Zero Hour for Gen X
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.7 • 656 Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2018
⏱️ 24 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Hennessey joins City Journal managing editor Paul Beston to discuss Matthew's new book, Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials.
More than a decade after the introduction of social media, it's evident that Silicon Valley's youth-obsessed culture has more drawbacks—from violations of privacy to deteriorating attention spans—than many of us first realized. For many millennials, though, who grew up with the Internet, there's nothing to worry about. And to hear the media tell it, this tech-savvy generation, the largest in American history, is poised to take leadership from the retiring baby boomers.
But a smaller generational cohort is overlooked in the equation: Generation X, those born, roughly, between 1965 and 1980, and destined to play the middle child between the headline-grabbing boomers and the hotshot millennials. Smaller demographically, they are reaching the age of traditional leadership, and they grew up in a less tech-dominated time. Matthew calls on America's "last adult generation" to assert itselfbefore losing its chance to influence the direction of the country.
"America stands anxiously on the cusp of an unknown future," Matthew writes. "Unlike the baby boomers, Generation X's race is not yet run. Unlike the millennials, we remember what life was like before the Internet invaded and conquered nearly everything. In that memory resides the hope of our collective redemption, the seed of a renewal that could stem the rot, decay, erosion, and collapse all around us."
Matthew Hennessey is an associate editorial page editor at The Wall Street Journal and former associate editor of City Journal.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to another edition of 10 Blocks, City Journal's podcast. |
| 0:26.7 | I'm Paul Bestin, managing editor of City Journal, and I'm here today with Matthew Hennessy, |
| 0:31.1 | the associate op-ed editor of the Wall Street Journal. |
| 0:34.5 | Matt has written a book called Zero Hour for Gen X, How the Last Adult Generation |
| 0:39.4 | Can Save America from Millennials, published by Encounter. It's a book that warns about |
| 0:45.6 | the all-pervasive role the technology is playing in our lives, and that's a familiar topic by now |
| 0:51.0 | to many of us, but Matt looks at it in a fresh way through a generational lens. |
| 0:56.2 | And he argues that if anyone is going to guide us toward a more proportionate, reasonable |
| 1:01.0 | relationship with technology, it's those Americans who belong to Generation X because they |
| 1:06.8 | remember a time when technology didn't mediate every minute of our lives. |
| 1:12.1 | Matt, thanks for joining us. |
| 1:15.7 | So speaking of Generation X, it's almost like one of those terms you don't, you know, |
| 1:19.4 | used to be so pervasive, and you don't hear it as much as you once did. |
| 1:24.6 | So to start with a question, you're probably going to get a lot of. How do you define |
| 1:29.4 | Generation X and while you're at it, the millennials and the Baby Boomer in terms of the generational |
| 1:35.7 | boundaries that frame them? Yeah, you're right. I find that people do often want to start there |
| 1:41.4 | because while most people are very familiar with the term baby boomers |
| 1:48.0 | and are increasingly familiar with the term millennials, |
| 1:52.0 | Generation X has largely been forgotten or ignored. |
| 1:55.0 | As you said, it was once on the tip of everybody's tongue. |
| 1:59.0 | So the way I look at it is like this. |
| 2:05.4 | The original term to refer to this cohort of Americans that I call Generation X was the baby bust. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Manhattan Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Manhattan Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.