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- [00:00]
WNYC Announcer
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. Glad you're listening live right now. I love live radio and I especially love being in conversation with you, which we'll do in just a second when we talk about Generation X. But I also want to remind you that all of our conversations are available to listen to anytime. You can download them wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find them on our show page@wnyc.org where we have transcripts and this is a great resource especially if you want to go back and get some information like like the name of one of the Brooklyn shops we talked about yesterday on our Go Local segment. Again, check them out@wnyc.org and navigate to the all of it show page. Now let's get this hour started with an appreciation of a certain generation.
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Song Lyrics / Musical Interlude
Won't you come see about me I'll be alone dancing you know it baby Tell me your troubles and doubts Giving me everything inside and out and love Strange, surreal in the dark Think of the tender things that we were working on Slow change may pull us apart Wanna get in your heart baby don't you.
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Forget about me.
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Don'T, don't don't don't don't you forget about me all.
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Host / Interviewer
Right, when you hear that song, if.
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Alison Stewart
You put your hand in the air and pumped your fist, it is likely you are a member of Gen X. And like the song says, don't forget about Gen X. The New York Times style magazine devot time to our generation.
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Host / Interviewer
Titled Is Gen X actually the Greatest Generation?
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Alison Stewart
The article notes how much Gen X.
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Host / Interviewer
Has influenced culture and how much our current culture is missing a spirit that has defined this generation of people. Now in their late 40s and 50s.
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Alison Stewart
Amanda Fortini wrote in the piece, she.
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Host / Interviewer
Said about Gen X, it's a moment, a mood, an ethos, an enduring way of being, the hallmark characteristics of which anti corporatism, anti authoritarianism, ironic detachment, artistic independence, an existential horror of selling out and a live and let live philosophy of life feel like the antidote to a lot of what is currently wrong in our culture. Amanda, welcome to all of it.
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Amanda Fortini
Thank you so much for having me.
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Alison Stewart
Where did you get the idea to.
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Host / Interviewer
Explore Gen X's cultural impact?
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Amanda Fortini
Well, my editors actually brought me the idea. They didn't really define it. They just said, we're doing a package about Gen X. We want you to write something about Gen X. We think it's interesting that so much of what they made has shaped our culture and that it either endures or is sort of coming back around again. You know, like we have Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, you know, playing Vladimir and Estragon on Broadway. They were the original Bill and Ted. We have, you know, Pavement songs going around TikTok. And I just thought about how do I want to, you know, what do I want to do with this? And what I thought is that something about the way that Gen X was raised or the conditions of our upbringing, of our life, you know, our existence as children and adolescents and teenagers was particularly conducive to making art. And that's the angle that I took in the piece.
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Host / Interviewer
And for our listeners, we are going to talk to Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter after this conversation.
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Amanda Fortini
Oh, fantastic.
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Host / Interviewer
So for just for practical purpose, what went into your consideration for who to call Gen X?
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Amanda Fortini
Right. So it is a subject of much murkiness. You know, the Pew research center says 65 to 80. That's the, you know, that's the, those are the parameters of the cohort we call Gen X. But somewhere along the way, that kind of got change because the original parameters, if you, if you speak to a lot of kind of what we would call early Gen X was 61 to 81 or 61 to like late 70s, originally, 61 being the year after the FDA introduced the birth or approved the birth control pill. So that sort of is a defining moment of a new generation. And then, you know, there are other people who like the Harvard, there's a Harvard housing study who puts it at, you know, 65 to 85. But I really think that 61 to 81 are the correct parameters of Gen X. And some of even like those early Gen Xers, like Doug Copeland, who wrote the novel Generation X. He was born in 61. He's the one who really kind of defined the name and the characteristics of some of the characteristics of the generation. So to leave him out of it would be kind of weird, you know. And Doug Rushkoff too, another kind of important Gen Xer, wrote the Gen X or compiled an anthology called the Gen X Reader, also born in 1961.
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Alison Stewart
Listeners, especially those who are Gen Xers, what makes your generation great or unique, give us a call or text us now. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC what do you think have been some of Gen X's greatest cultural contributions? Who's an actor, a WR artist from Gen X that you especially admire? 212-433-9692. How do you find yourself as a Gen Xer, reflecting back on your childhood? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433 w, n y C. You grew up in the Illinois suburbs? Amanda yes. What do you think is the most Gen X thing about your childhood?
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Amanda Fortini
Well, my childhood was, you know, it was pretty typical suburban childhood. But it's interesting because, well, what is the most Gen X thing about my childhood? I mean, it's interesting because I was going to say I read for the piece Brett Easton Ellis's collection, White. You know, he's written several canonical works of Gen X literature and he talks about growing up in the San Fernando Valley suburbs and just like roaming around without parental supervision, you know, moving from house to house where it seemed only other kids were living. And that was very similar to my childhood too. In Wheaton, Illinois, as an adolescent. My mother worked. My parents were divorced. That's very Gen X. My mother worked. She wasn't around very much because she had a two hour commute. And even when she was, she was sort of a what I call a laissez faire parent, which is again very typical Gen X. We were just, my sisters, I have two younger sisters and I were just sort of allowed to do what we want, whatever we wanted, which involved a lot of television watching, like while we made our way through like sleeves of Ritz crackers or microwaved cheese on chips in the, you know, in the microwave, riding our bikes outside when I was a teenager. Just a lot of like hanging out in people's houses without any adults around in wood paneled basements and in garages, playing with Ouija boards and things. You know, it's my memories of that time are just of other young people or being alone. They don't involve adults a lot. And I think you even see that in a lot of the culture of the time period. Yeah, you know, the movies and the shows.
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Host / Interviewer
Yeah. It was interesting. In your conversation with Gen X contributors, what struck you about how they were reflecting on their generation?
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Sponsor Announcement / Station Promo
What.
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Amanda Fortini
That is a good question because, you know, I spoke to a lot of different people for the piece. I spoke to a lot of artists. I spoke to the thinkers like, like I said, Doug Rushkoff and Doug Copeland and you know, Stephen Malus of Pavement and Liz Fair. And a couple of things struck me. One is that they didn't consider themselves slackers. That's one of the stereotypical portrayals of Gen X, is that we were kind of like, you know, because of all these couch potato movies, that we were slackers, that we didn't take initiative or were lazy or whatever. And I think that a kind of cynicism and distrust of institutions is often confused or conflated with, with being lazy or, you know, being a slacker. And then the other thing is that they just made things they didn't worry about, like how am I going to get it published, how am I going to disseminated, you know, get it out into the world. They created those avenues, whether through zines or independent labels or, you know, they. Liz Fair made her first, her first album. It started as a few cassette tapes called Girly Sounds that she made in her parents bedroom. You know, it was, it was sort of like the young people say today you can just do things. Which is. Which today's young, you know, Gen Z and thing things is they say that, I think because we, we for a long time, you know, following Gen X, we thought we had to have corporate, a corporate intermediary to get our work into the world. And it's just Gen X shows you it's not the case.
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Host / Interviewer
Let's take a couple of calls. Let's talk to Jason from Queens. Hey Jason, thank you so much for making the time to call all of it.
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Caller
Hi, hello. Nice to, to talk to you. I'm part of Gen X2. I'm born in the 70s. And a couple things positive and a negative comment. A couple things I feel like always get left out of the talk a little bit. We focus on 80s and punk rock, which is great, I love. But we forget about the golden age of the American rave scene, which was happening also at the same time as the golden age of American rap, hip hop, both in the early to mid-90s that I think are really both important Cultural inputs of that generation that were kind of really interconnected, I think, but kind of overlooked a lot when we look at the John Hughes movies and stuff. And that actually brings this negative side. You know, those John Hughes movies that I loved as a kid, they did not age well, some of them. But another thing, even worse is a lot of people my age now, my age group, in their late 40s, early 50s, white males, we are the biggest Trump supporters in the country. Like a huge conservative backlash of that generation. And I wonder if there's any comment on it, why that happened, you know.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, well, actually, in your. Thank you so much for calling, you talked about how a lot of Gen Xers are independence.
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Amanda Fortini
Yeah, it's hard, you know, it's hard to sort of typify or classify Gen X based on how they behave in one election because they, they're. They, they basically class them, classify themselves as independent. As a 2022 Gallup poll found 44% of Gen X think of themselves as independents, and that is more than any other generational cohort. That's the highest number of people who call themselves independents of all the generations. They tend to vote based on candidate and issue rather than party or ideology. A lot of Gen Xers who maybe did vote for Trump in this election, again.
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That'S. That's a very complex topic to get into because it really breaks down by demographic. Where you live. Urban Gen X did not do that necessarily. It depends on if you're in a city your age. Da da da da da. But a lot of them voted for Barack Obama and then eventually voted for Trump. It's kind of like a nuanced topic. But, yeah, they classify themselves as independent. And to speak to the other point the speaker made, I did spend a long time in the piece talking about the golden age of hip hop because I do think it gets overlooked and it's really important. And even, you know, white kids in suburbia were listening to hip hop, and it was a really important cultural moment.
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Alison Stewart
I'm talking to Amanda Fortini. She's the author of the article in the New York Times Style magazine. Is Gen X actually the Greatest Generations? We want to hear from you. What do you think have been Gen X's greatest cultural contributions? Who is Gen X public figure that you admire? 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc and Amanda, you write about reaching out to people who are famous, who are Gen X, and they didn't want to talk to you. It was sort of some of Them didn't want to talk to me, which is really interesting. What did that tell you about them? And about being a member of Gen X?
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Amanda Fortini
So I'm not going to name because I don't want to out people, but one of them wrote a very famous book that's very beloved to Gen X. And I reached out to him and he said, I'm going to politely decline. A couple others just sort of didn't want to talk and then came around and decided that they would talk. But, yeah, it told me that Gen X is just very conflicted about the spotlight. You know, selling out. We really, when I say we have an existential horror or dread of selling out, I mean, it's. You know, we do. And somehow the spotlight is tantamount. You know, having the spotlight put on you is tantamount to selling out to a lot of Gen Xers. Like, they kind of want to make their work in quiet. In quiet. They don't want to be out there branding themselves and promoting it and, you know, doing all the things that we tell artists that they have to do these days.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes when I'm out and about and I see the West Village girlies with their cameras out, posing on the side.
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Amanda Fortini
On the street, I'm just like, influencers of new.
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Alison Stewart
It just like, makes me want to vomit a little bit. It's like, why are you doing that? Why are you selling yourself as an entity? Just like, just go on and live your life or go on and make something. It just. I find it really difficult. Absolutely.
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Amanda Fortini
Influencer culture is probably the most antithetical thing to Gen X. You know, a Gen X ethos that you can come up with.
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Alison Stewart
Let's talk to Oren, who's calling in from Brooklyn. Hey, Oren, thanks for calling, all of it.
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Caller
Hey, Allison, thanks for having me. My remark is that as a childless early Gen Xer, I observed from the valuable, neutral vantage point, my friends being the best parents ever. And then later on, I started working with a lot of people from their kids generation, people who are now in their mid-20s to, you know, in some cases, later-30s. And they were so wonderfully brought up. They're so responsive and thoughtful and. And serious. And they just have such a fantastic. They're so well adapted. And so I want to say, based on my, you know, this. What do you call it? Anecdotal experience, that, boy, our generation must have turned. They must have really turned out some amazing kids. Their parental toolkit must have been fantastic.
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Host / Interviewer
Thanks so much for the comment. This Text says there are, of course, numerous cultural touchstones and foundation of today's culture rooted in Gen X. But I feel as the last complete generation, pretty much left to our own devices. No cell phones, fairly lax adult oversight. It's like we all got to be feral. There's a real resilience and willingness to just figure things out among Gen Xers and there's no ev of our shenanigans, so we carry on with abandon.
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Alison Stewart
That's.
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Amanda Fortini
That's all true. I think we were left to our own devices and we were basically feral. You know, there's a. There's a very funny Gen X meme that's like the sports drink of my childhood. And it shows a little kid drinking out of a garden hose, you know, and we really. We really. People are like, were you really left outside? Like, why couldn't you go in and drink out of the sink or get a drink? Well, we were locked outside all day. Like my mother would give our babysitter, you know, because I. I didn't have two parents, so we had a lot of babysitters. Give them some. A little bit of money, like 20 bucks, and tell them. Tell them to take us to the public pool all day. And we were not to come home until dark, you know, and. And we were all sunburned and everything. And even then, sometimes we weren't supposed to come home until after dinner. We were feral for sure.
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Host / Interviewer
We're talking about the New York Times Style magazine article, is Gen X actually the Greatest Generation? We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of it.
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Alison Stewart
You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with Amanda Fortini. She's the author of an article called Is Gen X actually the Greatest Generation? It's in the New York Times. New York Times Style magazine. If you're a member of Gen X, what do you think makes greatest. What has been Gen X greatest cultural contribution? Who is a Gen X public figure that you admire? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. As you can see, I am repping Gen X. I am wearing one of my MTV shirts. I've spent a lot of time at mtv. A lot of folks at Gen X watched mtv. And you noted that Kurt Cobain's death announcement was a real turning point for Gen X. Why do you think that was such an important. I remember that day. What was so important about that day?
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Amanda Fortini
I mean, I think he was really A hero to so many young people in terms of, you know, like we were talking about, he embodied all of the, so many attitudes and qualities of Gen X. Anti corporate, you know, he spoke against ticket prices, you know, anti authoritarian.
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He was real, just a really amazing artist, you know, and.
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I, I think it was like, it was, some people say it was like, oh, it was our, our JFK dying or something. I actually watched it on and I don't know if that, I don't know if I would go that far, but I just think it was the first, it was kind of like a watershed moment for Gen X. You know, it was the first time that someone that they had poured all of their hopes and dreams and that embodied so many things, even had divorced parents, you know, and talked about it a lot and made it okay for other kids to be emotionally troubled. You know, it was the first time that someone who was a symbol of all of that, you know, died. That's the best I can say. I was, you know, we were young, young people.
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Host / Interviewer
Let's go to Carrie from Union City. Hi, Carrie, thanks for calling, all of it.
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Alison Stewart
You're on the air.
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Caller
Hi, Alison. It's very exciting to talk to you because I myself watched a lot of mtv.
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I watched a lot of you on mtv. Yes, and I think MTV is probably one of the greatest attributes to society that Gen X created. I was telling the caller, I mean the screener that, you know, as someone, I was born in 71, I grew up in kind of a rural suburban area in Maryland. And the amount of creativity and things that were sort of forced upon us because I didn't really, I didn't live in a city. So we were forced, I was more on a farm. So we were really forced to dig into our creative sort of juices and our ideas in a way that is not really necessary today because everything's at your fingertips. But what I find interesting because I've worked in the beauty industry for almost 30 years in a, you know, sort of adjacent to retail is that I feel like Gen X's are so good at researching, they're so good at finding it out and figuring it out. Maybe it's where, you know, DIY came from, but I think that, but it's interesting when you look at a generation that's had Internet since they were born and how they're so much more ready for spoon feeding of information where I feel like Gen X really get in there and roll up their sleeves and kind of figure it out. And I think that's a really Beautiful thing to watch, especially in the workplace.
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Host / Interviewer
Thanks for calling, Carrie. Chris is calling from West Milford, New Jersey. Hey, Chris, thanks for calling, all of it.
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Caller
Hi. Thank you. And thank you for having this conversation. It's an important one.
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Host / Interviewer
Let's hear your side of what you think about Gen X.
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Caller
Okay.
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Well, I am in agreement that I think that Generation X is definitely the powerhouse superhero generation. We grew up in a time before technology really started coming in. And so we had to kind of figure things out and how to use a card catalog and not just kind of look it up on Google. And so we became experts at being independent and making our own way. I was born in 1969.
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And was one who. Yeah, get out of the house by 10am and don't come back by 5 or until 5. And we just really had to learn how to make our own way. I'm a Presbyterian minister and have done a lot of research specifically on generation in Generation X and the church. And it was just. It was a time that completely changed our society because we ended up leaving the church on Mass. A lot of that had to do with televangelists and Jimmy. Jimmy Baker and Tammy Faye and not wanting to have anything to do with that if that's what meant being in church was. And. And just really, you know, kind of took the bull by. By the horns, our own lives, because we knew that we had to.
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Host / Interviewer
Thank you so much for calling in, Chris. The article features a photo shoot with some Gen X folks like Molly Ringwald, Neil Long, John Leguizamo, Ana DeFranco, Lisa Loeb, Glenn Ligon. And I was curious what you thought, Amanda, when you thought about Generation X.
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Alison Stewart
And feminism, because the women in that article, Claire Danes in that article, Janine Garofalo, these are all women who I would consider feminists. I would even, Lisa, consider a feminist. How did the feminism of Gen X pave the way for feminism today?
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Amanda Fortini
It's a good question. It's a good question. I mean, third wave feminism really came up with Gen X as a response to the Anita Hill hearings, which I talk about in the piece, which, you know, if you haven't watched them, I suggest you go back and watch them. Shocking. And then in response, it's sort of thought to be outgrowth of what's called the riot grrrl movement, which was something that came up. A movement that came up in response to a lot of the sexism in the punk scene on the West Coast. And, you know, we were seeing it in, like, sassy magazine feminism, which is where I Found my feminism before I even had words or language for this. I hadn't even been in college yet, but they were. Jane Pratt, who was the editor of the magazine, was really making an effort to talk about this. How did it influence the feminism of today? I mean, I think.
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I feel like we're in a moment now where we need feminism more than ever. Kind of. We're seeing a real.
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Retraction, I think, to a lot of traditional values online I see, which aren't necessarily bad. But I think when it comes to women, sometimes there's some real retrograde attitudes that are floating around out there. I'm sometimes shocked by things that I see online on social media. And.
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Yeah, I feel like we as a generation or we as a culture right now, it's not just from the art, but I feel like from the attitudes toward women which were, you know, changing at that time. I feel like we have a lot to learn. Liz Fair talks a lot about that. That was her. That in the piece that was her album, Exile in Guyville, was an explicit response, explicitly feminist response to all of the sexism in the music industry. I wish I could say we were kind of further than we are, but like I said, I feel like we're in a moment of retraction.
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Host / Interviewer
Gen X was the last generation to grow up without the Internet as an established part of life. How does this weigh in on the way that we reflect on Gen X today?
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Amanda Fortini
Well, some of the callers brought that up, and I think it was a good, good, good point. It's probably one of the hallmark characteristics of the gener of what defined our generation, and one of the most important things to that. We didn't have the Internet. We had to figure things out, as people have said. We had to entertain ourselves. We. We were bored. Sometimes we had to go to the library and, like, write papers without the Internet. You know, I got the Internet when I was a freshman in college. We didn't have cell phones. So if you made a commitment or a plan to meet somebody, you were going to meet them or you were gonna. You were gonna ghost them. We didn't use, say, ghost at the time, but, you know, you had to follow through with your plans.
- [27:13]
I think the fact that we didn't have cell phones or social media probably formed us more than maybe. Maybe equal to our parents being so laissez faire. You know, we really just had to figure things out for ourselves.
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Host / Interviewer
The name of the article is. Is Gen X actually the greatest Generation? We've been speaking with Amanda Fortini and our listeners who called in as well. Thank you for your time.
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Amanda Fortini
Thank you, Alison. It's been a pleasure.
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Host / Interviewer
Speaking of Gen X icons, two folks mentioned in that New York Times article, we'll speak with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, who are now in Waiting for Gadot, directed by Jamie Lloyd. It's playing through January 4th in New York City. That's next.
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Amanda Fortini
On the NEXT FRESH air. Rhea Seehorn, the star of the new series Pluribus.
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WNYC Announcer
You may know her as the co.
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Amanda Fortini
Star of Better Call Saul, which was both the sequel and prequel to Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan created both shows. Pluribus has a sci fi premise, but asks larger questions about happiness, anger, conformity and resistance. Join us.
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Weekdays at 2 on wood.
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Sponsor Announcement / Station Promo
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WNYC Announcer
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- [29:31]
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