talkin' 'bout Our Generation
At the same time as we tackle Ageism, we're chucking out the notion that America can be divided into generations like Millennials and that obnoxious appellation, "Baby Boomers." Hopefully, we can stop blaming one another for the serious challenges facing our nation. We need to work as one.
We're talking with the man who shattered that divisive notion, London Sociologist Bobby Duffy, about his new book, "The Generation Myth."
Right now we're putting together an episode about FRIENDSHIP.
What is a friend? How important are friends to a happy, healthy life? Are friends exclusively people who share our experience, or can we make friends across barriers like race, gender, financial status... What happened to friendships during the depth of the pandemic? Is it harder to make friends as we age?
Friendship is a HUGE topic, and we are going to try to assemble this episode around YOUR comments. We want to hear from you -- WHAT DOES FRIENDSHIP MEAN TO YOU? You can add your voice to the episode one of three ways -- use the cool new app on our COMMENT PAGE, set up an interview via our remote recording app, or we can even record you off your phone. Just let us know at info@ourgenpod.com, and we'll get in touch.
We're also talking with some experts and some people who have seen the extremes of incivility, too -- like when it crosses the line into crime. We're working on a sobering episode with Federal District Judge Marc Treadwell of Georgia, one of the leaders in an effort to restore civility to the legal profession -- where we used to just assume propriety was par for the course. But who judges the Judges?
We also touch on the tragic consequences when a young person picks up a gun. Judge Treadwell has started some very promising efforts to discourage kids from taking that fateful step.
We're also going to be talking about Technology Run Amok, and how mastering today's Internet and all the associated gadgetry is more and more maddening to those of us who weren't born with a smartphone in our crib. Then there's the prospect of AI -- "Artificial Intelligence" - advancing so fast that humans are being replaced more and more by machines, just as Einstein predicted. What will that do to our world?
The tech world has brought wonders unimagined in our parents' time, but we've also been sucked into a synapse-singing nightmare of ever-changing "forgotten" passwords, the
Machiavellian algorithmic maze of confounding "Captcha" word jumbles and picture puzzles, two-factor authentication, rude robots demanding that we prove we are actually ourselves human...not to mention the tortuous ordeal of typing on those tiny keyboards with our aging eyes and declining dexterity.
We're planning episodes on Family -- how we grew up, and how the notion of family has changed in our lifetime. So much of what is happening in our society "begins at home," we have to ask if there is a breakdown in the family and what effect that is having. We'll also be looking at some different ideas about what "family" means to different people, like the LGBT community, where LGBTQ kids were rejected by their parents have formed new families with friends.
There's no end to what we might talk about. We'd really love to hear your suggestions -- what would YOU like to hear?
Let us know!