00:00:54.380this podcast is about many things including queer romance so we have a huge favor to ask
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00:01:36.200show. This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. And I'm Suchil Gonzalez,
00:01:48.980the author of Last Night in Brooklyn. All right, we're going to start very basic.
00:01:54.960What was your life like in 2007? Oh my God, my life was the best.
00:02:01.500It was the best. I had like alligator arms. I didn't pay for anything. I had all these
00:02:07.200guy friends and they paid for everything. Like it was amazing. So all my money was able to go to
00:02:12.360grooming and wardrobe and rent. And you lived in Brooklyn during this time.
00:02:17.720I lived right off of Fort Greene Park. I'm a native Brooklynite. So I'm originally from a much less chic part of Brooklyn. And then I went away to college. And then I literally, much as is written in my book, I was literally seduced by a shopping cart race and a night out in Fort Greene and was like, you know what, this is double my rent. And I don't care. I'm moving here because this is the greatest thing.
00:02:42.360And it was just fantastic. And I had a job that just wouldn't even exist now because it was so, like, almost easy. And you could semi-phone it in, but it came with an expense account and the chance to travel. And everybody was really nice. It was great.
00:02:58.680no there used to be we're going to talk about so much of this but like there used to be so much
00:03:05.140more robust layering in corporations where there were just more jobs yes doing work but not like
00:03:14.780robust work and now like every single corporation has become so lean that five jobs are combined
00:03:21.680mind into one and like to think though back to 2007 or to like I don't know 1987 yeah how many
00:03:30.620people were doing this work for sustainable salaries like it was just a different reality
00:03:34.500just a different reality I mean we had like two secretaries at my like first kind of real job you
00:03:40.800know like and and then you left it mainly a normal time and like you know unless you had something to
00:03:46.140do. Like, it was just, you really could have a life. And I think that that was the best part.
00:03:54.440And, you know, it's one of these very weird times, because then there was a before and an after.
00:12:34.980But like, I always feel like I'm going to be 49 this year.
00:12:39.460And so I always feel like I was just ahead of an avalanche
00:12:44.040is how my whole life has felt like I got I started a business in 2003 when you could literally get
00:12:49.960html for dummies and like have five thousand dollars in a bank account and like have a robust
00:12:54.220business four years later you know like and and now like it's like like what do you have like
00:12:58.840even to run the kind of service business I had it's like well do you have 150,000 dollars and
00:13:03.920a line of credit and like you know like the barriers to entry just kept getting harder and
00:13:09.260harder and harder for people. And I am aware of the weird privilege of time that I have. But I
00:13:16.640think that sometimes I don't always think about how millennials of the age that they were, what
00:13:21.460developmental ages those are, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh.
00:13:26.320We'll talk about this later. But I like I am technically at the very, very beginning of the
00:13:31.760millennial generation in 1981. But I become solidly millennial, because I was in graduate
00:13:38.440school and it delayed my like for seven years because I was getting my PhD it delayed my
00:13:44.620maturity right it delayed my my like placement in the larger economic sphere okay so we did an
00:13:55.020episode that was about millennial nostalgia a few years ago but this one we want to be much more
00:14:00.520specific and like even before I saw your book I and I'm sure you've noticed this too like so
00:14:07.640many reels and instagrams that are like oh my gosh like look at what the high schoolers looked
00:14:14.520like in 2005 just like a real nostalgia for this period in time and we just want to work through
00:14:22.340it so we got some great questions from our listeners and we're going to start with this
00:14:26.260message from sarah which is really a classic more of a comment than a question but it captures a lot
00:14:31.820of these feelings i graduated from college in 2008 worked on a u.s senate campaign in new mexico
00:14:37.080and moved to Brooklyn in early 2009, so wow, all the feels. I also left New York City in 2016 but
00:14:44.300was back visiting an old roommate in Brooklyn this weekend, so very fresh in my mind. Thoughts I had,
00:14:49.820how do we used to be able to afford to live here on under 30k a year? How did we think that racism
00:14:55.180was over with a black president? How are we so fucking optimistic? The feeling at the time was1.00
00:15:01.340that we were going to take over the world. I don't even know what I mean by we, other liberal arts
00:15:06.560college graduates? Sure, there was a recession and it took a few months to get a job, but that
00:15:11.160is not what I remember. Buying business casual dresses at H&M, which honestly held up for over
00:15:16.740a decade. Going out for a drink, so it felt like every day. Again, how did we afford that? Feeling
00:15:22.100cool and sophisticated, even though I definitely wasn't. It felt like Brooklyn was the center of
00:15:26.840the universe. Okay, we'll get to the Brooklyn part in just a minute, but I want to start with
00:15:32.740the optimism. And we've talked about this a little bit already. But even, you know, this person is
00:15:38.820like, I graduated college in 2008. I moved to Brooklyn in 2009. So it's very much the wake
00:15:44.900of the recession. Yeah. Where do you think that that feeling, like, how did it stick around?
00:15:50.880I really feel it was that idea of possibility. And I think that youth thing is a big part of it,
00:15:58.980because we also kind of don't we forget about that which is like that he had this youth powered
00:16:05.660election yeah everybody always talks about his ground game and then what's kind of gotten lost
00:16:10.420because all these people have aged now right so we forget how young like David Plouffe was like
00:16:15.600all these people around him were really young yes but then the people going door to door and
00:16:20.420canvassing were college students yeah so that idea that like we were going to change the world
00:16:26.680I think that we felt like we could and we just forget like he was just really cool like you know like I was like thinking this like about like you know politicians just they're so not cool like you know like now they're like literally whatever the opposite of cool is like they are like and he just had swag you know it's like it felt like like there was something very he was relatively young but there was also something youthful about him because he just had this like confidence
00:16:56.080that came I think because he had earned a lot of it like you know he was so untypical of like you
00:17:01.800know the kind of person that usually gets to this thing and I think that also made people just feel
00:17:07.100like I could kind of do anything and I made this happen I helped make this happen right right like
00:17:12.660and I think it makes you feel like you could do anything what a feeling to have in one of the
00:17:17.460first political elections that you participate in yes right wait can I just say one thing also
00:17:22.140So, like, God bless Michelle Obama for wearing J.Crew because it made me always feel a lot better about my H&M work dresses.
00:17:50.300it gave me access to a performance oh well at that phase of my career I was running a luxury
00:17:57.020wedding planning business and so I literally had to dress like a weather woman right so I would
00:18:02.780just go to H&M and I would buy a mono colored sheath dress with like the scoop neck I mean
00:18:09.760they still make it like like they still make it so classy it's so classy you were ready for
00:18:16.620anything right like you would kind of go and do anything and like things just felt accessible
00:18:20.840like the $30,000 a year and being able to go out for drinks every night like there was also like
00:18:25.540I think right now the vibe that I always get when I'm watching young people like on reels and stuff
00:18:30.760like is they are operating in restriction right like and we were even on limited like budgets
00:18:37.900living in abundance like I would leave the house with no wallet like I'll be like I'll run into
00:18:43.260somebody like you know like I was like because we weren't getting paid a lot but my male friends
00:18:48.280were and we like we also had this very it was funny because it was kind of before we talked
00:18:55.000about feminism the way that we then started talking about it into like girl bossing and
00:18:59.660Hillary and all this other stuff and so we had a very open acknowledgement and like I took up
00:19:04.360talking about this in the book a little bit like of like you are making money that I'm not seeing
00:19:09.180So, yes, this feels completely equitable to me that you should pay for us to go out an ownership and an acknowledgement that went both ways that didn't feel like that.
00:19:20.800I think sometimes can be perceived now as like a sexist system, but that to us felt quite just.
00:19:26.680Right. No. And it just like I think now we talk about like, oh, people who are making more money should fit more of the bill and like the gender kind of disappears from it.
00:19:34.480It's just that back then, because of these enduring like splits and like it was almost entirely men who were that I knew who were already making that money as well.
00:19:45.300Right. Yeah. Yeah. Whether it was as consultants or like as investment bankers or whatever.
00:19:50.700Yes. Also in grad school, though, no one had that money.
00:19:53.680So we just like no one just was always like house parties, which is a different sort of special.
00:20:00.360You know, it's a different kind of fun. It's a different kind of fun.
00:20:02.800But that optimism, I really think it is really interesting to see like when you have participatory democracy, not to be like corny about it, but like people felt like they were invested in our country because of how many people that volunteered for that campaign.
00:20:21.180I was also going to say just that the rallies, which now a political rally feels like so cringe and corny in some ways.
00:20:31.100Right. But then, you know, like George W. Bush had rallies like he was like there was not, you know, like I was in Austin at the time and I went to this enormous rally on the banks of the river.
00:20:45.660And it was like a profound political moment. And that had not occurred. Yeah.
00:20:51.940like many many years like even like people talk about Clinton on the stump not Hillary Clinton
00:20:57.720Bill Clinton on the stump and like how charismatic he was but he wasn't having like rallies attracting
00:21:02.700tens of thousands of people no no no no and the energy also like it's interesting because
00:21:10.680Obama also served this like symbolic purpose that was like you felt that in publicly supporting him
00:21:18.840yeah you were like saying the this is the America that I'm voting for like that we truly see the
00:21:26.880arc of justice bending in a particular way and so there was kind of a camaraderie of shared values
00:21:33.600that made people relax like and I think that that also is what made those rallies have a different
00:21:39.760energy you're like oh well I'm here with you and we both chose to spend our time here and like
00:21:45.660Right. Right. And so, like, like, we clearly have this kind of shared vision for what America could be, which is bigger than tax policy.
00:21:55.060Yeah. Like, right. Like, it's like, like, like it was it was.
00:21:58.780But that was through no fault or credit of his. It was just his existence.
00:26:56.860You were, like, you kind of got to live with abandon.
00:26:59.620But I also think because we weren't like this, like, you know, staring down and like involved in things happening in these other places, like, you know, one of the things I had a lot of fun writing about was like, you noticed when people were noticing you and when those people were hot.
00:27:16.820like and so like there was just a lot more actual manifestations of sex like when you were just out
00:27:24.660and about in the world because you weren't distracted and your energy wasn't going down
00:27:29.520to a device it was kind of present and i think that we sort of engineered that out of our bodies
00:27:36.520like and like and you just felt i think that actually we might be able to say that we were
00:27:40.440all just a little more embodied right because we weren't getting so pulled and so like when you
00:27:45.780went to places it was not just that it was that like you were like oh like you're not down here
00:27:51.920so you're like I see that person making eyes at me by that bar like oh yeah might as well talk to
00:27:56.520them like you know like it's like like like you just strangers didn't feel as strange because
00:28:01.540you were actually absorbing the energy yeah in a very present way I hope this comes off the right
00:28:07.420way the book is very like fleshy like as in like they're like I feel I have a real sensation of like
00:28:14.520people's bodies in the book. Oh, good. Oh, good. And I think that that's a sign that like you were
00:28:20.940trying to communicate that feeling of like, people like being in proximity to one another
00:28:26.220and noticing one another in a way that's super interesting. Oh, thank you. And like, I just
00:28:32.040actually missed it. A lot of my readers are younger. And I kind of was like, I promise if
00:28:37.640you go out, it'll be great. I want to seduce them into getting out and doing something at night.
00:28:44.520like with, with nobody and leaving their phone. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing is I will say
00:28:49.200like now when you go out, like if you're out at the bar, like everyone who's like feeling kind
00:28:52.900of awkward, they just look at their phones. Yeah. And before when you felt awkward, like
00:28:57.160you smoked. You flirted. You flirted. Yeah. You talked to the bartender so that that could give
00:29:08.200you an excuse to talk to the person next to you. Like you're like, I'll go in a three way and a
00:29:12.120triangle. If I can get the bartender and then I can get that person in.
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00:31:18.120by Article. So we have this second bedroom and there's a whole saga involved that mostly involves
00:31:25.220the fact that because our house is from 1904 and was never meant to serve the purpose that it
00:31:31.640currently serves, the ceilings are so low that you feel like you're in a ship. And we have tried
00:31:41.120various queen bed configurations in there because it needs to be a queen. But the ceilings are so
00:31:47.500low that any sort of traditional frame has just really made it feel claustrophobic. So yesterday,
00:31:53.880I pulled the trigger on the Bozzy Queen bed frame and smoked oak. And so it's one of those that
00:31:59.840doesn't have a headboard. I know, it's really nice. It's only $399 for a Queen bed frame. It's
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00:32:22.560arrive in pieces. I ordered it yesterday and it's supposed to come in like the next two weeks. So
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00:32:52.160It doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart as soon as you sit on this bed.
00:32:56.260Some of my article stuff I've had for six years, and it still looks like almost brand new.
00:41:23.500Like, I know people who pay 40 to 50 percent of their take-home.
00:41:26.200Honestly, I don't know any young people that are in the city that aren't subsidized.
00:41:31.500yeah like i know one young woman at the atlantic who has a second job but other than that person
00:41:37.720everybody else i know is pretty much subsidized like they are receiving financial help from
00:41:45.480parents like and you know like the average amount of help like it i think it used to be like you've
00:41:51.300like oh somebody's on their parents friends and family plan like oh great you don't have a cell
00:41:54.800phone bill but now i think the national average for parental output is almost fifteen hundred
00:41:59.860a month um support like yeah what i would have done with 1500 yeah like like that like and that's
00:42:07.860kind of just across the board so like you know you see people and it's it really has become
00:42:14.760a city of the very wealthy but partly it's because to your point like the salaries actually
00:42:21.440haven't gotten that much better like for a lot of these jobs yeah like so melody melody did some
00:42:27.940inflation math and like 30,000 if you were earning 30,000 in March 2008 has the same buying power
00:42:37.260now that's 46,000 so yeah the medium annual income for workers in the U.S. in 2008 was around 50,000
00:42:47.540and now it's 62,000 so like the it's like our you know we haven't kept pace and also housing prices
00:42:56.180particularly in New York, have not kept pace. And the other thing that I would note here is because
00:43:02.280the young people now, like we just, it's all over in the studies, like they're just
00:43:07.420less comfortable with other people, with hanging out, with like having friends. I see a real
00:43:13.200reticence to have roommates. So do I. Yes. Yes. And that was how we survived is we had roommates.
00:43:20.220Yes. And the other, I think the other thing that ends up happening is also
00:43:24.120So because you have this idea – because it then is attracting kind of a higher class, like a higher fiscal class, like family, like there's also –
00:43:49.640like if there's a market for it then if you build it then they will if they they will come when you
00:43:55.660build it like so I think that you're also seeing people building luxury and not building just like
00:44:01.460you need a place to live great like and so I think that that is a big part of it and I wish more
00:44:06.440people had roommates because I think it's such a forced way to have an intimate relationship in
00:44:10.960like a really good way like and it's like you can't just blow it up either because you've got
00:44:15.640make it work yeah you have to be you have to communicate you have to do these things that
00:44:20.540are hard and the other thing I would say that I see is like this impulse towards like becoming
00:44:26.360an adult very young which in some ways is very regressive right and yeah it used to be like you
00:44:31.820if you're a woman you graduated from college or even you didn't graduate from college you went
00:44:35.640straight into like adulthood and motherhood and wifedom right yeah so in a different way but now
00:44:40.600it's like not only does your dorm room have to look like the condo of a 47 year old that like
00:44:48.740when you graduate like your parents like put together your single room and like I see parents
00:44:55.820bemoaning that like their kids have to have a roommate when they're an undergrad or like have
00:45:01.400to deal with ugly quote-unquote ugly dorm furniture they take the dorm furniture out and
00:45:07.180they put it in storage and they put the like fancy furniture in oh my gosh there's this real like
00:45:12.860push to consume in that capacity but there's also a push to like now that i have nice things
00:45:20.440yeah oh my gosh i re-watched the devil wears prada and i stopped because at one point she's
00:45:26.300putting on her underwear in the very beginning anne hathaway and i was like i used to have that
00:45:30.380ikea lingerie chest like i was like i had that for like 15 years like i was like it was like
00:45:37.440hidden in a closet at one point like totally like and now i'm like i remember looking around my
00:45:43.500apartment like maybe a year or so gonna be like there's not a single thing from ikea here and i
00:45:47.960felt like i had triumphed but i was like like there is something weird that gets lost when you
00:45:53.540never know resistance like like talk about like friction defrictioning everything i don't know
00:46:00.220like live in a cinder block room for a few years that's what being in college is i guess is it is
00:46:05.160it gen x now like who are these who are the parents of this age is it older gen x and i i think it's
00:46:11.000because like they're traumatized from us being latchkey kids but i'm like you don't have to do
00:46:15.420everything like i know i know we had to make our own breakfast and i know that we came home and
00:46:22.040nobody was there and you like i know it's so sad that we had to do that but like like it doesn't
00:46:28.960mean that they're going to die if the dorm room doesn't look like Martha Stewart herself did.
00:46:36.580The other thing that I think about when I think about 2007-2008 is that the percentage of people
00:46:42.260with student loans was significantly lower. Yes. So a lot of us were taking out student loans. So
00:46:48.980at that time I was taking out more loans. But the people who were like 26 in Brooklyn did not have
00:46:56.580that tremendous student loan debt on them yet because the tremendous cuts in statewide funding
00:47:03.700that would force people going to state schools to take on significant debt and then also the like
00:47:08.200luxury lifestyle inflation of private schools that would cause the increase in tuition there
00:47:12.380like that was just that was not an extra cost that people were dealing with as well no that's
00:47:17.300right and also i'd actually say that there's like unfortunately particularly in cities like new york
00:47:22.400And I'm certain this is true somewhat in San Francisco and like a few other like there's also a certain elitism that's come up into hiring in the last 20 years that you used to go to work and I'd work with people that had gone to like Hunter or went to SUNY Purchase or like, in fact, there were industries where it's like, oh, yeah, we mainly hire forward.
00:47:40.600of like there were fewer schools from local schools you know like tier two to three schools
00:47:44.660and like and now there is such a preference given to like 40 schools in this country that like that
00:47:52.220are private elite institutions and and I went to one of them and I still get upset about it yeah
00:47:58.500and again I go back to tax policy because it was like what are we incentivizing these companies
00:48:02.540that live in these states if not to hire state school graduates like make these degrees more
00:48:07.840valuable because I think part of why people also had less debt is that they were able to go and
00:48:12.360get a great job and come out and go from a SUNY and get, oh, you know, maybe not a white shoe
00:48:18.180finance firm, but someplace. And I think that you started to see the recruiting practices kind of
00:48:25.520get more elitist over time. And I think that that has also made everything kind of scale up.
00:48:31.600Yeah. And the idea too, and this isn't like entirely new, but the idea that like
00:48:36.720in college, everyone at a state school, elite school, whatever, everyone should look for
00:48:43.420national internships that they should start working at. And then like, when you start
00:48:49.500applying for jobs, it's not like in state, it's, I will move anywhere at any time at any pay,
00:48:54.380right? Like, this is the work that I will do. And then you have so many more job applicants
00:49:00.000for so many more jobs. And then you have things like AI sorting through the applications and the
00:49:06.060way that they sort is by looking for things like where'd you get your degree so true right so true
00:49:11.140oh my gosh and then i think this this is like probably a topic for another day but i'm like
00:49:14.980and then after all these generations of being conditioned to go through this and then to have
00:49:21.020somebody like the ceo of palantir be like unless you're neurodivergent don't bother with school
00:49:26.320like like what does this do i feel like we're on the brink of 10 million people being unhoused
00:49:31.400again but like it's like a different version of it and i just don't know what we do with all those
00:49:35.380hopes and dreams and preparation that so many families have been gauged in over this next
00:49:41.840generation. Like you get a whole country kind of at a precipice and then pull a rug out from
00:49:46.060under them. And I just don't know what that does to our psyche. And yeah, nothing good.
00:49:57.500The Culture Study Podcast is sponsored by OLLI. Guess what yesterday was, Melody?
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00:52:30.420This is actually a great tee up to thinking about hustle culture, which is our last question. So
00:52:36.980this one comes from Rachel. What is the relationship between 2008 optimism and
00:52:43.280millennial hustle culture? In 2008, I had just finished my first year of law school and it was
00:52:48.900my first summer living in D.C. We received so many messages. Work hard, play hard. Get involved
00:52:55.040in politics. Network. Side note, is this why we all were wearing business casual to bars and clubs?
00:53:01.380The other message was, no way are we paying interns, and you must look and act professional
00:53:06.840at all times and be careful what you post on Facebook. It was a wild time. It all seems so
00:53:12.820quaint now uh i've just i've thought so much about this because i think the way that most
00:53:19.720millennials and i think some young gen x and i would love to hear your perspective on this is0.59
00:53:23.880like we reacted to the lack of jobs some people were like this is fucked up let's do occupy wall
00:53:32.220street but then the vast majority and i think this is in part because we were raised by boomers0.74
00:53:37.620said oh I'm just gonna work harder for less money a hundred percent like a hundred percent like I
00:53:47.160literally had one of my very good friends from high school was like in Occupy like you know
00:53:53.840she was like living down there and yeah and I remember meeting her for coffee like she left
00:53:58.880like the thing and like you know and we met up for coffee and she was like you of all people
00:54:03.060should really be down there with us like you have like this small business and like you were
00:54:07.020And I was like, but then how will I make money if I'm sitting down in the park with you?
00:54:11.860Like, you know, like, I mean, and that was like a very direct example because like if we weren't making the money, there was no money.
00:54:18.260But like it was only when thinking back and doing the research for the nonfiction book that I was like, oh, my God, this was really messed up.
00:54:25.380But I do think the problem is, and part of why this moment is so traumatizing for so many of us, is we fully believed, in fact, poor Barack Obama, meaning so many things to so many people, like that he's just a man.
00:57:36.400Some of the dots that I've been trying to connect in my head to are like, I wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago about all of these women who have been doing their husband's job searching for them and why like the men, like men do no longer have the robust social networks to like reach out or professional networks.
00:57:54.180And I'm thinking about how also the sort of work that we threw ourselves into was the all-consuming sort that, like, I'm thinking of even, like, investment bankers who didn't necessarily want to live, like, you know, in Murray Hill or down on Wall Street.
00:58:11.860And so they then became the people who could afford to live in Brooklyn, but they're working 18 hour days. They're never home. They don't have any social lives. They're not part of the community or invested it or even know who their neighbors are, but they're the ones who can pay that rent.
00:58:25.920Yeah. And then now we wake up against this backdrop of upper middle class precarity and are like, who am I? Who are my friends? That's the biggest part of it. The biggest the biggest challenge is the psychology of social class is like like I was raised very blue collar. Right.
00:58:46.900And so like, I always joke, I'm like, wedding planner, author, I don't know, like, I'm like, dog groomer tomorrow. I don't know, like a job's a job. Like, I'm like, it's like, because we weren't conditioned to talk about work, like nobody cared. Like, you know, if you came back home for Christmas break, like, I got this internship, like, is it paying? And like, well, then who cares? Like, you know, like, this was just not something that was valued in my family. But in an upper and middle and upper class context, you are trained to find your parachute.
00:59:16.400and the color of it specifically and like sew it and design it and make sure that it's couture and
00:59:22.460then this is your identity and i think it is it's a break in the social contract that's gonna feel
00:59:28.360very very traumatizing and i i think it's because we have four generations now you know and the
00:59:35.820worst part is is that in doing that weirdly then we've also managed to kind of stigmatize sort of
00:59:41.780blue collar work so it's not like we're trying to like when somebody's like like dina powell was
00:59:46.680like at the axios conference and she's like there's gonna be great careers in welding and i was like
00:59:51.860dina are your kids gonna weld like i'm like your kids aren't gonna go well but like unless you grew
00:59:56.160up in a large family with like lots of people that did lots of things like most upper middle
01:00:00.540class people can't imagine their kid having a career in welding and like they don't know a weld
01:00:05.240like they don't can't even literally fathom that life and that has to do with like so many things
01:00:10.840too right like we no longer have any sort of social organizations where we hang out with people
01:00:16.140of other classes like we've become so segregated but like and we've also in popular culture you
01:00:23.340have no more working class people I think one of the reasons why the bear actually was so unusual
01:00:28.500was because it was the dignity of people that work really hard and even then and that's partly0.96
01:00:33.680why that everybody loved that episode with Liza Cole and Zayas because you actually saw her go
01:00:37.820home like people are love it because like you're actually seeing a breath of experience and I think
01:00:43.940we've erased a whole swath of Americans and that's also partly why they're pissed off and spending
01:00:49.680all their time like and so on social media and not engaging with so much of this stuff like I
01:00:54.440it's a real we're really in a moment and I don't know that hustle thing is so interesting because
01:01:00.640like it's like you're watching the deflate the balloon deflate some of it I think is going to
01:01:04.420be really good and some of it i'm like oh no well and this is where do this is where i look at like
01:01:11.200not just gen z but now gen alpha like how they are reacting to this moment and especially like
01:01:18.880five years ago i saw this reaction to like millennials complaining about being burnt out0.99
01:01:23.500gen z was like some gen z were like yeah those fuckers like stop talking about your job like0.98
01:01:29.400get over yourself like just don't work as much right so some of them were like very much children0.99
01:01:35.260of gen x like yeah this is your problem but then some of them were like why do millennials complain
01:01:41.560all the time which was how i thought about gen xers being like you know anti-sell out like all
01:01:47.860these things i was like they just don't understand how to play the game yeah yeah and so that idea
01:01:54.640that like well if millennials won't take that job or are going to complain about it like i'm just
01:01:59.040going to work harder so essentially like not another generation like millennials not learning
01:02:05.000the lessons and instead of like rebuilding in a way that just is like settling for less
01:02:11.320that's what I'm scared of and I don't know how to like protect against that without being
01:02:16.180patronizing I I think and it's the hardest thing to do because people can't know what they don't
01:02:22.620know except except like until you tend to get burned by the stove but I do feel like I don't
01:02:30.420know like it's like like you get to a tip like I I always say like by the time I got over the hill
01:02:35.320of the recession like and we finally like paid off that chase loan about but like I had such a
01:02:40.580divorce between worth and money and career title like like it all kind of got divorced in a really
01:02:47.620healthy way and like I'm almost hoping that maybe this gives us a weird chance for a realignment
01:02:53.860but I am worried about what people wake up and do every day because like you need to have something
01:02:57.420to wake up and want to do every day like that's right right no like and this is where like I look
01:03:03.800at the people with the best like work-life balance the best like social lives and community involvement
01:03:09.820and it's people who do have like job jobs like yeah it's I'm not kidding like people are gonna
01:03:16.700of think this is sounds weird but like the exterminator who comes to my house and like
01:03:21.940sets the mousetraps is like one of the happiest people that I encounter on a bi-weekly basis and
01:03:28.380he is done at 5 p.m right but at the same time like you have to want to do that work and I think
01:03:34.860sometimes we're like oh well everyone wants to be a welder and you like the work still has to
01:03:39.860be dignified in whatever way it still has to feel dignified to you but i to you to you and i you know
01:03:46.660i do think like there's been a massive investment across the country in um trade educations yep and
01:03:53.860i do think that what i am seeing in gen z's is it's not actually just a revolt against maybe
01:04:01.340this like hustle thing as much as it's like a maybe we shouldn't spend all of our time just
01:04:06.740sitting at a desk like and like there is actually a desire to like like that is what doesn't appeal
01:04:12.900to them like that feels like crazy and weird and like like i don't want to and i do think that what
01:04:18.260we allowed corporate america to do to us is yeah divorce our bodies from our hands and our minds
01:04:25.600like and i think one of the reasons why people were kind of quasi happy in the beginning of
01:04:29.600covid was so many people were like i'm gonna bake bread i'm gonna have a good time making a very
01:04:34.320elaborate meal like it was like a physical thing that then their brain also was engaged in and like
01:04:39.720and we didn't realize how like I don't know like we'd let ourselves become like really good AIs
01:04:45.100in a really weird way like we're just kind of disembodied right like and like disembodied people
01:04:50.900just responding to emails till the end of time yes yes and it's like I think that what I find
01:04:56.840interesting are the young people that had already been on this thing like before this panic but like
01:05:02.040Where it's like, I don't want to be my parents taking out the laptop after dinner and, like, this doesn't appeal to me.
01:05:08.260Well, and isn't this, like, such a great, like, return to, like, Lloyd Dobler's speech in Say Anything?
01:05:15.520Where he's like, I don't want to buy anything, made anything, sold, processed or made, sell anything.
01:05:25.540I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career.
01:05:29.160I don't want to sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or process anything sold, bought or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed.
01:05:40.260You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
01:05:41.960This is a great place for us to come full circle just in terms of like some of the hope is like maybe there's a new way forward that isn't what our parents, what has made our parents miserable.
01:05:53.300And I am trying to think about this moment in time, less focusing on the end of something and more like, how do we learn the lessons of the past 15 to 20 years and build in a better, build back better?
01:06:08.700but make it interesting yeah like i i i really feel like we have a moment of opportunity and
01:06:21.040i've never seen people in mass seem so cognitive about where we've gone wrong
01:06:27.380which is very exciting actually it's like a very exciting thing okay so we have the small bonus
01:06:33.460segment it's called the ask and anything and we have a question about lifestyle creep and i think
01:06:38.600because of the intersection of your current fiction book and your new nonfiction book,
01:06:43.920I think you're going to be the perfect person for this one. Can you stick around and answer?