Kids These Days

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This week Kumars teams up with first-time guest host Eoin Higgins, a journalist and writer whose work appears regularly on Paste, FAIR, ATTN, and his personal website eoinhiggins.com. Kumars and Eoin sit down with filmmaker and author Shaun Scott, whose upcoming book Millennials and the Moments That Made Us - A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982—Present (Zero Books, February 2018) tells the story of our descent into neoliberalism through the lens of pop culture and from the perspective of the so-called millennial generation. Touching on media influences from The Simpsons and ‘80s action movies to Drake and LeBron James, Shaun shows how dominant narratives about millennials and their place in American society are rooted in the broader social and economic upheavals brought on by Reaganism. Behind arguments about millennial laziness and entitlement is the need for a class of low-wage, insecure workers who can be exploited. 

 

Eoin, despite not technically being a millennial, does his best to relate as we use excerpts from Shaun’s book to discuss the complicated and often ambivalent politics of comedy, rap, memes, and how they’ve shaped millennials’ ideologies. Finally, the conversation ends with a discussion of how those ideologies are translating into political engagement, and Shaun’s suggestions for a path forward that takes into account both our generation’s strengths and the existing context that will continue to shape us. 

 

Follow Eoin on Twitter at @EoinHiggins_ and Shaun at @eyesonthestorm. Millennials and the Moments That Made Us will be released February 2018 - preorder it here!