May 8, 2017

EP. 179 — Why Millennials Are The New ​Greatest Generation​​

The script is different but the wording is always roughly the same. Every few months some retiring journalist, former tech-mogul or aspiring Tomi Lahren-type goes viral because they’ve had it up to *here* with these gosh darn millennials. Between their clamoring for single-payer healthcare and their complaining about unpaid internships, it’s like they hate America or something. Why can’t they appreciate what they’ve got and be exactly what the generation before wants them to be?

We’ve heard it a million times and, frankly, it’s all bullshit. You know how we know? Because every generation has been lodging the same 4 complaints about their successors since the beginning of the written language (and probably before that too). Grug and all the other teens don’t care about hunting mammoths like their fathers, they just sit around playing with those newfangled *wheels* all day. As long as we keep having kids, this will happen until the end of time.

On this week’s podcast, resident Gen-X’er-in-chief Jack O’Brien welcomes young upstarts Katie Goldin, Brett Rader and Josh Sargent onto the show to discuss why this never-ending argument is bullshit. They discuss some flaws in logic behind popular anti-millennial rants and call out some shady statistics that news outlets circulate to prop-up these arguments.

And make sure to get tickets to our next LIVE Cracked Podcast, coming up on Saturday, May 13th at 7pm at the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles. Jack O’Brien is joined by Cracked’s Carmen Angelica, Alex Schmidt and Michael Swaim, and comedian Blake Wexler to combine the podcast’s two favorite topics: great moments in history and binge drinking. 

They’ll discuss the drafting of the US Constitution, the Russian Revolution and other famous moments in history where everyone was completely sh*tfaced. Tickets are only $7 and available here: https://goo.gl/PWmm2y

Footnotes:

Article: Cracked: This Millennial Rant Deserves A Trophy For Being Most Wrong: https://goo.gl/7xeex8

Article: The Society Pages: Adventures in Garbage-Millennial Confirmation Bias: https://goo.gl/cri4JA

Article: Cracked: 5 Lies Millennials And Baby Boomers Believe About Each Other: https://goo.gl/lFWuCt

Article: Cracked: 4 Terrible Parts of Pop Culture (With Weird Bright Sides): https://goo.gl/fIEPXj

Article: The New Yorker: The Big Uneasy: https://goo.gl/RyCzrx

Article: The New Yorker: The “Founder” Generation’s Creation Myth: https://goo.gl/Fn73e8

Book: Morley Winograd: Millennial Momentum: https://goo.gl/PfxdRb

This episode is brought to you by Audible (www.audible.com/CRACKED) and Adam and Eve (www.adamandeve.com code: CRACKED).

Recent Episodes

January 26, 2020

Freedom sucks…and that is why we have to defend it. Because our democracy involves doing a lot of stuff that takes energy, takes time, and lacks that Michael Bay Quality that only a surprise missile launch can provide. So on this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt and special guest Jason Pargin (who writes for Cracked as David Wong) are exploring the ways being afraid of everything (an easy action) can stop us from being free. Discover the decades-long tradition of some Americans wanting to give up everything in exchange for not needing to think, the centuries-long tradition of people inciting fake panics, and the reasonable ways you can help change things for the better.

Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-fear-based-democracies-arenE28099t-free-with-jason-pargin/

January 19, 2020

How’s your local shopping mall doing? Have you checked on it lately? Swing by sometime, because its department store might’ve turned into a call center or a hospital or a go-kart track. On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by the one and only Kai Ryssdal (Marketplace, Make Me Smart) for a look at surprising, strange, and shocking stories from all over the U.S. economy. Discover an international pig flu, a 26-word statement that built the modern Internet, and more amazing ways cash is ruling everything around you. By the way, if you’re an American listener, you spent the past few years funding an astonishingly huge bailout. Surprise! Listen for details!

Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/5-parts-u.s.-economy-that-are-stranger-than-you-think

January 12, 2020

Movies, TV, gaming: three things that are theoretically a waste of time. Oh sure, they deliver value in the art sense, and comfort in the goofing-off sense. But what if they’re more valuable than that? What if consuming shows and playing video games (accidentally) turns people into real-life heroes? On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/writers Caitlin Gill and Alex Watt for a look at the surprising number of times that exact thing happened. They’ll explore stories of regular people who saved a life thanks to skills gained randomly from cartoons, sitcoms, ‘World Of Warcraft’, and more silly entertainment.

Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/9-times-pop-culture-accidentally-taught-people-to-save-lives/