 All right. Hi everybody. It's Nick Gillespie. This is the reason live stream We have these every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern time I hope that you'll come to the next one as well as stay for all of this one, which is great I'm extremely happy to be talking about today's topic, which is whether boomers and gen Xers more or less can get along with Millennials and Gen Z the prompt for my Conversation or for this conversation has to do with a recent poll that was taken That Liz Nolan Brown who we'll be talking to in a second wrote up for reason. This was done by Newsweek But the finding was kind of stunning. I got a lot of play 44% of Millennials want to make misgendering a crime. We're gonna get back to that in a second I want to introduce my guests today who are This my guests today are Liz Nolan Brown She's a senior editor at reason a millennial who has written a lot about generational kind of identity and kind of Conflict over the past couple of years as I as of I and Jean Twenge Who is a psychologist at San Diego State University and the author of many books? most recently the book that is just out called Generations and here we have a slide of her Uvra Generations is the real differences between Gen Z Millennials gen X boomers and silence and what they mean for America's future She's also written I gen generation me and the narcissism epidemic Jean Twenge. Thanks for talking to reason. Thanks for having me on. All right So let's you know the first before before we get into the meat of the issue about this You know a parent turn against free speech or wide-ranging speech among Millennials and Gen Z that seems very much at odds with the kind of tradition or the ethos or the mythology maybe of baby boomers and And Gen X. I want to go through some of the stuff that is in Jean's book because it's it's extremely helpful to Talk about You know where we're going through now Jean your book is called Generations and it takes you know the idea that generations matter that birth cohorts share broad characteristics that are meaningful These are the generations that you go through in your book. There's the silent generation which is 1925 to 1945 there about 6% of the current population and dropping there is where did Baby boomers go there from 46 to 64 about 21% of the population I myself am a late boomer and one of the things that's great in Jean's book Everybody who appears has a birth year next to them So you can start to realize why you dislike them the way as as deeply as you do Gen X which Jean is a member of is About 18.5% of the population. They're the Jan Brady of generations, right the middle child the neglected But nine late neglected middle child I think Millennials of course 1980 and 1994 they are about 21% 20.5% of the population and then Gen Z which is coming up Faster Gen Z is 11 to 28 years old now. They're 23% of the population Jean I guess before we go to the next slide about this. What what prompted you to write this book at this moment So my previous book I Jen is about Gen Z and at the core of it. It's really about how Technology like smartphones and social media Fundamentally changed the lives of teens and young adults A lot of mental health issues that happen at that time They also start spending less time with each other in person just had some really big impacts So, you know, I give a lot of talks around the country college campuses high schools Corporations and when I would talk about the impact of the smartphone One of the most frequent questions that I got was well, wait Hasn't that affected everyone and of course the answer to that is yes I may have affected people differently depending on their age, but it got me starting to think about that broader picture yeah of how technology has Is really behind so much cultural change and how that cultural change has Created generational differences and when I say technology, I don't just mean, you know The recent stuff like smartphones and social media. It's everything. It's labor-saving devices better medical care Faster transportation air conditioning the birth control pill all these things that have these downstream effects on how we live Yeah, and you're kind of and I Put myself more or less in this camp as well You're kind of a technological determinants right that technology. It's not everything But technology is really the main driver for why society is the way it is and changes over time Is that accurate? It is yeah, I mean, you know the traditional theory of cultural change and particularly generations is Okay, major events happen Economic recessions Pandemics wars and that's how the generations are how they are Problem with that theory is it major events tend to be short-term in their impact and with a few exceptions, of course don't tend to impact, you know, how the speed of development or values or You know a lot of the things that really really get to the course you see the model here and the basic idea is That technology is at the root of so many of these other Changes technology has a direct effect on generational differences So Gen Z spending much more time online and less time with their friends when their teens is one example of that But it also has these mediating factors So it is behind the rise in individualism more focus on the self and less on others It's behind Developments slowing down because we have better medical care through technology people live longer And the whole development development on trajectory slows down from Infancy to old age so kids are less independent teens are less likely to get their driver's license or have a job Young adults take longer to marry to settle into careers to have children and middle-aged people look and feel Younger than their parents or grandparents did at the same age That is for sure. Here's here's a diagram or sorry, let me go back to that. Yeah, there's Kind of diagram of what's going on or the technology model of generation should talk about What in for the baby boom and this is something that I was remarking on I Read an interview with Lorraine Newman who was one of the original members of Saturday Night Live, which premiered in 1975 and she was talking about how The baby boom and she's an early boomer so probably born in the very in the mid 40s or late 40s But she was talking about how they're the first generation raised on TV. My parents who were born in the 20s You know, I they told me when they got their first TV That they watched it like they called it sick to work and just watched it for as long It was on because it was this new amazing machine, but they were in there I don't know, you know, like 20s or 30s it affected them differently than if you're a kid growing up So if we can look at you know, if television is kind of the big Technology and again, it's not the only one by any stretch For baby boomers. What what is the big technology for Gen X and for Millennials? So for boomers, I would also probably throw in the impact of labor-saving devices in the home Because that had a huge impact on particularly on women And boomers where the first ones to really live a lot of those differences. So Gen X, you know, we're in the middle For Gen X a lot of the same influences were there It's just it twists a little differently. So for Gen X. It wasn't just that the TV was around It was also it was there from birth as opposed to boomers where I was a little bit later You just taken for granted that it was there a lot more programming for kids Just and video games also started to become really big for Gen X. So that that's another technological influence For Millennials, I would say the internet an instant messaging and The beginnings of social media which were a little different from the way social media is now But things like Friendster and MySpace and then for Gen Z. It's the smartphone and Let's call it modern social media things like Instagram and TikTok. Yeah Liz does You know does that comport with you that the sense as a millennial and you you remember a time before? Smartphones certainly but also the internet to some degree but you know was you know kind of instant messaging and You know that kind of interconnected technology that was always on I can remember getting my first broadband connection I think was in 1998 and that was a game changer as an adult But I would think as a you know as a teenager as an adolescent Suddenly things, you know that that just became dominant Yeah, I'm on the older end of the millennial spectrum. So I Got I got on AOL an instant messenger when I was I think I don't know junior high maybe So yeah, I mean that was definitely a big that was my first internet experience was logging on through Through AOL with the thing where you still have dial-up and you still had you know an AOL Accounts and chat rooms and that was like a whole internet experience But um, you know, I think especially the older millennials like we went through every rapid change in internet adoption like I Was never on Friendster. I was on MySpace That was you know, I was on live journal. Live journal was big when I was in college And then you know, I was I was the oldest person on Facebook for a while because you had to you know Have a college account to create a Facebook a college email address to create a Facebook account And I was I was a senior when it opened up outside of a few schools So like you know, I was yeah from on Facebook from the beginning on Twitter So I think that's the interesting thing is yeah, we've been on we've been a lot of us have been on Every different iteration of social media platforms since the very beginning Which is why now also with you know, Twitter and uploading and other things like that like there's all these new ones like threads and blue sky And I I've leaped to join them all because I'm so used to that But I'm like got a bit of social media fatigue at this point like I don't know how yeah, I hear you How many platforms I can join? No, I you know, I feel like The Harry Potter or Horcrux Scenario where you're you're parking More and more little bits of yourself all over the place so that you don't get wiped out and you just get dissipated by that I think it in a literal and figurative like in a profound way Gene what about the political or they're not simply political events. Let me get back to that chart that you have or the diagram for This yeah, what are what are the events, you know, certainly with I love you the emphasis in the book about how labor-saving devices really radically altered household life and Set the set the ability for women to start going back to work not so much in the 50s But in the 60s and especially the 70s suddenly, you know, you didn't need somebody to take care of the household And the 1950s are a bizarre decade in American kind of Psychic life because conservatives in the 80s started talking about them as the great last great Decade where women stayed at home at work and people didn't get divorced, but they were a complete aberration They were also filled with a huge amount of anxiety about juvenile delinquency about drugs about homosexuality about You know illiteracy about losing to the Russians in the space race But we have this odd notion of the 50s as a placid period which really isn't but when we talk about the Boomers, what were the major events that really kind of triggered their World and you know, then what what is that with the millennials? So for boomers, you know, it really starts with World War two at their origins So that was their parents and that's why the baby boom began Is soldiers coming back from war? So that's one reason the baby boom begins with those born in 1946 but what was odd and There still really isn't a great explanation for It's why the baby boom continued after about 1950 or so Right because then its peak year was 57 or something, right? Seven which is yeah crazy when you think about it. Maybe people Figured out they enjoyed sex. I don't know or children. Yeah or both. I well as a parent Yeah, I know which one I prefer more Yeah, but yeah total fertility. Yeah, 1957 Was it at nearly four children? So yeah, just bigger families who are in vogue, you know, you had the the huge And that's much higher than it was in the 1930s. It was not linear. I mean, that's what's so interesting And so that had a huge impact on the baby boom because they were such an enormous generation So they shaped the culture at at at every age because they were so big So that's the first one but then Then we get to all of the things that happened when boomers were teens and young adults That had such a big impact and they had a big impact on Like the vietnam war right The civil rights movement although that the leaders of the civil rights movement the feminist movement And the lgbt rights movement were silence and greatness actually but The boomers were some of the folks, you know Kind of behind the scenes and the younger people in those in those movements and organizations And they lived those changes So the silent generation so people like martin luther king Ruth bader ginsburg. They were the ones that kind of got things changed And then it was the boomers who lived a lot of those I always think about that in terms of timothy leary who is technically I guess by this schema Is uh, actually the greatest generation is born in the early 20s But you know, his impact was mostly on boomers. So that you know in this These fuzzy categories things are over You know, there's no reason to be pedantic or you know didactic when something begins or ends but So you have all of that. What about for millennials? What are you know? What are the events that Define uh, their kind of psychic landscape Most millennials mention 9 11 That's often the first thing that that comes to mind for them But uh, maybe liz can talk about that a little bit more too. Yeah Um, I mean that that would have been the first thing I mentioned I don't I don't I don't know if it's because not necessarily because it you know Had the biggest impact on on me or other millennial psyches But at least it's the the the big one that we think of I think when you when you talk about our generation Well, when is the other big one? Oh, um, the the reset bank the great recession the housing crisis of the late aughts. Um, yeah Was was another big one. Can I ask about 9 11 though? Is it? And especially Liz, I know I mean you were growing up in southwestern Ohio and Cincinnati so it was It's not like you grew up in lower Manhattan or or in new york or you know near the pentagon or something like that Was the the amount of space that it took up in your head. Was it because it was being discussed all the time And obviously it also radically altered government policy on a on a wide variety of in a wide variety of ways and things like that But this to me is one of the things that's always interesting is that many of the events that End up shaping how we think or and how we feel about things are less You know, it's not like the great depression where it's like, okay, the economy is completely scuttered It's a kind of symbolic event which ultimately, you know with 9 11 The damage was, you know, awful disgusting disturbing, but it was fairly limited and we recovered from it fairly quickly Yeah, I mean, I think two things when I 9 11 in in my mind is all tied up, you know In in the afghanistan war and the iraq war and everything and like I knew a lot of people who Who fought in those wars, um, you know, they came from a very working class area So I had a lot of friends over there And uh, so I mean so there was that I mean that that's I think the the big one about how It affected millennials is like that was you know Our millennials were were fighting over there in afghanistan and iraq and and not had a big impact You know on everyone in our our generation um And and yeah, just also how it changed politics at first sorry I didn't know apologize because I have like a severe cold right now too. So I'm a little bit cloudy edited I think I sound very but but um You know, but I always think about how my freshman year of college there was the show on called That's my bush and it was about george w bush and it was I forget. I don't know who made it It was made by the south park eyes. Yeah, it was a math thrown in trey parker Yeah, and we always watch it. I was just like Yeah, it just portrayed him as just like a complete bumbling idiot, right? Like and it was just like that was the trajectory that the george W bush presidency was going in he was just going to be a joke and you know the butt of you know this and then All of a sudden he became this like Great hero figure to a lot of people and who was you know uniting our nation in these troubling times And it was just it felt like everything we knew about the political like, you know That we've had this fledgling ideas about the political system and and what was going on Right that in politics just was totally interrupted. And so I think that was that was very sort of unsettling to see I mean, I don't I don't think that all millennials were were obviously, you know, skeptical of Of the whole rhetoric around 9 11, but I know, you know a lot were and a lot of people my age Everyone I knew was at the time. So it was, you know opposition to opposition to The iraq and afghanistan wars opposition to this sort of very nationalistic Often, you know, racist or gingoistic rhetoric that sort of came in the wake of 9 11 Was a very uniting factor for for a lot of people in our generation. I think Jean you uh, would have as a gen Exeter you would have been coming up and this is, you know, as somebody who was in the second half of the baby boom I by the time I was in high school I was being taught by people who went to wood stock about what pieces of shit my cohort was You know, we were indifferent and we didn't do anything. You know, it was kind of I remember joking at some point You know, it's like I would they had the manson family. We had the menendez brothers We were just living in a you know in a fallen lesser age and it was like screw you Which is very gen x point of view and also where You know, uh, the uh, vietnam war and all the lies about that watergate all of the High profile, um, you know that while the economic Lastitude of the 70s as well as you know, people like jerald ford and jimmy car jimmy carter falling during a fun run and battling with a Killer rabbit in a canoe and things like that. Um, you know for you as a gen xer What was the what was the kind of psychic? World you were growing up. Well, I think I didn't even really become aware of some of this until Early, I think the early 90s was really the big turning point for gen x in terms of Of gen x being recognized as a separate generation Right. Um, we were named after a douglas copeland novel that came up Copeland born born in 60 or 61, right? So he's really by most people's definition So that the that kind of recognition, um, but there was maybe something else going on Actually did begin with people born in the early 60s Not the late 60s where the the most people put the the dividing line because I think that that experience was different You know if you're born in 63, you know, how old were you in woodstock happen? No elementary school early elementary school Yeah, yeah, right? So I think I think at that point there started to be that kind of recognition of there was some kind of a break that there was the boomers Who had those kind of quintessential? You know late 60s early 70s type of experiences and then everybody else And yeah, nobody knew really knew what to do with us that it was the idea of You know those late bloomers and gen Xers of you know, we're all depressed and we're black all the time And then we're junky and we're gonna you know ruin the country and like all this kind of stuff And slackers, right? Right and then by 94 we had like movies like reality bites Um singles, you know, all of those kind of it was like it it's very interesting to look back on this Especially given our current cultural moment of right negativity and pessimism Early 90s were a time of that as well It was there was a lot of pessimism a lot of cynicism a lot of the books that um came out around that time talking about gen X Um, we're like gen X is not going to do as well as the baby boomers economically Here's all these statistics about how terrible they're doing But then we all know what happened next. Yeah, but next was The tech boom just took off and Although, you know, gen Xers had that reputation for you know, they were they were the slackers and you know unemployed it turned on a dime by You know the mid 1990s It was oh no, they're they're the internet millionaires or the tech millionaires. Yeah Yeah, people like marca and dresen coming up with what became Netscape The internet interconnected or the networked Computer system that became first, you know the internet then the world Google youtube all of those were founded by gen Xers And it's fascinating also to think, you know the the end of the soviet union or the end of the cold war more properly freed up People from having to be ultra serious, right? Like we were no longer in a twilight struggle Now you could kind of go to burning man and you didn't have to feel apologetic about it or anything like that I also think, you know, this is always and you know, i'm Laying all of this out because I think we're going to come to this more when we talk about kind of millennial speech Attitude stored speech versus boomers Um, you know bill clinton was the first boomer president and he seemed impossibly young He was 43. I think when he was elected, but he was not a gen Xer He was he was the guy who went to boy state. He was the guy who, you know Somehow shook john f kennedy sands, you know, same with al gore They were not What gen Xers were they were like ass kissers, you know student president student council president types And whether it's good or bad. It's just they seem to be quite different. Um, So then we get to, um, you know, let's Can I add one more thing? I think this is relevant to um, To sort of what we're going to discuss later To if if I think of like the other big political thing that informed I think or at least, you know The millennial politics like aside from the whole war on terror stuff was was like the gay marriage battles Because that was you know, just when we were in high school and college and that and you know in our early 20s That was sort of dominating politics. Um all the different fights in the state and all of that and uh In really driving a lot of a lot of why why the political tribalism? So I think yeah, that was very how you know one thing that's One thing that's uh, you know amazing and and gene's book goes into this quite a bit That you know, the younger you are the more likely you are to be Completely comfortable with all kinds of sexual orientation. You know, particularly something like gay marriage um Liz what was it that you know kind of sensitized you or your cohort to that as An important thing and and I guess a leading question here How much of it was it was something that you You and your friends took for granted that your parents were kind of like hemming and hog That it was a way of separating you from your parents or one's parents I don't know. I think a lot of our parents Were a little bit opposed but came around about the issue during during that time like I know that my parents um sort of Were like kind of a knee jerk like well, no, they shouldn't and then like when they thought about it for three seconds They were like, actually, I don't know why I'm opposed and they they they changed their mind over the course of You know a very short time um as as the issue was in the spotlight and and So I think that actually that was you know, it wasn't it wasn't I don't think a generational issue per se I think it did, you know, it It did matter a lot that a lot of us had just come up with With knowing gay people in a in a way that were out in a way that like other generations didn't so it just seemed like Of course, you know, this is this is a thing that should be allowed But um, you know, on the other and on the other hand it was also sort of just foisted upon us because You know republicans were really using that well both parties were really using that as a wedge issue and to get out the vote I mean and and it's worth You couldn't ignore it Yeah, that people like bill clinton certainly but hillary clinton even barack obama when he was elected president was Openly against gay marriage against marriage equality So the the speed with which these old, you know, kind of uh, certainties die. It's You know, it's amazing Gene, can you talk a little bit about the impact of the financial crisis? You know, the housing bubble exploded in or popped in 2006 or thereabouts The financial crisis kicked in in 2008 and you know, it's funny There was a massive recession in the early 80s My brother who's older than me was born in 1959 graduated into that and people are like, you know, this is the worst downturn since the depression A decade later bill clinton got elected partly by arguing that what in hindsight is a relatively minor Recession was the worst rep or recession since the great depression and like people were like, didn't we just hear this? but then in the late aughts we had Something that was actually the worst economic downturn since the great depression How did that change things or how did that scatter categories and inform generational identity? Yeah, so that is Often the second and sometimes even the first Major event to come to mind when we're talking about millennials Because it had such a big impact on their day-to-day lives I mean you had that impact across all generations. We have to recognize that but for millennials A lot of them depending on when they were born, but we're for yeah, they were graduating high school graduating from college entering an extremely challenging job market and that Was a big hit, you know for their financial health um It didn't last forever though. We'll get into that. Uh, they did recover from that But that was obviously a huge shaping influence. It also led to things like occupy wall street Um millennial led movement a lot more awareness um around income inequality um, it was I I mean trust in government had been declining Yeah, well, it's been a straight line decline really since yeah There's some interesting ups and downs to it But the great recession was like kind of the final blow Um, because so that was that was the other piece of it Yeah, and how did um, what about obama and lis I'd be curious I mean, I don't think we actually knew each other in in around 2008, but obama seemed to be you know a messiah right that you know after all of the bullshit, you know after You know bill clinton where economically things went well But you know he hollowed out a lot of trust and confidence in the presidency the election of 2000 Which was obscure and vague and its outcome Then bush then 9 11 that a lot of lies about why the war was being prosecuted How it was being paid for and things like that and then you have a figure like obama who is youthful also a baby boomer but Is black and you know, he is promising hope and change and kind of Not explicitly but implicitly offering a kind of escape from uh racial You know a very tortured racial history Um, lis how did how did obama appearing on the scene affect you and your friends? I mean, yeah, he definitely came at the exact right time for everyone to be like Hey, like this guy. I mean, especially coming out of the bush years, right where it just seemed like, you know Social conservatism and a very sort of old stuffy sort of social conservatism was still sort of um, you know And and and obama just seemed like Such a radical departure from that even though and a radical departure from like some of the you know The war on terror rhetoric even though he wasn't you know, necessarily And even though still opposing gay marriage and things like that I don't you know when you look at what is is actual Some of his actual policies where I don't know why everyone exactly had that impression It was much more. I think about the the rhetoric and the aura around obama than necessarily anything You know, we eventually did or anything, but but that was you know, we were at the right age I think to really need a change and to want to believe that it was possible And I think that a lot of us even people who were you know, I was considered myself a libertarian at the time but I was One of the two times I voted in presidential elections. Uh, what was uh almost for obama and um I think Also, then Obama kind the obama year has kind of contributed to a disillusionment later amongst malinus too Because you have this like oh things are gonna change, you know, things are gonna be a lot different and um and then you know a lot of people We was you know, the first politician that we was like, oh, I believed it and then he was disappointed and therefore, you know I've learned that you might have cared about and Yeah, the you know, the obviously the economy did did not bounce back quickly. It took a very long time But I always think You know, and I I'm cautious about imposing my Feelings on on other people but the revelations by edwards snowed and that in you know, we some people thought with Credible, you know with some reasons that obama was an anti-war candidate But he wasn't and then the snowed in revelations and snowed in being a very great millennial, right? Along with people like julina sange. I suppose there's also he might be gen x But you know, we we found it was kind of meet the I mean millennials might not understand the reference to the who song But you know, it's like meet the new boss same as the old boss that we weren't Yeah, I think that we were we were just changing, you know putting Wine and new bottles or something like that Gene, how does that? You know, I guess this is a broad Question that may not have a good answer. It may not be a good question actually, but How does politics? Figure in all of this as opposed to kind of material conditions. So You know, the fact is is that the economy after it hits trough shortly after obama became Resident it started picking up slowly, but we had a massive recovery period which which followed into trump But it doesn't seem that material conditions necessarily are what are really Dictating the kind of vibe of the country or the vibe of particular generations Absolutely. So, I mean this this is one of the questions That uh, I spent a lot of time on in the book. I spent a lot of time thinking about Because it's a real mystery The economy started to do a lot better after especially after about 2011 It was a turning point and just it just roared back, you know, the stock market came back unemployment went Very very low. If you look at unemployment say right before Covid it's extremely low Things are going very very well. The median incomes were going up Yet that didn't really reflect the mood in the country Now some of that as you mentioned politics is because of trump and that had some, you know I think most people would agree a fairly negative impact on the national conversation and the And uh, how but it's it's also kind of the fact that he was possible You know reflected massive You know Yeah, you know, absolutely. And so I you know, I think and I think you have to you have to look at that closely and There were a few things that I found in doing the analyses for the book that I think it Go a long way toward explaining the rise of of trump and populism in in general So one example Is it used to be that and you looked at say depression and happiness and if you looked at it by social class education income Occupational prestige things like this For the silent generation, for example, there really wasn't a whole lot of difference For happiness and mental health depending on social class and then that started to change So I I had a lot of grass in the book um And those lines diverge they diverge starting with the boomers and then go from there where In more recent years you end up with a very big gap for happiness and depression by educational level and income so people with a college education for example Happiness has stayed fairly stable levels of depression fairly stable among older people anyway and then lower income Those who don't have a college education Big increases. So this these diverging lines It really suggests that for the segment of the country Working class, let's call them from huge amounts of dissatisfaction And that explains trump in a lot of ways Can I just to Linger on this a little bit you also point out something that's really fascinating that you know and well as as to backfill a little bit and you know, I'm Genuinely obsessed with these kind of generational issues because my parents were born in 1923 in 1927 So technically in your scheme of one is greatest generation one is a silent generation But they are so in my mind so clearly part of the same generation In the experiences that they had the attitudes that they formed and you know, so many different things go into that but One of the things that is fascinating to me is that you show that it's really the baby boom generation when depression kicks in or when when this kind of I prefer to think of it as existential lengths. That's when it kicked in my parents were not happy people They were not wealthy people. They were not educated people But they kind of expected life to suck they would talk often about how you know, so they were born to immigrant families In the 20s Then the depra, you know, and they were dealing with a bunch of shit then then the depression hit Then world war two my father served in world war two at the end of the war After you know, even after vj day He and my mother said well, we just we were glad the war was over but we just expected our lives to be a flat line of kind of Pretty shitty a little bit better than subsistence level existence But not much because their entire life had been kind of flat economically and then something changed You know, do you think that do you think that this is actually a change in like, you know the prevalence of of this sort of existential angst the prevalence of depression things like that or just a change in Our our cultural language around that We know for sure, but I don't know. I don't have a strong Yeah, and sorry to jump in but no Yeah, we we know for sure that that isn't it because you also see the same trends in things like suicide And self harm and so on And the the trends for of those objectively measured behaviors are almost exactly the same as the trends and say reports of symptoms Um And that's what that's when we're talking about these things. It's not based on diagnoses It's not based on people being more willing to talk about things publicly It's anonymous surveys about symptoms which most people don't even know our depression And these objectively measured behaviors But the but the rise in the I mean the boomers among all the other firsts that they either were Or they claim to is they're the first massively unhappy cohort, right? Yes And then gen X also not great a little bit better Kind of flat, you know, I mean so early on in their teen years the suicide rate was way up for for gen X But there may be other reasons for that um Because that's that the that's one of the few places where the suicide statistics kind of diverged from some of the depression ones But yeah, I mean it's if you look across all the generations is kind of a complex picture for the trends in mental health um The silent generation actually a better mental health than the greatest generation before them Maybe because they they didn't fight in world war two didn't and didn't have the huge impact of the great depression Uh, and then for boomers it gets significantly worse Much more depression and and un unhappiness and suicide rates go up Uh gen X kind of stays the course Right. I mean a couple a couple surveys even looks a little better at least as adults When they were younger not so much a lot of unhappiness um, and then Millennials very mixed picture for millennials for mental health As young people A lot of things improved actually happiness actually went up among teens um depression went down by a little bit But as adults Not so much depression starts to increase again. And then for gen z that is a place where we have extremely consistent data across pretty much every survey and indicator That mental health got a lot worse for teens and young adults starting around 2012 you know, um I'm skeptical though. Like what if what if earlier generations? I mean, they were dealing with the same level of mental health issues They just dealt with it in different ways because you know, there is there's some evidence that things like You know attention to suicides can increase people's, you know propensity to think that is the solution whereas, you know, maybe You're depressed you're depressed like 30 something or 40 something in the 1930s And you just like quietly drink yourself to death instead of necessarily, you know taking your own life like I don't know. I I don't think it's that word definitely suicide rates I think if that were true you would see a linear trend and it's not a linear trend It goes in and out So the silent generation actually have better mental health than the greatest before them From the data that but it wouldn't expect that curve if it was just oh the older generations are more stoic or something But it was a curve There is something odd going on where as america kind of like kicks free of material Poverty or misery After world war two where everybody, you know, and there's there's disparities in wealth But like the baseline most people have housing, you know clothing shelter Some level or access to education and dissatisfaction with life goes up I mean it almost to me It seems that it's you know, we have succeeded, you know far beyond abraham maslow's greatest Dreams of bumping up the hierarchy of needs and it's like. Oh, yeah The one thing that you need to do then is also invent meaning and significance On a daily basis. I mean we're all existentialism We're living in a world where all of those institutions that kind of channeled our energy or restricted our choices Have started to fade because gene one of one of the I think great themes in your book is about and this You know goes back to at least the beginning of the industrial revolution or the modern period modernity That people are more individualistic People have more choices and you know, I hate to you know quote spider-man But you know with great with great power comes great responsibility, right? Like we're all left having to make sense of our lives at a time when all the institutions That either did that for us or told us shut up. Don't do don't think just follow tradition They're all kind of missing, right? Yeah, I mean this just began with the boomers and this is the dilemma that's still with us today Yeah, a lot of these traditional rules Were really really restrictive um, a lot of them would now Be labeled, you know racist and sexist and homophobic. Oh god. I mean they were right. They were absolutely, right? Yeah, right for sure. Um And they were so they restricted opportunity for you know, great numbers of people Um, so, you know, I would rather live in this world than that one, right? Sure Uh, but with that said, you know, when you have structure There's not as many choices. You're not searching for meaning as much technology comes into play too because of this basic piece that Used to be life is about survival Right. I think I'm on my grandmother a lot. So my grandmother Uh And grandfather ran a dairy farm in rural minnesota. They had eight children They didn't have time to think about self-esteem or what the meaning of life was They were just surviving right Um, well, let's let's shift to uh start talking about some of you know, one of the great things about the boomers I'm always reminded whenever I think about this when saving private ryan Was uh coming out steven spielberg did an interview with roger ebert where he Said the most boomer thing ever Which was you know, the point of world war two was was the baby boom going to be born or not World war two allowed the baby boom to be born and it's like that is the most insane reading World war two right You know, but it's also perfect You know it captures something unique about the baby boom and the baby boom of course spent a lot of time hating on their parents You know who had not only given you know food clothing and shelter to them But unparalleled opportunities and education and you know extra pairs of pants and tv shows in a world You know food made especially just for kids And now we're kind of going through something similar And i've written about this a lot. I know liz has has touched on this gene obviously your work does but every reason Um, you know, there's generational warfare going on in all sorts of different ways This is a cover story from uh reason in in 2012 And it's more about old age entitlements and the argument that i'm making there with a co-author is that Old age entitlements are really taking money from you know, relatively poor relatively young people are giving it to relatively Old and relatively wealthy people We have um a little bit later. We wrote this wonderful story Again with a co-author about millennials this is from 2015 and it was um about how millennials are Charting their own course in that that's a good thing. Let me read a short quote From near the conclusion of this when it comes to politics generation independent, which is what we were calling them Is already turning tuning out their boomer and gen X elders like so much bob seager on their parents car radios That is as it should be the future always belongs to the young who must find their own way in the world Yet it would be a shame if this new generation gap gets in the way of the sort of transgenerational solidarity That could make the future so much easier for all of us to navigate They rummage Millennials rummage through past generations experiences and attitudes like gen Xers Used to rummage through salvation army stores Mostly though millennials aren't listening to you because you're not speaking a language that makes sense to them They are young They want to set the world on fire and they can and will burn brighter Then the sun without asking anyone's permission That reads like it's from a different planet these days because Millennials uh and liz please speak from your own experience seem to be a Sour bunch of people right now who insist that they are being screwed You know beyond any more than any generation ever Jean recently wrote the end this is an excerpt in the Atlantic that came out earlier this year From her book generations the myth of the broke millennial After a rough start the generation is thriving. Why doesn't it feel that way? I guess First before then I want to talk about the the poll that I mentioned at the beginning of this and attitudes towards free speech and kind of openness Liz do you agree that millennials today seem kind of sour compared to maybe a decade ago? Or is that overdoing it? But if they are you know, what changed? What what's stoking the anger? um I don't know that like in the in a quote-unquote real world the millennials are necessarily more, you know Sour angry depressed about their prospects now than they than they were, you know in 2013 or so You know, I mean obviously like you gene mentioned Occupied well street earlier. I mean there was there was a lot of there was a lot of discontent and a lot of anger there at the time too But I also think that today the idea that we're all You know very discontent and disgruntled and bitter about everything is is not My experience when I'm like, you know, just like talking to friends and in my everyday life and things like that but I think you know, um There is a there is a grievance culture that started getting rewarded online in You know when the when like when the VC money was flooding into starting like a billion publications like mic And they needed to fill content and it was all like, ah, let's like talk about how racist and sexist everything is like You know this this like yogurt commercial is like the worst because you know, yeah, whatever It was all just like, you know intense critiques about how everything was was terrible even though we were objectively getting, you know Much much better in these sort of progressive attitudes And you know that sort of thing started because there was just so much, you know money going into pumping out a stream of endless media and blog posts and things like that And then it got amplified because of you know, the incentives on social media and the incentives for people to become um, you know to go viral and things like that and and I just think that that sort of um That's sort of very aggrieved discontent Disposition and and posturing has really been rewarded online over the past, you know decade or so and that's Contributed to I mean and that in turn probably has influenced the way that millennials think about themselves to a degree But I also think it's just um Partly that that's what is the most visible for us when we Think about people in this cohort because that's what we're seeing from like, you know the most prominent commentators and things like that Gene could you talk a little bit about why? It seems millennials You know and not just them but the media in general perhaps But why haven't they updated their statistics? You know because if you if you look at 2010 it's I guess not good for millennials if you look at it now Things are actually good by most traditional indicators of wealth per capita income home ownership rates things like that What what is holding people back from? Kind of starting to deal with what's going on now as opposed to what was happening or what might have been happening in the past Yeah, you know, I I think there are some Some there is a little bit of reality in some of these attitudes. So for one thing the gains in median income Are almost all among women So that's a good news story But it also means then you have a heterosexual couple They want to have children to keep up both of those incomes. You need to pay for child care So in that in that way some of the economic complaints do do hold some water Um, but with that said there is such an enormous disconnect between how well millennials are actually doing economically And the perception of how they're doing and the discussion around how they're doing that it's that's so vast Uh, I think it's clear that there has to be some Perception rather than just Reality there And the stuff Liz mentioned I think is right on I think that that has a fair amount to do with it Just that negativity is rewarded online. It's rewarded on social media anger gets clicks negative news gets clicks positive news not so much So if you're going to go online and and talk about how Millennials are doing so badly That's going to get retweeted. That's going to get more clicks on your news story Than some of the good news pieces um But I think there there still is a little bit of a mystery here um With the economic perceptions That's not just about millennials And it's not even just about the economy. It's like why is everyone so pessimistic right now? Like there was a poll research a poll Sorry a few research center poll um a few months ago And it was across all ages and it was you know, our things going well, you know, it was a country on the right track It was those types of things and it was it was more pessimistic than in 2021 You know when we were not coming out of the pandemic Um, it it's incredible that like right now people are more negative Than they were when we didn't have a vaccine. Um when we were still in the middle of of the pandemic And and and there's this very pervasive argument particularly from gen z as well as some millennials that this is the worst time This is the worst time ever Everything bad keeps happening. Nothing good is ever going to happen again And I think if you take a step back and say well, wait a second Is this really a worse time in the beginning of the pandemic? Is it really a worse time than the great recession? Is it a worse time when you know, than vietnam and world war two than the great depression? I think objectively speaking probably not But there's something going on That's making people feel very pessimistic right now um, let's look at uh enough teasing and this is my uh, shoddy organization here and my inability to run I guess I am a boomer after all to run a slideshow, but let's talk About this poll, uh, liz that you wrote up. I think last week for reason Uh, 44 of millennials want to make misgendering a crime and uh, let me just read bit You write younger millennials were most likely to support criminal penalties for misgendering with 44 of 24 to 30 25 34 year old respondents in favor and just 31 saying misgendering should not be a crime And then you look a little bit older and you know the 25 to 34 year olds that includes some gen z So it's uh, you know millennial and gen z, but then some 38 percent of 35 to 44 year old respondents said it should be a crime While 35 percent disagreed some 33 percent of 18 to 24 year old respondents Which would be gen z said it should be a crime while 48 percent disagreed so you have you know Liz to you the best of your Hypothesizing, you know, what is going on that 44 percent of 25 to 34 year old respondents? Think that misgendering somebody should be a crime um, yeah, I mean It's They're not thinking about it. They're not thinking it through That's my that's my most I guess hopeful interpretation Um is you know people are people are very concerned with trans rights these days. They're very A lot of them will you know are very Rightfully think that you should you know respect people's pronouns respect people's gender that they consider themselves And they want to signal that so when you're asked in a survey like should it be a crime? Sure. Why not? You know my hopeful I think that's nuts, but I may be a prison I may be a prison abolitionist, but I think this should be a crime Yeah, I so but my my like hopeful interpretation is that people Answer survey questions a lot of times based on a sort of desirability bias of trying to say what they think is right And this is a way to signal that you think it is wrong to misgender people But there's no actual proposal attached to this right? There's no like, you know Like here's what the criminal penalties would be here's how much you know time people would spend in prison Or what they'd have to pay here's how it would be enforced There's no discussion about all the all the you know unintended consequences And things like that. So I I hope that you know if if this was an actual proposal people were actually discussing it The support would be a lot lower than um, you know Then in a in a poll where it's just like hey Is this you know where it's more answered almost as if like hey is this bad if people say yeah Because unfortunately we do have you know We are in an era where people think that like anything bad should be a crime sort of at least before they think it through What about uh, jean, what do you think is there you know, and this poll, you know, it was done by newsweek Um, the data is not available online. I looked around for we don't even know the exact Questioning, you know the wording of the question. So all of that those are serious caveats But it seems to comport with a general attitude among, you know A large chunk of younger people say people under 30 or under 35 Towards not putting up with speech. They find Ugly or or uncomfortable. What you know, what's your read of something like this? well really jumped out at me is that the Jen that the purely gen z that 18 to 24 year olds were actually less likely to say that they thought it should be a crime So yeah, I would love to see that data because that that's an interesting result um It might suggest that maybe a corner has been turned and gen z is like, yeah, of course I don't want to misgender people but no it should be a crime. Maybe they Have witnessed enough cancel culture that they're over it um But you know because a few years ago the data we have we have suggest, you know It's much more linear that that the younger you get the more likely people would would say no We would need to restrict speech um, but and uh, yeah, let's um, I want to I want to run two short clips I kind of get to this the first is Something that I think, you know, a lot of people have seen This was taken at Yale University in 2015 and it's Nicholas Christakis Who's a faculty member there and who was the master of a house along with his wife? And this was the aftermath of an email that Erica Christakis had sent out Suggesting to students that they can they can come they can police themselves when it comes to what is or is not a Inoffensive halloween costume. This is all that kind of strange thing But I I want to I want to play two clips. So this is from 2015 at Yale Where Nicholas Christakis, you know, a very highly esteemed Professor a baby boomer Has gone out to talk to students and let's watch this Your position All right, so jean, let me ask you just when you you know, and I'm sure you I'm sure that this first made the rounds among faculty members at universities Like when you see a confrontation like that You know with a professor on the receiving end of a you know screaming tirade You know, how did that make you feel? Well, I mean I remember that time there was certainly a lot of discussion on campuses among faculty members Um, I mean they really are the only word to describe it was fear. There was you know, it was this realization That what we thought the rules were Were no longer true that we thought the rules were That the university is a place to have open discussion And yes, we want to be respectful of each other and yes, we want to be respectful of You know people of different backgrounds But We should be able to discuss things and that was around the time that a lot of people Started to become afraid that they would say one thing in class and get and get fired Yeah, so Has that Changed a bit on campus for you. Do you think that has that really needed a little bit? Yeah No, I think it's it's pretty much still there And can I ask is that how does that affect the way, you know, not your research per se because that takes place outside of the classroom Uh, you know, although it's all connected, but how has that changed the way you teach? um It hasn't really changed the way that I teach although I did start to think twice about I mean I teach psychology and So there's never anything controversial or touchy going on, right? I mean, right, you know, and So I think I just had to go on Look, I'm going to present the research Do it respectfully, but I always tried to do that So it didn't really completely change that the way that that that that I did things, but it did I did definitely And I know I can speak for a lot of other people have had this experience too It did have a chilling effect. It had the effect of Being scared to talk about certain things of Of just worrying about it of worrying about if this goes wrong, you know, what could happen Will my department back me up if we have a discussion that goes sideways even Because it's these types of things that happen So I think a lot of faculty members, you know have watched those news stories coming out over and over and over And we pay a lot of attention to them because we try to figure out what went wrong And you know what sometimes you can take an object lesson out of the things that you read about other times you You just go man there before the grace of god go I that that didn't happen in my class I do Very close friend of mine is an english professor a full professor Who is one of probably maybe half a dozen people who occasionally teaches amary baraka A black poet and playwright an author and in his work He was lee raw jones in the for part of the 60s became amary baraka His his work is filled with the n word And and it's it is absolutely provocative and one You know semester she was teaching a class in that and Student not even a student of color objected and the response was okay Well, I'm not going to teach amary baraka anymore. And so you get this weird Experience where it's like, you know, somebody who was on the the margins of the of the Contemporary canon is now just not going to be taught which I don't think anybody would say oh, that's it's an understandable outcome It's not a good one. Liz. What what were your undergraduate years from when to when? Uh, do I have to say Yes, well, we know you're a millennial and you're an older millennial and you're a mother 2000 to 2004 Yeah, would you have ever In your life thought of screaming at a professor like that even if they had like Hit you with a baseball bat No, but I do think that some of these trends were starting even back then like I got into a lot of fights in this one english class with this this woman who Was upset about some things I said about about her like trend her her querying of my antennae Uh, and so she told the professor that I that I made her feel unsafe in class And we had to both come into his office and like discuss how I was making her feel Unsafe and then that was the language used so I think that this it was definitely not as prevalent but I think that this sort of um You know language around like words making people feel unsafe and ideas making people people feel unsafe was Was starting to percolate even back then Yeah, uh for sure. Um gene when were you in grad school? Uh in the 1990s. Yeah, so yeah, so that's what I started teaching and I'll tell you Nobody ever said that the idea like oh, we can't discuss this because it is unsafe That was nobody ever talked about that that that is a very that is a new concept Yeah, and it's kind of fascinating my grad school. Uh, I was in undergrad So liege you are forever young in comparison to me I was in undergrad from 81 to 85 a bunch of grad school in the late 80s through the early 90s Uh in an english department That was a hotbed of post structural theory and the idea of making people unsafe was kind of the whole point Um in lecture, you know, and that's why you would invoke various kinds of post Uh moderate or post structural thinkers was to make everybody unsafe And to their credit the professors kind of gave as good as they got they weren't you know uh gene, do you know when the rhetoric of safety or of You know that where an uh an invocation of me feeling unsafe Became a thing and is that related to one of your earlier books about narcissism? I'm curious Um, I It doesn't really follow the same trajectory as the changes in narcissism. I think it is more likely to be rooted in this Well, probably a combination of the slow life strategy and individualism but with the slow life strategy The slower development Parents tend to have the to make the choice to have fewer children and nurture them more carefully So then you start emphasizing safety a lot more then kids take longer to grow up um And so you know one of the analyses I did for the book was to look and uh the google books database great resource And you can look at the change in phrases like stay safe Right And didn't really change a lot till starts to go up, you know 1990 So these are things that really started with millennials in terms of just a lot more protection A lot more emphasis on safety and then they kept going even more with with gen z that It was kind of mission creep because at first it was let's protect kids from physical dangers Then it became let's protect kids from ever failing And then it became let's protect kids from ideas or teenagers or young adults of That safety is not just physical safety. It's emotional safety It's I don't want to be uncomfortable Of I don't want to be in the situation where someone else agrees with me um, and then it then it wanders into the the most controversial part of you know language and you know that that's offensive and and and um You know the the places where I think a lot of people can agree to disagree where You know, maybe we shouldn't have a kkk guy come to campus. That's kind of true But then where do you draw that line and who's to say that any of us is the one who knows where that line should be drawn Yeah, although is it also fair to say, you know, and I'm I'm thinking back to college in the 80s, you know, you would always have um You know every year I went to ruckers as an undergrad and every year they had a different cia former cia director To talk to campus and every year they would be protested because they were horrible human beings some of them worse than others But uh, but then they also had trolls, right? Like you would you would bring in speakers You knew we're going to piss people off, right? It seems like that's a more common thing I mean, there's I think, you know, college campuses should be totally wide open For all kinds of speakers, but when you invite somebody like mylo yinopolis, he is not an intellectual He has nothing meaningful to say Which became clear once, you know once he was allowed to actually speak You know, he didn't really have anything interesting to say, but it's not simply You know that kids are snowflakes, right? It's also true that different parts of campus are like Let's bring in the most insane ridiculous out there speaker That's that might be part of it, right? Yeah. Yeah, and I really hate the whole the whole snowflakes Label on on so many levels, you know, partially as a psychologist It's like I think that's often used for people who actually actually have depression or real mental health issues and like Let's not make fun of that. Okay, um, you know, plus it is nuanced It is something where we're you know, we're gonna have a you know, a wide spectrum Of of opinions about this because yeah, someone like mylo is just a product here You know, he's just trying to make people mad. He doesn't actually have anything to say Um, and you know, so when people say that person or you know, as I mentioned like, you know Somebody who uh is gonna advocate For the kkk or something like that. Okay. That's that's maybe in a different category Um, but then the idea of you know, someone who is further to the right or further to the left Shouldn't come to this campus and we shouldn't have a discussion where it is You know A more serious intellectual discussion of ideas I think that's where most people especially gen X or two boomers start to say well, wait a second What are we doing here? Are we really going to say that we can't have these folks come to campus? And if they do If you don't like it, don't go to the talk or go to the talk and ask challenging questions We don't have to you know, disinvite them. We don't have to have a safe space where if You know, this offends you you you can go There's other solutions to this. I think that's what a lot of gen Xers and boomers would argue anyway Liz you uh, you know, you you teach now right at university to Cincinnati and their uh journalism or communications program from time to time I'm a professional player there. So we do guest lectures for for okay. Well, well, I mean, but you've you've been on campus Uh, you know recently and things like that and I realized your undergrad was Ohio University, right? Alma mater of Paul Newman and uh, Mike Schmidt the great baseball player as well as Any number of other great great Americans Uh, including for two years my ex-wife, uh, I love oh you but can you make any? judgments like a bit between the people she went to College with and the students you're teaching now are encountering. Do you see great differences or do you think those are also mostly kind of hyperbolized in online media I mean, it's actually been really refreshing because you know, we were my husband and I do do a lot of the lectures together He's also a journalist and we were we were both very worried about Going to speaking to to these students about you know, we we did a like a series for one of the political journalism classes about how to cover You know the trump presidency and and sort of and just talking about our own work So I was talking a lot about you know, um, like sex work and sex trafficking and you know, um, myths around that I was talking to I had just written a story for reason about um, sort of the anti-asian hate crime, you know Uh Phenomenon that was happening now. Actually a lot of that had been sort of overblown So a lot of sort of sensitive topics that we were like We are going to get you know, like yell it out by these students or at least they're going to put up a big fight about You know how we're not You know being whatever but um that there there was none I mean people were like really respectful people asked questions people did push back on some ideas sometimes a little bit But you know in a way that was very just like Measured and reasonable and just like you'd want a discussion within that classroom to be So our actual experience was that like oh like none and you know, this is just Could be for any number of reasons. Um, it could be that this attitude is just more Prevalence in you know, and certain sorts of like Ivy League or liberal arts schools as opposed to just a you know university of Cincinnati very um, you know state school, but um But it was it was refreshing. They were not at all like these sort of uh Months safety monsters that we that we see in the in the And it might maybe Maybe we hope that uh journalists. I mean I had I kind of laughing about myself for even suggesting this But that journalists are like, okay. Yeah, we're into controversy in a way that other majors might not But I don't know That's a pretty weak argument, you know gender studies majors or anything like that. So yeah I want to run this as a clip from one of the originating moments of The free speech movement at Berkeley Which started in 1964 and it's fascinating because the free speech movement On the Berkeley campus at the time the only people who could leaflet who could table and give out materials You had to be there Officially part of the college republicans or the college democrats and there have been a bunch of people They've been doing things for um, civil rights Sign-ups including going down to the south to register voters and whatnot and one of the leaders of that who is just a phenomenal kind of improviser Improvisational Orator Mario Savio, you know who showed the you know the kind of spritzer Torah Uh that you know was talked about in renaissance, Italy, but he gives a speech here And I just I want to run this because again, it's from 64 And i'm curious to get your sense from both of you. How do you how do you think about this in comparison to what we You know what we saw in the Yale clip uh from 2015 When the operation of the machine becomes so odious Makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part You can't even passively take part and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels Upon the levers by all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop And you've got to indicate to the people who run it to the people who own it unless you're free the machine Won't be prevented from working at all whoo That's pretty good stuff Jane would you know when you listen to that, you know, here's an undergraduate assignment compare and contrast with the Yale video Yeah, um I mean it's You have anger in both cases obviously. Yeah um By there in 64 it seems More abstract More about the system Then in 2015 where it's more personal yeah Yeah, that's kind of fascinating right to think about I mean for me the most striking similarity is certainly the anger, you know to the idea that Anger on campus is something new seems off Liz, what about you? Have you seen that clip before? Um, or you know, and what's your response to it? Um I don't think you can necessarily compare. I mean, there's definitely, you know, you can see a lot of that sort of the anger at the system alive and well amongst Millennials and Gen Z depending on, you know, where you are and what what the protest is about Like I mean we saw a ton of that during during not a lot of the, you know, racial justice protests in 2020 and And again before that back in, you know, 2014 2015. So I think I think that sort of Anger at the system is still very much alive and well today I um, one of the things I find fascinating is that in the 60s and I have spent much of my professional career trying to be the Quizzling of the baby boom generation like I I want to collaborate with gen x and with volatiles and gen z to Sink the boomers to get rid of them. I think you know, the boomers tend to be full of themselves Or we are full of ourselves and all of that kind of stuff but It's interesting to me that in the 60s generation and what came after There was a move to build alternative systems and alternative communities Or to challenge the system very forthrightly. So you you know, people move to communes people created alternative corporations alternative schools The black panthers are one example of this in the civil rights movement and also the lgb You know the the gay and lesbian movement gay liberation movement women's lib was like fuck you We are going to do our own thing and we're going to exit And that's how we reform things and what strikes me as a meaningful change now is that many of the people and You know on campuses and millennials they are actually petitioning the system Rather than leaving it or even altering it It's and it's almost as if they believe on some deep-seated level that the system Is there and it is responsive to them and it has been Because when we look at the system if the system is america it is much better In terms of race in terms of class in terms of gender and sexual orientation And I wonder if we've kind of reached the limit maybe up where you know the the grievances that are being put in front of the system now The system can't really do much about that. I don't gene do you have any response to that? I think that might be true There is a poll done in 2020 That asks people adult of all ages in the u.s. About things like Is america fundamentally a fair society or an unfair society? Most millennials and gen z said unfair Are there significant changes needed to the system of american government? And a vast majority of millennials and gen z said yes So I think that points in the direction Of maybe a similar some some similar turning points to things like in in the late 60s where there's this idea of You know these small changes and petitioning is not working Um, I think that this is going to be very interesting to watch in the way forward if that pessimism And that attitude that things are broken leads to constructive change That could be a very positive result My fear is that it started to cross over into let's just burn everything down and start over Liz what about you? How do you um, you know, do you do you feel like we are stuck in a doom loop? Or you know, we're kind of culturally doom scrolling right or something like that or Is what what would be your preferred way forward? I mean I think I think you're right in your diagnosis there and it reminds me of you you showed that millennial cover earlier from 2014 it was my first my first feature article that reason was in that and it was a Called rise of the hipster capitalist, which is just such a cringe title But um Yeah Yeah, well, but the point I made it at some of the points I made it still stand Which is that you know, we were not I think millennials were much less likely and and still are than the gen X to be concerned with You know Selling out and like, you know, how the man and the corporations were people are like There's no concept of selling out amongst millennials want to sell out Um, but you know another another part of what I talked about was how like there was much less emphasis on like You just need to drop out of you know a capitalist system and much more on how like we were going to change it We were going to do social good through our companies and even though, you know, there's there's a lot of negativity about There's a negative rhetoric about capitalism I think that a lot of millennials still believe that that it's possible for people to do You know to do good through business as as opposed to needing to just totally remove themselves for that world Which is the same, you know the same thing kind of Another side of the coin you mentioned about you know trying to reform reform various systems of of government and et cetera through the system um As far as whether or not that works I have much more faith on the uh the capitalism side than I do with the reforming the The government yeah the official channels. I think a lot of times it's kind of naive to assume like These people are creating the problem and we'll we'll you know Use them also though to to be our to be our cops and our mediators, etc I uh, yeah, I mean like, you know, if if america is a Irredeemably racist, you know sexist society like you're not going to get justice from you know, the people who run the system Right by definition, but I think in that um 2015 millennial cover You know the cover story was a package your piece other things in there I think my main analytical error was that I I really saw it in positive terms that you know I think about these things in my family history my grandparents Escaped old europe and worked really shitty jobs and put up with a lot of stuff so that they're kids You know, I I mean we're able to get drafted in world war two essentially Um, but you know, my parents had a much better life than their parents. I had a much better life than my parents Uh gene and in terms of your slow Uh life strategy, you know, everything was stretched out my kids Have a very good life or a lot of options and I at the end of that millennial story talked about how Millennials might be the first generation that actually gets to do work that expresses their core political ideological cultural commitments Um, and I think I realized, you know, like if you're asking somebody who's 21 To you know, okay now go now go get a job that expresses exactly who you are and you know, what not that's so That's too much to ask of anyone, but especially a 21 year old who may not even know You know ultimately I didn't know what I really thought when I was in my early 20s. So Um, you know, it's it's setting people up for some kind of psychological Uh drama that is is asking too much Um, I guess as a final thought gene, let's let's leave let's end with you as the author of generations The real differences between Gen Z millennials gen X boomers and silence and what they mean for america's future What is the you know, what's the What what is your preferred prescription for? Bringing generations and it's not like we need a kumbaya moment or something We don't have to be singing folk songs around A non carbon emitting fireplace somewhere or something But you know, what what's what's a way forward where the generations can actually Learn from each other gain from each other comfort each other and and kind of help us all get better I think it's a couple things. So in this book my number one goal was really To help us understand each other better There's so many stereotypes out there so many misunderstandings Um, I think there's also plenty of people who just don't even Think about this person who's younger than me or older than me that they grew up in a completely different world Um, and I think that's what we're thinking about. I think it's worth understanding and that's why I delved into all of the the data and and stories and everything else was To try to help Yes, you know understand other generations better understand our own generation and ourselves better But as like the big picture I think we have to Really grapple with these technological changes that We have to recognize just how amazing this world is and how Amazing our lives are compared to people who lived 200 years ago or 100 years ago or 50 years ago how many Things we enjoy how many conveniences that we made just to put it in terms of time that we live longer lives and Those lives have a lot less drudgery because of technology and a lot more convenience because of technology So what are we going to do with that Amazing gift of time. Yeah Are we going to fight with each other on social media? Or are we going to sit down spend time with each other discuss issues And actually have a real conversation I think that's a pretty easy choice, but we've made the opposite one for a lot of the last few years So I think that's something to consider All right. Well, we're going to leave it there gene twangy Uh author most recently of generations. Thanks so much for joining us and uh, liz nolan brand always great to talk with you