Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 09-11-25_THURSDAY_6AM

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

09-11-25_THURSDAY_6AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausurrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Happy to have you here on a tough day. A couple of big an a number, well, a couple of big news items today, nationally of importance. Naturally, the 24th anniversary of the attacks from September 11th of 2001. Frankly, that's when KMED went news talk.

I don't know if you were listening back at that time, but, you know, 2001, it was something that we were planning. And just to kind of give you kind of a recap of what we have been doing up to that point, I had moved back from Fargo back when I think Clear Channel owned the radio stations at that point. You know, the huge national conglomerate. And, of course, that was a very different era of radio indeed. but they own my stations in Fargo that I was working at and I had lost control of my life and spent a couple of years in Fargo, North Dakota, as I had long mentioned, and then said, yep, got Southern Oregon is home. Southern Oregon is home, man.

It's like I probably would have come back and worked for free. Fortunately, they did choose to pay me, you know, at that point, but I was working together with Paul Hansen. We were doing daily news practices. We are going to be doing a morning news program here in southern Oregon. And we were working this morning 24 years ago. And I think it was about quarter to six or something. The news broke about the one plane striking the tower, you know, the first, the first tower.

And we're all going, oh, man, this is horrible. This is, you know, what a horrible tragedy. And then the second one. And then the news from the second one hits. And then off to the race as we were. It's still kind of a blur. Can't really remember a lot of the way it was. You know, the shock and the awe, you know, within the collective nations' psyche.

The sky's cleared because all the airlines were grounded. Remember that? Yeah, I know that's a Lucretia. That's a Lucretia deal, right, Lucretia? Yeah, you got all into that. But still, the country changed incredibly from that day forward. Not necessarily for the better. Yeah, we were really united for a while.

My challenge, and I don't know if you have an opinion on this or not, but 24 years after 9-11, I don't even like using the turn 9-11. I think I prefer September 11th because so much of our language is a great article in Lou Rockwell today that kind of hit me hard how much of the language of today almost seems like it was designed to be an incredible psychological up on the American people by forces that have been. in control for a long time that'd like to keep us involved in lots of wars for whatever reason, whether it's just about being a hegemonic power, whatever it is, or whether it's about keeping the military industrial complex going, I don't know. But a project for a new American century, all you have to do is just do a little bit of reading on it and read some of the other amazing books that came out in the wake of 9-11. And I know a lot of bad things happened that day

but the one thing that I do know is much like all the many of the people who are involved with the 9-11 commission report it's a big lie and a big whitewash and that's why when the anniversary comes around it's it's kind of like

I hate to put it this way I know it sounds very cynical but my attitude about this day 24 years ago has been rewarded in which which, you know, happy your government lies to you day about so much of what happened that day and what happened and what came beyond it, you know.

So I don't know if I want to dwell a whole lot on that. Maybe you do. And you have thousands of Americans died that day. That was real. The underpinnings of the reaction and how it came to be, though, I'm not so sure about it. and I'm not going to try to tell you that I know what happened. But the one thing I can tell you is that what we've been told all those years happened is a rather incomplete truth, okay?

We'll just kind of leave it at that. If you want to discuss it, you're certainly more than welcome. 7705-633-770 K-M-E-D. And for that I am very sad. Very sad that so much of our language and so much of our knowledge of what we're, really happens has been someone hidden from that day. All right. But what I really want to talk about here for a little bit, and certainly we're going to have

time to take your calls, is the latest shock to the system. Latest shock to the system yesterday, of course, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, conservative activist. And from all accounts, incredible guy. I didn't know him. I wasn't a talk show host that I knew. I knew of him. occasionally watch some of his videos in which he would debate people on the college campuses.

And he was really good at that. Very effective. Very effective. And he was assassinated yesterday, as you probably know at this point, unless you've been under Iraq. But he was assassinated at Utah Valley University in Norm Utah, probably one of the more conservative universities in this country. And if there is one place that you figure that he was. safe to speak you would have thought that it was in Utah at Utah Valley University but not it's not the way it ended up working out fact he was talking about mass

shootings at that time and one shot rings out hit him in the throat took out his left jugular from the looks of it I shared the video and I think you know and I know people are saying don't share that kind of stuff no people need to see the results of political violence. You need to see it. At least I did. And it was sickening. It was sickening.

It's very sad. And then I hear, I am very sad for his family, too. For one, I understand his family was there watching it. Three-year-old, six-year-old, his wife? Oh, my gosh. You saw Daddy killed. And for about an hour, hour and a half,

we were all sitting around praying and sharing stuff on social media and talking about how how could this happen I don't claim to be any expert on this I don't I'm just sharing what some of the stuff that I had had watched to but I remember seeing when Charlie was

was shot assassinated murdered I saw that shot I'm just like going oh he's I doubt he was going to make it from that in fact he was likely brain dead when he was on the operation table because there was just such a massive loss of blood. It was just, he was bleeding out so quickly. And I don't know, unless you had a surgical team there, could you save someone like that?

But yeah, they battled mightily, but then they called it after about 45 minutes, 50 minutes later. And then the news came out that he had passed. And then conservative nation in mourning, conservative nation in morning. And now today we're picking up the pieces and wondering where this goes. and then we ended up going through okay we got the shooter right we got the shooter the first one was supposedly guy kind of looked like Bernie Sanders down on his knees and one of the things he said is I am going to remain silent I think is what what he said if I recall some of the reports that were on it and they took him in it's like older guy and older white guy

and they took a man, they questioned him, no connection to it, and he was released. And then there was another suspect that was brought in a couple of hours later that was all dressed in black and seen running away from the event. And so he was brought in and questioned thoroughly, and then no connection, and then he was released. And then they, well, of course, then Washington Post and others ended up enhancing a video, a cell phone video, and what do you know another guy on the roof a couple hundred meters

well a couple hundred yards away a couple of football field links away on the roof apparently and you know again nobody looked up on the roof before this I don't know

as far as the security aspect of it and so that's who they're looking for right now FBI is all over it. FBI is very good at investigating. Federal Bureau of Investigation. I imagine Cash Patel has a lot of pressure to throw everything he can possibly throw at it

into this mix. And what I found interesting, I don't know what it was like for you. How did you react to it? Was it with anger? Was it just kind of stun shock? I was ready to cry and I don't even know

Charlie Kirk it affected me very differently from the assassination attempt on President Trump and I think the reason for that it now it's not because of the talk show host thing because I mean he's just out there debating doing what he does you know debating the college kids and bringing conservative values to a wide audience.

He was extremely effective. He was probably the most effective person talking with Generation Z and Beyond. Really good at that. And now he was actually a very young millennial. Speaking of which I'm going to be talking about the millennial generation with an author from Bloomberg here in a few minutes that I think is really interesting talking about the characteristics of

this much malign generation. in my opinion. But Charlie was effective, and I think what got me is that when President Trump had the assassination attempts, we're shocked, but we all know that that is part of the field. If you're going to run for president or if you're going to be president, there's always the risk. We know that. There's always that risk of assassination.

It's been going on forever. long, long time in this country. Political assassination, I know everyone's going to say and give you the platitudes of, oh, the assassination is political violence is not what we are, yada, yada, yada. I'll always remember Paul from Talent who used to call the show, and he says,

Bill, political assassination and violence happens because it's effective. And no doubt the reason why Charlie Kirk was taken out was because of his effectiveness. And this is just my opinion, but I'm going to talk my opinion along with Kevin Sterrett again. We'll have him on the show here in just a little bit after seven. We're going to talk again. I know I talked with him yesterday about a different firearms issue.

This was a professional hit. Charlie Kirk was so effective that there was a person or some people out there who figured you had to bring in a professional to take care of business. Was it about, you know, strangling the conservative youth movement in its crib? I don't know. It's pure conjecture on this point. We don't know anything really at this point. It's going to take about 48 hours just to probably get the basic facts of what really happened on the ground there out.

It's just the way it is, all the noise that happens in the first place. But, yeah, that, if, but like I said, I was angry about President Trump, but I know that that's part of the deal. He had lived a long life. It raised his kids, had an amazing business, great story, et cetera. Had he been assassinating back at that time, I would have been very sad. But you also know that, okay, he lived his life the way he wanted to, and Charlie Kirk was just really in the beginning of it, kind of a baby. of it and yet he was a giant in the conservative movement and he was effective which i believe is why a professional had to be brought in it appeared to be a professional one now i'm willing to

follow my sword if it is not found to be that way and just uh some doofus that uh went to the guns to the gun range every now and then and uh just hated conservatives i i don't know we'll just see where this ends up going but it sure feels like it was designed and then you have to say who is it designed by because we're being spun up to well hate the left of course well given what I know about what we weren't total about 9-11 does it have to be the left or is it just the the worldwide globalist blob so we can talk about such things that this morning. 7705633-3-770 KMED.

This is the Bill Meyer show. Nine days only. It all end. Go.com. This is Randall with Advanced Air, and I'm on KMED. Thinking about Charlie Kirk's assassination yesterday, 7705-633, thought we would take a few of your calls. We'll have more calls, especially time, available at 7.30. And maybe after my 635 interview, but believe me, we'll get to every.

everybody on conspiracy theory Thursday as quickly as we can. Deplorable, Patrick, you're here, part of the early morning risers club. Welcome. It's on your mind. Well, I'm in stunt shock, if you want to my reaction for now. And my first question is, hey, I'm confused. I thought the left was anti-gun. Oh, well, anti-gun, they're anti-gun as long as they have the gun. I think that's really what we're thinking about, or how you have to phrase it, when you say? I think so well. What the left is, I'll tell you what the left is, they're inconsistent.

And I also want to just mention, before I keep moving and on to go this morning, I was thinking what good work Charlie Kirk was doing, and I was thinking about jumping into being a supporter. Now I'm more than thinking about, I'm doing it today. All right. Patrick, appreciate the call. 770563. David is here. Good to have you on Bill Meyer's show. Good morning. Hey, Bill. Good morning. You kind of touched on it a little bit when you said, you know, you said something about, you know, hating the left, and you have to wonder if somewhere in the plotting of this thing, the political fallout and the social repercussions weren't some

were considered, you know, as something that was going to happen from killing him. We don't know anything yet, but my main thing is, and also I know there's lots of conspiracy theories, like how do you run away in the world of cameras, license plate, readers, drones, all that stuff. do you get away in the American city? But anyway, the real thing I'm curious about with this girl being stabbed on the bus and then this Charlie Kirk footage, the internet, I recall, when I was younger, the internet, the media, news outlets and social media, and this was before, like, AI and stuff, they wouldn't show film of people actually dying.

I know. That used to be, so how come these two events are being, everybody's calling me last night and they've seen it. Like, you can't even watch, you couldn't even watch a video if a car crash was lifted in a death. They wouldn't play the video on the media site. And this is not new. That was a couple years ago. We've got AI programs now to filter out, all kinds of content online.

You have to wonder why everybody's seen this. Well, I don't think that they're filtering that out to the extent that we once thought, because all you have to do is watch a bunch of YouTube shorts. You can see all sorts of blood and guts. Some of it may be AI, other parts of it may be movie clips, which nobody seems to mind that. But I know the one thing that Facebook did

when I ended up sharing it, because this is important news, whether there's no way of getting around it. You can't candycoat this. And they ended up putting a warning shield over it, and I even warned that this is graphic content. and making sure I don't have kids that are on my particular Facebook account. You know, they don't, you know, kids are not on my account for the most part.

We know that it's, you know, it tends to be mostly adults that would be commenting on what I'm doing. But I don't think they've been filtering this to the extent that you're thinking of back then. And maybe you're right about that. Yeah, it was earlier time that you just couldn't find it, could you? No, there is a protocol in journalism and media, and it's, I think it's been, more strict since technology got better, but I'm just going to say there's many layers to this, obviously, I mean, I feel for the guy, this is horrible and his family, but I'm just going to say, part of me feels like this is meant to be seen, you know, and for some other

purpose. And, you know, and I think that what adds to that is the fact that this guy, whoever did this, was able to get away. You know, that's not normal. I mean, you go, go to a little town like Central Point and rob a liquor store, and you watch what, watch the police response. Watch the cameras. Yeah. And the technology is available. And you're telling me on a college campus in a large American city, you know, those things put together to me have all the markings of it. I'm not going to say. Well, that is that that is what I was mentioning here and bringing up. It's like, I know what we're supposed to think. And because of that very reason, I'm suspicious. Okay. Well, I'm ready. I'm, yeah, I mean, and I, and I think the

sentiment, well, you have to be suspicious of everything we've lived through, you know, I'm not, no longer naive, you know, and the fact that the guy got away, the fact that everybody's reacting the way they are, it's the same week as the Charlotte train thing, and, you know, and I'm sure you'll have other people that. I don't even read internet conspiracy theories. I'm just using, I just know. No, hey, come on. Hey, buddy, we're living internet conspiracy theories, okay? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We live in the sciop. So, but I just, yeah, it's terrible what happened to the guy. All right. Thank you for the call, David. I'll grab one more, and then, like I said, We'll have more open phone time a little bit later, but this will be the final.

Tom, you'll wrap it up this segment here, but good morning. Yeah, hi, Bill. Yeah, my reaction, just great sadness for the state of the country, to have 9-11 immediately after Charlie was assassinated really compounds the sadness, I feel, because I've lived with almost 60 years with the knowledge that our government murdered its own president back in 63. And what happened on 9-11 was another continuation of this rogue government that we have doing what it's doing with the endless wars and propagating, propagandizing, just like in that article, which I also recommend in Lou Rockwell,

I believe it's called Language and Mind Control, which the American people were under such mind control here with the news and so forth. If you don't realize it, you can't see it. It's like the goldfish swimming through the water and not noticing the water. It's the same sort of thing. This is the atmosphere that we live and swim in. It certainly is, and my sadness is how few people seem to realize it. And that was really highlighted with the 80% compliance with the COVID facts.

When that came out, I looked at it and said, oh, this smells rotten. But 80% of the American people went along with this propaganda. And I would dare say that COVID broke the American mind in many ways, or at least the mass American mind. Do you think so? Oh, yeah. You and I both have been talking about this a bit. I'll tell you what, why don't we pick this up a little bit later? I know you called earlier, but if you want to call back a little later,

I have some big open phone time 7.30-ish, okay? And we can continue that along with everybody else who are going to miss this time, okay? Thank you, Bill. All right. Thanks, Tom. It's 634. Charlie Wells is going to join me, and we're going to talk about Charlie Kirk's generation. Charlie Kirk was a young millennial, one of the younger of the millennials who had great,

amazing skills you know to communicate with younger generations than the millennials themselves and you know the millennials have gotten a really really bad rap and Charlie Wells is a award-winning reporter from Bloomberg and he wrote a book about the generation what happened to the millennials what happened to them because there's no generation that has probably been more maligned that I can think of in my lifetime and we're going to have a little talk about that the good and the bad of it. And I think it's a really interesting thing. These people are

moving into the possessions of power, and it's worth understanding it better. Need a roof that performs and lasts? Kea Medford, click Kia Medford.com. You're here in the Bill Myers Show on 1063, KMED. Proud to bring Charlie Wells

on. He's an award-winning reporter at Bloomberg News. He's covered finance, tech, real estate, culture. And before Bloomberg, What, another half decade or so at the Wall Street Journal, huh? In that case, how you doing this morning, Charlie? Good day, have you on. Hey, good morning.

Thank you for having me. Yeah. It's pretty, in the news world, a lot of things going on between the 9-11 commemorations going on. And, of course, big news has been the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who, of course, is a member of the millennial generation, which is also your generation and a very influential guy. He was one of the younger members of that. you're kind of like right in the middle of this and you have written a book coming out next week which I think is really worth picking up and it's called what happened to millennials in defense of a generation now I've got to tell you of all the generations I've seen come around I know it's

always been fashionable for for the older folks to sit there and go oh those kids they don't know you know this has been going back thousands of years okay yeah yeah and and the world is going to go to hell in a handbasket because of those kids. And I thought it was that you bring up a lot of interesting things about the millennials, the good and the challenging, and the way that this group of individuals ended up forming their worldview. And first off, could you tell us, for those that don't know, what is that age range, generally speaking, when someone was born to be considered a millennial?

Yeah, so millennials are people who were born between the years of 1980. in 1996. So people who are about 29 years old to 44 years old. And this is actually America's largest living generation. So this is the largest cohort of people in one of those age brackets that we talk about. When we talk about things like Gen X or baby boomers, right now it's millennials. We are the biggest generation in the U.S. biggest one. And they've gotten pretty much a bad rap in my opinion. Some of it kind of deserved, but what are you bringing forth in this particular book? Because you're

a millennial, you're talking two millennials. But I don't think it's just being written as a gazing at the naval thing and hanging out in mom's basement, right? I hope not. No, no. And I think my big takeaway here is millennials have gotten older, right? And I think sometimes we forget that the things that we say about different generations of the kind of overgeneralizations that we have. Those things change,

right? The data starts to shift underneath it, right? I think one of the pieces of the data is literally the age of millennials, right? We are no longer the new kids on the block in the workforce. And, you know, Bill, you're talking about how going back throughout history, often we tend to say, oh, you know, those young kids, what are they doing? They have no idea what they're doing. A lot of times what we've seen over the past 100 years or so is when people start entering the labor force, that a lot of the kind of stereotypes, a lot of the generalizations that older folks might make about the new crop of people coming into the workforce, that's when a lot of that starts. And so when millennials were coming into the workforce, that was about

a decade ago, right? That was about a decade ago, right when, you know, we were dealing with the outcomes of the recession, we were dealing with the outcomes of the war on terror, and also we were dealing with the growth of social media. So you combine all that stuff, and and you've got this group of people. Now the largest living generation in America, kind of under that microscope of social media at a really, really, really awkward time in life for pretty much anybody.

Yeah, when you're first getting into the workforce, for sure. I would just remind you here, Charlie, that I remember the way I would look at some history books and the way that the Flapper generation was talked about before the Great Depression, and they were talking about all the Flapper Generations, these kids, they're just ne'er-do-wells to nothing. They're never going to be able to get together

and make a life for themselves. Yeah, great to... That's Gerald. Yeah, that's his book. Yeah, exactly. Great Depression happened, World War II happened. We know them today as the greatest generation. Hmm.

Good point. And I just thought, you know, a lot of people kind of forget that aspect of it. That generation was thought of as just a bunch of loose. losers prior to being lazy. Life shapes you, right? And I think that's the important point that I'm trying to make here is that, you know, that generation, as you say, it's out that they were quote-unquote losers, right? But they really went through a lot. And look, you know, I think that happens to every generation, the wisdom of life. And where I really pick up in this book is in 1999. And that is when the oldest millennials started turning 18. And I think one of the narratives

about millennials, that millennials themselves, I have done this myself, have internalized is that we weren't growing up, right? We were kind of staying younger. We weren't kind of getting to a lot of these adult milestones. But from 1999 to now, there has been so much change in American life that millennials have gone through. And we've all gone through this, right? Everyone who's been living in the country since that point has gone through these changes. But what I focus on here in this book is that that was a pretty formative time for this group of people, right? That was kind of your early adulthood, as I was talking about that really awkward phase. And you're sort of figuring bring things out, and it's not easy.

And would you say that even global war on terror had great influence on this group and maybe even more traumatizing than perhaps other groups? Certainly. I mean, that was, you know, a lot of people on 9-11, which is, this is the marker of that day across the

country. It was a moment that I think for a lot of other generations, I think, you know, I think about maybe baby boomers, it was you know, when Kennedy was as fascinated. I think it was this feeling that maybe the safety and security that you had or that you assumed was around, maybe, maybe in a naive and childish way, but maybe in a realistic way that really did represent the standing of the United States. You know, it had only

been a few years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, right? Since really the end of communism, we were kind of celebrating that victory. And I think to then have 9-11 happen, I think, kind of shattered a lot of these understandings that millennials had a really important kind of young moment in their life. Charlie Wells is with me. And coming up next week, he has excellent book coming out. I highly recommend this. What happened to millennials in defense of a generation? Now, the stereotypical talk about millennials for a long time is that, you know, not able to work, not willing to work, not even interested in working. Is there any truth to some of that? Because I know that, you know, you would get this from sometimes. I would read

stories about that, you know, oh my gosh, the company is calling back the retiring boomers. Please come back for a little while. Is there any truth to that? Well, it was a hard time getting started in work, and I think that, you know, one of the statistics that stands out to me is if you flash back to the height of the recession, you go back to 2009. Yeah. One in five young people was unemployed.

So if that means that one out of five people who wanted a job couldn't get one. And I think that that was creating a lot of stressors across the country. There was a lot of kind of job hopping. There was a lot of temporary labor that has, that continues. use and has been incredibly difficult for people, but actually some data shows that millennials, when you take stock, when you look back at what's happened, they hopped jobs a lot less than prior generations did. So I think some of those assumptions have been wrong. And actually, if you think about the workplace, and this is where there is a lot of intergenerational mixing, right? This is where

whether we want to or not, we've got to work with people from different age groups, one study of many, many people across generations found that actually millennials more than other groups want to be considered martyrs by their bosses. They care about their work so much. And, again, I think... Really? That's an interesting data point. So, martyrs.

Really have. What happened to the... I work to live, not live to work, kind of ethos. I've heard so much about this group. Two things here. I think one of the things is that jobs were hard to get when we were trying to get jobs for the first time, right? They were so hard to get.

when you can't, when you don't, when you want something but can't get it, you kind of get obsessed with it, right? That's another thing, millennials and real estate. That is another thing that comes up a lot. But the other issue here, and I talked about social media before, but I want to come in here, LinkedIn, right? That is one of the most active social media networks that we have. And that, I think, for millennials, has made what you do so personal and so public, right? I mean, Bill, like, flash back to, like, your first job or maybe your first couple jobs. Yeah. People that you knew from high school, I'm assuming people who you knew from middle school, probably didn't know where you were or what role you were moving through. On LinkedIn, now, as everybody knows, you see when someone gets a promotion.

You see when someone switches jobs. You see when someone loses jobs. And I think that makes the role of work huge in a lot of millennials' minds. Is this the first generation that was really all in on social media in the workforce? Is this the first one really? I mean, I would say by and large, yes. You know, Facebook, I remember Facebook rolling out when I was in college. Again, though, Gen X, you know, has had to deal with us as well, and so with baby boomers. I think this is another, this is another point I really want to make in this book, which is we can be a little too astrological about generations, right? We can say, oh, you were born in 1988, therefore you must be like this. And literally professors were said, we've got to step back from that, right? We need to have a more nuanced take. You know, people are born kind of an in-between eras as we were talking about. and we've got to look at the year that someone's born to think about, you know, how their generation, how this, a group of people is going to be able. Well, let's face it, Charlie, we're all, we're all products of the situations and the conditions of the life that we enter at that time.

So there has to be some influence of the times on who you are. The time, history, right, that everyone is going through. And then the other kind of the third area where people really think we need to focus a little bit more is life stage, right? So just as we were talking about, everyone going through certain periods in life, whether they are a boomer, whether they were the greatest generation or what have you, they go through these transitions childhood. They're, you know, early adolescence. They might be called different things and they might be understood in different ways. But those are things when you take into account that life stage, the history, as well as the year that someone's born, that gives you more complete picture. Charlie, I know that we're trying to just dispel generalizations of generational behavior and the conflict between it.

The one thing I had noticed, though, and this is just my experience, and I don't interface with medical very often, but I have relatives who do older relatives that you take them to the doctor, you take them to the hospital. Of all the generations that I've seen come up in my lifetime and beyond, and hopefully beyond, I don't think I have found better caregivers than millennial aged. And I'm kind of wondering, did you find out anything about that or talk about that? And it has to do with more of an empathetic approach to work. And I'm wondering if this is something which is a general characteristic of the group. I think that's such a telling observation.

And, you know, what I would say is from at least what I've done in my work and researching for this book, It could go back to that job issue of millennials had such a hard time getting jobs. I think if you want to think about the medical field, that was an area where even when the economy is not doing great, there is still demand for doctors, nurses, for caregivers, right? And I think, I know people in my own generation, my own family, who are caregivers in those occupations, and they were so thankful to have those roles when everyone else, when I wasn't getting a job. I remember this person in my family being like, wow, I'm just, you know, she wasn't bragging, but she was like, look, I'm just so thankful that I have this role as a physical

therapist because there isn't continued need for that. And I think these people see it and they know it and they've been thankful for, you know, as they've kind of started this interview, millennials are getting old now. And now these millennials who've been in these health care roles, they've seen and they're thankful for what these professions have provided them. That would be my, that would be my theory there. Charlie Wells with me once again. His book is Millennials in Defense of a Generation. That'll be published September 16th, just a few days from now. And I think, like I said, it was just a fascinating go-through in interviews with lots of different. I have a young millennial daughter who was born in 1993. I wish I had better contact with her. One thing I did

want to ask you about is, where does the millennial generation lie overall when it comes to family connection because I know even my own daughter, I don't know if it's because of my politics, if she looks at me as kind of toxic, but you can tell that she kind of keeps me at an arm's length, even though she loves me and I love her. And is there something like that? Because I seem to remember this, there was a lot of, well, I don't really care about my family. I care about my friends.

Is there any evidence of that having been sort of a part of this generation? You know, I think on the political front, I think it's been a huge. huge challenge in the United States, the polarization that would be, right? The fact that political affiliation has become such a huge part of identity, right? And I think that if you rewind back to even that 1996 election, which millennials, a lot of the millennials I talked to, that was when they started to think about what was going on politically, that then there weren't red states or blue states, right? Even a lot of the TV networks used red to represent a Democratic victory and blue to represent a Republican figure. So it just, it was.

that these conceptions and the fact that, you know, now politics has become so solidified on either side, that, you know, has been a huge change over the course of our lifetime. And I think there's a lot that comes into play here, right? It's the proliferation of cable news, of social media, of the fact that things just kind of get oversimplified and people tend to take things really personally. Um, and so I think, you know, that that has been on a very unfortunate side effect of polarization. On the bigger issue of family life, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of rethinking family. I think, you know, I, every subject in this book that I spoke with eventually went on to form a family, and it was fascinating to watch how that happened in different ways. But I don't think that that, you know, emphasis on family has diminished. I think it might look different. And I think, as well, people are living longer. And so I think the phases, the seasons of life that people go through look different. They come at different times. I think there's times when we are away from, you know, family members who we were close with at a different phase of life, but then we come back. And I think maybe one of the changes is just that longevity

issue. And so thinking about politics, thinking about longevity, those factors, those shape are social relationships, right? They shape the everyday interactions that we have with the people who were closest to. You talk about in the book how millennials as a rule are very adaptable, and I would agree with that, very adaptable. But like you just mentioned, they remember life before the red and blue states. And so do you ultimately think that politically, that they really could be more of a unifying force as time goes on in the country? That's the whole, right? I think that there is the memories that they have of, you know, life before politics became so toxic.

I think that's something that I left being optimistic. I think something else, just an observation I had in this book, not everyone is as political as, you know, the headlines might make people suggest. And because conversations, I knew that people in this book had different views than I did. But those didn't come up a lot. People in the every day are pretty polite. They want to have a nice time. They want to talk to people. And one of the points that I talked about with a lot of these folks was being a bridge of remembering the before, remembering before the toxicity of politics right now. But also a lot of the technology, right? So one of the issues that Gen Z has dealt with is just having grown up around smartphones and social media and not really knowing what that was like. And one of the women in this book, she is a mother now and she looks forward to helping younger people dealing with a lot of anxiety that comes with being connected to technology so much.

Basically saying, put that phone down, right? When I was a kid, I would go days without access to technology. And kind of the benefits of some of the boredom and the fact that you just have to kind of be with people, whether or not the dopamine receptors in your brain were being stimulated by the next. Yeah, with the likes and the thumbs up and the shares and everything else. Yeah, okay. Hey, you know, the one thing I have to really thank and tip my hat to millennials for is that I really like avocado toast, I found out. So, you know, I know it's kind of a joke, but no, I really do. It's great.

Yeah, it's great. But it's associated with us forever. But it's more than that. Yeah, I'll be an ally in this particular case. Charlie, so the book is out on Tuesday. Do you have a book, a website for it? Because, like I said, I think it was a really interesting read because I think what is very important to understand the generation more

because it's moving into positions of power. And so it's a thing, one way or the other. Whether you like it or not, that's where it's going. So where do you go to find out more about this, huh? Yeah, you know, the best thing you can do is just, You know, anywhere the books are sold online or Google, just, you know, type in Charlie Wells, Millennials, and a place to buy it will show up. Okay, very good. I think he did a great job on this, and thanks for having joined the show and shared a little thought with this, okay?

Really appreciate that. Thank you for having me. All right, 657 and changed Charlie Wells, once again, his book, What Happened to Millennials in Defense of a Generation? This is the Bill Myers Show.