Stuff You Should Know - Are Generations Even a Thing?

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

We all love to tour our generation's superiority, but who decides where the split occurs and what to name it? And is this even a thing or just an arbitrary division?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. Just a few Gen Xers hanging. doing our thing, being too cool for you on drinking Mountain Dew, Code Red. And that's it. Wow. Look at you, on fire already. I don't know about that.

I could have done a lot better, but that was off the dome. Yeah, well, off the dome, that's probably a millennial or Gen Z saying. I got that from you. Well, I got that from Noel. Oh, well, Noel's definitely a millennial. Yeah. he is a millennial through and through. As we'll see, the birth cohort that Noel and every one of his age cohort was born into are exactly alike, and they're different from everybody older and younger, and it's pure science that's proven that.

Yeah, and by the way, we're talking about Noel co-host, obviously, of stuff they don't want you to know, among other great things that he's done, including former mini movie crush. co-host. Yeah, I didn't know if you were going to say that for a second. I was going to jump in and be like, don't forget movie crush. Yeah, yeah. He hosted those minis with me. Yeah, for sure. And he was, he produced them too, right?

Yeah, he produced him for a while. And then I think Noel even took the reins and hosted two great episodes by himself, if anyone is a fan of John Cameron Mitchell or Kesha. Oh, wow. Like Kesha was on? Yeah, two of the big. bigger gets on movie crush were Noel episodes. Wow. What was Kesha's favorite movie?

You know, I'm pretty great at remembering all of the guests that I had, but I don't remember Kesha or John Cameron Mitchell's. Oh, okay. Well, we'll look it up someday. Yeah. I'm sure it was something great. Yeah, I remember when Noel, when you made him producer, he let that go to his head. He started wearing, like, pastel blazers with the sleeves rolled up, and was always, like, sniffing and, like, touching his nose. He was an uber producer for a while.

Yeah, he got an ascot, which was a little much. But it started hanging with Bronson Pinchot. So we're talking today about generations. That's why I mentioned that we're all Generation X. And I was being facetious earlier when I said, this is all proven by science. Apparently, it's not at all proven by science. It's really not particularly scientific.

And the whole thing, actually, when you start to dig into it, was this sociological, almost intellectual debate that got somehow manhandled and taken over by marketing, who now use it to make money, essentially. Yeah. See, what I found interesting about this, and I commissioned this one because it just the whole idea of generations fascinates me. But, you know, you'll hear us say things like, well, it was all a marketing thing, basically, to sell people's stuff. And it's really people feel commonalities or there are commonalities and people around the same age because of these reasons. But that's also sort of being a part of the generation that you're dubbed.

Right. There are actual, like, decent explanations that sociologists have come up with, but they're not. The problem is that you can't paint an entire group of people with that same brush, and that's what people try to do. Yeah. And then also the same market researchers that always hype and they're generational researchers, even though they're not really scientists, they're market researchers. It would be so much more honest if they were like, here's what a lot of kids, the cool kids are into today, start selling to them like that. Not like this entire generation is like this specific group of well-to-do white suburban kids, essentially. Yeah, exactly.

But it's still interesting to talk about. So let's talk about it a little bit because there are generations that seem to have really. Like, are paying attention to them really kind of started in the beginning of the 20th century. That's when people started thinking about this kind of thing. Yeah, for sure. So we're going to kind of go through, since they've been dubbing generations, specific generations here in the United States, we're going to go through them to begin with. And I think it's a good just sort of primer for when you're hanging out and talking about this kind of thing with other people.

You'll know all this stuff because there was one or two that slipped in there that I kind of forgot about. Like the Lost Generation? Yeah, that was the first one, right? Yeah, so they were born between 1883 and 1900. They came of age during World War I, which was like a massive catastrophe for the entire world for everyone. Like nothing had ever happened like that

before in the history of humanity. Yeah. And it was just a really big deal, and this was the group that came of age during that time. And they're called the Lost Generation. Gertrude Stein called them that. But they had a loss of it. of friends and family to death in the war, loss of limbs to landmines, loss of faith in institutions

and the traditional values that got everybody to World War I. It was a big deal, and those kids were the ones who went on to become the rebellious jazz age people. Yeah, and I'm glad we're saying where these came from, because that was one of the big kind of curiosities I had. It was like, who even thinks of these names. Right. And in most of these cases, we can trace it back to when a person said it first, like in print, usually. That doesn't mean they're the people who dreamed it up. Sure. But specifically in this case, it was from the book, The Sun also rises, and the epigraph Ernest Hemingway quoted Stein saying, you are all a lost generation. So that one looks pretty clear cut. Yeah. The next sentence was, too bad, so sad.

Your dad. Hemingway had a way of turning a phrase. Yeah. Who was next, Chuck? Who is after the lost generation? Well, the greatest generation from 1901 to 1926. seven. Yeah. And you're also going to notice that the years are going to fluctuate a little bit because there's not a set science to any of this, as you said, even though there's this one dude that we'll learn later is like, we should just make it 15 years moving forward. Right. Yeah, because the first one was 17 years and then this one's 26 years. Yeah, exactly. This is obviously the generation, I guess it would be like our grandparents who lived through the Great Depression and were, you know, defended freedom against the Nazis in World War II.

And this is one name-wise that came about, the name came about much later. Well, I'll go ahead and say who ended up naming it, and then maybe you can take what the original name was. But Tom Brokaw wrote the book, The Greatest Generation, and that was 1998, and that really took off and kind of stuck. Oh, yeah, that was a big deal. I remember when that came out.

I can hear Tom Brokaw saying, I can't do an impression of it, but can hear him saying it and talking about it. But essentially, he wrote this book about just profiling different veterans, I think mostly everyday people, and essentially collectively said, like, these are the people who grew up in the Depression. They faced genuine deprivation in many, many cases, collectively too.

And then they went on and were called to, like, go fight the Nazis in World War II, right? So there's nobody before since that's done this kind of stuff. Hats off to you, greatest generation. And they sat back and were like, we'll take this. Sure. Keep going, Brokaw. That's right. And since you didn't do what I set you up to do, I'll do that part.

They were not always the greatest generation. There were these two generational theorists, theorists, or theorists, Neil Howe and William Strauss. And they actually coined the term millennial. But they had previously labeled that generation, the GI generation, the greatest generation, and then Brokaw came along. I used to do a Brocaw, weirdly. Can you try now?

I don't remember. It was more about cadence than the actual voice because he always sounded like he was just out of breath or something like that. No, that's pretty good. Not bad at all, man. It was a breathing thing for him. It always felt like he was just about to inhale, but he couldn't quite get there, which is sad.

Enough of that GI Generation, though, stuff, or the GI Generation, I said it wrong. Let's get back to Broca on his book. I mean, what do you need to know? It was a huge book. Came out in 1998. Yeah, I already said that. Oh, okay, good. I just wanted to make sure all of our T's were crossed and our eyes were dotted. Sure. We could say it a third time if that really, you know, if you want to drive book sales.

Hit it up. 1998, everybody. Very nice. Still the year. So let's move on to the next generation. This is called the Silent Generation. This is when my dad was born. And he actually fits this bill pretty well. Yeah, I think my mom, I can't remember. the year, but I'm pretty sure she was the silent generation as well. It makes sense.

We're of that age that that would make sense. Yeah, I mean, just on the cusp of boomerdom, but silent generation is, I guess, maybe so dubbed because they're between the greatest generation and the baby boomers who got way more attention, and the silent generation was just sort of wedged there and like kind of quietly wedged there in the middle doing their thing. Yes. Also, though, they, I guess the whole thing comes from. from a time article or essay written in 1951, anonymously, weirdly, I guess, because this person

was criticizing their own generation. Yeah, maybe. But they said, they called them the silent generation. They said, it does not issue manifestos, make speeches, or carry posters. It has been called the silent generation. And I think they mean by me. Right. And, like, they were just basically saying, like, that our parents did all this amazing

stuff, and we're just, we don't do anything. We're the silent generation. So that makes sense. And then also, I guess the silent generation describes them. They're supposed to be cautious, conformist. That's another reason they're called the silent generation. So that's, you know, I guess it all kind of adds up. Yeah.

But again, you know, I think Dave put this together, and he points out, you know, Andy Warhol and Nina Simone and Gloria Steinem and Bob Dylan were all from this generation. So that's where the generation thing kind of falls apart a little bit because you can always pick out individuals. and say, well, they're nothing like they're categorized, you know. Yeah, that's definitely going to be a recurring theme in here. I saw there's this New York article by Lewis Menard. It's time to stop talking about generations where he says,

essentially all of the most important figures in like the flower power, anti-war, 60s hippie movement, almost all of them were from the silent generation. Yeah. You know, like almost none of the people who were the important figures driving this were actually baby boomers. Yeah, well, of course, that's an X from 46 to 64. Pretty wide swath there. And this, they have a pretty interesting distinction

is they're actually recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau, the only generation to be kind of independently recognized. Right. And they're the baby boomers, I think everyone knows this, because there was a big baby boom after World War II. And this isn't something that was just like, oh, the media just got a hold of it. like there were a ton of babies born after World War II.

In 1945, there were $2.9 million. It went to $3.4 the next year. And by 1964, they peaked. Oh, actually, they peaked in 57 with 4.3, but 64 was the last year in the United States, which is kind of crazy to think about with more than 4 million births. Yeah, it is, which is strange because I think the millennials, didn't they have more than the boomers? Or were they just barely second? Maybe they were second.

Regardless, that is quite a baby boom. I think it's an apt. Yeah, I mean, there are more millennials, living millennials now, but I think that's just because a boomer die off. Gotcha. Okay. So there's, we've talked about this before. I don't remember when, oh, you know what?

We did a whole episode on baby boomers, so I guarantee it was in that. Did we? Yeah, we did. Huh. I think it was called Leave the Boomers alone. I don't know. Oh.

Wow, all right. I don't think that's what it was called. I think we called it how baby boomers work. Because I don't think we were in that mindset. I think it was give him hell. Right. But there's like a whole, the later section of boomers, because this is like a 20-year, basically like 18-year group.

Yeah, that's a big one. A lot changed in between the 60s and the 70s. And the ones that were born later on in the baby boom, who grew up in the 70s, had a much, different formative age than the older boomers who came before them and were like dropping acid and everything. These are the people faced with like America becoming super cynical. Yeah. I mean, my sister is six years older than me and she's a year, she was 65. So she was a year off from being quote unquote boomer. And she's, I mean, she's solid Generation X if you ask me.

Right. Yeah. That's another problem too. What about people on the cusp like Xenial? Yeah, I mean, supposedly cusp-born people identify with both to a certain degree, but I don't know. My sister doesn't have much boomer in her. Right. Right. So that group that your sister just barely missed, the second half of the baby boomers, they have been dubbed Generation Jones by an author named Jonathan Pontell. Jonathan Jones? He basically said that he dubbed...

them that because they're a large anonymous generation. That makes sense. Jones is kind of a common last name in the United States. That's another thing, too. We should say generations, the other reason why they seem kind of flibbitty-jibity is because we're talking almost exclusively about the United States here. Yeah, of course. At the most, the English-speaking Western world at the most, right?

So it's a large anonymous generation, Jones. Or this one's so weird, that they are the generation that's jones in after their unfulfilled expectations. They're jones in for meaning or whatever. I thought it might have been keeping up with the Joneses. That's another one too. But it's almost like every time he said one of these, he was like, what do you think of that one? Right.

Yeah, testing the waters. For sure. Who's up next, Chuck? Would you say the best is up next? Yeah, I mean, here's the deal, man. I feel like Gen X is very much bordering these days on being labeled as obnoxious about how much we talk about, how awesome we are. Yeah, I think so too. I think we're kind of tipping the scales in the wrong direction, so I'm not going to tout the benefits of being Gen X because we've talked about it before. Well, also, that's like, that is super Gen X. It's just be like, well, we're treading into uncool. waters here, we better cool all. No, you're totally right. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. That's as Gen X as it gets. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the

things about Gen X is we supposedly shunned, and we did. Labels and were very sort of jaded and cynical and anti-corporate. Obviously, we think of the grunge era of the 90s and rejecting capitalism and stuff like that before

a lot of them became capitalist, but there are still, you know, plenty of Gen X, true and true through and through, both of those who are still like that. I don't know if you've seen that great Netflix documentary, The Secret Mall apartment. Have you seen that? No, that sounds great. Yeah, and it's a pretty well-known story that these Gen Xers built an apartment inside the guts of a shopping mall where they weren't found. Highly recommend it. It was a pretty cool story. I remember reading about it kind of years later when it was, I guess, got a little more media attention, but the documentary is really good.

But it could have been called ode to Gen X because all of these people, I was like, man, these were my people. Like, I could have seen my friends doing something like this. Yeah, pretty creative. Breaking the rules, but also not really doing anything that's genuinely anti-social necessarily. Yeah, breaking rules without causing harm. Yeah, that's a great way to put it, Chuck.

Yeah. Yeah, we got our name, Generation X did, from the Douglas Copeland book, Generation X, Colin, Tales for an Accelerated Culture, which is a great read. I urge everyone to read it. Copeland, apparently one time, said he named it after the Billy Idol, Billy Idol's original band, X. Yeah.

Then he later took it back and said he got it from an obscure sociology book, and that in the book it was a reference to a group that the sociologist labeled X, and this group wanted to basically exit the traditional American, class pursuits and I guess preoccupations, like didn't want to have anything to do with that. So he thought that was kind of a good name for it. Yeah. And I think X has long been a stand-in,

whether it's Malcolm X or just signing your name with the X when you don't want to put your signature is just sort of an almost active civil disobedience of like, this is not me, this is not my label. I'm just going to put an X here. Are you allowed to do that? I mean, I don't know if it's legal. But that was always, I mean, I think initially it was like if you didn't, if you couldn't write, you would sign your name with an X as well.

But I don't know. So maybe the Gen Xers are being ironic when they're doing that. Maybe. But Gen X is better than Baby Busters, which was the original idea for our name because after the post-war baby boom, birth rates dropped a lot. Yeah. It's a terrible name. I also saw just like the baby boomers were divided into a couple of groups. The, I saw the older Gen Xers are called the Atari wave.

The later Gen Xers are called the Nintendo Wave. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. And then carrying it on, the Xenials, the ones who are on the cusp between Generation X and Millennials, they're also called Elder Millennials. They're called the Oregon Trail Wave. I love it. I thought we could get through all these before our break, but there's still several generations to go, so maybe we should take a break and hit up the millennials after this?

Let's break it up. All right. We'll be right back. That is Josh. I'm Chuck. You have the desire to help to make a real difference? The College, LaCite, you offer the program Dependance and Scenti Mental.

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I feel like this is a great generation, if you ask me. Yeah, I agree. Maybe not the greatest, but they're a great generation. They put up with a lot more than our generation. and more than Gen Z and Gen Alpha. I think they just had, they took the brunt of recent history and they've just kind of plodded along

and been like, fine, we'll be the ones. It's fine. You know, they haven't complained too much. Well, I should say they stopped complaining. They used to complain a lot. And now they've just kind of grown into this respectable and I think self-respecting group as a whole if generations were real.

Yeah, I totally agree. That's people that were born from 81 to 96. And again, there's a pretty big, difference between, and you can say this for a lot of the generations, obviously, but, you know, the ones that were on the cusp of either end, I think millennials may be the most pronounced as far as how different people born in 81 and people born in 96 are, but that might just be me, you know, in my brain. Yeah.

Well, I think especially if you're coming of age in the time before computers or the time when computers are starting to be a thing. Yeah, yeah. That is definitely, I mean, that's a pretty big dividing line for sure. Yeah, I agree. I think those elder millennials, too, yeah, I think there's something to say about straddling that line. I think it's a cool, it's just a neat thing to be able to have experience in both of those completely different realms of technological development. But even more than that, I saw that millennials are divided between whether as a younger person they watch Save By the Bell or Save by the Bell of College years.

Well, there's definitely a thing, you know, we ran wild in the streets and knocked on doors and called people on the phone. But we're also can understand young enough to understand all the tech that we're explaining to our parents and grandparents. But I think elder millennials definitely sort of identify with that life as well. Yes. They were first dubbed the Echo Boomers. Obviously, it's the children of boomers. They created a little bit of a baby bump on the population charts. And like I said, they're the largest living generation right now.

They took over in 2019, took over the boomers at 72 million millennials in 2019. That's a lot of folks. Yeah. And just a little bleak note on that statistic. It wasn't because they kept being born up to 2019, if you know what I mean. They were originally Generation Y, or at least that was the early consideration. editors at ad age. And as you'll see, there's a lot of marketing people that have their thumbs in this pie.

But they were the ones that were trying to call them Generation Y as like a more extreme Generation X. But our buddies, Neil Howe and William Strauss again, in 1991, they published a book called Generations, colon. The History of America's Future, 1584 to 269. And that's where they came up with the millennial generation for pretty obvious reasons. You left out the comma. There's a colon and a comma in there. There is. Yeah.

There's a comma after America's future. You're right. So we need a jingle for commas, the rare comma, you know? They should have finished it off with 508 to 4 to 2069, an exclamation point. You're right. And then the zero in 269 is the ampersand. Let's just keep it going. What's the one in 1584?

Has it got to be punctuation? Because the first thing I thought of was an eye with a heart above it. Oh, I like that. That's an eye, though. They can actually program anything they want to into a keyboard. I found that out when Prince changed his name to a symbol, the artist formerly known as Prince. And you could type that? Yes, they sent it out to all of the media and press to basically insert it into their font catalog.

So they can do that. That was pretty funny. They can make an eye with the heart above it if you want them to. Yeah, I think so. And by the way, I said I think it's pretty obvious, but we'll say it out loud. It's the first generation to be the first to graduate high school after the year 2000. Right. So there you have it.

And sorry, I realize I'm being a little squirrely today that you keep setting me up. And I'm like, no, let's talk about this instead. That's all right. So the other thing about it, I think the reason why millennials stuck and overtook generation why, which I fully remember, that was really close to being that generation's name, and I'm really glad it turned into millennials. It has like an optimistic kind of hopeful feel to it. Yeah, I think so. So one of the things that characterize millennials, as far as generation researchers go, is that they came of age during 9-11 as young kids. That was an enormous thing

to learn at a young age that things like that can happen in the world, and that an entire, like, culture can lose its innocence in like one morning. And then also as they started to enter the workforce, they got smacked with the Great Recession and couldn't find a job for five years. And they were the first generation to start moving back in with their parents because they had to you. So who's up next, Chuck, after millennials. Well, everybody knows.

Gen Z. They're staring at you silently. But not judging, I don't think. Or maybe they are. No, they are. 1997 to 2012. The reason is Gen Z. is just from when it was supposedly going to be Gen Y before them.

IGen, lowercase I, was going to be the initial name because of obvious reasons again for Apple stuff. That's a good one. Digital natives is what they say that were literally all born and raised in the Internet age. Yeah, I like Igen. That could have been good. I'm sure Apple was like, yeah, let's call them that. Yeah, let's sue everybody as well. Right.

They were also almost called Generation K, which this is astonishing to me. Yeah. The K is for the K and Katnus Everdeen from The Hunger Games. Who thought of that? I mean, I had to be the movie studio that made that, right? Probably. Probably or a publicist they secretly hired. But the reason why is because it's just such an almost a dystopian era that these kids are growing up in or grew up in.

Yeah. You know, I mean, but still, first of all, you don't want to name an entire generation after the dumbiest thing you can think of. Yeah. You want to kind of have, at least put some sort of a positive spin on it, and we'll see why it matters in a minute. Yeah. What about Generation C? Surely that's got to be upbeat. Yeah, Generation COVID or coronavirus.

That was a consideration for a little while as well. Luckily, that did make it, and we got Gen Z, who was. known for what Dave calls, quote, being extremely online. Yeah. As opposed to just online a lot, I guess. Yeah, they're also known for curating their online images. They were the first to really start paying attention to this. Yeah.

They also put a lot into, a lot of stock into being authentic and socially conscious. They're also on the negative side, frequently called coddled, entitled, snowflakes, that kind of stuff. again, all of this stuff, you're like, yep, totally, totally, 100%. Just stop for a second. And remember, you're talking about millions of people from all walks of life. They're all coddled. They're all snowflakes. They're all entitled.

Think about what that's actually saying, right? And the idea is that this is all made up. So you just got to remember that because, well, we'll just cut to the chase real quick right now. There's like a real harm that can be done in. in calling entire groups of kids or dismissing entire groups of people as snowflakes or woke or whatever. God, I hate that word.

You could barely even say it. It even sounded funny coming out of your mouth. Right. Like you can even deride their, you know, focus on authenticity or whatever. You can take any of these and turn it negative and that harms the group that you're talking about. But it also makes that group resent you

probably the older person who's criticizing them and what they care about and what they're interested in because you weren't or it doesn't make sense to you and your values, there is actual individual harm, but also more importantly, a social harm that can be done because it allows for essentially a socially acceptable form of discrimination, which is ageism, whether it's going upward in age or downward in age. It doesn't matter. It still is harmful. Yeah, it gives somebody permission to do something like that.

Yeah. And it's no different if you're like, hey, you know what? You're not like other Gen Zs. You're the real deal. You're not like an entitled little snowflake. Like, just stop. That's even worse almost. It is.

Stop being the uncle at Thanksgiving. Just stop. But simultaneously, stop being the millennial who says like, okay, boomer, although I know no one says it anymore. But that was harmful too. even though it was totally accurate. Interesting thing about Gen Z. Dave found some research on some of the politics.

There was a survey on gender. And 53% of Gen Z women apparently described themselves as feminists compared to only 32% of Gen Z men, which is the largest gap, I believe, I don't know about any generation, that's a 21 point gap compared to an 8% gap, Same question for Gen X, what I thought was super interesting. Yeah, and very concerning too.

And that's legitimate because they're using Gen Z as just a shorthand for an actual age group that was legitimately surveyed. Yeah. So that is a troubling value, change in values, I think. Yeah. What's next? Next up, Chuck, is the latest generation, not greatest, latest. Latest. Who knows whether they're going to be great or not.

History will tell us eventually. but that's gen alpha. And I think it's very reassuring that we're not on Gen Z anymore because that's a little troublesome that you've reached the end of the alphabet as a group goes, like a population of human beings goes, now we're back to Alpha. And that's great. I'm glad for that. Yeah, well, and earlier when I mentioned there's some guy that wanted to say, let's just

make it 15 years moving forward. That's a guy named Mark McRendell. He's an Australian social researcher. and he is the one who coined Generation Alpha, again, just starting over after Z. And he said, and also, he sounds a little grumpy. He's like, and also, can we just make him Greek letters from now on and like go Gen Beta after this? And everyone said, no, you're not the boss of us. We come up with our own willy-nilly, and we decide as a group what we like and what we don't like.

So, no, we'll go with your Gen Alpha for now, but don't get above your station, McRendell. Yeah, yeah, slow your role, buddy, although it'll probably be Jim Beta, which would be kids born this year, starting this year. Yeah, I predict it's not going to be Jim Beta, Chuck. Yeah, I agree. I think it's going to be, they'll start with that, and I think it'll be something else. I think humanity just wants to spite Mark McRendell. Yeah, and Beta has such a negative connotation now just from those alt-right weirdos that, you know, beta male stuff. Right, plus also Beta Max, no one like that.

Yeah, exactly. Beta dine, that stuff was the worst because that means you have a nasty cut. Right. Or beta fish, they're always biting the mirror. Yeah, he wants a beta fish. Boring. Yeah, I know. It's sad for the beta fish, though, because their prize is at county fairs very frequently. Yeah, that's true. So apparently Gen Alpha is even more online than Gen Z, so much so that they don't even really realize, well, they're also still pretty young right now. They're born between 2010 and 2025.

Their cutoff just happened last year. They're not even aware that there is anything, that there's other stuff out there from what I understand. There's an alternative. Yes, exactly. Thank you. This is just what people do because that's what they grew up doing. And there's a lot of concern about what effects that's having on them. Gen Z, the big concern is social media and the devastating effect.

that can have on a developing mind. With Gen Alpha, it's like all technology now is just gunning for those little tiny brains, and people are like, what's going to happen with this? Yeah. Trust me. I'm a parent of one, and I wonder sometimes. Yeah. I mean, it's got to be so preposterously hard to raise a kid these days compared to 30, 40, 50 years ago.

Yeah, I mean, there's more raising of a kid if that's what you mean. Like, more active parenting. Yeah. Oh, definitely for sure. What I think is weird, and, you know, I'm getting a little off track, but Gen X was like, we were wild in the streets and our parents ignored us, but we were the first helicopter parents. Yes. I'm not, of course, but that was kind of where it came from.

Right. Gen Z has turned out to be really weird and really weird as far as that goes compared to how we were raised and then how we're raising kids, our own kids. It is very surprising. It's a surprising turn of events, if you ask me. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that stranger danger finally got through to us, but not until we were like 40. So this generation thing is, like we said, mainly made up.

I mean, the term generation obviously comes from biology. And like when a parent has a kid, that offspring is the next generation. But as far as like generations goes, as we're. We're talking about him. There was a sociologist, I think kind of the first guy to write about this. His name was Carl Mannheim. And he wrote an essay in the 1920s called The Problem of Generations. And he was just sort of trying to look at like how do groups of cohorts or groups of people change over time.

And that's where he, and, you know, he was in his book, and, you know, I think generally when people talk about this stuff, they're talking a little less about like back then the factory workers. farmers and a little more like intellectuals and writers and artists. Yeah, 100%. Manheim was like people who aren't like intellectual or artistic, they're probably not changing that much as a group over time, but tastes and art and culture change, you know, pretty distinctly over relatively short periods, a decade, two decades, that kind of thing. He's like, why? And I mean, I'm sure other people have noticed this too, but Mannheim was the first to stop and

try to figure out what was going on. And what he came up with was essentially what most the average person believes generations come from today, average person on the street who thinks about this kind of stuff. And that is called the imprint hypothesis. And it essentially says that some event, some process, something big of historic proportions that happened during your formative years as a kid made an impression on you, it imprinted on you. and made you kind of who you are, gave you your outlook on life. And because there was a whole other cohort of kids your same age, the same thing happened to them. And that's why people within a generation resemble one another in a lot of ways,

especially with trends and values and outlooks and stuff. Yeah. And we talked about all these as we've gone along, you know, the depression, COVID, 9-11, all these things. Those are generation shaping events according to him, being imprinted with those. Yeah. There are other sociologists that say, you know, it's not really outside events that's causing this stuff.

It just sort of organically happens when groups of young people are all just hanging out and growing up together. Yeah, so it's a chicken or the egg situation. Like, does society change because new people grow up and, like, just change society because there's new people and new ways of thinking? Or do people change because society changes, like, e.g. 3.3.3.3. COVID or the Challenger disaster or something like that, or the fall of the Berlin Wall that has these huge imprints on people. And there's actually a guy named Morris Massey who basically combined the two. He said that there's values that separate the generations, that that's really what it is, and that the reasons that the values are different among generations is because of that imprinting process

happens to hit at a time when you are in a formative, I guess a formative place where you're figuring out what your values are, and when that historic thing happens, that helps shape your values. That same historic thing isn't going to have the same effect on older people because their values have already been shaped, but it will on that one generation. So that's essentially what his jam was. He was kind of merging everything.

For sure. You know, we promised talk of advertising because that's, marketing, that's where a lot of this comes from. And it does because no one really talked about this stuff until the 1970s when baby boomers were getting into their 20s. And, you know, if you know anything about just marketing and selling things to people, that demographic of, you know, 18 to 24 is what they always say. But, you know, basically people are in their 20s. It's a big, that's when you have money to spend maybe for the first time. If you're, you know, out from under the thumb of your family and your parents and you've gotten your first job maybe, or at least in the old days,

you probably did. And so they want to sell the people. They always have, they still do, that are in their 20s. And those are also the people that are shaping the taste of generations and influencing people around them in age. And when the baby boomers were coming into their 20s in the 1970s, companies went wild. And they started doing all this sort of market, generational market research that is a very big deal. I know this is an older stat, but in 2015, they found out that American companies alone spent $70 million just on generational consulting. Yeah, those people that essentially who've made up generations or say that it happens every 15 years or something like that. Yeah. So yeah, you want to take a break and come back

and talk about some criticisms of this? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. That is Josh. I'm Chuck. You have the desire to help to make a real difference? The College of the program Dependance and Scenti Mental. Acqueray the competences essential

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on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. You came along and it was like, hey. Yeah, well, we were work pals. All right, we're back talking more about generations and we're going to talk about some criticisms in a second. We should say that, you know, obviously the media plays a part in all this.

It's not all just like a marketing scam. But when the media picks up on these names especially, and, you know, all of a sudden there's people writing books and technically that's selling something. but that's producing a, you know, your take. Like, everyone's got their take on this stuff. So there's going to be plenty of people writing books about all these generations.

Right. But the whole idea is, like, is this even a real thing at all? And sociologists look at three different effects that influence how people think and behave. And they're the life cycle effects, the period effects, and the cohort effects. Yeah, the life cycle effects makes the most sense to me

in that you are likely to essentially not change your personality, but change your outlook, your values, that kind of thing, as you age. And so entire cohorts of people age generally the same. So they're all going through the same life stages at roughly the same time. So the baby boomers are a really pronounced example of this. When you're younger, you're more rebellious. You question the system. You want to change things, hence the 60s hippies.

As you get a little older, you become much more materialistic. You become, say, more grounded. you abandon your earlier idealism in a lot of cases, the yuppies of the 80s. And then as you get older and kind of get put out to pasture, one of the ways that you can make yourself more relevant is to become politically active, hence the older current today baby boomers.

So, like, this whole idea is that we confuse that for generational effects, that people are actually just going through life stages together on mass. Yeah, exactly. Or that, you know, millennials were like, We're not having babies and we're moving to the suburbs. We're living in the city and we're staying single or at least getting married and shunning kids. And while plenty of them did and still do, as they got a little bit older and this is the life cycle effect, a lot of them did get those kids and families. And a lot of them did get the house in the suburbs.

And it's just, you know, it's an age effect thing. Right. The same thing with period effects. It's basically saying, no, there's no such thing as generations or we confuse the generation. effect or differences for actual period effects. And what that is is that those same historic events happen, but they impact like everybody. We just happen to focus on the group that it tends to impact the most,

the younger generation, because again, they're going through a formative time. So COVID affected everybody in all sorts of very deep ways, right? It affected, like, kids. People were preoccupied with kids because those kids, like, basically had a whole year of very important schooling that they didn't get. And that was a huge focus of society. And so that kind of became looked at, focused on, and kind of that was hung on that generation, whereas really everybody got affected by COVID in a bunch of different ways.

Yeah, for sure. And the last one, cohort effects, I don't really see the difference in why this is even broken out between. It sounds just sort of like the other two combined in a way. That's exactly right. That was that Morris Masu thing. basically, and this is what we think of as generational effects, combination of life cycle and period effects, producing groups where you are different from people who are older than you and different from people who are younger than you. That's generational differences or generational effects.

That's what people are saying, like, that's, no, life cycle effects, sure, period effects, sure. Cohort effects, we don't really think so. Yeah, exactly. As far as criticisms go, we've lobbed a few out there as far as what generally people think, how they think critically about dividing people up like this. But one big problem is that you sort of touched on it earlier, that these are really broad generalizations, but it's from small sample sizes.

So the media has a lot to do with how this plays out. And Dave makes a great point. When you talk about the 1960s, like the first thing that comes to your mind is like Woodstock and the hippies and sticking a daisy in the barrel of a rifle. And there were very few people like that. If you look at like percentages, and you base it on things like drug use

and premarital sex and feelings like that. Like apparently almost 90% of Americans, 20-somethings, did not smoke pot in 1969. And if you look at movies and TV and the media, you think that kind of that was what everyone was doing. Yeah, like 112% of 20-somethings in 1969. Exactly. And that's the thing.

Like the media highlights the most extreme segment of a group of people, and that still happens today. The loudest people get the most attention, essentially. Yeah, for sure. Another big criticism is the, when you, and you touched on this a little bit too, like when you group people up in these huge cohorts and say, everyone's kind of like this, you're really, really ignoring everything within that group of people, like all the little differences, like, oh, race. and class and income and privilege and stuff like that. And you really nailed it when you said, like when people talk about generations in broad terms like this,

they're kind of talking because it's a marketing thing about like, you know, middle to upper class white America in a lot of cases. Yeah. It ignores intersectionality, essentially, which ironically is something that people say that Gen Z is preoccupied with. Yeah.

Although, you know, there's, I totally believe this is a thing, but I remember when I saw the movie Crooklyn, Spike Lee's great movie about his life growing up in the 70s in Brooklyn, New York. I remember watching that movie and being like, oh, my God, that was my life growing up in suburban Atlanta in the 1970s as a white kid. Like, we're all the same. Okay, right, right. So there were similarities. He also had much, he faced a lot of differences that you didn't face, too. I'm sure and vice versa. Oh, absolutely.

You guys have different challenges for sure. But that's more of like a society was like that at that time. That's what parents in general were like, okay, this is cool. This is what we're doing. Let's just have latchkey kids. That's what we have to do because both parents are working now and we're still figuring it out. That's what society was doing. The question is, did that have an impression on this whole group of kids the same way to make them unique in that way?

That's what generations are saying. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, one of the other criticisms you were talking about earlier is when you've given people permission to sort of drag and dunk on a whole generation for being like, on your phone too long or addicted to your screens or this or that or snowflakes. If you dig down and look at actual statistics for some of this stuff, they found out, and this doesn't surprise me at all. I've talked about the fact that baby boomers are on their phone, at least in my life, more than anyone I know. Sure. People 65 and over average. 10 hours of screen time a day compared to seven hours a day for 18 to 34 year olds. And that is not just on your phone. That's also due somewhat to the fact that when, you know, very sadly, when some

people retire, they like start watching TV during the day, which is the death knell, if you ask me. It is. You want to not watch TV during the day and not watch it in bed at night. Yeah, well, I love watching TV in bed. I do too, but in hotels. Oh, I love it.

it, man. There's nothing better than watch a movie in bed. What do you, oh, you watch movies in bed? You don't watch like, whatever. You don't watch Jimmy Fallon? No, no, no. I don't watch any. I mean, I love Jimmy Fallon, but I haven't watched late night talk shows since Conan left. Well, that's a pretty good reason to stop, actually. Yeah, I think so.

Chuck, you got anything else? Because I'm hoping you say no. I feel like this is a nice little package that we put together. No, and that means long stuff. is out. That's right. Oh, wait. No, no, no.

Sorry, how do we end this thing? We say it's time for listener mail. That's right. But instead of listener mail, we are going to reiterate that we are performing, I believe, tomorrow in Madison, Wisconsin. Isn't that right? Yeah, we're going to be there April 16th. So if this comes out, April 15th, you're right on the money.

Now, it's coming out on the 14th. So in two days, we'll be in Madison. Either way, if you're in the Madison area, come see us. or in Chicago, come see us. Akron, I think it's like too late because we basically have sold out Akron. Yeah, I got to say. Akron's strong.

That means a lot that Akron is one of our best-selling cities on this tour. So we're looking at you, Madison, we're looking at you, Chicago, coming out and see us. I know we're at the auditorium theater in Chicago. Where are we in Madison? The Orphium.

The Orphium. So two great theaters. We're going to have a good time. It's a fun topic. Get to do some audience Q&A. going to share some laughs. You get to be in a big room with a bunch of cool, like-minded, smart people. Yes. We're reasonably sure that you will like having gone. That's right. And I think early showtimes, I think these are both seven o'clockers.

Oh, yay. Like responsible aging Gen Xers, we want to get everybody home in a decent hour. Yes, we do. Before your babysitter can even get in the fridge, you're going to be home. That's right. Great. Well, if you want more info or tickets to come to see us, we'd love it if you did. You can go to Stuff You Should Know.com and click on the tour button, and that will bring up all the info you need. And you can buy tickets through there, like I said. And I guess in the meantime, you can also send us email.

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