What’s up with Gen Z?
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
New research has found that young people seem to be disillusioned with life in Britain, so Amol (Millennial) and Nick (Baby Boomer) are joined by Labour MP Nadia Whittome (Generation Z) and former Conservative minister Lord Willetts (Baby Boomer) to discuss why that might be - and what can be done about it.
And Nick explains how he discovered that his X/Twitter account had been hacked after a tweet was posted saying that he and the Today programme had launched a new cryptocurrency.
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The Today Podcast is hosted by Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson who are both presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Amol was the BBC’s media editor for six years and is the former editor of the Independent, he’s also the current presenter of University Challenge. Nick has presented the Today programme since 2015, he was the BBC’s political editor for ten years before that and also previously worked as ITV’s political editor.
This episode was made by Lewis Vickers with Nadia Gyane and Grace Reeve. Digital production was by Grace Reeve. The technical producer was Fiona Fairmaner. The editor is Louisa Lewis. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.1 | Gen Z think UK is racist and would not fight for their country, said the times. |
| 0:10.9 | One in five, Britain's aged 18 to 45, prefer unelected leaders to democracy. |
| 0:16.8 | Poll finds was the headline in the Guardian. |
| 0:20.4 | Young people are revolting. |
| 0:23.4 | Yeah, it's one of the issues that we've talked about a lot on this podcast |
| 0:25.8 | about how there does seem to be this very, very sharp generational divide |
| 0:29.9 | in attitudes across a whole range of things. |
| 0:33.1 | But today, Nick, we're going to talk about Gen Z. |
| 0:35.1 | And you know the really sad things that neither you or I qualify as Gen Z. |
| 0:39.3 | Not even me. |
| 0:40.3 | Not even you. |
| 0:42.4 | But it turns out Gen Z have very strong views about a range of things. |
| 0:46.0 | And as I've argued on this podcast before, in some ways it's a rational response to the fact that in some ways their opportunities, their circumstances aren't always |
| 0:56.1 | those of a generation earlier. And in that generation earlier, I include myself. And is it just that? |
| 1:02.2 | Or is it that young people have always been revolting? That's the whole point of being young. |
| 1:06.8 | Revolt against the values, the attitudes, the institutions that your parents or your grandparents |
| 1:12.6 | have created. Well, we're going to be talking to someone who genuinely is Gen Z. We might |
| 1:17.2 | even tell you what that means at a second. She's the left-wing Labour MP, Nadia Wittam, |
| 1:21.4 | and will be joined by someone who, like me, is just about a baby boomer. That's right. David Lord Willits. He used to be Margaret Thatcher's |
| 1:30.5 | policy wonk now runs a think tank that has argued that the young and the poorly paid should get |
| 1:38.3 | more of a share of the nation's wealth. He wrote the book, didn't he? It was called The Pinch, |
... |
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