Re:GENERATIONS: Recent Episodes
Tom Matthews & Paul Matthews
With humor, respect and more than a little angst, a father and son reach across the Boomer/Millennial divide to make sense of a very tumultuous time in history.
Spoiler alert: Only one of them is going to be around to see how this all turns out.
As a college student with an interest in space exploration, Paul once admired Elon Musk. Here was a deep-pocketed individual determined to return Americans to space without the bloat and bureaucracy of government.
Then Musk found Twitter. And would not shut up on Twitter. And tried to buy Twitter. And may now destroy Twitter. While his rockets keep blowing up, and his self-driving Teslas keep killing beta testers.
It's hard to keep a hero in the 21st century.
Paul endures a way-too-personal life lesson from Tom, shared in the hopes that he won't make the same mistakes when his time comes. In the year 2042.
Older listeners, however, will be well advised to listen in. This probing conversation will make you flinch, but (spoiler alert) everything is fine in the end.
Our first cultural exchange episode has us looking back at “The West Wing,” one of the last great TV series of the 20th century.
The expertly made drama portrayed a presidential administration far nobler and accomplished than any actual administration we have seen since then.
Now rendered a wistful fantasy, its honest portrayal of the sometimes-ugly business of running a country can still impress when viewed through a Millennial lens.
With a seemingly endless string of fatal encounters between the police and people of color, followed by increasingly furious protests, can we no longer look to cops to protect and to serve? It’s a complex issue that puts into conflict some deep seeded generational perspectives.
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The truth will set you free... but the truth is now whatever we decide it is. Or whatever the sources we trust tell us it is.
Where do we go for the facts we need on critical issues of the day, while making sure we're not being seduced by "truths" that tell us what we want to hear?
Tom stands up for the veracity of what remains of "dead tree journalism," while Paul shares the digital sources he relies on when he wants a deep dive into world events.
J.K. Rowling. Louis C.K. John Cleese. Dave Chappelle. Whether it's cultural ignorance, a taste for vile/criminal behavior, or a career built on courting controversy, the ways an artist can blowup their career by saying the wrong thing are many. What to do when one such artist has done masterful work that can no longer be viewed without the repulsion caused by their bad behavior?
It's trickier when your relationship with such artists goes back decades.
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In 2007, “60 Minutes” did one of the first stories on the rise of the Millennials. The bafflement and derision of Boomers expressed for this next generation was already at hysterical levels.
Fifteen years later we revisit that piece to debate where its predictions missed the mark, and what it got right.
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Paul notes that coming out of past pandemics, companies were met by returning workers who would no longer accept low pay and lousy working conditions to keep production flowing.
Amazon, Starbucks, John Deere, Frito-Lay and a growing number of other employers are now staring down the barrel of aggressive unionization movements, the likes of which haven't been seen in decades.
Tom, product of an abandoned GM town, and his Labor-friendly kid talk it out.
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Born just in time for the dawn of the Digital Age, Paul has questions about what it was like to grow up without the Internet. Tom recalls the very first email he ever sent in 1994, which traveled a matter of feet. Not too long after, another email needed to be sent across the Atlantic at a particularly anxious moment in his writing career.
Join us as we recollect an 800-mile trek from Wisconsin to Virginia for Locknfest 2014. Square old dad contemplated letting his freak flag fly in the company of Paul, a music fest veteran.
In addition to a frank discussion of drugs, this look back finds Paul schooling the old man in the difference between dresses and skirts. Also: Listening to Pink Floyd with a man named Skull.
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ReGENERATIONS
Travel back to the latter half of the 1960s, when the first battalion of youth rose up to challenge the status quo imposed on them by their parents.
Teens and young adults – with the Who’s “My Generation” as their battle cry – swore they were going to undo the greed, ignorance and hypocrisy of the generation before them.
By the time today’s Millennials came along, the promise was that America would remain a groovy utopia.
Spoiler alert: It is not.
In this episode, Tom details how the best intentions of the Flower Children succumbed to the temptations and compromises of middle age. And tries to distill lessons that might be of use to Paul’s generation in their battle with the new status quo.
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Listen in for the first time as Tom & Paul -- otherwise known as Father & Son -- begin an ongoing conversation that will cross the Boomer/Millennial divide to try and make sense of these very tumultuous times. Often candid, always with humor and mutual respect, these talks will merge generational perspectives to sort out how we got here and where we're headed.