
Speaker 2: the second half of the Baby Boomers. They have been
Speaker 2: dubbed Generation Jones by an author named Jonathan Pontel and Jones.
Speaker 2: He basically said that he dubbed them that because they're
Speaker 2: a large anonymous generation. That makes sense. Jones is kind
Speaker 2: of a common last name in the United States. That's
Speaker 2: another thing too, we should say generations. The other reason
Speaker 2: why they seem kind of flibbertigibty is because we're talking
Speaker 2: almost exclusively about the United States here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course at.
Speaker 2: The most, the Western English speaking Western world at the most. Right,
Speaker 2: So it's a large anonymous generation Jones or this one's
Speaker 2: so weird that they they are the generation that's jones
Speaker 2: in after their unfulfilled expectations. They're jones in for meaning
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 3: I thought it might have been keeping up with the Joneses.
Speaker 2: That's another one too, But it's almost like every time
Speaker 2: he said one of these, he was like, h what
Speaker 2: do you think of that one?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Testing the waters for sure? Who's up next, Chuck? Would
Speaker 2: you you say the best is up next?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, here's the deal, man.
Speaker 1: I feel like gen X is very much bordering these
Speaker 1: days on being labeled as obnoxious about how much we
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 3: How awesome we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 3: I think we're kind of tipping the scales in the
Speaker 3: wrong direction.
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna tout the benefits of being gen
Speaker 1: X because we've talked about it before.
Speaker 2: Well, also, that's like that is that's super gen x
Speaker 2: to just be like, well, we're treading into uncool waters here.
Speaker 2: We better cool.
Speaker 3: You're totally right. I don't even think about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's as gen x as it gets.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's one of the thing things about
Speaker 1: gen X is we supposedly shunned and we did labels
Speaker 1: and were very sort of jaded and cynical and anti corporate.
Speaker 1: Obviously we think of the grunge era of the nineties
Speaker 1: and rejecting capitalism and stuff like that. Before a lot
Speaker 1: of them became capitalists. But there are still, you know,
Speaker 1: plenty of gen X true and true through and through
Speaker 1: both of those who are still like that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've seen that great Netflix documentary The Secret
Speaker 1: Mall Apartment.
Speaker 3: Have you seen that?
Speaker 2: No? That sounds great, Yeah, And it's.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty well known story that these gen xers
Speaker 1: built an apartment inside the guts of a shopping mall
Speaker 1: where they weren't found.
Speaker 3: M H highly recommend it. It was a pretty cool story.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about it kind of years later when
Speaker 1: it was I guess got a little more media attention.
Speaker 1: But the documentary is really good. But it could have
Speaker 1: been called ode to gen X because all of these people.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, this was these were my people.
Speaker 1: This like I could have seen my friends doing something
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty creative breaking the rules but also not really
Speaker 2: doing anything that's genuinely anti social necessarily.
Speaker 3: Yeah, breaking rules without causing harm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Shock. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: We got our name Generation Next did from the Douglas
Speaker 2: Copeland book Generation X Colon Tales for an Accelerated Culture,
Speaker 2: which is a great read or everyone to read it.
Speaker 2: Copeland apparently one time said he named it after the
Speaker 2: Billy Idol Billy Idol's original band X.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then he later took it back and said he got
Speaker 2: it from an obscure sociology book and that in the
Speaker 2: book it was a reference to a group that the
Speaker 2: sociologist labeled X, and this group wanted to basically exit
Speaker 2: the traditional American class pursuits and I guess preoccupations like
Speaker 2: didn't want to have anything to do with that, so
Speaker 2: he thought that was kind of a good name for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think X has long been a stand in,
Speaker 1: whether it's Malcolm X or just signing your name with
Speaker 1: the X when you don't want to put your signature
Speaker 1: is just sort of a almost active civil disobedience of like,
Speaker 1: I don't this is not me, this is not my label.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to put an X here.
Speaker 2: Are you allowed to do that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if it's legal, but that
Speaker 1: was always I mean I think it initially it was
Speaker 1: like if you did if you couldn't write, you would
Speaker 1: sign your name with an X as well.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: So maybe the gen xers are being ironic when they're
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 1: Maybe, But gen x is better than Babybusters, which was
Speaker 1: the original idea for our name, because after the post
Speaker 1: war baby boom, birth rates dropped a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a terrible name. I also saw, just like
Speaker 2: the Baby Boomers were divided into a couple of groups.
Speaker 2: I saw the older Gen Xers are called the Atari Wave,
Speaker 2: the later Gen Xers are called the Nintendo Wave. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that makes sense, And then carrying it on the Zennials,
Speaker 2: the ones who are on the cusp between Generation X
Speaker 2: and Millennials. They're also called elder Millennials. They're called the
Speaker 2: Oregon Trail Wave.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: I thought we could get through all these before our break,
Speaker 1: but there's still several generations to go, so maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a break and hit up the millennials after this.
Speaker 2: Let's break it up, all right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 4: That is Josh, I'm Chuck. When you came along and
Speaker 4: it was like, yeah, well we were work pals, all right.
Speaker 2: Now we're on the millennials. I feel like this is
Speaker 2: a a great generation if you ask me, Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: Maybe not the greatest, but they're a great generations. They
Speaker 2: put up with a lot more than our generation, and
Speaker 2: more than Gen Z and Gen Alpha. I think they
Speaker 2: just had they took the brunt of recent history and
Speaker 2: they've just kind of plodded along and been like, fine,
Speaker 2: we'll be the ones. That's fine. You know, they haven't
Speaker 2: complained too much. Well, I should say they stopped complaining.
Speaker 2: They used to complain a lot, and now they've just
Speaker 2: kind of grown into this respectable and I think self
Speaker 2: respecting group. As a whole, if generations were.
Speaker 3: Real, Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: That's people were born from eighty one to ninety six,
Speaker 1: and again there's a pretty big difference between And you
Speaker 1: can say this for a lot of the generations obviously,
Speaker 1: but you know, the ones that were on the cusp
Speaker 1: of either end. I think millennials may be the most
Speaker 1: pronounced as far as how different people born in eighty
Speaker 1: one and people born in ninety six are. But that
Speaker 1: might just be me, you know, in my brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think especially if you're coming of age
Speaker 2: in the time before computers or the time when computers
Speaker 2: are starting to be a thing. Yeah, yeah, that is
Speaker 2: definitely I mean, that's a pretty big dividing line for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: I think those elder millennials too. Yeah, I think there's
Speaker 2: something to say about straddling that line. I think it's
Speaker 2: a cool. It's just a neat thing to be able
Speaker 2: to have experience in both of those completely different realms
Speaker 2: of technological development. But even more than that, I saw
Speaker 2: that millennials are divided between whether as a younger person
Speaker 2: they watch say by the Bell or say by the
Speaker 2: bell at college years.
Speaker 1: Well, there's definitely a thing you know, we ran wild
Speaker 1: in the streets and knocked on doors and called people
Speaker 1: on the phone. But were also can understand young enough
Speaker 1: to understand all the tech that we're explaining to our
Speaker 1: parents and grandparents. But I think elder millennials definitely sort
Speaker 1: of identify with that life as well. They were first
Speaker 1: dubbed the Echo boomers. Obviously it's the children of boomers.
Speaker 1: They created a little bit of a baby bump on
Speaker 1: the population charts, and like I said, they're the largest
Speaker 1: living generation right now. They took over in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: took over the boomers at seventy two million millennials in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just a little bleak note on that statistic.
Speaker 2: It wasn't because they kept being born up to twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They were originally Generation Why, or at least that was
Speaker 1: the early consideration.
Speaker 3: At editors at ad age.
Speaker 1: And as you'll see, there's a lot of marketing people
Speaker 1: that have their thumbs in the spy, but they were
Speaker 1: the ones that were going to trying to call them
Speaker 1: Generation hy as like a more extreme Generation X. But
Speaker 1: our buddies Neil Howe and William Strauss again. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, they published a book called Generations Colon the
Speaker 1: History of America's Future fifteen eighty four to twenty sixty nine,
Speaker 1: and that's where they came up with the Millennial generation.
Speaker 1: For pretty obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: You left out the comma. There's a colon and a
Speaker 2: comma in there.
Speaker 3: There is, Yeah, there's a comma after America's Future.
Speaker 2: You're right, So we need a jingle for commas, the
Speaker 2: rare comma.
Speaker 3: You know. They should have finished it off with fifteen
Speaker 3: eighty four to twenty sixty nine an exclamation boy, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right.
Speaker 2: And then the zero in twenty sixty nine is the
Speaker 2: ampersand let's just trip it going the what's the one
Speaker 2: in fifteen eighty four?
Speaker 1: Has it got to be punctuation? Because the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought of was an eye with a heart above it.
Speaker 1: That's an eye.
Speaker 2: Though they can actually program anything they want to into
Speaker 2: a keyboard. I found that out when Prince changed his
Speaker 2: name to a symbol the artist formerly known.
Speaker 3: As Prince, and you could type that.
Speaker 2: Yes. They sent it out to all of the media,
Speaker 2: impressed to basically insert it into their font catalog, so
Speaker 2: they can do that.
Speaker 3: That was pretty funny.
Speaker 2: They can make an eye with a heart above it
Speaker 2: if you want them to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I said, I think it's pretty obvious,
Speaker 1: but we'll say it out loud. It is the first
Speaker 1: generation to be the first to graduate high school after
Speaker 1: the year two thousand right there.
Speaker 2: And sorry, I realized I'm being a little squarely today
Speaker 2: that you keep setting me up, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: let's talk about this instead.
Speaker 3: That's a right.
Speaker 2: So the other thing about it, I think the reason
Speaker 2: why Millennials stuck and overtook Generation Why, which I fully
Speaker 2: remember that was really close to being that generation's name,
Speaker 2: and I'm really glad it turned into Millennials. It has
Speaker 2: like an optimistic kind of hopeful feel to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: One of the things that characterized Millennials as far as
Speaker 2: generation researchers go, is that they came of age during
Speaker 2: nine eleven as young kids. That was an enormous thing
Speaker 2: to learn at a young age that things like that
Speaker 2: can happen in the world, and that an entire culture
Speaker 2: can lose its innocence in like one morning. And then
Speaker 2: also as they started to enter the workforce. They got
Speaker 2: smacked with the Great Recession and couldn't find a job
Speaker 2: for five years, and they were the first generation to
Speaker 2: start moving back in with their parents because they had to.
Speaker 2: So who's up next, Chuck? After Millennials?
Speaker 1: Well, everybody knows gen Z. They're staring at you silently
Speaker 1: but not judging. I don't think, or maybe they are
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven to twenty twelve. The reason is gen
Speaker 1: Z is just from when it was supposedly going to
Speaker 1: be jen Y before them, lower case I was going
Speaker 1: to be the initial name because of obvious reasons.
Speaker 3: Again for you know, Apple stuff.
Speaker 2: There was the first one.
Speaker 1: Digital natives is what they say that we're literally all
Speaker 1: born and raised in the Internet age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like eye Jen that could have been good.
Speaker 2: I'm sure Apple was like, yeah, let's call him that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's sue everybody as well.
Speaker 2: Right. They were also almost called Generation K, which this
Speaker 2: is astonishing to me. Yeah, the K is for the
Speaker 2: K and Catonus Everdeen from the Hunger Games.
Speaker 3: Who thought of that? I mean, I had to be
Speaker 3: the movie studio that made.
Speaker 2: That, right, Probably probably were a publicists they secretly hired.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the reason why is because it's just such
Speaker 2: almost a dystopian era that these kids are are growing
Speaker 2: up in or grew up in. Yeah, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: but still, first of all, you don't want to name
Speaker 2: an entire generation after the doomiest thing you can think of. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want to kind of have at least it's some
Speaker 2: sort of a positive spin on it. And we'll see
Speaker 2: why it matters in a minute. Yeah, what about Generation CE.
Speaker 2: Surely that's got to be upbeat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Generation COVID or coronavirus. That was a consideration for
Speaker 1: a little while as well. Luckily that didn't make it,
Speaker 1: and we got jen Z, who was known for what
Speaker 1: Dave calls quote being extremely online. Yeah, as opposed to
Speaker 1: just online a lot, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They're also known for curating their online images. They
Speaker 2: were the first to really start paying attention to this.
Speaker 2: They also put a lot into a lot of stock
Speaker 2: into being authentic and socially conscious. They're also on the
Speaker 2: negative side, frequently called coddled and titled snowflakes that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. Again, all of this stuff, you're like, yep,
Speaker 2: totally totally, one hundred percent to stop for a second
Speaker 2: and remember you're talking about millions of people from all
Speaker 2: walks of life. They're all coddled, they're all snowflakes, they're
Speaker 2: all entitled. Like, think about what that's actually saying, right, So,
Speaker 2: and the idea is that this is all made up.
Speaker 2: So you just got to remember that because what was
Speaker 2: just cut into the chase real quick, right now, there's
Speaker 2: like a real harm that can be done, yeh in
Speaker 2: calling entire groups of kids, or dismissing entire groups of
Speaker 2: people as snowflakes or woke or whatever kind of hate
Speaker 2: that word, or.
Speaker 1: You could barely even say it even sounded funny coming
Speaker 1: out of your mouth, right Like.
Speaker 2: You can even deride their you know, focus on authenticity
Speaker 2: or whatever. You can take any of these in turn
Speaker 2: it negative, and that harms the group that you're talking about,
Speaker 2: but it also makes that group present you. Yeah, probably
Speaker 2: the older person who's criticizing them and what they care
Speaker 2: about and what they're interested in because you weren't or
Speaker 2: it doesn't make sense to you and your values that
Speaker 2: there is actual individual harm, but also more importantly, a
Speaker 2: social harm that can be done because it allows for
Speaker 2: essentially a socially acceptable form of discrimination, which is agism.
Speaker 2: Whether it's going upward in age or downward in age,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. It's still as harmful. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It gives somebody permission to do something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh. And it's no different if you're if you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, You're not like other gen zs. You're
Speaker 1: you're the real deal. You're not like an entitled little snowflake.
Speaker 1: Like just stop. That's that's even worse almost.
Speaker 2: It is stop being the uncle at Thanksgiving. Just stop.
Speaker 2: But simultaneously stop being the millennial who says like okay, boomer,
Speaker 2: although I know no one says that anymore. But that
Speaker 2: was harmful too, even though it's totally accurate.
Speaker 1: Interesting thing about gen Zuh, they found some research on
Speaker 1: some of the politics.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a survey on gender, and fifty three percent
Speaker 1: of Gen Z women apparently describe themselves as feminists, compared
Speaker 1: to only thirty two percent of Gen Z men, which
Speaker 1: is the largest gap I believe, I don't know about
Speaker 1: of any generation. That's a twenty one point gap compared
Speaker 1: to an eight percent gap same question for Gen X.
Speaker 3: What I thought was super interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very concerning too, And that's legitimate because they're
Speaker 2: they're using gen Z as just a shorthand for an
Speaker 2: actual age group that was legitimately surveyed. Yeah, so that
Speaker 2: is a that is a troubling value change in values.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, what's next?
Speaker 2: Next up, Chuck is the latest generation, not greatest latest
Speaker 2: who knows whether they're going to be great or not.
Speaker 2: History will tell us eventually. But that's Gen Alpha. And
Speaker 2: I think it's very reassuring that we were not on
Speaker 2: Gen Z anymore, because that's a little troublesome that you've
Speaker 2: reached the end of the alphabet as a group goes,
Speaker 2: like a population of human beings goes. Now we're back
Speaker 2: to alpha, and that's that's great. I'm glad for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and earlier when I mentioned there's some guy that
Speaker 1: wanted to say, let's just make it fifteen years moving forward.
Speaker 1: That's a guy named Mark mccrindall. He's an Australian social
Speaker 1: researcher and he is the one who coined generation alpha
Speaker 1: again just starting over after Z. And he said and
Speaker 1: also he saunds a little grumpy, he's like, and also,
Speaker 1: can we just make him Greek letters from now on?
Speaker 1: And let go jen beta after this?
Speaker 2: And everyone said, no, you're not the boss of us.
Speaker 2: We come up with our own willy nilly and we
Speaker 2: decide as a group what we like and what we
Speaker 2: don't like. So no, we'll go with your Jen Alpha
Speaker 2: for now, but don't get above your station. Mccrindall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's slow year roll, buddy, although it'll probably
Speaker 1: be Jim Beta, which would be kids born this year
Speaker 1: starting this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I predict it's not going to be Jim Beta. Chuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be. They'll start with that,
Speaker 2: and I think it'll be something else. I think humanity
Speaker 2: just wants to spite Mark mccrindall. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Beta such a negative connotation now, just from those
Speaker 1: alt right weirdos that you know, Beta male stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, plus also Beta Max knowing like that.
Speaker 3: Exactly Beta dine that stuff was the worst because that
Speaker 3: means you have a nasty.
Speaker 2: Cut, right or Beta fish they're always fighting the mirror.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wants a Beta fish boring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. It's sad for the Beta fish though,
Speaker 2: because their prizes at Tony Fairs very frequently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: So apparently Jen Alpha is even more online than gen Z,
Speaker 2: so much so that they don't even really realize. Well,
Speaker 2: they're also still pretty young right now. They're born between
Speaker 2: twenty ten and twenty twenty five. They're cut off. Just
Speaker 2: happened last year. They're not even aware that there is anything,
Speaker 2: that there's other stuff out there from.
Speaker 3: What Yeah, yeah, there's an alternative.
Speaker 2: Yes exactly, thank you. That like this is just what
Speaker 2: people do because that's, yeah, what they grew up doing,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of concern about what effects that's
Speaker 2: having on them. Gen Z. The big concern is social
Speaker 2: media and the devastating effect that can have on a
Speaker 2: developing mind. With gen Alfha, it's like all technology now
Speaker 2: is just gunning for those little tiny brains, and people
Speaker 2: are like, what's going to happen with this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, trust me, I'm a parent one, and I wonder sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's got to be so preposterously hard
Speaker 2: to raise a kid these days compared to thirty, forty
Speaker 2: fifty years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's more raising of a kid, if
Speaker 3: that's what you mean, like more active parenting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh definitely, for sure.
Speaker 1: What I think is weird and you know, I'm getting
Speaker 1: a little off track, but gen X was like we
Speaker 1: were wild in the streets and our parents ignored us,
Speaker 1: but we were the first helicopter parents. Yes, g not
Speaker 1: of course, but that was kind of where it came from.
Speaker 2: Right, gen z has turned out to be really weird
Speaker 2: and really weird as far as that goes compared to
Speaker 2: how we were raised and then how we're raising kids,
Speaker 2: our own kids. It's it is very surprising. It's a
Speaker 2: surprising turn of events if you ask me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess that stranger danger finally got through to us,
Speaker 2: but not until we were like forty.
Speaker 1: So this generation thing is, like we said, mainly made up.
Speaker 1: I mean, the term generation obviously comes from a biology
Speaker 1: and like when a parent has a kid, that offspring
Speaker 1: is the next generation. But as far as like generations goes,
Speaker 1: as we're talking about him, there was a sociologist I
Speaker 1: think kind of the first guy to write about this.
Speaker 1: His name was Carl Mannheim, and he wrote an essay
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties called The Problem of Generations, and
Speaker 1: he was just sort of trying to look at like
Speaker 1: how do groups of cohorts or groups of people change
Speaker 1: over time?
Speaker 3: And that's where.
Speaker 1: He and you know, he was in his book, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think generally when people talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1: They're talking a little less about like back then, the
Speaker 1: factory workers and farmers and a little more like intellectuals
Speaker 1: and writers and artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. Manheim was like, people who aren't
Speaker 2: like intellectual or artistic, they're probably not changing that much
Speaker 2: as a group over time, but tastes in art and
Speaker 2: culture change, you know, pretty distinctly over relatively short periods, decade,
Speaker 2: two decades, that kind of thing. He's like, why, And
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure other people have noticed this too,
Speaker 2: but Manheim was the first to stop and try to
Speaker 2: figure out what was going on. And what he came
Speaker 2: up with was essentially what most the average person believes
Speaker 2: generations come from today, average person on the street who
Speaker 2: thinks about this kind of stuff, and that is called
Speaker 2: the imprint hypothesis, and it essentially says that some event,
Speaker 2: some process, something big of historic proportions that happened during
Speaker 2: your formative years as a kid, made an impression on you,
Speaker 2: imprinted on you and made you kind of who you are,
Speaker 2: gave you your outlook on life. And because there was
Speaker 2: a whole other cohort of kids your same age, the
Speaker 2: same thing happened to them and that's why people within
Speaker 2: a generation resemble one another in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: especially with trends and values and outlooks and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we talked about all these as we've gone along,
Speaker 1: you know, the depression, COVID nine to eleven, all these things,
Speaker 1: those are generation shaping events, according to him, being imprinted
Speaker 1: with those.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: There are other sociologists that say, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: really outside.
Speaker 3: Events that's causing this stuff.
Speaker 1: It just sort of organically happens when groups of young
Speaker 1: people are all just hanging out and growing up together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a chicken or the egg situation, like
Speaker 2: does society change because new people grow up and like
Speaker 2: just change society because there's new people, new ways of thinking.
Speaker 2: Or do people change because society changes, like eg through
Speaker 2: COVID or the Challenger disaster or something like that, or
Speaker 2: the fall of the Berlin Wall that has these huge
Speaker 2: imprints on people. And there's actually a guy named Morris
Speaker 2: Massey who basically combine the two. He said, that's values
Speaker 2: that separate the generations. That that's really what it is,
Speaker 2: and that the reasons that the values are different among
Speaker 2: generations is because of that imprinting process. Happens to hit
Speaker 2: at a time when you are in a formative I
Speaker 2: guess a formative place where you're figuring out what your
Speaker 2: values are, and when that historic thing happens that helps
Speaker 2: shape your values. That same historic thing isn't going to
Speaker 2: have the same effect on older people because their values
Speaker 2: have already been shaped, but it will on that one generation.
Speaker 2: So that's essentially what his jam was. He was kind
Speaker 2: of merging everything for sure.
Speaker 1: You know, we promised talk of average because that's in marketing,
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of this comes from. And it
Speaker 1: does because no one really talked about this stuff until
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies when baby boomers were getting into their twenties.
Speaker 3: And you know, if you know anything about just.
Speaker 1: Marketing and selling things to people, that demographic of you know,
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty four is what they always say. But
Speaker 1: you know, basically, people are in their twenties is a
Speaker 1: big That's when you have money to spend, maybe for
Speaker 1: the first time, if you're you know, out from under
Speaker 1: the thumb of your family and your parents, and you've
Speaker 1: gotten your first job maybe or at least in the
Speaker 1: old days, you probably did, and so they want to
Speaker 1: sell to people They always have. They still do that
Speaker 1: are in their twenties, and those are also the people
Speaker 1: that are shaping the taste of generations and influencing people
Speaker 1: around them and age.
Speaker 3: And when the baby.
Speaker 1: Boomers were coming into their twenties and the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: companies went wild and they started doing all this sort
Speaker 1: of market generational market research that is a very big deal.
Speaker 1: I know this is an older stat but in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen they found out that American companies alone spent seventy
Speaker 1: million dollars just on generational consulting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those people that essentially who've made up generations or
Speaker 2: say that it happens every fifteen years or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, you want to take a break and come
Speaker 2: back and talk about some criticisms of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it. That is Josh, I'm Chuck.
Speaker 4: You came along and it was like, yeah, well we
Speaker 4: were work pals.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back talking more about generations and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some criticisms. In a second, we
Speaker 1: should say that, you know, obviously the media plays a
Speaker 1: part in all this. It's not all just like a
Speaker 1: marketing scam. But when the media picks up on these
Speaker 1: names especially, and you know, all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 1: people writing books and technically that's selling something, but that's
Speaker 1: that's producing a you know, your take, Like everyone's got
Speaker 1: their take on this stuff. So there's gonna be plenty
Speaker 1: of people writing books about all these generations, right, But
Speaker 1: the whole idea is like, is this even.
Speaker 3: A real thing at all?
Speaker 1: And sociologists look at three different effects that influence how
Speaker 1: people think and behave, and they're the life cycle effects,
Speaker 1: the period effects, and the cohort effects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the life cycle effects makes the most sense to me,
Speaker 2: and that you are likely to essentially not change your
Speaker 2: personality but change your outlook, your values, that kind of
Speaker 2: thing as you age, and so entire cohorts of people
Speaker 2: age generally the same, so they're all going through the
Speaker 2: same life stages at roughly the same time, so they
Speaker 2: like the baby boomers are a really pronounced example of this.
Speaker 2: When you're younger, you're more rebellious, you question the system,
Speaker 2: you want to change things, hence the sixties hippies. As
Speaker 2: you get a little older, you become much more materialistic,
Speaker 2: you become say, more grounded, you abandon your earlier idealism.
Speaker 2: In a lot of cases, the yuppies of the eighties,
Speaker 2: and then as you get older and kind of get
Speaker 2: put out to pasture, one of the ways that you
Speaker 2: can make yourself more relevant is to become politically active.
Speaker 2: Hence the older current today baby boomers. So like this,
Speaker 2: this whole idea is that we confuse that for generational effects,
Speaker 2: that people are actually just going through life stages together.
Speaker 1: On mass yeah exactly, or that you know, millennials were like,
Speaker 1: now we're not having babies, and we're moving to the suburbs,
Speaker 1: we're living in the city, and we're staying single or
Speaker 1: at least getting married and shunning kids.
Speaker 3: And while plenty of them did.
Speaker 1: And still do as they got a little bit older,
Speaker 1: and this is the life cycle effect, a lot of
Speaker 1: them did get those kids and families, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them did get the house in the suburbs.
Speaker 3: And it's just, you know, it's an age effect thing.
Speaker 2: Right, the same thing with period effects. It's basically saying, no,
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as generations where we confuse the
Speaker 2: generational effects or differences for actual period effects. And what
Speaker 2: that is is that those same historic events happen, but
Speaker 2: they impact like everybody. We just happened to focus on
Speaker 2: the group that it tends to impact the most, the
Speaker 2: younger generation, because again, they're going through a formative time.
Speaker 2: So COVID affected everybody in all sorts of very deep ways. Right,
Speaker 2: It affected like kids. People were preoccupied with kids because
Speaker 2: those kids, like basically had a whole year of very
Speaker 2: important schooling that they didn't get and that was a
Speaker 2: huge focus of society, and so that kind of became
Speaker 2: looked at, focused on, and kind of that was haung
Speaker 2: on that generation, whereas really everybody got affected by COVID
Speaker 2: in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And the last one cohort effects.
Speaker 1: I don't really see the difference and why this is
Speaker 1: even broken out between. It sounds just sort of like
Speaker 1: the other two combined in a way.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. That was that Morris mass you thing basically,
Speaker 2: and this is what we think of as generational effects,
Speaker 2: combination of life cycle and period effects producing groups where
Speaker 2: you are different from people who are older than you
Speaker 2: and different from people who are younger than you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's generational differences or generational effects. That's what people are saying, Like,
Speaker 2: that's no life cycle effects. Sure, period effects sure, cohort effects,
Speaker 2: we don't really think so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: As far as criticisms go, you know, we've lobbed a
Speaker 1: few out there as far as what generally people think,
Speaker 1: how they think critically about dividing people up like this.
Speaker 1: But one big problem is that you sort of touched
Speaker 1: on it earlier that these are really broad generalizations, but
Speaker 1: it's from small sample sizes. So the media has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with this how this plays out. And
Speaker 1: Dave makes a great point. If you're you know, when
Speaker 1: you talk about the nineteen sixties, like the first thing
Speaker 1: that comes to your mind is like woodstock and the
Speaker 1: hippies and sticking a daisy in the barrel of a rifle,
Speaker 1: And there were very few people like that if you
Speaker 1: look at like percentages and you base it on things
Speaker 1: like drug use and premarital sex and feelings like that,
Speaker 1: Like apparently almost ninety percent of Americans twenty somethings did
Speaker 1: not smoke pot in nineteen sixty nine, And if you
Speaker 1: look at movies and TV and the media, you think, like,
Speaker 1: kind of that was what everyone was doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like one hundred and twelve percent of right twenty
Speaker 2: some things in nineteen sixty nine exactly. And that's the thing,
Speaker 2: Like the media highlights the most extreme segment of the
Speaker 2: group of people, and that still happens today. The loudest
Speaker 2: people get the most attention, essentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Another big criticism is the when you and you touched
Speaker 1: on this a little bit too, Like when you group
Speaker 1: people up in these huge cohorts and say everyone's kind
Speaker 1: of like this, you're really really ignoring everything within that
Speaker 1: group of people, like all the little differences like oh,
Speaker 1: race and class and income and privilege and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And you really nailed it when you said, like when
Speaker 1: people talk about generations in broad terms like this, they're
Speaker 1: kind of talking because it's a marketing thing about like,
Speaker 1: you know, middle to upper class white America in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it ignores intersectionality essentially, which ironically is something that
Speaker 2: people say that gen Z is preoccupied with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although you know, there's I totally believe this is
Speaker 3: a thing.
Speaker 1: But I remember when I saw the movie Crooklynd, Spike
Speaker 1: Lee's great movie about his life growing up in the
Speaker 1: seventies in Brooklyn, New York. I remember watching that movie
Speaker 1: and being like, oh my god, that was my life
Speaker 1: growing up in suburban Atlanta in the nineteen seventies as
Speaker 1: a white kid, like, we're all the same.
Speaker 2: Okay, right, right, So there were similarities, he also had
Speaker 2: much He faced a lot of differences that you didn't
Speaker 2: face too, I'm sure, and vice versa. You guys have,
Speaker 2: for sure, But that's more of like a society was
Speaker 2: like that at that time. That's what parents in general
Speaker 2: were like, Okay, this is cool. It's what we're doing.
Speaker 2: There's let's just have latchkey kids. That's what we have
Speaker 2: to do because both parents are working now and we're
Speaker 2: still figuring it out. That's what society was doing. The
Speaker 2: question is did that have an impression on this whole
Speaker 2: group of kids the same way to make them unique
Speaker 2: in that way? That's what generations are saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the other criticisms you were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier is when you've given people permission to
Speaker 1: sort of drag and dunk on a whole generation for
Speaker 1: being like on your phone too long or addicted to
Speaker 1: your screens or this or that or snowflakes. If you
Speaker 1: dig down and look at actual statistics for some of
Speaker 1: this stuff, they found out and this doesn't surprise me
Speaker 1: at all. I've talked about the fact that baby boomers
Speaker 1: are on their phone, at least in my life, more
Speaker 1: than anyone I know. Sure, people sixty five and over
Speaker 1: average ten hours of screen time a day compared to
Speaker 1: seven hours a day for eighteen to thirty four year olds.
Speaker 3: And that is not just on your phone.
Speaker 1: That's also due, you know, somewhat to the fact that
Speaker 1: when you know, very sadly, when some people retire, they
Speaker 1: like start watching TV during the day, which is the
Speaker 1: death knell if you ask me, it is.
Speaker 2: You want to not watch TV during the day and
Speaker 2: not watching in bed at night?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I love watching TV in bed.
Speaker 2: I do too, But in hotels, oh.
Speaker 3: I love it. Mans nothing better than watching a movie
Speaker 3: in bed.
Speaker 2: What do you, Oh, you watch movies in bed?
Speaker 3: You don't watch whatever?
Speaker 2: You don't watch Jimmy Fallon, No.
Speaker 1: No, no, I don't watch any I mean, I love
Speaker 1: Jimmy Fallon, but I haven't watched late night talk shows
Speaker 1: since Conan left.
Speaker 2: Well that's a pretty good reason to stop. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think so, Chuck, you got anything else? Because I'm
Speaker 2: hoping you say no. I feel like this is a
Speaker 2: nice little package that we put together.
Speaker 3: Uh no, and that means long stuff is out.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Oh hea, no, no, no, sorry, how do we end
Speaker 3: this thing?
Speaker 2: We say it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: But instead of listener mail, we are going to reiterate
Speaker 1: that we are performing I believe tomorrow in Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: Isn't that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to be there April sixteenth. So if
Speaker 2: this comes out April fifteenth, you're right on the money.
Speaker 1: Now it's coming out on the fourteenth, so in two
Speaker 1: days we'll be in Madison.
Speaker 2: Either way, if you're in the Madison area, come see us,
Speaker 2: or in Chicago, come see us Akron. I think it's
Speaker 2: like too late because we basically have sold out Akron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta say Akron strong. That means a lot
Speaker 1: that Akron is one of our best selling cities on
Speaker 1: this tour. So we're looking at you Madison, We're looking
Speaker 1: at Chicago coming out and see us. No, we're at
Speaker 1: the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. Where are we in Madison?
Speaker 2: The Orphium the Orphum, so.
Speaker 1: Two great theaters. We're going to have a good time.
Speaker 1: It's a fun topic. Get to do some audience Q
Speaker 1: and A gonna share some laughs. You get to be
Speaker 1: in a big room with a bunch of cool, like minded,
Speaker 1: smart people.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're reasonably sure that you will like having gone.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: And I think early showtimes. I think these are both
Speaker 1: seven o'clock ers, so yay, like responsible.
Speaker 3: Aging gen xers. Yeah, we want to get everybody home
Speaker 3: in a decent hour.
Speaker 2: Yes, we do, before your babysitter can even get in
Speaker 2: the frage. You're going to be home, that's right. Great, Well,
Speaker 2: if you want more info or tickets to come see us,
Speaker 2: we'd love it if you did. You can go to
Speaker 2: stuff youshould Know dot com and click on the tour
Speaker 2: button and that will bring up all the info you
Speaker 2: need and you can buy tickets through there, like I said,
Speaker 2: and I guess. In the meantime, you can also send
Speaker 2: us email send it off the stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.