This week, Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt look at the most powerful and divisive generational cohort of them all: boomers. The people born between 1946 and 1964 have been credited, and blamed, for creating the world we live in. They’re the 60s generation, the Me generation, the Reagan generation and the Third Way generation. Where they lead, the world follows. Now that most of them have passed the age of 60, they are allegedly at war with millennials over their legacy: OK, boomer.

But does it really make sense to generalise about a cohort which extends from Dolly Parton to Donald Trump, and Theresa May to Prince? And what is a generation anyway? Ian (early millennial) and Dorian (late Gen X) discuss the roots of generation theory, track the boomers’ rise to power and assess the charges that boomers and millennials throw at each other across the divide. Is the generation gap bigger than ever or a phoney war cooked up by politicians and the media?

Reading list

Books:

Helen Andrews — Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster, 2020

Jennie Bristow — Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict, 2015

Bobby Duffy — The Generation Divide: Why We Can’t Agree and Why We Should, 2021

Jill Filipovic — OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind, 2020

Bruce Cannon Gibney — A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, 2017

Landon Y Jones — Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, 1980

Joseph Sternberg — Theft of a Decade: Baby Boomers, Millennials, and the Distortion of Our Economy, 2019

William Strauss and Neil Howe — Generations: The History of America’s Future 1584 to 2069, 1991

Jean M Twenge — Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silent — and What They Mean for the Future, 2023

David Willetts — The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future — And Why They Should Give It Back, 2010

Online:

Karl Mannheim — ‘The Problem of Generations’, 1928

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjln8-IiteBAxU2XUEAHcSICu4QFnoECA4QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmarcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu%2Fclasses%2F201%2Farticles%2F27MannheimGenerations.pdf&usg=AOvVaw37Wl_dRsSZ_rDdODQ0fMbd&opi=89978449

Richard Lorber and Ernest Fladell — ‘The Generation Gap’, Life, 1968

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BVUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA81&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Neil Howe and William Strauss, ‘The New Generation Gap’, The Atlantic, 1992

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/12/the-new-generation-gap/536934/

Louis Menand — ‘It’s Time to Stop Talking about “Generations”’, The New Yorker, 2021

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/its-time-to-stop-talking-about-generations

Justin E Smith — ‘My Generation’, Harper’s, 2023

https://harpers.org/archive/2023/09/my-generation/

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

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