WTH is Wrong with Gen Z? Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott Explain
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2024
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Generation Z is now entering the workforce, and free speech levels have never been so low in America. Coincidence? We think not. Legions of Gen Zers are bringing the totalitarian ideas they were spoon-fed in university — CRT, DEI, and other Neo-Marxist ideas — into the American mainstream. As a result, we are at a peak cancel culture moment. How did this happen, who is to blame, and most importantly, how do we close Pandora’s box? Our guests — authors of a new book on cancel culture — suggest we cannot, but we can move forward and begin to right some of these wrongs. It starts with raising kids who aren’t cancelers, keeping corporations out of the cult of cancellation, fixing K-12, and reforming higher education.
Greg Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and one of the country’s most passionate defenders of free expression. Together with Rikki Schlott, he is the author of The Canceling of the American Mind. He has written on free speech issues in the nation’s top newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and was executive producer of the documentaries Can We Take a Joke? and Mighty Ira. Lukianoff earned his undergraduate degree from American University and his law degree from Stanford.
Rikki Schlott is a New York City-based journalist and political commentator. She is a research fellow at FIRE, host of the Lost Debate podcast, a columnist at the New York Post, and a regular contributor to numerous publications and television programs. Her commentary focuses on free speech, campus culture, civil liberties, and youth issues from a Generation Z perspective.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.1 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's gone on? |
| 0:01.0 | Who in God's name knows what it's all about. |
| 0:28.9 | I am Daniel Pledka. |
| 0:30.9 | Mark Tieson. |
| 0:31.8 | Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:33.1 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:35.4 | Mark, what the hell is going on? |
| 0:39.2 | What the hell is going on is we're wondering what the hell is going on. Mark, what the hell is going on? Well, what the hell is going on is wondering what the hell is wrong with Gen Z? That seems to be a constant theme in this |
| 0:45.4 | podcast recently. I can already hear younger listeners saying, okay, boomer, but actually I'm not a |
| 0:51.1 | boomer. I'm Gen X. And we've got some real problems with this generation. |
| 0:55.7 | We're educating a generation of young people who are, you know, just getting out of high school, |
| 1:00.3 | getting in college or just about to get out of college, starting to enter the workforce. |
| 1:04.8 | And they are just woefully unprepared for life. They are woefully not committed to the principles of free speech |
| 1:13.5 | and other things that make us Americans. They are ignorant of history. We just saw a poll that |
| 1:19.5 | shocking numbers of young Americans believe that Jews are an oppressor class, that the Holocaust |
| 1:26.1 | was exaggerated, that Israel should be |
| 1:29.3 | taken away and given to Hamas and the Palestinians. I mean, this whole, you know, events in the |
| 1:35.0 | Middle East has really unearthed a lot of bad things that are going on about this generation. |
| 1:40.6 | And what are the roots of it? How are they so misguided? It's because they've been |
| 1:44.9 | indoctrinated. One, we haven't, our schools have not been educating young people properly. And |
| 1:50.6 | basics, you know, we focus a lot on the reading and writing, which are just horrible because |
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