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Are Generations Even a Thing? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here. Just a few gen xers hanging
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: doing our thing, being too cool for you, drinking mountain
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: dew code red and that's it.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Wow, look at you on fire already.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know about that. I could have done a
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: lot better, but that was off the dome.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but well, off the dome, that's probably a millennial
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: or gen Z saying I got that from you, Well,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I got that from Nol. Oh.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Well, Nole's definitely a millennial. Yeah, he is a millennial
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: through and through. As we'll see what the birth cohort
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: that Nol and every one of his age cohort was
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: born into are exactly alike, and they're different from everybody
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: older and younger. And it's pure science that's proven that.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And by the way, we're talking about Noel co host
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: obviously of stuff they don't want you to know, among
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: other great things that he's done, including former.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Mini movie Crush co host.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't know if you were going to say
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: that for a second. I was going to jump in
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: and be like, uh, don't forget Movie Crush.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he hosted those minis with me.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, Andy was he produced him too, right.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he produced him for a while, and then I
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: think Noel even took the reins and hosted two great
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: episodes by himself. If anyone as a fan of John
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Cameron Mitchell, Oh yeah, Kesha?
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, like Kesha was on Yeah.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Two of the bigger gets on Movie Crush were nol episodes.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Wow, what was Kesha's favorite movie?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm pretty great at remembering all of the
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: guests that I had, but I don't. I don't remember
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Kesha or John Cameron Mitchell's.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, well we'll look it up someday.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was something great.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: I remember when Noel, when you made him producer, he
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: let that go to his head. He started wearing like
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: pastel blazers with the sleeves rolled up, and he was
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: always like sniffing and like touching his nose. He was
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Uber producer for a while.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: He got an ascot, which was a little much, but.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: It started hanging with Bronson Pincho. So we're talking today
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: about generations. That's why I mentioned that we're all Generation X,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: and I was being facetious earlier when I said this
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: is all proven by science. Apparently it's not at all
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: proven by science. It's really not particularly scientific. And the
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: whole thing, actually, when you start to dig into it,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: was this sociological almost intellectual debate that got somehow manhandled
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: and taken over by marketing who now use it to
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: make money. Essentially.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, see what I found interesting about this and I
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: commissioned this one because it just the whole idea of
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: generations fascinates me. But you know, you'll hear us say
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: things like, well, it's all it was all a marketing
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: thing basically to sell people stuff, and it's really people
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: feel commonalities or there are commonalities and people around the
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: same age because of these reasons. But that's also sort
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: of being a part of the generation that you're dubbed.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Right, there are actual, like decent explanations that sociologists have
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: come up with, but they're not. The problem is is
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that you can't paint an entire group of people with
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: that same brush, and that's what people try to do. Yeah,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: and then also those same market researchers that always hype
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: and their generational researchers, even though they're not really scientists.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: They're market researchers. If they it would be so much
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: more honest if they were, like, here's what a lot
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: of kids, the cool kids are into today, start selling
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: to them like that, not like this entire generation is
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: like this specific group of well to do, white suburban
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: kids essentially exactly. But it's so interesting to talk about,
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about it a little bit, because there
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: are generations that seem to have really like are paying
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: attention to them? Really kind of started in the beginning
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: of the twentieth century. That's when people started thinking about
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: this kind of thing.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: So we're going to kind of go through since they've
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: been dubbing generation specific generations here in the United States,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: we're going to go through them to begin with. And
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I think it's a good just sort of primer for
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: when you're hanging out and talking about this kind of
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: thing with other people. You'll know all this stuff. Because
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: there was one or two that slipped in there that
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I kind of forgot about, like the Lost Generation. Yeah,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that was the first one, right, Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: So they were born between eighteen eighty three and nineteen hundred.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: They came of age during World War One, which was
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: like a massive catastrophe for the entire world for everyone,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Like nothing had ever happened like that before in the
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: history of humanity. Yeah, it was just a really big deal.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: And this was the group that came of age during
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: that time, and they're called the Lost Generation. Gertrude Stein
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: called them that. But there's they had a loss of
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: friends and family to death in the war, loss of
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: limbs to land mines, loss of faith and institutions and
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: the traditional values that got everybody to World War One.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: It was a big deal, and those kids were the
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: ones who went on to become the rebellious jazz age people.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm glad we're saying where these came from,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: because that was one of the big kind of curiosities
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: I had, was like, who even thinks of these names?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: And in most of these cases we can trace it
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: back to when a person said it first, like in print.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Usually that doesn't mean they're the people who dreamed it up, sure,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: but specifically in this case, it was from the book
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: The Sun Also Rises, and the epigraph Earnest Hymmingway quoted
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Stein saying, you are all a lost generation. So it
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: looked that one looks pretty clear cut.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the next sentence was too bad, So sad. Your dad,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Hemingway had a way of turning a phrase. Yeah, who
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: was next, Chuck? Who was after the Lost Generation?
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Well, the Greatest Generation from nineteen oh one to nineteen
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: twenty seven. Yeah, and you're also going to notice that
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: the years are going to fluctuate a little bit, because
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: there's not a set science to any of this. As
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: you said, even though there's this one dude that will
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: learn later is like, we should just make it fifteen
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: years moving forward.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, because the first show one was seventeen years
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: and then this one's twenty six years.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. This is obviously the generation. I guess it
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: would be like our grandparents who lived through the Great
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Depression and were, you know, defended freedom against the Nazis
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: in World War Two.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: And this is.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: One name wise that came about. The name came about
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: much later. Well, I'll go ahead and say who ended
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: up naming it, and then maybe you can take what
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the original name was. But Tom Brokaw wrote the book
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: The Greatest Generation, and that was nineteen ninety eight, and
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: that really took off and kind of stuck.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was a big deal. I remember when
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: that came out. I can hear Tom Brokaw saying I
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: can't do an impression of it, but I can hear
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: him saying it and talking about it. But essentially he
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: wrote this book about just profiling different veterans, I think,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: mostly everyday people, and essentially collectively said like, these are
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: the people who grew up in the depression. They faced
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: genuine deprivation in many many cases collectively too. And then
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: they went on and were called to like, go fight
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: the Nazis in World War Two, Right, so there's nobody before.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Since that's done this kind of stuff, hats off to you,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: greatest generation. And they sat back and were like, we'll
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: take this, sure, keep going, bro Caw.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And since you didn't do what I set you up
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: to do, I'll do that part. They were not always
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the greatest generation. There were these two generational theorists, theorists
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: or theorists, Neil Howe and William Strauss, and they actually
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: coined the term millennial, but they had previously labeled that
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: generation the GI generation, the greatest generation. And then Brokaw
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: came along. I used to do a bro call weirdly
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: can you try now, I don't remember. It was more
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: about cadence than the actual voice, because he always sounded
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: like he was just out of breath or something like that.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's pretty good.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: It was a breathing thing for him. It always felt
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: like he was just about to inhale, but he couldn't
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: quite get there, which is sad.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Enough of that GI generation though, stuff or the GI
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: generation I said it wrong. Let's get back to brokawn
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: his book.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, what do you need to know?
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: It was a huge book, came out in nineteen ninety eight.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I already said that.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, kit, I just wanted to make sure all
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: of our teas were crossed and our eyes were dotted.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: Sure we could say it the third time, if that
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: really you know, if you want to drive book sales.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Hit it up.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety eight. Everybody very nice, still, dear.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: So let's move on to the next generation. This is
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: called the Silent generation. This is where my dad was born.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: And he actually fits this bill pretty well.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I think my mom I can't remember the year, but
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure she was this silent generation as well.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: It makes sense. We're we're of that age that would
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: that would make sense.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just on the cusp of boomerdom. But
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: silent Generation is I guess maybe so dubbed because they're
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, who got
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: way more attention, and the Silent Generation was just sort
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: of wedge there and like kind of quietly wedged there
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: in the middle doing their thing.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Yes. Also though they I guess the whole thing comes
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: from a Time article or essay written in nineteen fifty
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: one anonymously weirdly, I guess, because this person was criticizing
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: their own generation.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe, but.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: They said they called them the silent generation. They said,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: it does not issue manifestos, make speeches or carry posters.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: It has been called the silent generation. And I think
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: they mean by me, and like they were just basically saying,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: like that, our parents did all this amazing stuff and
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: we're just we don't do anything. We're the silent generation.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: So that makes sense. And then also I guess the
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: silent generation describes them. They're supposed to be cautious conformist.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: That's another reason they're called the silent generation. So that's
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: you know, I guess it all kind of adds up.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, But again there.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: You know, I think Dave put this together and he
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: points out, you know, Andy Warhol and Nina Simone and
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Gloria Steinem and Bob Dylan were all from this generation.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So that's where the generation thin kind of falls apart
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit, because you can always pick out individuals
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: and say, well, they're nothing like they're categorized.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, that's definitely going to be a recurring
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: theme in here. Yeah. I saw there's this New York
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: article by Lewis Minard It's time to stop talking about
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: generations where he says essentially all of the most important
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: figures in like the Flower Power, anti War sixties hippie movement,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: almost all of them were from the Silent generation. Yeah,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: you know, like almost one of the people who were
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: the important figures driving this were actually Baby Boomers.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Well, of course that's an X from forty six to
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: sixty four, pretty wide swath there. And this they have
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: a pretty interesting distinction is they're actually recognized by the
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: US Census Bureau, the only generation to be kind of
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: independently recognized, and they're the Baby Boomers. I think everyone
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: knows this because there was a big baby boom after
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: World War two, And this isn't something that was just like, oh,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the media just got a hold of it, like there
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: were a ton of babies born after World War Two.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: In nineteen forty five, there were two point nine million,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: went to three point four the next year, and by
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four they peaked. Oh actually they peaked in
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: fifty seven with four point three but sixty four was
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: the last year in the United States, which is kind
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: of crazy to think about with more than four million births.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, which is strange because I think the
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: millennials didn't they have more than the boomers, or where
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: they just barely second. Maybe they were second. Regardless, that
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: is quite a baby boom. I think it's a fit.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: It's an apt Yeah.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are more millennials living millennials now, but
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I think that's just because the boomer die off.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Gotcha. Okay, So there's we talked about this before. I
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: don't remember when. Oh you know what, we did a
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: whole episode on baby boomers. So I guarantee it was
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: in that, did we Yeah we did. Huh. I think
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: it was called Leave the Boomers Alone. I don't know.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, all right, I don't think that's what it
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: was called. I think we called it how baby Boomers work,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: because I don't think we were in that mindset.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: I think it was give them hell, right.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: But there's like a whole the later section of boomers,
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: because it's like a twenty year basically like eighteen year group. Yeah,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: a lot changed in between the sixties and the seventies,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: and the ones that were born later on in the
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Baby boom who grew up in the seventies had a
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: much different formative age than the older boomers who came
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: before them and were like dropping acid and everything. These
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: are the people faced with like America becoming super cynical.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, my sister is six years older than me,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and she's a year she was sixty five, so she
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was a year off from being quote unquote boomer and
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: she's I mean, she's solid Generation X if you ask me, right.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another problem too. What about people on the CUSP,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: like xennials.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean supposedly CUSP cus born people identify with
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: both to a certain degree, but I don't know. My
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: sister doesn't have much boomer in her right.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Right, So that group that your sister just barely missed
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: the second half of the Baby Boomers. They have been
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: dubbed Generation Jones by an author named Jonathan Pontel and Jones.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: He basically said that he dubbed them that because they're
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: a large anonymous generation. That makes sense. Jones is kind
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: of a common last name in the United States. That's
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: another thing too, we should say generations. The other reason
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: why they seem kind of flibbertigibty is because we're talking
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: almost exclusively about the United States here.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, of course at.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: The most, the Western English speaking Western world at the most. Right,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: So it's a large anonymous generation Jones or this one's
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: so weird that they they are the generation that's jones
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: in after their unfulfilled expectations. They're jones in for meaning
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: or whatever.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: I thought it might have been keeping up with the Joneses.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: That's another one too, But it's almost like every time
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: he said one of these, he was like, h what
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: do you think of that one?
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Right? Yeah?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Testing the waters for sure? Who's up next, Chuck? Would
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you you say the best is up next?
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, here's the deal, man.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I feel like gen X is very much bordering these
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: days on being labeled as obnoxious about how much we
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: talk about.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: How awesome we are.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: I think we're kind of tipping the scales in the
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: wrong direction.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna tout the benefits of being gen
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: X because we've talked about it before.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Well, also, that's like that is that's super gen x
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: to just be like, well, we're treading into uncool waters here.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: We better cool.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: You're totally right. I don't even think about that. Yeah,
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: that's as gen x as it gets.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's one of the thing things about
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: gen X is we supposedly shunned and we did labels
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and were very sort of jaded and cynical and anti corporate.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Obviously we think of the grunge era of the nineties
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and rejecting capitalism and stuff like that. Before a lot
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: of them became capitalists. But there are still, you know,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: plenty of gen X true and true through and through
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: both of those who are still like that. I don't
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: know if you've seen that great Netflix documentary The Secret
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Mall Apartment.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: Have you seen that?
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: No? That sounds great, Yeah, And it's.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty well known story that these gen xers
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: built an apartment inside the guts of a shopping mall
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: where they weren't found.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: M H highly recommend it. It was a pretty cool story.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I remember reading about it kind of years later when
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: it was I guess got a little more media attention.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: But the documentary is really good. But it could have
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: been called ode to gen X because all of these people.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I was like, man, this was these were my people.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: This like I could have seen my friends doing something
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: like this.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty creative breaking the rules but also not really
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: doing anything that's genuinely anti social necessarily.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, breaking rules without causing harm.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Shock. Yeah. Yeah.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: We got our name Generation Next did from the Douglas
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Copeland book Generation X Colon Tales for an Accelerated Culture,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: which is a great read or everyone to read it.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Copeland apparently one time said he named it after the
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Billy Idol Billy Idol's original band X.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Then he later took it back and said he got
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: it from an obscure sociology book and that in the
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: book it was a reference to a group that the
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: sociologist labeled X, and this group wanted to basically exit
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: the traditional American class pursuits and I guess preoccupations like
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: didn't want to have anything to do with that, so
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: he thought that was kind of a good name for it.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think X has long been a stand in,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: whether it's Malcolm X or just signing your name with
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the X when you don't want to put your signature
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: is just sort of a almost active civil disobedience of like,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I don't this is not me, this is not my label.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: I'm just going to put an X here.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Are you allowed to do that?
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if it's legal, but that
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: was always I mean I think it initially it was
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: like if you did if you couldn't write, you would
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: sign your name with an X as well.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: But I don't know.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: So maybe the gen xers are being ironic when they're
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: doing that.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe, But gen x is better than Babybusters, which was
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the original idea for our name, because after the post
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: war baby boom, birth rates dropped a lot.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a terrible name. I also saw, just like
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: the Baby Boomers were divided into a couple of groups.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I saw the older Gen Xers are called the Atari Wave,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: the later Gen Xers are called the Nintendo Wave. Oh yeah,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: that makes sense, And then carrying it on the Zennials,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: the ones who are on the cusp between Generation X
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: and Millennials. They're also called elder Millennials. They're called the
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Oregon Trail Wave.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I thought we could get through all these before our break,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: but there's still several generations to go, so maybe we
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: should take a break and hit up the millennials after this.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Let's break it up, all right, we'll be right back.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: That is Josh, I'm Chuck. When you came along and
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: it was like, yeah, well we were work pals, all right.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Now we're on the millennials. I feel like this is
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: a a great generation if you ask me, Yeah, I agree.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Maybe not the greatest, but they're a great generations. They
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: put up with a lot more than our generation, and
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: more than Gen Z and Gen Alpha. I think they
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: just had they took the brunt of recent history and
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: they've just kind of plodded along and been like, fine,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: we'll be the ones. That's fine. You know, they haven't
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: complained too much. Well, I should say they stopped complaining.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: They used to complain a lot, and now they've just
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: kind of grown into this respectable and I think self
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: respecting group. As a whole, if generations were.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: Real, Yeah, I totally agree.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: That's people were born from eighty one to ninety six,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and again there's a pretty big difference between And you
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: can say this for a lot of the generations obviously,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: but you know, the ones that were on the cusp
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: of either end. I think millennials may be the most
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: pronounced as far as how different people born in eighty
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: one and people born in ninety six are. But that
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: might just be me, you know, in my brain.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think especially if you're coming of age
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: in the time before computers or the time when computers
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: are starting to be a thing. Yeah, yeah, that is
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: definitely I mean, that's a pretty big dividing line for sure.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: I think those elder millennials too. Yeah, I think there's
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: something to say about straddling that line. I think it's
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: a cool. It's just a neat thing to be able
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: to have experience in both of those completely different realms
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: of technological development. But even more than that, I saw
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: that millennials are divided between whether as a younger person
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: they watch say by the Bell or say by the
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: bell at college years.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Well, there's definitely a thing you know, we ran wild
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: in the streets and knocked on doors and called people
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: on the phone. But were also can understand young enough
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to understand all the tech that we're explaining to our
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: parents and grandparents. But I think elder millennials definitely sort
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: of identify with that life as well. They were first
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: dubbed the Echo boomers. Obviously it's the children of boomers.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: They created a little bit of a baby bump on
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the population charts, and like I said, they're the largest
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: living generation right now. They took over in twenty nineteen,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: took over the boomers at seventy two million millennials in
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: That's a lot of folks.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And just a little bleak note on that statistic.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: It wasn't because they kept being born up to twenty nineteen,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: if you know what I mean.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: They were originally Generation Why, or at least that was
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the early consideration.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: At editors at ad age.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And as you'll see, there's a lot of marketing people
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: that have their thumbs in the spy, but they were
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the ones that were going to trying to call them
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Generation hy as like a more extreme Generation X. But
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: our buddies Neil Howe and William Strauss again. In nineteen
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: ninety one, they published a book called Generations Colon the
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: History of America's Future fifteen eighty four to twenty sixty nine,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and that's where they came up with the Millennial generation.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: For pretty obvious reasons.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: You left out the comma. There's a colon and a
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: comma in there.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: There is, Yeah, there's a comma after America's Future.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: You're right, So we need a jingle for commas, the
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: rare comma.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: You know. They should have finished it off with fifteen
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: eighty four to twenty sixty nine an exclamation boy, yeah,
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: you're right.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And then the zero in twenty sixty nine is the
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: ampersand let's just trip it going the what's the one
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: in fifteen eighty four?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Has it got to be punctuation? Because the first thing
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: I thought of was an eye with a heart above it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: That's an eye.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Though they can actually program anything they want to into
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: a keyboard. I found that out when Prince changed his
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: name to a symbol the artist formerly known.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: As Prince, and you could type that.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Yes. They sent it out to all of the media,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: impressed to basically insert it into their font catalog, so
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: they can do that.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: That was pretty funny.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: They can make an eye with a heart above it
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: if you want them to.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I said, I think it's pretty obvious,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: but we'll say it out loud. It is the first
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: generation to be the first to graduate high school after
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the year two thousand right there.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: And sorry, I realized I'm being a little squarely today
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: that you keep setting me up, and I'm like, no,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: let's talk about this instead.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: That's a right.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: So the other thing about it, I think the reason
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: why Millennials stuck and overtook Generation Why, which I fully
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: remember that was really close to being that generation's name,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: and I'm really glad it turned into Millennials. It has
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: like an optimistic kind of hopeful feel to it.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: So.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: One of the things that characterized Millennials as far as
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: generation researchers go, is that they came of age during
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: nine eleven as young kids. That was an enormous thing
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: to learn at a young age that things like that
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: can happen in the world, and that an entire culture
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: can lose its innocence in like one morning. And then
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: also as they started to enter the workforce. They got
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: smacked with the Great Recession and couldn't find a job
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: for five years, and they were the first generation to
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: start moving back in with their parents because they had to.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: So who's up next, Chuck? After Millennials?
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Well, everybody knows gen Z. They're staring at you silently
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: but not judging. I don't think, or maybe they are
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven to twenty twelve. The reason is gen
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Z is just from when it was supposedly going to
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: be jen Y before them, lower case I was going
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: to be the initial name because of obvious reasons.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Again for you know, Apple stuff.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: There was the first one.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Digital natives is what they say that we're literally all
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: born and raised in the Internet age.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like eye Jen that could have been good.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: I'm sure Apple was like, yeah, let's call him that.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's sue everybody as well.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Right. They were also almost called Generation K, which this
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: is astonishing to me. Yeah, the K is for the
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: K and Catonus Everdeen from the Hunger Games.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Who thought of that? I mean, I had to be
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: the movie studio that made.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: That, right, Probably probably were a publicists they secretly hired.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: But yeah, the reason why is because it's just such
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: almost a dystopian era that these kids are are growing
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: up in or grew up in. Yeah, you know, I mean,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: but still, first of all, you don't want to name
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: an entire generation after the doomiest thing you can think of. Yeah,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: you want to kind of have at least it's some
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: sort of a positive spin on it. And we'll see
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: why it matters in a minute. Yeah, what about Generation CE.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Surely that's got to be upbeat.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Generation COVID or coronavirus. That was a consideration for
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: a little while as well. Luckily that didn't make it,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: and we got jen Z, who was known for what
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Dave calls quote being extremely online. Yeah, as opposed to
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: just online a lot, I guess.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They're also known for curating their online images. They
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: were the first to really start paying attention to this.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: They also put a lot into a lot of stock
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: into being authentic and socially conscious. They're also on the
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: negative side, frequently called coddled and titled snowflakes that kind
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: of stuff. Again, all of this stuff, you're like, yep,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: totally totally, one hundred percent to stop for a second
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: and remember you're talking about millions of people from all
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: walks of life. They're all coddled, they're all snowflakes, they're
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: all entitled. Like, think about what that's actually saying, right, So,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: and the idea is that this is all made up.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: So you just got to remember that because what was
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: just cut into the chase real quick, right now, there's
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: like a real harm that can be done, yeh in
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: calling entire groups of kids, or dismissing entire groups of
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: people as snowflakes or woke or whatever kind of hate
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: that word, or.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: You could barely even say it even sounded funny coming
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: out of your mouth, right Like.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: You can even deride their you know, focus on authenticity
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: or whatever. You can take any of these in turn
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: it negative, and that harms the group that you're talking about,
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: but it also makes that group present you. Yeah, probably
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: the older person who's criticizing them and what they care
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: about and what they're interested in because you weren't or
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: it doesn't make sense to you and your values that
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: there is actual individual harm, but also more importantly, a
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: social harm that can be done because it allows for
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: essentially a socially acceptable form of discrimination, which is agism.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Whether it's going upward in age or downward in age,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. It's still as harmful. Yeah.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: It gives somebody permission to do something like that. Yeah.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Uh. And it's no different if you're if you're like, hey,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: you know what, You're not like other gen zs. You're
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: you're the real deal. You're not like an entitled little snowflake.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Like just stop. That's that's even worse almost.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: It is stop being the uncle at Thanksgiving. Just stop.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: But simultaneously stop being the millennial who says like okay, boomer,
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: although I know no one says that anymore. But that
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: was harmful too, even though it's totally accurate.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Interesting thing about gen Zuh, they found some research on
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: some of the politics.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: There was a survey on gender, and fifty three percent
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: of Gen Z women apparently describe themselves as feminists, compared
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: to only thirty two percent of Gen Z men, which
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: is the largest gap I believe, I don't know about
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: of any generation. That's a twenty one point gap compared
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: to an eight percent gap same question for Gen X.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: What I thought was super interesting.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very concerning too, And that's legitimate because they're
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: they're using gen Z as just a shorthand for an
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: actual age group that was legitimately surveyed. Yeah, so that
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: is a that is a troubling value change in values.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, what's next?
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Next up, Chuck is the latest generation, not greatest latest
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: who knows whether they're going to be great or not.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: History will tell us eventually. But that's Gen Alpha. And
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: I think it's very reassuring that we were not on
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Gen Z anymore, because that's a little troublesome that you've
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: reached the end of the alphabet as a group goes,
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: like a population of human beings goes. Now we're back
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: to alpha, and that's that's great. I'm glad for that.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Well, and earlier when I mentioned there's some guy that
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: wanted to say, let's just make it fifteen years moving forward.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: That's a guy named Mark mccrindall. He's an Australian social
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: researcher and he is the one who coined generation alpha
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: again just starting over after Z. And he said and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: also he saunds a little grumpy, he's like, and also,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: can we just make him Greek letters from now on?
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: And let go jen beta after this?
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: And everyone said, no, you're not the boss of us.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: We come up with our own willy nilly and we
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: decide as a group what we like and what we
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: don't like. So no, we'll go with your Jen Alpha
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: for now, but don't get above your station. Mccrindall.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's slow year roll, buddy, although it'll probably
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: be Jim Beta, which would be kids born this year
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: starting this year.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I predict it's not going to be Jim Beta. Chuck.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: I think it's going to be. They'll start with that,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: and I think it'll be something else. I think humanity
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: just wants to spite Mark mccrindall. Yeah.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: And Beta such a negative connotation now, just from those
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: alt right weirdos that you know, Beta male stuff.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Right, plus also Beta Max knowing like that.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Exactly Beta dine that stuff was the worst because that
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: means you have a nasty.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Cut, right or Beta fish they're always fighting the mirror.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he wants a Beta fish boring.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. It's sad for the Beta fish though,
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: because their prizes at Tony Fairs very frequently.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: So apparently Jen Alpha is even more online than gen Z,
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: so much so that they don't even really realize. Well,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: they're also still pretty young right now. They're born between
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: twenty ten and twenty twenty five. They're cut off. Just
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: happened last year. They're not even aware that there is anything,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: that there's other stuff out there from.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: What Yeah, yeah, there's an alternative.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Yes exactly, thank you. That like this is just what
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: people do because that's, yeah, what they grew up doing,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: and there's a lot of concern about what effects that's
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: having on them. Gen Z. The big concern is social
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: media and the devastating effect that can have on a
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: developing mind. With gen Alfha, it's like all technology now
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: is just gunning for those little tiny brains, and people
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: are like, what's going to happen with this?
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, trust me, I'm a parent one, and I wonder sometimes.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's got to be so preposterously hard
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: to raise a kid these days compared to thirty, forty
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: fifty years ago.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's more raising of a kid, if
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: that's what you mean, like more active parenting.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh definitely, for sure.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: What I think is weird and you know, I'm getting
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: a little off track, but gen X was like we
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: were wild in the streets and our parents ignored us,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: but we were the first helicopter parents. Yes, g not
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: of course, but that was kind of where it came from.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Right, gen z has turned out to be really weird
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: and really weird as far as that goes compared to
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: how we were raised and then how we're raising kids,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: our own kids. It's it is very surprising. It's a
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: surprising turn of events if you ask me. Yeah, yeah,
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: I guess that stranger danger finally got through to us,
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: but not until we were like forty.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: So this generation thing is, like we said, mainly made up.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, the term generation obviously comes from a biology
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and like when a parent has a kid, that offspring
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: is the next generation. But as far as like generations goes,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: as we're talking about him, there was a sociologist I
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: think kind of the first guy to write about this.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: His name was Carl Mannheim, and he wrote an essay
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties called The Problem of Generations, and
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: he was just sort of trying to look at like
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: how do groups of cohorts or groups of people change
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: over time?
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: And that's where.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: He and you know, he was in his book, and
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I think generally when people talk about this stuff.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: They're talking a little less about like back then, the
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: factory workers and farmers and a little more like intellectuals
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: and writers and artists.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. Manheim was like, people who aren't
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: like intellectual or artistic, they're probably not changing that much
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: as a group over time, but tastes in art and
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: culture change, you know, pretty distinctly over relatively short periods, decade,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: two decades, that kind of thing. He's like, why, And
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure other people have noticed this too,
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: but Manheim was the first to stop and try to
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: figure out what was going on. And what he came
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: up with was essentially what most the average person believes
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: generations come from today, average person on the street who
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: thinks about this kind of stuff, and that is called
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: the imprint hypothesis, and it essentially says that some event,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: some process, something big of historic proportions that happened during
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: your formative years as a kid, made an impression on you,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: imprinted on you and made you kind of who you are,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: gave you your outlook on life. And because there was
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: a whole other cohort of kids your same age, the
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: same thing happened to them and that's why people within
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: a generation resemble one another in a lot of ways,
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: especially with trends and values and outlooks and stuff.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we talked about all these as we've gone along,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: you know, the depression, COVID nine to eleven, all these things,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: those are generation shaping events, according to him, being imprinted
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: with those.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: There are other sociologists that say, you know, it's not
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: really outside.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: Events that's causing this stuff.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: It just sort of organically happens when groups of young
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: people are all just hanging out and growing up together.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a chicken or the egg situation, like
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: does society change because new people grow up and like
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: just change society because there's new people, new ways of thinking.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Or do people change because society changes, like eg through
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: COVID or the Challenger disaster or something like that, or
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: the fall of the Berlin Wall that has these huge
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: imprints on people. And there's actually a guy named Morris
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Massey who basically combine the two. He said, that's values
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: that separate the generations. That that's really what it is,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: and that the reasons that the values are different among
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: generations is because of that imprinting process. Happens to hit
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: at a time when you are in a formative I
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: guess a formative place where you're figuring out what your
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: values are, and when that historic thing happens that helps
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: shape your values. That same historic thing isn't going to
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: have the same effect on older people because their values
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: have already been shaped, but it will on that one generation.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: So that's essentially what his jam was. He was kind
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: of merging everything for sure.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: You know, we promised talk of average because that's in marketing,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: that's where a lot of this comes from. And it
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: does because no one really talked about this stuff until
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies when baby boomers were getting into their twenties.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: And you know, if you know anything about just.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Marketing and selling things to people, that demographic of you know,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty four is what they always say. But
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: you know, basically, people are in their twenties is a
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: big That's when you have money to spend, maybe for
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the first time, if you're you know, out from under
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: the thumb of your family and your parents, and you've
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: gotten your first job maybe or at least in the
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: old days, you probably did, and so they want to
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: sell to people They always have. They still do that
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: are in their twenties, and those are also the people
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: that are shaping the taste of generations and influencing people
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: around them and age.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: And when the baby.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Boomers were coming into their twenties and the nineteen seventies,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: companies went wild and they started doing all this sort
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: of market generational market research that is a very big deal.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: I know this is an older stat but in twenty
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: fifteen they found out that American companies alone spent seventy
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: million dollars just on generational consulting.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those people that essentially who've made up generations or
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: say that it happens every fifteen years or something like that. Yeah,
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: so yeah, you want to take a break and come
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: back and talk about some criticisms of this.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it. That is Josh, I'm Chuck.
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: You came along and it was like, yeah, well we
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: were work pals.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back talking more about generations and we're
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: going to talk about some criticisms. In a second, we
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: should say that, you know, obviously the media plays a
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: part in all this. It's not all just like a
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: marketing scam. But when the media picks up on these
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: names especially, and you know, all of a sudden, there's
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: people writing books and technically that's selling something, but that's
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: that's producing a you know, your take, Like everyone's got
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: their take on this stuff. So there's gonna be plenty
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: of people writing books about all these generations, right, But
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the whole idea is like, is this even.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: A real thing at all?
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: And sociologists look at three different effects that influence how
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: people think and behave, and they're the life cycle effects,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: the period effects, and the cohort effects.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the life cycle effects makes the most sense to me,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: and that you are likely to essentially not change your
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: personality but change your outlook, your values, that kind of
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: thing as you age, and so entire cohorts of people
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: age generally the same, so they're all going through the
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: same life stages at roughly the same time, so they
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: like the baby boomers are a really pronounced example of this.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: When you're younger, you're more rebellious, you question the system,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: you want to change things, hence the sixties hippies. As
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: you get a little older, you become much more materialistic,
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: you become say, more grounded, you abandon your earlier idealism.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: In a lot of cases, the yuppies of the eighties,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: and then as you get older and kind of get
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: put out to pasture, one of the ways that you
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: can make yourself more relevant is to become politically active.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Hence the older current today baby boomers. So like this,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: this whole idea is that we confuse that for generational effects,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: that people are actually just going through life stages together.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: On mass yeah exactly, or that you know, millennials were like,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: now we're not having babies, and we're moving to the suburbs,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: we're living in the city, and we're staying single or
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: at least getting married and shunning kids.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: And while plenty of them did.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: And still do as they got a little bit older,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: and this is the life cycle effect, a lot of
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: them did get those kids and families, and a lot
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: of them did get the house in the suburbs.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: And it's just, you know, it's an age effect thing.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Right, the same thing with period effects. It's basically saying, no,
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: there's no such thing as generations where we confuse the
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: generational effects or differences for actual period effects. And what
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: that is is that those same historic events happen, but
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: they impact like everybody. We just happened to focus on
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: the group that it tends to impact the most, the
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: younger generation, because again, they're going through a formative time.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: So COVID affected everybody in all sorts of very deep ways. Right,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: It affected like kids. People were preoccupied with kids because
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: those kids, like basically had a whole year of very
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: important schooling that they didn't get and that was a
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: huge focus of society, and so that kind of became
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: looked at, focused on, and kind of that was haung
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: on that generation, whereas really everybody got affected by COVID
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: in a bunch of different ways.
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And the last one cohort effects.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I don't really see the difference and why this is
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: even broken out between. It sounds just sort of like
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: the other two combined in a way.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. That was that Morris mass you thing basically,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: and this is what we think of as generational effects,
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: combination of life cycle and period effects producing groups where
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: you are different from people who are older than you
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: and different from people who are younger than you. Yeah,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: that's generational differences or generational effects. That's what people are saying, Like,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: that's no life cycle effects. Sure, period effects sure, cohort effects,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: we don't really think so.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: As far as criticisms go, you know, we've lobbed a
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: few out there as far as what generally people think,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: how they think critically about dividing people up like this.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: But one big problem is that you sort of touched
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: on it earlier that these are really broad generalizations, but
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: it's from small sample sizes. So the media has a
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: lot to do with this how this plays out. And
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Dave makes a great point. If you're you know, when
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: you talk about the nineteen sixties, like the first thing
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: that comes to your mind is like woodstock and the
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: hippies and sticking a daisy in the barrel of a rifle,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: And there were very few people like that if you
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: look at like percentages and you base it on things
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: like drug use and premarital sex and feelings like that,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Like apparently almost ninety percent of Americans twenty somethings did
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: not smoke pot in nineteen sixty nine, And if you
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: look at movies and TV and the media, you think, like,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: kind of that was what everyone was doing.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like one hundred and twelve percent of right twenty
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: some things in nineteen sixty nine exactly. And that's the thing,
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Like the media highlights the most extreme segment of the
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: group of people, and that still happens today. The loudest
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: people get the most attention, essentially.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Another big criticism is the when you and you touched
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: on this a little bit too, Like when you group
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: people up in these huge cohorts and say everyone's kind
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: of like this, you're really really ignoring everything within that
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: group of people, like all the little differences like oh,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: race and class and income and privilege and stuff like that.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: And you really nailed it when you said, like when
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: people talk about generations in broad terms like this, they're
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: kind of talking because it's a marketing thing about like,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: you know, middle to upper class white America in a
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: lot of cases.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it ignores intersectionality essentially, which ironically is something that
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: people say that gen Z is preoccupied with.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, although you know, there's I totally believe this is
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: a thing.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: But I remember when I saw the movie Crooklynd, Spike
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Lee's great movie about his life growing up in the
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: seventies in Brooklyn, New York. I remember watching that movie
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: and being like, oh my god, that was my life
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: growing up in suburban Atlanta in the nineteen seventies as
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: a white kid, like, we're all the same.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, right, right, So there were similarities, he also had
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: much He faced a lot of differences that you didn't
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: face too, I'm sure, and vice versa. You guys have,
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: for sure, But that's more of like a society was
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: like that at that time. That's what parents in general
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: were like, Okay, this is cool. It's what we're doing.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: There's let's just have latchkey kids. That's what we have
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: to do because both parents are working now and we're
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: still figuring it out. That's what society was doing. The
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: question is did that have an impression on this whole
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: group of kids the same way to make them unique
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: in that way? That's what generations are saying.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: And you know, one of the other criticisms you were
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: talking about earlier is when you've given people permission to
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: sort of drag and dunk on a whole generation for
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: being like on your phone too long or addicted to
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: your screens or this or that or snowflakes. If you
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: dig down and look at actual statistics for some of
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: this stuff, they found out and this doesn't surprise me
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: at all. I've talked about the fact that baby boomers
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: are on their phone, at least in my life, more
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: than anyone I know. Sure, people sixty five and over
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: average ten hours of screen time a day compared to
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: seven hours a day for eighteen to thirty four year olds.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: And that is not just on your phone.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: That's also due, you know, somewhat to the fact that
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: when you know, very sadly, when some people retire, they
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: like start watching TV during the day, which is the
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: death knell if you ask me, it is.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: You want to not watch TV during the day and
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: not watching in bed at night?
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well I love watching TV in bed.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: I do too, But in hotels, oh.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: I love it. Mans nothing better than watching a movie
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: in bed.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: What do you, Oh, you watch movies in bed?
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: You don't watch whatever?
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: You don't watch Jimmy Fallon, No.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: No, no, I don't watch any I mean, I love
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Fallon, but I haven't watched late night talk shows
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: since Conan left.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Well that's a pretty good reason to stop. Actually, yeah,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: I think so, Chuck, you got anything else? Because I'm
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: hoping you say no. I feel like this is a
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: nice little package that we put together.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: Uh no, and that means long stuff is out.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: Oh hea, no, no, no, sorry, how do we end
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: this thing?
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: We say it's time for listener mail.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: But instead of listener mail, we are going to reiterate
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: that we are performing I believe tomorrow in Madison, Wisconsin.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: Isn't that right?
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to be there April sixteenth. So if
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: this comes out April fifteenth, you're right on the money.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Now it's coming out on the fourteenth, so in two
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: days we'll be in Madison.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Either way, if you're in the Madison area, come see us,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: or in Chicago, come see us Akron. I think it's
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: like too late because we basically have sold out Akron.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta say Akron strong. That means a lot
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: that Akron is one of our best selling cities on
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: this tour. So we're looking at you Madison, We're looking
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: at Chicago coming out and see us. No, we're at
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. Where are we in Madison?
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: The Orphium the Orphum, so.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Two great theaters. We're going to have a good time.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: It's a fun topic. Get to do some audience Q
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: and A gonna share some laughs. You get to be
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: in a big room with a bunch of cool, like minded,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: smart people.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, we're reasonably sure that you will like having gone.
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: And I think early showtimes. I think these are both
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: seven o'clock ers, so yay, like responsible.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: Aging gen xers. Yeah, we want to get everybody home
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: in a decent hour.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, we do, before your babysitter can even get in
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: the frage. You're going to be home, that's right. Great, Well,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: if you want more info or tickets to come see us,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: we'd love it if you did. You can go to
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: stuff youshould Know dot com and click on the tour
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: button and that will bring up all the info you
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: need and you can buy tickets through there, like I said,
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: and I guess. In the meantime, you can also send
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: us email send it off the stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: dot com.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.