True story. A couple of months ago, I googled something like, when were the first members of Gen X-Born? And the search engine did that thing where it assumed I'd made a typo and instead served up information

to me about Gen Z. This is how under the radar people born between about the mid-60s

and early 80s are compared to other larger generational cohorts. But it turns out Gen X has found

influence without necessarily holding the spotlight. From KERA in Dallas, this is

think. I'm Chris Boyd. Members of Generation X had their outlook on life shaped by the

unique conditions of their formative years and that outlook shows up like a

watermark in a lot of culture produced by Gen Xers and beloved not just by them but

also younger people coming up behind them.

Amanda Fortini is a writer. Her essay, Is Gen X, Actually the Greatest Generation, was published by T

magazine. Amanda, welcome to think. Thank you for having me. You tell us in the piece, you graduated from

high school in 1994, so you are a Gen Xer, as am

I. I can't lie and say that that didn't draw me to your headline to begin with.

But I mean, it's probably true that people of every age think about their particular generational

cohort as special. What got you thinking that, like, empirically, Gen X and its cultural

contributions are worthy of extra respect?

So, well, first I want to say, obviously, I didn't title the article.

So the piece itself is a little more nuanced than just, you know, Gen X is, as you know, then Gen X is the greatest generation.

But what got me thinking about it is my editors at T, they contacted me and said,

you know, we're thinking of doing a package, a themed issue about Generation X.

And they kind of left it open to me.

They told me some of the artists from that era.

They were thinking of photographing.

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