The Blindboy Podcast - Rectum Pen Pals

Episode Date: February 20, 2019

Why the Tom Hanks film Big, is the most important sci fi of the past 40 years Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anoint your neighbours feet with lavender oil you munching dunkins What is the fucking crack? Welcome to the blind boy podcast I'm here in my studio smoking my vape having a good time If this is your first podcast, go back to the very start. Just do. Just do for the crack. Go back to the start.

We've new listeners every week. It keeps growing. If you're an international cunt, if you're a listener who came across this by accident and you're in America or Australia, do you know? And if you've never heard of Blind Buy, never heard of the Rubber Bandits, if you're one of these listeners

who came across this podcast in isolation, what I would like you to do is to recommend the podcast to a friend. Because you're my most... You're like my power users. do you know what I mean, it's like, lots of people hear about this podcast through my Twitter or my Instagram or whatever, but it's the people, especially the people outside Ireland, who just randomly find this podcast and don't know anyone else who listens to it, you're like the fucking, the sleeper agents, you're the spies in your

community, so I'd like you to, I don't know, tell a friend about this podcast, tell your American friend, tell your Australian friend, your French friend, your Australian friend your French friend your Spanish friend whatever post about it on your Facebook your Twitter you're very valuable cunts because that's how I get this podcast to grow

in strange areas and I've many many strange areas like there's about 250 people listening in Uruguay the fuck like do you know what I mean

shout out to my peeps in Uruguay I hope you're having top listening in Uruguay. The fuck, like, do you know what I mean? Shout out to my peeps in Uruguay. I hope you're having top fun in Uruguay. But yeah, to everyone else who listened last week. Oh, my chair's being a prick, is it? Hold on. Need to get a new chair. Yeah, that's very noisy. Listen to that for a rowdy chair.

I'm just doing a regular amount of moving it moving in it now like fuck that fuck that um so last week last with an enjoyable podcast last week i liked it it was it was about procrastination but ironically the podcast itself it was procrastinated because it was interrupted by a tomcat howling and i managed to get a photograph of the tomcat okay and i have i've named him silken Thomas after the Silken Thomas Rebellion. But I took a photograph of Silken Thomas and he's completely white, do you know? And I posted this on Instagram and on Twitter. And some people suggested, because last week I was like,

you know, this Tomcat's really loud. And he sounded very morose. What's his deal? I was trying to figure out. You know, he's probably screaming because he wants a mate. Is he deliberately being a little bit pathetic in order to attract a mate? But someone pointed out that white cats are usually deaf. That a lot of deaf cats. Tend to be white. And.

He's all white. His eyes. Deaf cats with blue eyes. Now he doesn't have blue eyes. But his sister. Napper Tandy. She has one blue eye. But Silken Thomas.

Is completely white. And and maybe his very loud screams are as a result of the poor fucker being deaf so i don't know i've been trying to because he's a feral wild cat you know he's very alert anyway so I've been trying to put myself in a situation where I'm in his blind side where I'm like behind him and he can't see me but I don't know whether he can feel my feet on the ground so I'll update you on that to see if Silken Thomas is in fact deaf and it kind of breaks my heart because I have a sore spot for cats that are blind or deaf or have anything like that

I have a real, not a sore spot that sounds like their existence offends me, no I have a soft spot for them so if he is, like look the two cats are already feral and I feed them and I give them shelter.

And I'm trying to get them into a situation where they could possibly be domesticated. I don't know, sit on my lap. But if it turns out that he's deaf, I will dedicate myself to his well-being. Poor old Silken Thomas. So anyway, before I continue with the podcast, I want to tell you about some upcoming live podcast dates that I have going. I listed out a couple last week. I'm under pressure from promoters to fucking advertise the gigs

because I'm shit at advertising my own gigs. Turns out I missed a lot of them last week. So this is what we have so far, right? I'll go through them quickly now March 4th Dublin, Vicar Street em 23rd of March, Waterford

30th of March Castle Blaney, Manahan I'm gigging in fucking Manahan I guess I am, 30th of March I'm in Manahan em April 5th I'm in Manahan um April 5th I'm in Nace 6th and 7th Vicar Street again

12th of April fucking Whitley Hall Belfast 27th of April I'm in Cork in the Opera House May May May can go fuck itself 7th of April, I'm in Cork in the Opera House. May. May can go fuck itself. May can fuck off. Look, I just called out those ones there.

Limerick, actually, in May that I announced last week, that's now sold out. That's on the 9th, sold out. I might announce a second one. Um, yeah. That's all you need to know right now. 9th sold out I might announce the second one em yeah that's all you need to know right now I need to

stop making myself so fucking busy em I'm up the walls at the moment with creative stuff so I didn't even know I had that many gigs and there's way more I'm just gonna leave them to after fucking hell look we'll get them done So I didn't even know I had that many gigs. And there's way more. I'm just going to leave them to. After.

Fucking hell. Look. We'll get them done. We'll have crack. The live gigs are very very enjoyable. I do enjoy it. I like. Interviewing people.

And achieving that. The podcast hug. And the intimacy. In a live environment. And listening. Learning. Providing platforms. That's what the crack is about so this week's podcast um

it's it's a big dirty hot take do you know it's a big hot take but the thing is is that i don't know what the hot take is i don't i don't have i don't know exactly what the hot take is, I don't know exactly what the hot take is, but I have a good feeling about it, I feel hot takes, when I get a good hot take, I feel it in my heart and my belly, and I run with it, so I don't have the words to tell you what this week's hot take is,

but I think by the end of the podcast, we'll have figured out what it is when I kind of explore my train of thought and hopefully achieve a state of flow but what I can tell you is what inspired today's hot take what got me thinking um I've been thinking all day and like mulling ideas around in my head around this hot take

a hot take for anyone new is a an uninformed kind of personal opinion not really uninformed but like a personal opinion not really uninformed but like a personal opinion that borders on conspiracy theory that

might have elements you know it's rooted in truth but it wouldn't hold up in court if you know what I mean it's pure and utter fucking my opinion my humble opinion on a situation sprinkled with

lateral creative thinking we'll say not to be taken as absolute truth but rather something that gets you thinking and researching and you know researching and asking questions from people who know more than I do.

Because I'm not a fucking expert on anything really, to be honest. I'm just someone who's interested in ideas. But, so anyway. I was, when Brexit happens, right, we're a month off from Brexit. And we don't know, is that going to be a no deal Brexit? We don't know is that going to be a no-deal Brexit. We don't know. But one thing we in Ireland do know is a lot of, we'll say, banks in particular, big international banks, are looking at Dublin for their international headquarters.

Now, we're in the middle of a pretty serious housing crisis in Ireland especially in Dublin. There's no kind of houses to buy, people aren't getting mortgages anyway even if they want them the mortgages are prohibitive. There's people hoarding land because they're waiting for the best price. There's a shortage of housing, basically. Rents are astronomical. And when these large corporations, you know, set up headquarters in Ireland, in Dublin, it's only going to make it worse

because a huge contributing factor to the housing crisis and the rent crisis in dublin it's not only the likes of we say airbnb and most people choosing to do short-term lettings rather than rent out their gaff it's more than that it's because we have the corporate headquarters of so many massive international corporations, Google, Facebook and all of this, because we have this in Dublin, as a result of Ireland's incredibly low tax rate, the biggest companies in the world pretty much don't pay any tax because of the Irish loophole that our country has created.

But these corporate headquarters are in Ireland, mostly in Dublin, has created but these corporate headquarters are in ireland mostly in dublin and this is one of the reasons that rent is so high so logic would suggest that after brexit when more of these cunts arrive yeah they might create a few jobs but it puts rent higher up than and out of reach of ordinary dublin people and another thing happened in dublin in the past three months which rent higher up than and out of reach of ordinary Dublin people. And another thing happened in Dublin in the past three months which I can only see as being a problem in the future even though it's dressed as a good thing. So Dublin City Council made it legal for people to build log cabins in their back gardens without needing planning permission. So now in Dublin, and log cabins are pretty decent, you know, you could sleep and live in a log cabin. It's not as good as a house, but you can sleep in a log cabin.

So now, what I think, this is what I think is going to happen in Dublin with the log cabins, right? The people who are going to put log cabins in their back garden will be parents who have children, you know, Dublin people,

and their children are now late 20s, early 30s. These Dublin, well, they're not children, they people and their children are now late 20s, early 30s these Dublin well they're not children, they're adults these Dublin people now are trying to get a mortgage, they're trying to buy a house they can't, even if they have good jobs even if their partners have good jobs

it's still pretty much fucking impossible to buy a gaff in Dublin unless you're very wealthy, so I thinklin city council is after allowing parents to build these log cabins out the back garden so that the children the adult children can move in live there not not technically have to live in their parents house have a certain degree of autonomy in the back garden and to live there with their partner until they can get enough money together for a fucking a deposit and then get a mortgage that's what i think's going on okay um and anyone can do it now because you don't need

planning permission um if it now of course eventually what's going to happen is people will build log cabins just to rent them out for two grand a month. That's what's going to happen. So you already have people essentially living in sheds in Dublin, renting sheds for two grand. Landlords are going to fuck a log cabin into the back of the garden. And the standards of the conditions for renting will drop further they're already pretty bad in dublin there's a huge problem with slum landlords 16 people to a fucking room type of carry on this is what's going to happen with the the log cabins so anyway my hot take around that that got me thinking about the hot take I'm going to explore in this episode.

I just find it interesting that I'm going to use the term millennials, right? Now I don't particularly like terms like millennial, Generation X, baby boomer. millennial generation x baby boomer i because the media use them in quite a divisive fashion and they're kind of inaccurate and it's a great way to divide people and say us and them but for the purposes of clarity i'm going to be saying millennial baby boomer generation x in this podcast because not i don't support those nomenclatures i just like when i say what a millennial is you know exactly what i'm talking about when i say what a baby boomer is you know what i'm talking about same with generation x so millennial is that you know someone born between 1982 and the year 2000 so who's trying to get on the property ladder

right now, mostly millennials alright, generation Z, born in 2000 you know the oldest of them are 18 like or 19, so we're talking millennials, so millennials are going to be moving into

their parents back gardens in Dublin, in log cabins, so that they can try and get on the property ladder. Now, the other problem that's going to happen is, and I've mentioned this before, that's all, like, first off you shouldn't have to live in a log cabin, but it's all well and good if you're a Dublin native and your parents live in Dublin. If you're a cultie and you're not from Dublin if you're a culty and you're not from Dublin and you're working in Dublin, well fuck you pretty much it's just have a job in Dublin, pay extortionate rent

you're never going to fucking be able to own a gaff so it will create a new pale essentially, where the only people with a chance to get on the property ladder will be Dublin natives who live in their parents' log cabins. But here's the hot take that got me thinking today that I find interesting. Most of these Dublin millennials, when they were kids in the late 80s or the early 90s,

their parents probably bought them a Wendy house. 80s or the early 90s their parents probably bought them a wendy house and a wendy house is a very small you know slightly larger than a a dog house a very small wooden replica house that a child goes into and they get a feeling or a sense of autonomy the child goes out the back garden into the little wooden Wendy house and it has a door and it has a little window and they can effectively play house inside in this Wendy house. It's a role play. It's a way to practice autonomy, independence, being an adult.

And isn't it so fucking ironic that now the parents are building full-sized fucking Wendy Houses out the back because culture and society did not deliver on the promise of the original Wendy House. Generation X and Baby Boomer parents genuinely believed that their millennial children would grow up in a world where they could have access to property and you know i don't want to subscribe to the fucking idea that you know for gen x or for baby boomers it was easy to get a gaffe of course there was hardship of course there was high taxes all of this yes it was hard but not as hard as it is for millennials not by a fucking long shot okay you can account for inflation all you want the facts of the matter are property is several

times more expensive right now even when you account for inflation so i'm not saying you know if you're in your 50s or your 60s and you're listening to this I'm not saying it was easy on you of course it was hard to get a gaff but right now for millennials it's more or less impossible especially if you're living in the likes of Dublin so that was the hot take that got me thinking isn't that interesting? Building these Wendy houses and now they're living in a giant fucking Wendy house out the back in what can be described as

extended childhood. Okay? And this extended childhood idea is where the hot take is going for this episode. Now I want to try and achieve an uninterrupted state of flow. So before we get into this hot take, because there's going to be a lot of thinking involved,

I'm going to do the ocarina pause. Ocarina is still missing, probably gone forever. I haven't bought a new ocarina yet, like last week we have the banjo pause a few of you loved the banjo pause last week a few of you said you really enjoyed that i had introduced a banjo into the podcast so we're going to do it again this week this week last week i played it with my fingers i have a plectrum this time which makes it more a bit clearer So I'm going to play the banjo for a little bit. And you might hear an advert. This is like a warning.

Just so an advert doesn't come out of nowhere and shock the shit out of you. An advert for a Passat or an Audi or the British Army. So here's the banjo pause. Thank you. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for?

Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now

to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Okay, that's gone, that's gone tit-shaped. The banjo pause with two incorrect notes in there. Sure, fuck it.

I'm gonna put it down now because it's heavy also this podcast is sponsored by you the listener via the Patreon page please if you're

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yuppies were a phenomenon in the 1980s right it means young urban professional yuppies they would have

worn most of them would have been centred around large city areas right there was loads of yuppies in London loads of them in New York might have been a few in Dublin I don't know but this was the style we'll say for they would have been

late baby boomers baby boomers were people that were you know born just after world war ii the baby boom well the yuppies would have been at the late stage of the baby boomers yuppies would have been born in the mid 60s early a culture embraced materialism they you know had jobs in banking finance the the emerging tech industry young urban professionals, they fetishised materialism, they wore Versace, I think they were fond of Versace suits, expensive watches, they would drink champagne, they'd drive Porsches, a very materialistic culture based on wealth affluence working hard and being an adult

the thing with yuppie culture is when you look back at it there's nothing humorous about it you laugh at them but there's no you laugh at them but there's no humor within yuppieism if you want to see what i'm talking about you know the wolf of wall street look at that film that's about yuppies okay very wealthy doing cocaine very affluent lunatics excessive um american psycho is about yuppies there's no room for humor or irony yuppies were very very serious and they were about achieving goals and this type of shit now like what interests me with any cultural youth movement is you know how does it come about what are the economic and political settings that something like that comes about and usually what is it a response to when young people by which i mean from i don't know fucking 18 to mid-30s, when they express themselves culturally,

it tends to be a kind of a response to what went before. So, you know, why all of a sudden in the 1980s? Like, what happens in the early 80s whereby young people essentially want to start wearing suits and becoming business people and embracing capitalism and embracing materialism where you know where does that come from well first off you have to look at what they're responding to they're responding to earlier baby boomers who were hippies

um yuppieism is the exact opposite of what the hippies were the hippies were all about free love changing the world you know, deconstructing capitalism deconstructing big business everything should be free we should live in this perfect fucking utopia with love and peace

that was early baby boomer hippies, and then their younger brothers and sisters, you know, when the hippies start to get a bit old, when the hippies start to get into their mid-30s and the 70s, the young kids are going, well, that's not fucking cool, how can I do the opposite, how can I do the opposite to what my uncool older brother is now doing, snorting coke with a skullet so the yuppies come about now also it's not just as simple as

we're all going to start wearing suits and getting jobs in banks because it's not cool to have flares and long hair and smell like patchouli oil and listen to the Beatles it's not cool to have flares and long hair and smell like patchouli oil. And listen to the Beatles. It's not just that. And of course with these things too.

It all relates to what's known as the zeitgeist. The zeitgeist is a flavour in the air. It's something that's present in the food we eat the way we speak the music we listen to our economics our politicians the zeitgeist is the general hum or feeling of an era and it's very hard to pin down what the zeitgeist is when you're living in it you generally need 15 years to be able to look back and then you go ah that's the flavor of the 80s that's what the 80s smells like looks like tastes like sounds like that's what the 2000s smells like and tastes like and sounds like that's a zeitgeist so

zeitgeists are influenced by many factors so what would have influenced the 80s yuppies zeitgeist? A cultural response to hippies, obviously. That's not cool anymore. I need to redefine myself because I'm young as something completely different. But also, with the late 70s, you see kind of the ideals of the hippies. You see these things disappearing. One of the good things that happened after World War II is Britain and America got a bit of a shock and they moved towards what we'd now call socialism

in a lot of their policies you know they moved towards you know Britain established the NHS, free healthcare for all started rolling out council houses, compassion became part of public policy just after World War II

because Britain was nearly fucking blown to bits and taken over by the nazis so they said oh fuck it maybe maybe we'll stop being cunts there for about 20 years and unions unionization workers rights all these positive things that we should see a return to they did start crumbling a bit in the late 70s new y York City, for instance, and we spoke about this in our hip-hop podcast, New York City had gone bankrupt. And so things like unions fell apart in Britain and in America.

Now, the unions fell apart for a couple of reasons. There was a financial crisis in the late 80s, or sorry, late 70s, as a result of... What was it? Something to do with the Saudis and oil. And that fucked the late 80s. Or sorry late 70s. As a result of. What was it? Something to do with the Saudis and oil. And that fucked the world over anyway. So that didn't help the economy.

And it didn't help. People lost jobs. It didn't help the tax base. If you're going to have. Things like free health. Free transport. Free housing. You need to have a healthy tax base obviously to pay for it.

But also. Unions became corrupt corruption uh you know in america the mafia infiltrated a lot of unions now as well what's worth talking about is big business lobbyists very much were all about breaking unions when the unions fell apart in the 70s in America big business and lobbyists were rubbing their hands together going fucking brilliant now we can exploit some people unions stop people from being exploited but they are also

can be open to corruption if not run properly but you know union busting was very much a thing, especially in the climate of the 60s in America, where unionists were seen as communists. Do you know what I mean? So people in the early 80s got to see... They would have seen socialism as being a very bad thing. If the teachers' union has fallen apart,

if transport unions have fallen apart, naturally in the early 80s people are going to go, well, that's socialism, that's fucking shit, give me something different. So in the 80s, early 80s, the Americans vote in Ronald Reagan and the Brits vote in Margaret Thatcher

and a lot of the problems horrible problems that we see today in the world with inequality in the west we'll say in Ireland, Britain, America the problems we see today are as a result of

Reagan and Thatcher and shit that they did and are as a result of Reagan and Thatcher and shit that they did and are as a result of yuppies in the early 80s wanting a quick easy solution and this allowed the kind of promises of Reagan and Thatcher to be

very appealing to these people Thatcher was in or sorry Reagan was into trickle-down economics which is the belief it's an economic belief that the wealthy and wealthy businesses should not be taxed that don't tax the wealthy don't tax the businesses let them operate without being taxed because technically what should happen is that if they are not subject to tax they can be really really successful and then that trickles down the money trickles down so by leaving the rich off and letting them being productive and captains of industry then the money trickles down so by leaving the rich off and letting them being productive and captains of industry then the money will trickle down to the middle and working classes

and the economy will be fine that's trickle down economics and reagan managed to convince america that this was the way forward in the 80s against the backdrop of unions falling apart and fucking new york going bankrupt a very simple and tasty solution of course we now know that fucking did not happen even even the the imf in 2015 said all trickle down economics does is it makes the rich get richer it's that simple so reagan and his trickle-down economics yuppies fucking loved that obviously then in britain you had thatcher thatcher's thing was again trickle-down economics but also a love of neoliberalism neoliberalism being the idea that things that are formerly controlled by the state should be handed over to private powers. So it's basically the privatization of transport, the privatization of healthcare, the privatization of housing. Like what Thatcher did, and it's interesting because if you look at footage of yuppies in the 80s in London being interviewed,

these are young wealthy urban professionals you'd expect them when you hear them to be like posh English people they're not their accents are kind of either middle class or working class accents these are not posh generationally wealthy people they're new money and Thatcher very much appealed to this new money people who would have grown up and benefited from socialist ideas they would have you know yuppies would have grown up benefiting from council houses benefiting from free health care from the NHS you know something their parents didn't necessarily have yuppies became adults benefiting from this but then they saw it fall apart in the late 70s and Thatcher introduced a thing called the right to buy

which was again sold off the back of a lie Thatcher basically went to the British people and said if you are currently in a council house right in. You essentially rent your gaff from the council. At a very affordable rate. If you're in that situation. I will allow. You. To be able to buy your gaff. At an affordable price.

So swathes of people did this. They bought their council houses. In Britain. In the 80s. Now. The promise was. You can buy your gaff and when anyone asked thatcher and said but then there'd be no council houses thatcher would have said oh don't

worry like we're going to build more council houses i'm just giving people right now the right to purchase their council houses if they want to become homeowners because Thatcher sold it as a way for people to become upwardly mobile to move, we'll say, social classes in Britain. But the new council houses were not built. They weren't. Instead what it did is it took the burden of council housing

off the state and off councils into private hands. Straight up neoliberalism. Absolutely grand if you were lucky enough to be able to sell the council house but fucked over future generations. Now resulting in a massive housing crisis in Britain as well and in London. And this is why areas like Hackney which used to be full of council houses are now prohibitively expensive when I stayed over in London I stayed in a council flat in Soho well it was a council flat in the 60s it would have been built as a council flat now it was still like a small council flat but would have had the price of. A luxury apartment.

It would have been three million if someone was to buy it. And BBC were renting it out for me. For like fucking two grand a month or something. And. You know as well. I know someone over in London. They're a television lawyer. And their husband is a television lawyer.

Two incredibly wealthy people. And they were bragging. About buying an ex-council flat in in hackney this small gaff that had been built in the 50s to be social housing is now a fetishized property in london and people who don't have money don't have access to social housing because of what thatcher did in the 80s the The promises that she made and then broke. So, yuppies loved Thatcher and they loved Reagan. And yuppie culture was based around materialism, wealth, business, suits, champagne, oyster bars, Porsches. suits, champagne,

oyster bars, Porsches, all this stuff that's incredibly superficial with a very serious veneer. You don't imagine a yuppie laughing. You imagine a yuppie with a serious face doing serious business and a giant mobile phone to their ear. That's what a yuppie is. Yuppies don't laugh.

When yuppies laugh, it's a cynical laugh with a champagne glass in their hand because they just did a deal not not a culture that we particularly look back on fondly unless we're mocking it okay yuppies effectively ended in 1987 what happened in 1987 there was a massive stock market crash a huge crash all over the world that effectively became the end of the yuppie 1987 the end of their ideals the ideal of wearing suits being dead dead serious, you know, working in finance. This fad, I'm not saying that that stuff disappeared, but that particular fad amongst young people, that was proven now, that failed a lot of people. So that ended in 1987.

in 1987 and so I think now I'm get I'm kind of getting close to naming knowing myself what the fucking hot take is and so here it is here's the blistering here's the blistering hot fucking take you know that'll burn your mouth it'll burn your chest so it's 2019 and as i've mentioned before in this podcast i love the film blade runner blade Runner was a bold prediction of the future it was a prediction of this is what shit's gonna be like in 2019 and if we're being honest it's it's not accurate Blade Runner while being a fucking incredible piece of work and possibly my favourite film, is not a particularly accurate prediction of 2019, of the life and the world culturally that we live right now. There's no one chasing around humanoid robots

and shooting them in the street. There's no flying cars, okay? The roaring hot take that I have is that the film from the 80s that most correctly predicted the world that we live in now under our noses is big with tom hanks the film big with tom hanks 1988 that is a more accurate With Tom Hanks. The film Big. With Tom Hanks. 1988. That. Is a more. Accurate.

Cultural marker. Satire. And prediction. Of 2019. Than. Any science. Fiction film. In the fucking 80s.

Including Blade Runner. And I'm gonna try and. Explore. Why I think that is. And why I'm talking about fucking yuppies. Big is, first of all, it's a fucking incredible film. I only re-watched it this week. There's a few problematic dated things in there.

I'm not going to get into them. But as a film it's fantastic. It's a fucking brilliant film. I'm sure you to get into them but as a film it's fantastic it's a fucking brilliant film I'm sure you've all seen it it's about a child who's 12 years of age you know in a nutshell he goes to a carnival

wishes that he could be an adult with this machine wakes up the next day as a 30 year old man that's big in a nutshell directed by penny marshall and what makes big interesting is that it was the first ever film directed by a woman that had grossed 100 million in the box office what i find also incredibly interesting about big especially now as i'm you know I'm trying to make the case here that Big correctly predicted the future more so than any science fiction film of the 80s. Big was written by Steven Spielberg's sister, Anne Spielberg.

Spielberg, of course, you know, fucking directed Star Wars in 1980 Blade Runner 1982 is Ridley Scott but Star Wars and Blade Runner two years apart they set both of those set the template for science fiction in film

they set the modern template a film is either like Blade Runner where it's intellectual and dystopian or it's like star wars where it is blockbuster and massive and spielberg's sister anne wrote the script to big so if you go at the film big with a fucking scalpel and you know don't look at it as just you know it is a very entertaining family film it's a feel-good film you know it's very imaginative it's creative uh tom hanks is fantastic in it it's a great fucking film but if you go at it with a knife and look at its subtext

and look at its subtexts and you know whether deliberate or not you know i don't know whether big is intended as a satire but what i am interested in is like i said the zeitgeist big is released 1988 the yuppie ends in 1987 with this huge stock market crash black monday as it was known um actually right now there's a tv series with don sheedle called black monday about yuppies and i haven't seen it yet no but it's about yuppies and about stock market crash um but anyway big is released in 1988. I think that what Big actually is, that's the start of the, that is the cultural touchstone for when yuppies began to be culturally rejected. Big is the beginning of that, okay?

Because, first off, Big is a comedy film, okay um and a lot of the comedy in it is there's a child the child wakes up one day as a 30 year old man played by tom hanks tom hanks plays a child trapped in a 30 year old man's body so it's tom hanks full-blown adult acting like a 12 year old it's a 12 year old in a 30 year old man's body so the humor of big relies entirely upon the utter absurdity of an adult behaving like a child like this what this tells us is that culture in 1988 the yuppie as I'd mentioned culturally

it's all about not only the fetishisation of materialism but adult, yuppies are adults, even though yuppies were fucking under the age of 30 between 20 and 30 they were very serious business like

adults, they were not into frivolities, humour they left their teens behind, they put on a suit and they became about the world and caring about Reagan and caring about Thatcher and caring about money they were serious

okay so now all of a sudden in big 1988 you've got Tom Hanks the first scene that we kind of explore the humor of Tom Hanks as an adult who's actually a child we see him on a fucking BMX that's too small for him and this is hilarious and you see him sitting down with his buddy in an ice cream parlor and even the fact that Tom Hanks as a 30 year old man is eating an ice cream

sundae is viewed as absurd because 30 year old men in 1988 are eating caviar and drinking champagne, they wouldn't be seen dead in an ice cream parlor because ice cream is for children. Extravagant bowls of chocolate ice cream are for fucking children. BMXs are for children, for teenagers.

A yuppie doesn't have a BMX, he's got a Porsche. So eventually Tom Hanks' character, the 30-year-old man who's really a child, finds his way into a job he ends up getting a job in computers very easily because he's 12 he's fucking around with computers in his bedroom and then as an adult 30 year old he walks

into this job in a tie making company, a company that makes ties for children he walks into this job as a low level tech employee and all of a sudden finds himself tie making company a company that makes ties for children he walks into this job as a low-level tech employee and all of a sudden finds himself in an office and big is you know it's classic fish out of water fish out of water is a technique that films or books or whatever will use comedy in particular if you want to create comedy get a fish. Get the fish and put them out of water. And what you are guaranteed is a number of.

Scenarios where we the audience. Understand how it's supposed to go. But our characters eccentricities. Eccentricities contradict it. And then hilarity ensues. So because. That's the humour that Big is operating under. We get to see what the expectations of a 30 year old adult actually were in 1988 and what's interesting

are the things that tom hanks's character is doing in this office first off he's dressing unconventionally he starts off wearing a suit but on his shoes he wears runners. So he's wearing runners and a suit and this is hilarious and this is absurd. And it draws the ire and curiosity of all the adults around him in his office when he works there. Also interestingly is the love interest in big played by elizabeth parkins so elizabeth parkins in big she's your typical yuppie she is a power suit wearing giant shoulder pads fucking yuppie focused on her job okay and tom hanks is there as this giant child in the office one thing that i am interested in with big is the psychology of it what did stand out for me

has been particularly interesting when we're first introduced to elizabeth parkins character one of the first scenes is her in the office and all the other women are having a baby shower. Now she's like 30 in big. All the other women are having a baby shower for one of the women

in the office who's just had a child and you see Elizabeth Perkins not giving a fuck about the baby shower at all walking past it and then she goes

immediately to her office because she works in a toy company and she's working with a doll. giving a fuck, about the baby shower at all, walking past it, and then she goes immediately, to her office, because she works in a toy company, and she's working with a doll, a little kid's doll, that's a very subtle scene, and big, but,

I don't think the director, or the writer, would have put something, as strong a signifier, as that, without it meaning something, you know, a 30 year old woman walking away from

the expectation to have a child and then playing with this doll there's something of value in that but anyway back to tom hanks tom hanks soon climbs the ranks of the company because he meets the boss in a toy shop and tom hanks because he's a secret fucking child exhibits a playfulness and a freedom that a child should have around toys and isn't afraid to play with them and isn't afraid to express his silly side and the boss of the company finds this endearing and gives him the job as a head kind of creative in the office now. So now Tom Hanks is 30 years of age, has just walked into this job where he is the main developer of children's toys. And his office becomes transformed into this space where it's just full of kids toys. And on the door, written in crayon, says keep out.

And now he no longer wears a suit to work instead what he wears are very colorful shirt and jeans and sneakers and this in the context of 1988 is utterly fucking hilarious because it is so strange it is so odd and it is a satirical deconstruction of the yuppie okay it's everything the yuppie believes and holds in this film big is now a mirror is held up to it and it said yuppies are fucking absurd this is wrong and now this character that tom hanks is embodying this is the way forward this is who you should be yuppies are uptighting, this is the way forward, this is who you should be yuppies are uptight, Tom Hanks is the way forward, look at him, he's having crack he's a nice person

he's a child and this becomes reinforced for me the viewer and for any, remember too, the people looking at Big, Big would have been marketed to teens, it's a teen film, so the 12 year olds 13 year olds who would have been watching big who are generation x now they're

not baby boomers are now looking at big and watching this tom hanks character pointing at late generation x yuppies and going look at you you sad cunts and how this is really solidified is the character that Elizabeth Perkins is playing she becomes sexually attracted

now to Tom Hanks and she has a boyfriend can't think of the fucking boyfriend's name but the boyfriend is your straight up yuppie, he is a yuppie and he's clearly an asshole, and the thing with him is that he's an incredibly boring, aggressive, serious man who embodies all of the yuppie qualities, all he does is talk about work. All he cares about is owning things. And he is the villain now in this movie. Elizabeth Perkins' boyfriend. And Tom Hanks anyway eventually ends up with Elizabeth Perkins attracted to him

because he's the free child who wears tackies or sneakers and jeans and walks around the office like a giant child playing with toys. And Elizabeth Perkins' fella now appears like a stuck up prick who is no fun to be around. So this conveys to the audience now, the young generation X, 12, 13 year olds, 14 year olds. If you were like Tom Hanks you were going to get the girl. That's the message. You are going to get the girl. And sure, what more powerful message. He is now the hero of this film. This person who is rejecting the ideals of the uppie

and deconstructing the traditional workplace environment. Now, another aspect of the psychology of big that I find incredibly interesting is it's something we spoke about before on a podcast about transactional analysis. Now, transactional analysis as a school of psychology would have been quite popular in the mid-80s. It would have been part of pop psychology and pop culture and within transaction analysis we have two separate states of like just to take give you a quick refresher transaction analysis what the fuck why can't i say analysis transaction analysis states that us as humans have three ego states that we move in and out of at all times in how

we exist parent adult and child okay i believe that big is an analysis of the child ego state that we can occupy because within transaction analysis there's two types of child. There is our free child. Our free child is the part of us that is carefree, compassionate, playful, creative and explores. That's our free child. But then the other child that we sometimes can inhabit within ourselves that isn't very helpful to us as adults is what's called the adaptive child. And the adaptive child is jealous the adaptive child gets hurt the adaptive child has poor control of its emotions so it can throw tantrums so if you look at tom hanks's character in big that's the free child he's creative and carefree and his divide of ego and then you look at Elizabeth Perkins'

boyfriend who is his love rival he's the adaptive child he is there's a scene in it where he vindictively ends up with Tom Hanks in a headlock and ends up hitting him and getting jealous and then there's a line in it where when Elizabeth Perkins

finally leaves her boyfriend for Tom Hanks the boyfriend says to Elizabeth Perkins finally leaves her boyfriend for Tom Hanks the boyfriend says to Elizabeth Perkins what does he have that I don't have that I don't have my fucking voice has gone now because I'm gone too hot in the take two seconds so Elizabeth Perkins's boyfriend says to her what does Tom Hanks have that I don't have and she says he's a grown-up and that's about three quarters way through the film and it's a it's a beautiful irony it's a beautiful irony because Tom Hanks isn't a grown-up he's an actual child in an adult's body but I that's why I think the writer or the director were looking at transaction analysis because to be incorporating your free child as part of your adult state that's a very grown-up thing to

do to be incorporating creativity compassion these things those are really adult things to be carrying around bitterness resentment jealousy uh these are not adult things these are things that toddlers do so it's a lovely telling moment in the film so where things get quite interesting for me and where I see things as being culturally significant and representative of the zeitgeist of the time

and what has gone forward is Tom Hanks ends up buying, you know, a huge studio apartment, a Manhattan apartment, which is in direct contrast to Elizabeth Perkins' and her fellas' apartment, right? So they have the classic y Yuppie apartment. With the designer furniture. And the fucking. Fancy fridge. And all these adult things. Okay.

That's what their apartment is like. Tom Hanks's apartment. Does not have these things. He's got a bunk bed. He's got a giant trampoline. He's got a fucking vending machine. That has Pepsi in it. He's got a foosball table.

He has. The trappings of childhood. He has the trappings of childhood. He has the apartment that a 10 year old child would have if they could afford an apartment. And this is presented to us, the viewer, in 1988 as fucking hilarious and outlandish. And isn't it mad that this 30 year old man has got a trampoline in his gaff isn't that crazy ha ha ha right and it's big is it is a rejection of the 1980s culture of yuppies by 80 fucking eight people had gotten tired of these stuck-up cunts but also it coincides beautifully with the stock market crash big couldn't have come at a better time not only was the yuppie disappearing as a result of economics but it's quite clear because big was a fucking runaway success it's clear that the yuppie was now an object of contempt now i spoke about how the yuppie came

about in the early 80s because in the late 70s it had appeared that socialism had failed and not only had socialism failed like with the collapse of unions not only did it appear that it had failed but it appeared that the misery or the reason you lost your job was because of socialism so a new deal was needed

Reagan, Thatcher these were the people that were promising this is the new way to do things and yuppies embraced this. By 87, there's this huge fucking stock market crash. What happens with a stock market crash? There's a massive recession. Ordinary people are now having their lives affected. People are losing jobs. People don't have enough money in the real world.

So yuppies now become the object of contempt in the way that yuppies looked at unions and hippies the yuppies looked at hippies and said you fucking free love communist socialist pricks fuck you give me reagan now the teenagers who are the audience of big in 1988 are looking at the yuppies who are now in their early 30s and going, You fucking pricks. My dad lost my job because of ye. You extravagant bastards with your fucking watches and your slick back hair and your business cards and your champagne. You false fuckers. Nothing about ye is real. You're not cool. pain you false fuckers nothing about ye is real you're not cool but overall the biggest critique in big and the biggest critique against yuppies is that

it's like saying to the yuppie you you couldn't wait long enough to grow up it's like you as soon as you you were you were a teenager and as soon as you, you were a teenager, and as soon as you got to fucking 18 years of age, you put on the fucking suit and you went to work. You couldn't wait. And that's the whole thing. The overarching message of Big is, enjoy your childhood.

Don't rush to be an adult. Because at the end, Tom Hanks's character reverts to being a child he doesn't like the adult life and yuppies are all about i am a fucking serious adult and i'm not frivolous i'm not interested in anything the children are into and they had disdain for children and that's what big does and the 15 16 year olds that are looking at it are going yeah fuck those idiots i'm gonna i'm gonna enjoy my childhood a bit so these 16 year olds who are the earliest stages of Generation X. They. When they get to 1819.

They. Inherit. A world. That is the post 1987. Crash. They now don't have. The economic opportunities. And opportunities for employment.

That. The yuppies had in the 80s. Now things still weren't fucking terrible in the early 90s an 18, 19 year old or someone in their 20s could still live they could rent apartments they could get basic jobs they could go to college

they mightn't have had the huge opportunities for wealth or to immediately buy a house that yuppies had but they could live and this is we get to about 1990 and the kids who watched big the teenagers are now adults and they embrace what's known as early 90s slacker culture and slacker culture is grunge music you know you look at uh kurt cabane and the seattle grunge scene that's classic slackerism um you see the way mtv went in the early 90s with fucking kind of an apathy you know a rejection of ideals a post-modern irony irony that Simpsons episode where Homer hangs out with smashing pumpkins which is kind of a critique of Generation X that that sums it up nicely that Generation X that generation x apathy and i'm too cool to care about anything and slackerism and slackerism became the complete and utter rejection of the yuppie it's the opposite of the yuppie

so like i said cultural things they go in cycles the young reject what is cool of the people that are now in their 30s the young have to find their identity so if being a yuppie means i'm gonna wear a fucking suit i'm gonna get a job i'm gonna do the daily grind i'm gonna try my hardest and i'm gonna be a fucking adult generation x have now turned that on their head generation x are instead of buying expensive suits are buying second-hand flannel shirts and wearing jeans that have rips in them. And are not interested in getting a career. Instead, as we can see in slacker films like Clerks, you know, directed by Kevin Smith, they're working in video shops.

Quentin Tarantino, who was a classic fucking early 90s slacker, he worked in a fucking video shop and spent his day looking at videos, coming up with ideas for his films. You look at Wayne's World. That, again, adopts slacker culture. What are they doing all day? Drinking, smoking hash, listening to rock music, living in their giant fucking studio apartment that's in a really, you know, a shit part of town you have to remember too

generation x had the opportunity to move into we'll say the east end of london when it was very poor and very run down and rent out a warehouse for next to nothing and live in a giant warehouse with repurposed furniture and yes they living in. They don't have a lot of fucking money. And they're hanging out in coffee houses. But they're able to live. And Generation X are living in. Warehouses. Studio apartments.

Repurposed places. That aren't. The exact opposite. Of the fetishised Manhattan apartment. That the yuppies were living in they're now moving to brooklyn to old warehouses places that are dodgy that are rough places that they would consider authentic and these are now the people that have inherited this but also they're living at a time where they don't have as much opportunity as the uppies. So they feel like postponing their 20s a bit.

They're going to slack. They're not going to try. They're going to wait. Because ultimately, too, they do have the privilege of knowing they're not going to end up starving and homeless. Okay? That's an important thing with these Generation X slackers. They had the luxury of slacking around and having as their cultural heroes

people who postponed adulthood into the late 20s. You know, who didn't wear suits who didn't try and get a job that's a luxury that they could afford because they weren't going homeless they could live somewhere they could get by they might not had much but they could get by and they also had the confidence that they were slacking, they were postponing. I'm just going to chill until I'm about 27, 28. And then when I get to 28, then I'll get the real job. They had the confidence in knowing because of the baby boomers before them, shit will work out.

If I follow this, if I go to college to college yeah i can take a gap year i can fuck off to east asia and come back and get a spiritual awakening but yes things will be grand and i will own a house eventually generation x had that knowledge and confidence that they would be okay eventually so i view the lifestyles that you see in films like wayne's world beavis and butthead and these being able to live in the cool fucking warehouse and be in a band and not earn a lot of money looking back it's actually a privilege it's a privilege that generation x had um millennials today don't really have that privilege they don't have the privilege looking back, it's actually a privilege. It's a privilege that Generation X had. Millennials today don't really have that privilege.

They don't have the privilege of, oh, I'm just going to move into a fucking cool warehouse and earn nothing and be grand. That doesn't exist anymore. Now, one of the benefits of slacker culture, early 90s Gen X culture, is there's a cynicism in it, an irony and a cynicism. And from this irony and cynicism,

you kind of get the end point of post-modernism. And the irony and cynicism, it's a rejection of, we'll say, what baby boomers would have held to be true. So from a cultural point of view, you end up with art that cynically and ironically borrows from everything that has gone before and mixes it up just for the crack. The film's a fucking Quentin Tarantino, like Pulp Fiction, bloody incredible film, work of genius,

but all Pulp Fiction is, it's literally, fiction, Pulp Fiction from the 50s, stock stories, caught up, and put together in a new form, the music of Beck,

Beck, the artist, if you listen to his albums around 93, 94, like Audley, he was just taking from every piece of music that had gone before, mixing it together with a lot of fun and a lot of creativity. Hip-hop is an example of that. Hip-hop is a Generation X music, how it came about. Hip-hop, again, sampling from James Brown, sampling from the previous

generation mixing it up and making something new so creatively it was the slackerism created the last great art forms in music to be honest because the music industry really really fucking thrived off

generation X slackers MTV thrived off Generation X slackers MTV thrived off it you know fashion thrived off it designer ripped jeans but where the Generation X slacker culture

where the people of this when it starts to pay off they get a bit older and the mid 90's comes about and the promise they made to themselves when they were 18 which is

I'm not going to do this fucking yuppie shit where I'm going to wear a suit and do what the man tells me and be in the rat race fuck that when they start to get to 26, 27 the internet comes along and the pioneers of the world wide web do you know the shit that we see in the 2000s dot com bubble uh silicon valley everything we live today we see these pioneers

come out of generation x and slacktivist or slacker culture. Not technically a tech example but Starbucks, like Starbucks began in Seattle out of the grunge scene in the 90s as a coffee shop because coffee shops were, you know, if yuppies were drinking in champagne bars, the exact opposite is a coffee shop where you simply get a cheap cup of coffee and someone's playing music, which in itself was a callback to early 60s folk culture. But Starbucks starts off as a very small Seattle coffee shop, which, and Seattle, of course, is where grunge music comes from. Grunge was the soundtrack to

slacker culture and then starbucks becomes this huge multinational corporation very corporate but on its surface it's on its surface it's essentially fucking Tom Hanks and Big. It doesn't present itself as a corporation, even though it is a bloody corporation. Its branding and image is, oh, but we're cool. We're just bringing you coffee. You know? We're just bringing you coffee.

And this is where I see, this is what I'm getting at when i say that big was a very important science fiction film in predicting where we are today this is what i'm talking about it influenced generation x to to still be corporate and still go to the office but to create the facade that they're still cool while doing it and if we think

back to Tom Hanks' bedroom and Tom Hanks' carry on in his office you know what the fuck do we see today in the offices of Google or Facebook and Tom Hanks' carry-on in his office. You know, what the fuck do we see today in the offices of Google or Facebook, all the multinational corporations? They don't look like offices.

They have beanbag chairs. They have trampolines. These things, these things that in 88 were hilarious have now been adopted into mainstream office and corporate culture as a facade. And this was started by the Generation Xers who were teenagers who were watching Big when they grew up. Elon Musk, even in how he behaves and how he speaks, he's Tom Hanks in big. He's got a company called The Boring Company. He's marketing a fucking flamethrower that just exists for the laugh, a tie. Elon Musk is Tom Hanks in big. So, I mean, this is what i'd call the bigification of the workplace but like the

yuppies idolized reagan and thatcher for generation x who they kind of looked towards would have been bill clinton and tony blair and what you have with Clinton and Blair, very much, they were neoliberal. They... Blair in particular, would hate to be seen as stuffy and evil, like Thatcher. So instead, expertly creates a facade

of being young and cool and different, while secretly still carrying on with these neoliberal policies that crush Britain. And same type of shit with fucking Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was the coolest cunt going. He was the young generation ex-president. He played the fucking saxophone sure how could he be a politician but his policies were quite different and this is reflected as well in the bigification of the corporate workplace today they looked at tom hanks and. And all they did. Was.

Take from his behaviour. But not his values or ideals. Tom Hanks in Big isn't nasty. Isn't mean. So it's as if. They only identified. With the superficial qualities of his character. And still kept. The bloodthirsty.

Rootlessness of the yuppie. But decided only to get rid of the facade. So Generation X managed to engage in a type of collective cognitive dissonance. Where they're effectively lying to themselves. We can still be corporate. We can still be cutthroat but we're cool though you know we invented casual fridays why would you want to wear a suit suits are for dark suits are for yuppies we're cool in here i want to see you wearing sneakers and jeans. You know, all these benefits.

It's like, we don't have offices. We've got floating desks. Just walk around the place with your laptop. You don't have to sit down in an office. That's stuffy and uncool. What am I, a dad? Do you know what I mean? Seats. We don't have seats.

We've got beanbags. Oh, are you stressed out? Come play at the pool table. Cans of coke are free the modern office place is big it's tom hanks's fucking bedroom in big and this is why today if you were to release big like if you go back and look at big now 50 of the laughs are gone there is nothing at all absurd or strange about a 30 year old man turning up to work in a pair of sneakers, riding a BMX and playing with toys. This is now mainstream, normal culture for millennials. okay it's it was sold to us under the idea of it creates you know a less stress-free

environment in the workplace uh or it enables creativity and i'm sure those things are true and i'm sure the person who goes into the office that has beanbags and that has video games their time in work you, at their nine to five is going to be more pleasant than if it was just an office. These are ultimately good things. But unfortunately, what they were used for and what they continue to be used for, it's merely a very friendly facade,

a very, very friendly facade that in the late 90s and most of the 2000s, it's like these big corporations especially going to google or facebook in ireland you know either of them the corporate headquarters are here it's beanbags fucking everywhere they're amazing places i've been in there they're cool as fuck it's a giant daycare center for adults it's amazing but they're not paying taxes. The workers don't have unions. All of these things that the baby boomers had, that they got right. You know, if we take it back to the 60s and fucking madmen, it might have been a very stuffy workplace environment where people got pissed

and there was a huge amount of, you know, women weren't even allowed into the workplace. All terrible things. But they had health care they had unions they had a right to uh hold on to their jobs they had pensions these things don't exist anymore in the modern corporate environment and instead what they've been replaced with are ties they've been replaced with colourful ties and bean bags and it's a form of grooming

it's a form of fucking grooming it's what do you mean you want a union look at all the pizza we brought in last Friday we had pizza day on Friday everyone ate free pizza you want a union but we Everyone ate free pizza. You want a union? But we're so nice. Why could you want a union?

What about our human rights abuses in Indonesia? You can play video games all day if you want. You're under no pressure. Deadlines? What are they? Let's go and brainstorm. Do you know what i mean and not you know calling people by their names and notions it's all just a fucking facade it's the bigification of the workplace and this is what millennials right so like i said now millennials born between 1982 and the year 2000 older millennials so the older millennials who are now

mid 30s we'll say the older millennials who are over the age of 25 we'll say what you see so we've got right yuppie that's what you did with your 20s and the 80s. Then slacker, if you were Gen X.

Millennials have got the hipster. Now the hipster's kind of gone now. The hipster would have been from 2006 to, I would say the hipster ended about 2013, when everyone started getting beards. But the hipster is then a continuation. It's a cultural continuation from the environment that the Gen Xers who watched Big created. So first off, the Gen Xers, when they were starting their offices, like look at what happened to Brooklyn in New York look at what happened to

Shoreditch and the east end of London Hackney, millennials didn't do that, baby boomers did that in the late 90s the baby boomers said fuck Manhattan, let's go to Brooklyn, this very poor place and let's buy a warehouse

okay, and let's go to Hackney or go to Dalston and buy a warehouse there and we're going to turn the warehouse into a very vibrant creative space and everything's going to be really cool and creative and the rents are low and this is, how could this even be an office, we're in Brooklyn, there's people doing crack outside and we can hear we can hear gunshots wow we're so dangerous and cool and it's the Gen Xers who owned these companies and who started this and then the older millennials around the year 2006 start moving into these companies and working there now the rent goes up massively so the situation now with the the millennials now can't afford like you can't live

in fucking brooklyn anymore you can't live in the east end berlin was the place to go now that's gone what i'm trying to get at is culture and economics work together to essentially extend adulthood the yuppies went straight to fucking adult Gen X said fuck that you stuffy cunts I'm holding off adulthood until about 26 but with hipsters

and older millennials adulthood is really postponed and you see this in our culture today like comic books are things that adults buy if you look at the biggest films

like I remember when like in the early 2000s like superhero films started becoming a thing that adults went to and at first it was a novelty but now you know like the batman films are subject to serious critical debate this is now mainstream adult culture are things for children and it's not an insane fucking idea like teenagers didn't exist before the 50s before the 1950s you got to the you wore short pants you got to 12 years of age then you got

long pants and you were a fucking adult and there was no in between before the 1950s that it didn't exist but then the baby boomers the first baby boom, who would have been the age of 12 in the 50s, these were the first ever teenagers. Because of capitalism and, you know, the massive economic boom after the war, you now had this new class of consumer who were searching for an identity between the ages of 12 and 18. And these were called teenagers. And you know. The music of the 50s and 60s.

Came about because this new. Gap of fucking people. Emerged. And adulthood became something that happened when you were 18. Now. Adulthood is being postponed. To. I mean fucking 40

I don't know 40 years of age and I think this is the new thing and you can trace it all to a combination of economic, political and cultural factors and it's quite clearly evidence and this is

why at the start of the podcast I said I'm not sure what my fucking hot take is and to be honest there's a couple of hot takes in this episode the one I'm definitely sure about is that big is the most accurate fucking science fiction representation of what 2019

would be like alright but like I said in Dublin the millennials were raised with Wendy houses at the back garden being told this will be yours one day one day you are going to own your own

fucking house okay just you'll be grand whether it was Gen X parents or Baby Boomer parents just do your thing you'll go to college you'll be fine you it was gen x parents or baby boomer parents just do your thing you'll go to college you'll be fine you will one day own a house because of the policies that started in the 1980s of trickle-down economics and neoliberalism and what both those things cause is a massive massive shift of wealth from poor to the rich and a disparity now you just have millennials who can't get houses going when is it my time to be an adult

i can't have a child even though i'm in my 30s i'm still trying to save for a gaff you know trying to get a mortgage and i have a lot of debt because of the neoliberalization of education which was once free is now quite expensive and i might have a crack at a master's degree i mean that's the other thing too you know the way that education was privatised, it devalued it. And now a master's degree is worth what a regular degree was 10 years ago. And a PhD is now the thing that you want. So you have this highly educated generation of people who are just postponing adulthood because of economic situation but you've got loads of comic books and you can wear trainers in your 30s and that would have been unacceptable 10 years ago brilliant or 20 years ago

and i also i view it as a great irony that Trump is president of America because he was a yuppie god the yuppies like he was the biggest yuppie he was the yuppies in New York in the 80s Trump was the guy that they wanted to be and he he kind of

encapsulated it all and now he's the fucking president and for younger millennials who are in their 20s now you know what we're kind of seeing there that manifestation manifestation of um you know they're still working in the offices of corporations that have beanbags and pizza on Fridays but younger millennials their values it's not hipsterism that they're into they're into social justice and being woke and being politically correct and we're seeing this now reflected with corporations pretending to be very, very woke

and all about social justice, even though those corporations are committing actual human rights abuses in the global south against very poor people. The same bullshit, do you know? I don't know what's going to happen with Generation Z. They're only just after turning 19. We'll have to see one thing i can be positive of because it's a pattern and it has to happen i guarantee it generation y when like the millennials that are in like we say the millennials that i am right so i'm late

millennial i was born in the 80s so we're already old now the ones in their 20s are going to be old soon and once you tip over 25 once you go beyond 25 you're no longer cool you you don't have access to coolness anymore coolness is whatever people from the ages of 16 and 25 are doing. That's what's cool. Whatever they're doing is cool. And they must define their coolness. It has to be defined by a rejection of what has gone before. So I don't know how the 18, 19 year olds, how they're going to reject millennial values to redefine a new coolness.

Maybe it will be a rebirth of a type of yuppie-ism, but there's no actual money there. I don't know. But it has to be, it will have to be a rejection. It will have to be, if they're 19 and they're looking at someone who's 26, 27, they're going to go, they're old, that's not cool. What can I do that's the opposite? So we'll have to wait and see. We will have to wait and see.

So, was that a long, hot take? That was this week's episode. I thoroughly enjoyed that. I enjoyed just talking and exploring an idea. In real time witchy. I felt. I liked it. Look.

My role. When I'm doing a podcast is that. If I'm interested and passionate about what it is. And that is something. Those past 80 minutes or whatever they were. I was genuinely interested and passionate about what it is. And that is something. Those past 80 minutes or whatever they were. I was genuinely interested and passionate. So hopefully that will. Come across to you.

As an interesting listen. And if it wasn't. Go back to a different podcast. Or I'll have something next week that will interest you. You terrible terrible boys and girls. Yeah I sign off by saying fucking boys and girls. The fuck? You're adults.

I'm an adult. Let's have a bit of a revolution. Alright, God bless. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you. Thank you. so rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game. And you'll only pay as we play.

Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at TorontoRock.com.