Every generation gets a panic about its kids — and every generation’s panic looks deeply stupid in hindsight. In Part 1 of a new three-part series, Chris and Des trace how the modern “teenager” was even invented, then walk the timeline through Elvis’s hips, James Dean, the 70s nihilism of Over the Edge, Chris’s 80s coming-of-age in Ames, Iowa, and the slacker label that never quite fit. The setup for everything coming next: it’s not that the kids aren’t all right. It’s that the kids aren’t supposed to be all right — and adults keep forgetting their own teenage years.
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Timestamps:
0:00 — Cold open: “the kids end up okay at the end”
1:30 — Welcome + a new three-part series
4:00 — The Michael Jackson biopic conversation
8:00 — The teenager was invented after WWII
13:00 — “Kids these days” — the cyclical hand-wringing
15:00 — Elvis’s hips and rock and roll panic
21:00 — “Cut your hair” as the universal theme
23:00 — The 70s: latchkey kids and Iowa childhood
29:00 — Over the Edge: the dark side of 70s teen life
32:00 — “It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your kids are?”
33:30 — The 80s: the “fake decade”
36:00 — Jocks, bullies, and 80s masculinity
41:00 — John Hughes brings teenagers to cinema
43:00 — MTV, hairbands, grunge, and the rise of rap

48:30 — Why we got called “slackers”
52:00 — Where does that energy go?
55:00 — Kids aren’t SUPPOSED to be all right
57:00 — Belonging, generational labels, and what’s next

References:
Project MUSE
University of Southern Indiana
https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2022/10/the-senate-comic-book-hearings-of-1954/
https://www.archives.gov/legislative/resources/education/comic-books
https://the-artifice.com/masculinity-gender-roles-tv-1950s/
AAIHS
Springer
https://www.history.com/articles/the-stonewall-riots
https://guides.loc.gov/lgbtq-studies/stonewall-era
Latchkey kids
Over the Edge (1979)
Info on Stonewall
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0044118X211001096

Produced by Julia Bevolo