Hi everyone and welcome back to our Brexit and Beyond podcast and I'm delighted today that our guest is Bobby Duffy. Professor Bobby Duffy, formerly of Ipsos Mori, now of King's College.

I think Bobby's actually my line manager. He's an all-round good guy. He's written an absolutely

fantastic book. You might get me a pay rise if you all listen to this. But Bobby, welcome.

Thank you. What a great welcome.

And I have to say, I mean, I find you slightly annoying in the sense that you not only run

the Policy Institute,

but you seem to put out a book every year, which I don't understand how you managed to do that.

And your latest one, having spent a long time working on polarisation, is on generations.

Can you give us the sort of two-minute synopsis?

Yeah, sure.

So, yeah, I'm not going to be doing another one soon is the first thing to say. I think you said that to me a year ago. I think I did say

that last time, actually, as well. The synopsis is that generational thinking is a really powerful

idea that you can trace back to some of the biggest thinkers in sociology and philosophy. People like Carl, Mannheim,

August Comp, they've all got this theory and then practical lessons from how generations are formed

and then basically determine the speed of societal development because, you know, we get stuck

in our ways when we get older. We need new

generations coming through and that changes. So understanding how generations are different from each other,

truly different from each other, is vital to understand how society is now and then how we'll

change in the future. So you've got this massive idea that is integral to society as it is and how

it's changing, but it's been hopelessly, horribly

corrupted by terrible cliches and stereotypes and myths. Things like millennials killing everything,

everything from the napkin industry to wine corks to the Olympics to whatever. Millennians are supposed

...