Basically Gen Z: Recent Episodes
Basically Gen Z
Always mistaken for being Korean even though she’s not, Ellie is a Cal student and wannabe world traveler; Kaytie is back at BU from taking a leave of absence and juggling three blue collar jobs. The two met in fourth grade PE and bonded over talking about fourth grade things…now they have grown-up conversations about social media phenomena, the extensive Gen Z lexicon, and everything in between.
Tune in to eavesdrop on the conversation of two friends catching up on today’s topics--all from a Gen Z perspective.
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Hello and welcome back to Thought Bubbles! This episode is an update on Kaytie's "Stepping Away" experiment. Long story short, it was difficult to stay off apps like Tiktok when scrolling has become a long-standing habit in regular environments, such as the train. After reflecting on what went wrong and what could be different, Kaytie decides to delete Tiktok for good and see where that goes.
Tune in next week for the results!
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When was the last time you heard or saw an ice cream truck? In this Thought Bubble, Ellie describes a fun encounter with an ice cream truck that brought back memories of her five-year-old self living in the suburbs of California.
Throwback to the time when we had fun at playgrounds swinging on monkey bars and swings, playing hopscotch, jumping rope, and fooling around in the sandbox. Looking back, it seemed so natural for us to work/play together with people we just met and to make friends.
I was in an entrepreneurship bootcamp last semester, and we did a little team-building exercise called the spaghetti tower challenge (aka the marshmallow challenge) where teams of five compete against other teams to build the tallest structure using sticks of spaghetti, string, tape, and one marshmallow that’s supposed to be at the top of the tower as a marker for measuring. This challenge is timed for 18 minutes, and the team with the tallest tower (aka whose tower has the highest marshmallow) wins.
The result: my team had the tallest tower. Yay!!! During the debrief of that exercise, the bootcamp alluded to Tom Wujec’s TED Talk “Build a tower, build a team”, in which he points out that the people who do the best at this challenge are kindergartners - building towers much much taller than those of MBA and post grad students (who often performed the worst). Isn’t it ironic that MBA students who are taught collaboration and leadership skills in business school do the worst? Well that’s because these MBA students follow what they’re taught in school too rigidly (such as having a set project timeline where they spend way too much time deciding who the official team “leader” is and “allocating” tasks to everyone instead of actually building the tower). Meanwhile these kindergartners are out here building away and work together and communicate very naturally. They don’t try to grapple for power and try to be the official “team leader”. It’s all a very creative and naturally collaborative process, without the constraints of a “textbook” system.
The reason I mention this marshmallow challenge is to highlight the benefits of feeling like a kid again and how that feeling can open up so much creativity and collaboration, which is probably why companies like Google create spaces that try to emulate that sense of playfulness to inspire creativity and open-mindedness. It’s beneficial to do things to feel like a kid again that help you find your own ‘sandbox’, whether it’s eating ice cream, drawing, playing with plushies, etc.
I really hope to see more spaces or playgrounds for adults to relax, have fun, and to relive their childhood. For most of us, it’s great stress relief!
Also… does that mean that my team has the brain of a bunch of kindergartners if we did so well during the marshmallow challenge? Haha just kidding lol ;)
Until next time, Ellie
Tom Wujec’s TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower_build_a_team
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Hello, welcome back to Thought Bubbles! This week Katie will be embarking on a journey to know less about the world. Not in the “I am aiming for complete blissful ignorance” way, but in the “I am going to cut out irrelevant media and focus on living my life and being the best person I can be in real time and real space without thinking about world politics or what the popular girl from high school is eating for lunch” type. You know?
The first app to be axed in this experiment is Tiktok. For a while, I justified spending 2-3 hours on the app every day because I told myself I was using it, unironically, for educational content. I was watching content from “stocktock”, “fintok” and “techtok”, but I was watching mindless content as well. Needless to say, I am ready to stop being delusional and reclaim my time.
Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter fall in the category of “I go here when bored of Tiktok”. I reckon that IG will be the most difficult to stay off of here since I like to take my fashion inspo from IG sometimes. That being said, I’m sure a week will do no harm to my fashion sense. Also hot take: Snapchat is outdated. Another hot take: Twitter is outdated and Elon Musk owning it doesn’t change a thing.
Robinhood is a funny situation because I do have real money invested in it. That being said, I am a dollar cost average, buy and hold investor, so watching the graphs tick up and down is probably doing more harm to my mental health than good. See ya after the recession, Robinhood.
Signing off on this very long caption! I plan to come back everyday to update my thoughts.
Catch you later,
Kaytie
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Welcome to the first mini-episode of a subseries called Thought Bubbles, where we record and collect some of our thoughts and opinions.
Often fueled by random bursts of energy, these recordings can vary from unpolished rants, scripted writings, or one-sided conversations.
Context for this Thought Bubble (recorded last Friday - which was the last day of instruction for UC Berkeley): While cleaning and scrolling through Instagram stories of graduating seniors who are celebrating their last day of instruction EVER, Ellie reminiscences on memories she made at the beginning of the school year and the past few years of college. While she isn't graduating yet, she's already starting to miss the college life and the social aspects of school. Listen to her takes on what nostalgia means to her.
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“Hello everyone, and welcome back to Basically Gen Z!”
Wow, haven’t heard that for a long time. Today, Kaytie and Ellie revisit their earlier podcasts, think out loud about future plans, and go on multiple tangents spanning K-pop and economics. Did you know that Chanel bags are veblen goods?
0:00 Hello again!
2:00 Story around our very first podcast + beginner mistakes we made
3:20 K-pop Big Bang tangent
4:46 Re-introduction (no doxxing allowed on this channel!)
5:30 SharSharBinks88 and “veblen goods” tangent
7:42 How did we meet?
8:40 Conception of our channel
11:07 Re-invention+future
11:58 Vlogbrothers tangent
12:00 Wrap up
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Prelude: Summers are always such turning points and times for reflection, reinvention and redirection. I’ve always wanted to capture the essence of that grueling yet exciting feeling in some form of content, so here it goes.
Note: This is not a romanticization of not making decisions. Committing to something is always better than being frozen in the task of choosing.
This episode is Ellie and me discussing whether or not I should move back to college for the fall or take another leave of absence. Rather, I contemplate my decision out loud while Ellie adds to it by asking me questions about myself.
There is always the question of time and opportunity cost; is going back to school the best thing I could do for myself right now? What is the next best thing? Is school better than the next best thing?
I admit that COVID has allowed me to try all of the things that I could not because of school-related time constraints: work at a mall, start a business, start this podcast, etc. During this time, I was able to explore who I was outside of school.
Although this was freeing, I found there to be so many roadblocks to the things that I wanted to do, and it made going back to my institution for more education appealing for the first time in a long time (I was on the verge of dropping out).
Annnd...there is also the apprehension of going long-distance while being one half of a budding relationship that stops me from making a split second decision. More on this subject will follow in later episodes.
Anyways, I do reach a decision at the end of the episode. I’m sure it is already obvious which path I am going down ¬‿¬.
-Kaytie
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Hello! This week we are talking about all the shows, videos, and movies that have kept Kaytie and Ellie amused over their years of growing up. Tune in to find out why Kaytie woke up at 5 am to watch someone drink water on live streaming and the new Kpop reality show that Ellie can’t get enough of.
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It’s getting hot in SoCal, so let’s talk about all the things that are ~fire~. Welcome to Kaytie and Ellie playing meteorologists for the first half of the episode (explaining heat waves and Socal) and then pivoting to Kaytie’s personal issue with her AC. Ellie talks about food that “cool” people down in the summer, and her much anticipated reviews of various Asian desserts.
Oh and btw, there are other things that are fiRE: Kai in the mhm music video and Financially Independent Retire Early.
Links to references in this episode:
CA heat waves: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147256/california-heatwave-fits-a-trend
Taehyung and Jin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4mZQkR62EI
KAI 카이 '음 (Mmmh)' MV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc-fa6cAe2c
FIRE reddit thread ;) https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/
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Welcome back to another episode! To reminisce old travel memories, mourn the canceled travel plans of the year past, and to celebrate reopening, Kaytie and Ellie recount all their past travel experiences. Ellie has some things to say about a very specific airport in the Bay Area, and Kaytie talks about the best airplane congee on long-haul flights. Tune in for thirty minutes of travel gossip with no itinerary!
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Welcome to this week’s episode! A couple days ago, Kaytie and Ellie retook their Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tests for the first time in a long time. They ponder through some of the ambiguous questions on the questionnaire, guess each other’s personality types, and analyze the results.
Find out your MBTI type here: https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types
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In this episode, Kaytie and Ellie examine the current e-commerce landscape. Partially inspired by seeing people sell slightly greasy BTS X McDonald’s paper bags, Kaytie and Ellie recount their stories of buying/selling ~things~online.
Links to articles we discussed:
16- year old makes 6 figures selling shoes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timlevin/2016/07/27/meet-the-16-year-old-sneaker-reseller-earning-six-figures-from-yeezys-and-air-jordans/?sh=67c511437078
Subscribe to Basically Gen Z and leave a rating and/or review on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts. Contact us: basicallygenzpods@gmail.com
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It seems that today’s diet-based activism centers around plant-based or meat-based diets. While the vegan diet is quite popular in pop culture, certain vegan figures (thatveganteacher on tiktok) have gotten banned off platforms due to their militant activism. On the other hand, there are figures like Mikala Peterson that are championing the all-meat (carnivore diet). Both perspectives have valid points; Kaytie and Ellie decided that the core issues of diet/health centers around refined sugars and artificial additives.
Food and diet culture in different countries vary widely. The conventional “American” diet (think pop tarts, sugary cereals, and diner foods) are larger in portion size and have more processed sugar than their European and Asian counterparts. This difference in attitude towards food became more evident as Pixar Animations changed broccoli to bell peppers in their Japanese release of Inside Out. In the American version, the emotions Anger and Disgust reject broccoli; in Japan, this would not make sense since Japanese children actually enjoy broccoli.
Supermarkets and food companies have also adapted to the tastes and demands of the current consumer. Oatly stock went public earlier this year, Crossroads Kitchen has created a vegan egg yolk made from yellow tomatoes, and sugar-free, dairy-free, etc-free foods are widely available.
Some of the new diet trends center around the exact type of macronutrient that one should be consuming (think carbs vs fats) and the time periods for eating. The keto diet and intermittent fasting are two popular ways of eating that focus on lowering insulin and burning fat.
This episode is quite heavy in information, so it ends off on a light note: Katie’s review of the new BTS x McDonald’s collaboration meal.
Links to everything discussed in the podcast:
Controversy around thatveganteacher: https://plantbasednews.org/news/social-media/who-is-that-vegan-teacher-and-why-is-she-going-viral-on-tiktok/
Oatly going public: https://www.reuters.com/business/oprah-backed-oatly-seeks-10-billion-valuation-us-ipo-2021-05-11/
Egg from yellow tomatoes!!! https://www.insider.com/these-vegan-eggs-are-made-from-whipped-yellow-tomatoes-2019-12
Artificial sweeteners: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/artificial-sweeteners-sugar-free-but-at-what-cost-201207165030
Intermittent fasting: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-surprising-update-2018062914156
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Apologies for the audio quality - we had quite a bit of technical difficulties recording this episode D:
What even is a metaverse? Katyie and Ellie explore this question in today’s episode as they talk about UC Berkeley's virtual commencement (Blockeley), virtual music idols (aespa), and the mind-boggling what-ifs of NFTs.
Links to articles that we mentioned in the podcast:
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/05/11/what-is-the-metaverse
https://digiday.com/marketing/how-roblox-is-paving-the-way-for-a-new-era-of-branded-gaming/
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-the-hell-do-you-throw-a-music-festival-in-minecraft/
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Over 70% Gen Z follow at least one influencer on platforms like Youtube, IG, or TikTok. In this episode, Kaytie and Ellie explore the differences between content creator vs influencer, Kaytie does a little case study on her admiration of bestdressed (aka ashley), and Ellie analyzes the appeal of living the main-character life vicariously through carefully crafted narratives (and y/n fanfiction).
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Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! In this episode, Ellie and Kaytie reflect on their experience of growing up in a majority Asian town in the US. We hear about Kaytie’s experience of being called “oriental” by a customer at work, Ellie explains the subtle tensions between different groups of Asian Americans, and we try to figure out what it means to be “white-washed”. Also, is it Ranch 99 or 99 Ranch?
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Um, so, like yeah, we use a lot of filler words. In this episode, Ellie and Kaytie reflect on the most cursed phrases in the English lexicon, explore the etymology of “like” and undergo a challenge to avoid said curse words for an entire episode.
Filler words and puff words often have a negative effect on other people’s perception of a speaker. Here a link to a LinkedIn post about filler words and academics that is referenced in the podcast:
How did “like” become so common in everyday English conversation?
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-americans-say-like-so-much-2020-3
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/the-evolution-of-like/507614/
List of Plague words to avoid: http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/plague.htm
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In today’s episode, we take a trip down memory lane as Kaytie reads through some of the dialectical journals she wrote for Catcher in the Rye. Kaytie and Ellie chat about Holden Caulfield, growing up, and their concerns for imminent adulthood.
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Welcome back to another episode of Basically Gen Z! This episode was inspired by Ellie’s computer science teacher Twitch streaming BTS on April Fool’s Day. In this episode, Kaytie and Ellie share their experiences with teachers, TAs, and mentors from high school, college, and work; they explore the role that “adults” play in the guidance realm of young adults.
Disclaimer: Our personal stories are for entertainment purposes only; please take our tidbits of advice with a grain of salt! Sometimes, relationships with those who have “authority” are complicated, and it is always good to use your best judgment! Also, most teachers and faculty on public school campuses have mandated reporting laws to follow; do with this information what you will.
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Hello and welcome to episode 4! Kaytie and Ellie take a trip down memory lane to reminisce past trends and ruthlessly judge current trends. Tune in for their takes on throwback jams (who remembers Gangnam Style?), men in crop tops, and nature’s ~cereal~.
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Welcome to Episode Three of Basically Gen Z! In the last episode, Kaytie and Ellie talked about their freshman college stories. As spring rolls around, Kaytie and Ellie dish their feelings about the pros and cons of living on campus versus living at home. Tune in to hear about Ellie’s roommate’s disgusting 14-day old salad, the time that Kaytie found a creepy wig beneath her bed, and campus squirrel elitism.
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In this episode of Basically Gen Z, Kaytie and Ellie catch up on the current going-ons of their lives. Ellie explains to Kaytie the concept of “Berkeley time”, and Kaytie talks about her decisions to transfer colleges. Both hosts discuss their college freshman application process and their ~feelings~ about where they are now. Tune in for an informative conversation between two college sophomores.
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Welcome to the first episode of “Basically Gen Z”, where Kaytie and Ellie try way too hard to explain what “Gen Z is” to Gen Z. Ellie reveals her secret to a successful research paper, past business endeavors are discussed, and Kaytie reveals her unpopular opinions about Common Core. If you enjoyed this episode, support this podcast by tuning in to our future episodes!
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