THE CREATION OF THE TEENAGE ft. LAUREN FADIMAN

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[00:01:33]Greetings. I'm your host Jason Miles here for another episode of This is Revolution Podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to hang with us. If you're new to the channel, welcome. Glad to have you here. If you do like what we're doing, please hit like and subscribe. It's a passive gesture that goes a long way and promoting the channel. If you are a returning listener, subscriber, or one of our very valued patrons.

[00:01:57]So glad to have you back. If you missed it live, don't worry. Episode 15 of what fresh hell is up for you to check out.

[00:02:05]Kuba dove into why the most recent assassination attempt on the president's life has led many to speculate that the event was a false flag operation. We also dove into the current situation in Sudan and how the war in Iran affects subsaharan Africa. After the main show tonight, we will be going into the champagne room where we'll have a discussion that will be a bit of a deeper dive from issue 23 of the weekly TIR newsletter, the soundoff. Now, the TIR soundoff issue number 23 is up. A weekly newsletter that is available to all patrons of the show. That being said, if you appreciate the work we do here on TIR and you'd like to join us for things like our movie nights, which we're going to be having tomorrow, champagne rooms, which we're going to be having tonight, there's a couple of easy ways. Become a patron or a paid YouTube subscriber. Your donation makes sure that TIR can continue to stay on air and bring you programming such as this. $3 a month or a onetime payment of $30 for the year is all it takes. Trust me, it is worth it. Now, let's dive into the complicated history of the creation of the teenager.

[00:03:22]I kind of have one teenager left. He's 19.

[00:03:28]It's a little different. Then there's the seven-year-old. He hasn't quite hit the teenage years yet. He's in a different It's a whole different Seven is it own thing.

[00:03:40]rebellion, counterculture, rock and roll, angst. I was taught that all of these were simply part of the natural state of one's teenage years. It was the inevitable progression from childhood to adulthood. The teen years as a turbulent right of passage, a universal period of rebellion in search of cause.

[00:04:02]Yet, as authentic as those experiences felt, that state of being may have had less to do with biology or Darwinian inevitability than with the imperatives of the marketplace. Youth culture, as we understand it today, may be one of America's greatest exports of soft power. The post-war boom built upon the foundations of the New Deal order created unprecedented prosperity and teenagers, young people who, as our guest notes, had once been destitute, train hopping vagabonds, soon found themselves behind the wheel, literally flushed with disposable income, and central to a rapidly expanding consumer economy.

[00:04:49]The Great Depression had driven birth rates downward, while World War II sent millions of able-bodied men overseas to fight fascism. In their absence, a new labor market emerged, one that re relied heavily on young workers vulnerable to capitalist exploitation. So significant was their economic role that cause calls even arose for a youthdriven economic bill of rights. But post-war prosperity transformed the place of young people in American life. As industrial demand for youthful labor declined, the economy increasingly shifted towards consumption, particularly the conspicious variety so brilliantly analyzed by John Kenneth Galbreth in the affluent society.

[00:05:36]Galraith argued that modern capitalism does not merely satisfy existing desires, it manufactures them. Nowhere was this more evident than in the invention of the American teenager whose social identity became inseparable from his or her purchasing power. From our guest's latest article for Jacabin, the making of the teenager. While teenagers continued to work in the post-war years, middle class teens had to if they wanted to be able to afford their records, cameras, clothing, comic books, and exotic creeps rodents. While others engaged in paid labor or of an obligation to support their working-class families, the era of their collective worker power was at once behind them and perennially deferred to adulthood. After peaking around 1978, teen labor force participation would begin a long decline. Teenagers would never again be as central to the American economy as they had been at the height of World War II when millions clocked into daily victory shifts. Nor would they pose the threat to the status quo they had during the Great Depression when millions drifted, rode the rails and begin to organize around the notion of youth rights. To the extent that they could afford it, whether by work or allowance, teenagers in the post-war period were left with a single means of economic influence at their disposal, consumption. Teenagers in the post-war period. Uh, sorry. This is not to say that teenagers were entirely disempowered by this post-war reinvention. In the 1960s and 70s, high school and college campuses proved themselves powerful sites for political organization. At the same time, the cultural sway of consumer power became increasingly potent as the enormous baby boomer generation began to come of age in the 1960s. These teenagers and young adults would rage on the front lines of the civil rights movement where some of their most important demonstrations against segregation and racial injustice frame consumption as a political issue and wielded it as a political tool. They fought among other things for the rights to visit the same soda counters and swimming pools. And they used the soda counter and the swimming pool to enormous effect as staging grounds for those very fights. Sitins were accompanied by youth boycots of buses, school, and stores that leveraged the lack of consumption as a weapon, laying the ideological groundwork for future student efforts to force universities to cancel Vietnam War era military contracts and divest from South African apartheid, which in turn paved the way for the present-day boycott divestment sanctions movement. It was only because of the economic importance of teen consumption that the threat by countercultural youths to drop out of society in mass in response to the unpopular Vietnam War could mean anything at all.

[00:08:47]Today, we'll explore how capitalism didn't merely market products to young people. It helped create the teenager as a distinct social category complete with its own desires, anxieties, aspirations, and of course, political contradictions.

[00:09:04]Please welcome journalist and editor at Jacabin, Lauren Fedman.

[00:09:17]>> Thanks so much for having me on, Jason.

[00:09:19]It's such an honor and a pleasure.

[00:09:21]>> Oh, wow. Well, well, thank thank you.

[00:09:24]Um, first and foremost, why the hell do you care about teenagers?

[00:09:31]>> Are you are you just out of your teen years?

[00:09:34]>> I feel like it, but less and less so every year, you know. Um, I think I think that the latent power of teenagers as a class has just always been interesting to me. And I felt so political as a teenager and I feel like so many of my peers were also very political and I always wondered what it would mean if we, you know, really put up a fuss in an organized kind of concerted way. I just always felt like teenagers had so much capacity to sort of wreak havoc on society if they so chose. Um, >> are your parents boomers?

[00:10:09]>> My parents are boomers. Yeah.

[00:10:14]>> Yeah. Yeah. And I I definitely grew up on stories of, you know, what it was like to be a teenager in that time period and felt kind of jealous.

[00:10:23]>> Where are they from? Are you from the east coast?

[00:10:27]>> Yeah. What about you?

[00:10:28]>> I'm from the West Coast. I'm from the Bay Area.

[00:10:31]>> Kind of a hot bed of of youthful protest. So, it's just kind of ingrained in in the DNA of of youth culture there.

[00:10:39]>> Yeah.

[00:10:40]>> Especially from the East Bay as well. I went to a high school outside of Berkeley. Um, >> okay cool. Yeah, I had a very strange teenage life in a way. I was a student at a boarding school. I was like a financial aid student at a boarding school and boarding schools are like little military institutions and I always wondered why, you know, why there had to be such rigid organization of our lives like what like what they were afraid of you know if if there had been a little bit of slip in the power structure. Was it the Eastland School for Girls?

[00:11:12]>> For those that know what the Eastland School for Girls is, and if you do know what it is, write it in the comments because don't know what it is, you're not allowed to talk to me about 80s pop culture.

[00:11:23]>> Okay, I'll keep my mouth shut about 80s pop culture.

[00:11:27]>> But your article challenges the assumption that adolescence is like a timeless or universal experience.

[00:11:33]um really what led you to want to investigate the historical invention of the teenager because that's one of those things that I don't think a lot of people are kind of aware of that even that terminology wasn't used until what was it the early 40s I believe >> yeah that was my sense of of the origins of the term um I think yeah the like 1944 1943 around then Um, I think, you know, I was I mean, like I was saying, I've always been sort of interested in youth history. I think I was interested in the idea that I think we often take for granted that teenagers were invented as a consumer category.

[00:12:16]>> And I think in some ways that is like a a true thing. Um, like obviously the notion of the teenager kind of co-emerges with this new kind of consumer economy seemingly in the in the wartime and post-war era. Um, but I was kind of interested in challenging the idea that um that teenagers had only ever existed as a cla like in public consciousness as a consumer class. I was kind of curious about like other understandings of youth as a collective whole. And so I think this article explores youths as like a social threat in the form of kind of drifters during the great depression era. It explores them as like a working a working class during the wartime period and then looks at them as a consumer class.

[00:13:06]>> Can you talk a little bit more about that because I um I'm kind of getting ready to do something on I >> going to totally date myself. I'm 48. Um I bowled as a young person. I was very competitive bowling and I recently found out that young people were called pins setters >> and they would I think you mentioned that that they that was part of the job that when you threw a ball down lane there were kids behind >> the the lane and they would set up the pins and put it back up for you and I always was amazed by that. Um but can you talk a little bit about the the pre-war young person who really wasn't referred to as a teenager. These were just like was it 16 to 24 year olds that were like train hopping and and kind of a bit destitute and also taking uh a pretty prominent role in the industrial capacity of World War II America as well.

[00:14:05]>> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think I mean what I found through my research um and there's some you know great works that get really into the details on this. Um I was sort of just doing a survey of this but during the great depression period there were just tons and tons or a quarter million teenagers um like riding the rails um in the US. So they were like homeless and drifting from place to place looking for work. Um and this was really scary to um politicians and other like community leaders because simultaneously in Germany obviously like the disaffected youths of of Germany were organizing themselves into the brown shirts who had kind of comprise a huge power base in the form of street thugs for for Hitler uh and for the Nazi movement. And so there was a lot of concern that um youths in the US who were kind of at loose ends would be radicalized um you know in the direction of fascism but also in the direction of of communism. So there's all these um different kind of newspaper articles contemporaneous to the depression talking about um you know the Christian Science Monitor and other publications talking about youths who if they became organized could cause property destruction could be radicalized um against capitalism. Uh there's a great like quote from a New York City rabbi talking about youths who become communists through eviction and not through conviction. Um, so there's >> interesting quote that you added in there. Yeah.

[00:15:42]>> Yeah. There's just all this concern circulating and it's shared at the highest levels seemingly of the US government. So we have Eleanor Roosevelt talking about, you know, the communists are stepping up for youths. Um, they're helping them find work, you know, whether it's paid work or volunteer work. They're just helping them find meaningful work. Um and she's saying that uh you know non-communists who she says who believe in democracy could be doing the same but are not doing the same or failing to do the same. Um and so she's whispering in uh in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ear sort of about the plight of youth. Um Elanor Roosevelt is a great champion of young people. And eventually um Roosevelt starts the National Youth Administration, which is one of his New Deal programs that helps youths find paid work um kind of in conjunction with schooling because there's a big push to get youths back in school um where it's thought they can be sort of controlled. They're less dangerous in school than they are drifting. Um and so programs like the NYA um end up creating this infrastructure for youth labor that I think during the you know during the war period um ends up just funneling tons of young people into the job market.

[00:16:54]um and they end up working in huge droves. And obviously women, you know, women are the backbone of the wartime economy um World War II, but the jobs that like women and older children uh leave vacant are filled by younger children. So that's where we see like these pin setters in the bowling alleys are working night shifts. They're working kind of in age inappropriate shifts, but they're they're doing it for really good money because there's just so much um available work while men are serving, you know, overseas. Um so there's this like, you know, women step up to take the jobs that have been left open by men. Young like teenagers then step up to take the jobs that have been left open by women, and children are kind of stepping up to take the jobs that have been left open by teenagers.

[00:17:41]Um, so there's just tons and tons of work across the board and kids are making really good money doing it. Um, yeah.

[00:17:49]>> Yeah. Yeah. That in the piece that's I can't remember who that that said it that was it. The the kids are making more money than their probation officers.

[00:17:58]>> Yeah. They're making more money than their teachers. They're making more money than their probation officers.

[00:18:02]There's all this like fear-mongering later on, especially um about what all this money is going to mean for their moral character. Um, but you know, the kids are wielding it with with some kind of strategic power. Like I found a Christian Science Monitor article talking about babysitters setting a price floor for their labor so no one is charging less than um like 50 cents an hour for babysitting. And the Christian Science Monitor author is asking um you know, is this like a kind of protoization among 13year-old girls? Um, yeah, there's just like enormous power in in the kind of labor position of these young people.

[00:18:43]Does that speak to the moment because we're also about to hit this moment of like peak unionism, too. Um, does it speak to the moment that culturally we understand the importance of working together? because now um I can't see even even if it was a bunch of people young people in the school setting I can't see them all getting together and say okay well this is the floor of what we're going to charge >> because it feels like we're in the era of the the individual as not just capitalists but the individual as brand. So, if being an all pair or a babysitter is your thing, you know, you're going to find a way to >> to do a cute, you know, Instagram, Tik Tok reel on it and monetize.

[00:19:35]>> Does it does it time that kids were like, let's we got to [ __ ] organize.

[00:19:40]>> I wonder, you know, I think they're coming out of I think it's hard to say.

[00:19:43]I think you know in the article it's not clear exactly how you know formal the kind of organization among these girl babysitters is um but I think they're coming you know teenagers are coming out of a great depression moment where there was an unprecedented amount of youth organization so I talk um in my article about this group called the American youth congress um and there's a great book about it called fighting authoritarianism by Britt Hass by the historian Britt Hass that really gets into detail about what youth organizations um were fighting during the Great Depression for youth rights. Um but the American Youth Congress was like a youth voice group. It was like 5 million strong. Um it was really progressive. It was for for the time it was a racially integrated organization. Um, and it had like really serious kind of socialist inclinations, although it was constantly being accused of I mean it was one of those organizations that was always being accused of being um too far left and too far right. So it it sort of occupied a contentious place in the political landscape. Um, but it was, you know, it was a very outspoken group.

[00:20:53]They're kind of in cahoots with Eleanor Roosevelt. There's representatives from the American Youth Congress sitting on the advisory committee to the National Youth Administration.

[00:21:03]Um, and all the while they're pedalling this bill called the uh the American Youth Act, which would have established these democratically elected youth and unionled commissions that would oversee vocational training for young people. So they're thinking um you know they're imagining this world in which you know young people and union leaders are coming together to organize education and employment. So they're they're doing that. They're also pedaling something called the uh Declaration of the Rights of the American Youth, which is sort of um you know, just like a a a big statement decrying militarism, decrying racial racial discrimination, fascism, but also affirming all these positive rights like the right of workers to join labor unions and to advance their economic interests. Um so they have this really like capacious, progressive view of what they want the world to look like. And this is all over um in the Great Depression. You know, five million youths is like a pretty shocking number for the American Youth Congress. And there are other groups that also have pretty big membership roles. So, I think, you know, it's hard to say exactly how organized these these babysitters were, but I think they're coming out of a moment where there was just this unprecedented amount of youth organizing. Um and so I think that that legacy is still kind of apparent going into um the wartime economy. But I think you're also right that there was probably a collective attitude engendered by the wartime economy, the kind of like rahrrah patriotism of the wartime economy that um I'm sure you know a version of that we saw again with like the war on terror and other with other conflicts. So I'm sure that there is some of that going on as well. Um but I also think that these kids are being pretty cutthroat. Like I don't even I I think there is like a a real competitive edge. You know, there's also like accounts of boys who are um kind of job hopping, trying to get like the best job on the golf links, you know, go just like, you know, quitting, you know, if they're not making as much as their peers and moving on to the next opportunity. So, they're not always organizing. Sometimes they're just kind of, you know, out for the best deal they can get.

[00:23:21]>> I mean, it's still America, right?

[00:23:23]still.

[00:23:25]>> Uh but what was interesting about the the youth uh what was it called again? I >> Youth Congress. Yeah, >> it is a Youth Congress. Um that it was a multi-racial uh group of of young people that actually said, you know, they're kind of forward thinking. They're like negroes need rights, too. Um >> what happens with this um Youth Congress? Where does it go? And what rights did young people lose as this youth congress goes away?

[00:23:57]>> Yeah. So, unfortunately, the American Youth Congress um does not last for a very long time. Um you know, it's it's there in the 1930s.

[00:24:08]Things are looking really good for the American Youth Congress. Like it even seems at one point like the um American Youth Act will be passed um potentially.

[00:24:19]Um but the war the the kind of coming of the war ends up thwarting a lot of the plans of the youth congress. And um part of that is that this organization has always been um has always been contentious like I was saying it's always been kind of dogged by these accusations. of communism.

[00:24:44]There's there's contention internally about whether the group has had you made too many um too many concessions to the uh the Roosevelt administration. Um so it's already, you know, it's already a group that's kind of vulnerable. It's so big that, you know, perhaps is also slightly the the victim of its own size.

[00:25:02]Um but I think what's really the nail in the coffin is just that um the AYC is extremely war averse. you know, they don't want to see children sent off to fight >> to fight in in um in Europe and Asia. Um and so they obviously have to be um you know, they have to be done away with.

[00:25:26]And so the Roosevelt administration terminates the National Youth Administration in 1943. Um and a you know, a lot of the young people who had benefited from that program are sent to fight on the Eastern and Western fronts.

[00:25:39]Um, the American Youth Act is buried in Congress a final time and then the American Youth Cong Youth Act is buried in Congress for a final time and then the American Youth Congress is sort of broken up um soon after and that you know it can't really come back from that that failure. Um, and there's all this kind of snarky coverage in the news about the the end of that organization, but I think it represented um and and Brit House, that that author I mentioned, >> says it much better than me, but I think it represented a moment where it seemed like, you know, a different world was really possible, like a world where youths are really integrated into the labor force in a positive way, where they wield meaningful political power at high levels. Um, all these things seem kind of within reach in in the 1930s. So even though you know World War II would give these kids like really lucrative babysitting jobs and bowling pin setting jobs um it definitely came at a huge political cost.

[00:26:38]>> Um now you you uh talk about how the post-war capitalism economy transformed teenagers from producers into consumers.

[00:26:52]um explain that change a little bit because I think this is where we start to understand the teenager as we know it today.

[00:27:00]>> Yeah. Yeah. So, there's so many teenagers who are working in in World War II that like around 1943 um the Roosevelt administration starts to get nervous as do other kind of commentators um about what's going to happen during the post-war era. you know, school enrollment is back down again. A lot of teenagers are talking about like not wanting to go back to school because they're making so much money. Um, and so we see the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor start um rolling out these campaigns to kind of incentivize kids to go back to school. Um, because there's 15 million vet, you know, veterans who are about to come back to the civilian labor force.

[00:27:43]The the end of the war is presumably already in sight by 1943.

[00:27:48]So they're they're going to need to reconvert the economy. Um and so they're they're making all this like propaganda basically trying to incentivize kids to come back and they're drawing, you know, in those propaganda campaigns, they're drawing on um these kind of consumer culture icons, these early consumer culture icons. So they're getting Frank Sinatra in to make campaign appeals. They have like Superman and the Lone Ranger and like the cast of this kids show called The Quiz Kids.

[00:28:18]all these kind of representatives of this emerging consumer economy are, you know, speaking to kids through, you know, through the movies and other media. Um, telling them like, you know, if you want to grow up to have a good job, you need to go back to school and get like an advanced degree. They're starting to kind of propagate that that narrative in order to draw kids out of the kind of lucrative bluecollar jobs they already have. Um, and in the new in like the newspapers of the time, you can see kids being like, you know, kind of weighing their options. Am I going to go back to school or not? Um, and a lot of them are, um, there's one great quote from a kid who's working at Lockheed. Um, which I assume is the predecessor to Loheed Martin. Um, he's saying, you know, he says, quote, "I've been working next to some of those clucks who didn't finish school and I don't want to be as pebbleed as they are." And so he decides he's going to go back to school that fall. Um, but all these campaigns are being done through the language of kind of early consumer culture and kids are already consuming, you know, during the wartime period. Um, there's like a Newsweek article that talks about how, you know, obviously the reason kids don't want to leave their jobs is because they're making all this money that they're spending on clothing and fun out with their friends. Um but it turns out that that kind of consumption doesn't go away in the post-war period. So obviously a lot of kids stay in the workforce even if it's in a different capacity um you know than it is during World War II. Um but also there's just you know this kind of post-war economic boom that means that there is within the family you know within kind of middle class families there's like spending money kind of trickling down so to speak from parents to children. Um and because uh because the population of teenagers is so small um proportionally because you know depression era birth rates were really low these kids are able to like get jobs and just like access resources sort of disproportionately. So they're all still able to spend a lot of money. Um, and just like a huge consumer market, a multi-billion dollar consumer market emerges catering to teenagers in the 19 late 1940s and the early 1950s. And the numbers are kind of staggering. Um, like twothirds of teenagers owned cameras by 1957. They took 1/4 of all photographs.

[00:30:51]Um, the year before that they purchased 70% of single disc records.

[00:30:57]>> I saw that. Crazy. Yeah.

[00:30:58]>> Um, so they're just like consuming at really shocking rates. They're like the kind of primary consumers for a lot of goods. Um, and so it kind of comes out of the wartime period, but it, you know, the the the earnings are there during the wartime period, but the the consumer market is sort of a post-war creation.

[00:31:18]>> Does the consumer market there have something to do with the fact that if you're if you're making things for for consumption at this point, right? not use, but you have >> uh an older population that doesn't really >> I don't want to say understand because eventually you're going to understand that you have extra money, but you just got out of a depression. You probably lived through some really rough times.

[00:31:42]>> Yeah.

[00:31:43]>> Um the foreclosure rate was really high.

[00:31:47]Like this stuff didn't turn around overnight. Um, but as far as youth culture goes, you actually start creating a culture based around like diners and soda and you know >> Yeah.

[00:32:03]>> the counterculture. Does the counterculture feel like it's part of the manufacturing of youth?

[00:32:14]>> Yeah, I think there definitely are um some critics who would say that. There's there's one great um critic I I cite in the article named Thomas Frank who wrote this book the conquest of cool >> um which argues that this kind of fake counterculture emerged at the same time as the quote unquote real counterculture and that that fake counter culture was one um in which companies basically are trying to access you know what is >> sexy and interesting about the actual counterculture in order to sell products. And so Frank cites a couple of like I mean many actually many many many different advertisements that are using the language of revolution in order to sell you know random [ __ ] Um there's one from Simplicity Patterns which is like a sewing guide a sewing pattern manufacturer that says um you don't let the establishment make your world. Don't let it >> sew your own world.

[00:33:17]>> Yeah. Exactly. And there's another there's a famous one from um >> CBS Records um that's like a a picture of a bunch of protesters in jail and the tagline says the man can't bust our music. Um and so there are all these companies that are like, you know, advertising their products as connected in some way to the counterculture as though, you know, you can buy your way into the counterculture by buying a CVS record or simplicity pattern. Um, and I think the two definitely like co-emerge like there are people who are, you know, trying to purchase their way into a certain way of being. Um, >> yeah.

[00:33:57]>> But does that speak though to the counterculture as a a marketing uh uh cohort? Like for example, the let's say the beat generation is a natural uh manifestation, >> right? that people just really got into poetry. People really got into politics because soon after the war is over, there's another conflict in Korea.

[00:34:23]There's a draft happening.

[00:34:26]>> Um, and these wars are not to stop fascism in the same way that World War II was, let's say, for example.

[00:34:39]Um, and there's an artistic push back through through poetry, through the novel, and of course eventually through song. You know, the Brill Building will lose some of their bigger writers to the idea of the singer songwriter. Now, let's just say that's a natural manifestation >> and then at post beats, you get you get hippies. But do you think that in that you can be adjacent to those things and and be more akin to the consuming aspect of it, i.e. the CBS records. Um, hey, the man can't lock up your music.

[00:35:27]Like, um, not everybody that wore a black turtleneck was for the cause. Not everybody that wore tie-dye was for the cause. that everybody afro for the cause.

[00:35:39]>> Um, does the look, the iconography of these things kind of help with the idea that this is just a marketing cohort as well?

[00:35:50]>> Yeah, I think, you know, Frank says that like the the style of the counterculture becomes a fixture because it can be sold, bought and sold so easily. Um and because so many of the um so many of the aesthetics we associate with um you know with the counterculture >> are these products. So he says um you know the countercultural style becomes permanent because it I'm quoting because it uh conveniently and efficiently transforms the petty tyrannies of economic life into ration for consuming.

[00:36:35]And so if you're you know if you're upset or even just marginally annoyed or maybe not annoyed at all about you know what you're seeing around you just want to fit in with with a scene. um there's like an opportunity to, you know, purchase the aesthetic even if you're not, um, you know, necessarily, as you're saying, kind of down with the cause in a meaningful way. Um, I think the counterculture certainly like emerges as I mean, I think I I I sort of subscribe to Frank's idea that there is like the real counterculture and there's the fake counterculture. And probably the real counterculture, you know, doesn't have I mean maybe it I mean I think certainly in some cases it does have you know like a uniform and it's kind of aesthetic signifiers. Um but I think you know a lot of the people who are really politically activated in this moment are less concerned right with how they um are sort of signifying and and more concerned with you know the kind of actual like revolutionary. That's not to say that I mean I do think like aesthetics were a really important part.

[00:37:40]That's not to say that aesthetics were not an important part of the counterculture because I think that kind of like signification is like an important way of demonstrating you know the size of your movement, the power of your movement. Um I think the kind of like I mean obviously there's so much writing on this that I'm unfortunately not like overly familiar with.

[00:37:59]>> Yeah. You don't have to know every every essay or or book that's written on this because I think a lot of it is is BS and it becomes a little bit of academic wankery and you know fart sniffing at the end of the day. But >> you know it to me it always boils down to like there's there's always these cultures of >> of uh of of like gatekeeping if you will.

[00:38:22]>> Yeah. Right. Like to be cool, you know, we can't have you in the group because you're not doing the in-group things.

[00:38:29]Um, and and I always found that kind of problematic because then it's like, well, is this really about freeing Korea or is this about, you know, you being the coolest person in the lunchroom right now?

[00:38:44]>> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I know. I mean, it's still a problem >> on the left today. I definitely have felt this in in in organizing spaces before. I mean, I sort of um you know, I I go to a lot of like um I guess I probably shouldn't say too much about what I'm up to, actually, depending on who's you know, who's in case the feds are listening. But >> they're always listening. their home.

[00:39:07]>> Um, you know, I go to different um kind of direct action events sometimes and I sort of dress like a square and I always think that I probably look like a, you know, people probably think I'm a fed rolling up because I I don't look like a, you know, I don't I don't really like dress in a super cool kind of radical way. But I definitely see a lot of, you know, kind of posturing even among people who are obviously like really committed organizers and activists.

[00:39:33]There's, you know, there's a lot of pressure obviously to like look look like a revolutionary whatever that >> I don't I don't know what that looks like in 2026 like right there was a look for it in 1968 right >> you know but I feel like 1968 is eternal for a lot of people because >> because of the iconography they had a plan and it worked to a certain degree when it comes to this idea of winning the culture war. And that's where the counterculture gets interesting to me. Like anything of importance because it's always like, >> okay, you won the culture war. So what?

[00:40:15]You didn't win anything politically and the nerds, if you will, sat there diligently and have totally destroyed the New Deal and any mildly good uh Great Society programs. Um, the nerds destroyed uh your right to an abortion, right? That's what the nerds sat there.

[00:40:34]All the guys you made fun of because they weren't cool and they weren't smoking pot in the back of somebody's VW. Uh, like >> it's it's those people that dressed like the the dweebs that ended up kind of chipping away diligently at a machine they didn't like.

[00:40:57]>> And Um, if you were to say the godfather of where we are today is Barry Goldwater, >> people are probably looking like what?

[00:41:09]No, it's Donald. No, it's it's Goldwater. This starts with Goldwater.

[00:41:13]Reagan doesn't happen without Goldwater, >> right?

[00:41:16]>> And it's like, well, what do you have?

[00:41:18]You have beretss, afro, leather coats, tie-dye, and attitude.

[00:41:27]What have you gotten with that?

[00:41:29]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think like obviously there were many Yeah. It is it's a tough pill to swallow. obviously that there have been so many losses you know like looking you know in in retrospect I do think you're right that obviously there has been this enormous multi-deade you know campaign to erode the hard one rights of the 1960s and earlier I think there must have seemed you know in the 1960s to be a moment where it seemed like things were really going the other direction and I think like the um the uh the the the kind of like aestheticized revolutionaries of the 1960s.

[00:42:22]I think like probably, you know, felt like they were about more than than the look. Like I think there was more going on than just the kind of >> I'm sure you there's a there's a There's a quote that Adam Curtis had in one of his documentaries. I can't remember which one it was. God me >> where and again I sadly I can't remember which which revolutionary uh Marxist sect it was but they were somewhere in the Middle East >> and in this place they were in men and women were rooming together and sleeping together. the the people they're with were like, "Hey, we don't really do that." And they were like, "Hey, [ __ ] fighting are the same thing.

[00:43:09]This is the revolution right here, dude."

[00:43:12]>> And uh there's there's something to be said about kind of that whole like, "No, everything we're doing is revolutionary because in some capacity it really is, right?" You know, like look, I am a white person next to a black person.

[00:43:28]This is revolutionary. And it's like, yeah, you know, I get that. This is 1965. That is that is definitely something that isn't that common.

[00:43:37]>> Yeah. Like I just think that like Yeah.

[00:43:40]I also say that I I do like agree with you that I think like the the history of the you know the 1960s did not did not grant us the present that we wish we live in. I you know I think it's interesting like when we think about like revolutionary movements in the 20th century like you know what would it have meant if something like the American youth congress was able to persist you know a group that had this like very clear vision for what they wanted in terms of the collaboration between you know activated youth and like labor organizations for example like what would it have meant to actually institutionalize you know a kind of cleareyed program of um solidaristic collaboration between, you know, organized labor and other kind of radical groups, you know, something like that. As opposed to the kind of more, you know, that's not to say that people in the 1960s were not cleareyed about what they wanted. OB, you know, the kind of revolutionaries of the 60s were not cleareyed because obviously there was a lot of >> really dogmatic revolutionary programming going on and and but you know it's just interesting to think about like you know these other kind of revolutionary moments what it what it might have meant if they persisted.

[00:44:55]What did I say?

[00:44:56]>> Uh no people are saying ridiculous things about me in the show.

[00:45:04]Um, no.

[00:45:07]What what interested me when you talked about the American Youth Congress was how it was handled delinquency, >> right? We're going to handle delinquency by organizing young people and trying to get them jobs. I grow up in the 80s and 90s where we're going to handle delinquency by charging young people as adults, >> right, >> for for these crimes that are violent.

[00:45:35]And I think people for some reason believe like violence started with crack. And it's like, do you know how violent the depression era, how violent the 60s and 70s were? like people killed each other and just didn't trip. And if you're talking about the depression era, you're still talking about people that, you know, uh, killed an animal that they raised from a baby and felt nothing.

[00:46:07]>> Yeah.

[00:46:08]>> So, killing you over a disagreement over anything is just it's just what happens when people get mouthy, you know?

[00:46:15]>> So, we're talking about a violent time.

[00:46:16]And we're talking about a violent youth cohort and it's almost feral because there's also these there's so many brand new things that we don't talk about especially when it comes to the way parents do on their children.

[00:46:30]>> Yeah.

[00:46:31]>> This these are all relatively newer concepts in the grand scheme of things.

[00:46:36]So to think about taking these, you know, again, feralish kids, organizing them, teaching them to read, giving them jobs, and then they just want to do positive things. And you know, uh, 50 years later, we see these same children, and our our answer is, well, we just need to lock them up for long periods of time.

[00:47:02]And I see a return to this um that happens kind of during the COVID shelter in places where as things opened up slightly, you know, in major metropolitan areas, you saw more smash and grab robberies in certain uh major cities.

[00:47:23]And the problem becomes youth violence and we were too lenient on these people.

[00:47:29]And this is what happens when you defund this, that, and the third, and abolish this, that, and the third.

[00:47:35]And we're not talking about defunding anything. We're not talking about abolish. Like, that language doesn't exist. It's just about organizing and trying to get people into the workforce.

[00:47:46]>> Yeah.

[00:47:48]Yeah. I mean, I think like we've we've, you know, by creating this category of people, and I'm talking about, you know, young people here. By creating this category of people who we think of as like a protected class, we strip them, you know, we we think about that as like a kind of special thing, you know, they're a protected class. That means um that means that they're uh you know, spared some of the the suffering of adult life, right? like they're a protected class, so we don't expect them to work. They don't have to pay taxes.

[00:48:21]Maybe this is obviously not borne out in reality, but in theory, we're not charging them as adults for crimes. You know, we're thinking about them as having completely limited capacity.

[00:48:31]Obviously, this is like, yeah, not not borne out in reality, but that's the theory of it. Um, so thinking about kids as a a protected class, um, sounds great in theory, but it also means that they are granted kind of like limited responsibilities, like limited access to the world. And so we stop thinking about, um, you know, a whole sle of potential solutions. That's not to say that I think like bringing back child labor is like a solution for any of the problems facing young people. And it's not to say that I think, you know, we should treat children as adults, but I think we we just take for granted that limited responsibilities needs to come with limited rights and vice versa. Um, you know, young people can have, you know, can play what, you know, a really powerful role in society as has been borne out historically and and we should think about them, you know, as a a group of people with like a real stake in in our society. both its present and its its future. And I think CO was a moment where um yeah, I don't know that you know the >> Were you in school?

[00:49:41]>> Were you in school during COVID?

[00:49:43]>> Yeah, I was in college still during co and I remember thinking at the time that you know there was no equivalent to like the civilian conservation corps or whatever. There was no way for young people to like get out there and play a meaningful role in you know sustaining society. you know, this is a moment where we were talking about like young people as being, you know, facing a lesser threat from COVID. Even even with that as a kind of piece of knowledge, um there was still no call for like young people to take up a kind of heightened role in preserving, you know, and and you know, preserving social order and supporting, you know, social programming and, you know, serving their communities. Um, I thought the discourse was very much about, you know, controlling young people when they weren't in school was kind of the the bulk of the conversation. What do we what do we do if they're not in school?

[00:50:34]It was all about like >> they're so restless.

[00:50:38]>> Yeah. Just like retaining that degree of control. And that that kind of hearkens back to other moments where school has been, you know, has proven itself to be a form of, you know, social control in certain ways. And you know, even as it's obviously an amazing thing and I love school. I'm a grad student. No one loves school as much as I do. You know, school is kind of a tool of social control, obviously.

[00:51:02]>> But, you know, I believe it's your piece you talk about there's like even sorority groups. Was it your piece about sorority groups in high school?

[00:51:09]>> Oh, I did mention it. Yeah. In the high school.

[00:51:11]>> Okay. Uh because I read I read two I read you yours and I was reading um another uh synopsis of the affluent society which kind of talks about uh the New Deal era and the problematic nature of of trying to fix capitalism with >> nicer capitalism. Um, in the era of the social media influencer culture and algorithmic advertising, has capitalism fundamentally changed the meaning of being a teenager or has it simply intensified older patterns?

[00:51:49]>> Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think my feeling is that in some ways um the state like the status of the teenager has kind of or the experience of the teenager has kind of shifted. I think, you know, obviously there's never been a teenage monoculture, but I was thinking of a kind of segmented monoculture just born of like limitations in the consumer economy that once existed. You know, there were there used to only be so many channels on the television and so many clothing stores. So, there was like a more limited, you know, scope for for access. And so, um, there were sort of I I would hesitate to call them universal, but there were, you know, many shared experiences that like middle-class teenagers could maybe expect to have, you know, across, you know, AC across the country like in the 1970s and ' 80s.

[00:52:40]And I think things have changed on that front. I think like the kind of influencer culture you're talking about, the kind of media consumption encourages like a a kind of hyperindividualized algorithmically mediated consumption.

[00:52:54]And so I think some consumption has kind of lost its collectivity. And I think with that collectivity goes both some of the pleasures of adolescent life and also some of the political power embedded in consumption. you know, if you're not all shopping at the same stores, you can't really effectively boycott those stores, for example. Um, and so I think, yeah, I think, you know, young people, um, are less defined.

[00:53:22]That's not to say that they don't consume, you know, in patterns because obviously they do. The kind of things that like my sisters and her friends purchase are obviously like there's commonalities, you know, that have to do with trends that they're getting fed on social media and stuff like that. And, you know, >> boycott matcha.

[00:53:41]>> Matcha.

[00:53:42]>> I've been waiting for someone to say that.

[00:53:45]>> Boycott matcha.

[00:53:46]>> Boycott dudes wearing crop tops.

[00:53:50]>> No, they can stick around.

[00:53:51]>> They can stick around. Okay.

[00:53:55]Um, but yeah, I think, you know, I think my feeling about teenagers today is that like just so many of the post-war promises have been kind of broken. Like I think consumer culture has lost a lot of the pleasure that it once had perhaps. And I also think like they just have they're not protected in the ways that we, you know, in theory are promising them. Like child labor is coming back in a big way, you know, >> in a massive way. in a massive way that should be enough to make one shudder in fear. And I feel like most people shrug their shoulders cuz where it's happening isn't necessarily in the urban core, right? It's kind of in the hinterlands.

[00:54:36]>> But still, these are major multinational corporations. They're like, "Sure, if the kid wants to work the, you know, night shift at McDonald's, he wants to work the overnight. We're back to 24 hours a day because poverty is here."

[00:54:49]>> Yeah. It's not even just like service work. It's also like industrial work in a meat packing plant is like coming back for teenagers. And the Republican party is obviously saying like this is a great way to teach responsibility to young people and like parents should be able to consent to this for their kids. Um, and it just makes you wonder like what what is this protected class of people who are actually protected from from nothing or are only protected when it's convenient, you know, under the the capresses of capitalism.

[00:55:19]Um, so finally last question. Thank you so much for for hanging with me for for about an hour and wherever you guys are watching or listening to the show later, there's a link in the description. It should be the first link in the description to Lauren's article uh the creation of the teenager. Finally, if capitalism helped invent the teenager, what might a less commodified version of youth look like today? And is it even possible under contemporary economic conditions?

[00:55:50]Yeah, it's a really good question. I think I mean I think in some ways it speaks to my own, you know, limitations as someone living under capitalism that it's hard to hard for me to envision, you know, some of the kind of radical possibility of, you know, what teenage life might look like outside of capitalism. Um I you know I think I think some of what the American Youth Congress was calling for might um you know might might practically be the case. Like maybe we would see like a greater kind of connection between organized youth groups and organized labor and other kind of organized adult political groups. Maybe we would see some of that. Maybe we would see young people kind of weighing in, you know, um, at different levels of government, weighing in, you know, on affairs in their community. I think in a more abstract way, we might just like kind of refer it to the Declaration of the Rights of the American Youth that the American Youth Congress wrote up.

[00:56:52]Um, and I think it speaks to what I'm saying about, you know, the idea of this protected class that has limited limited rights and limited responsibilities sort of to their own detriment that I think we would just be living in a place where, you know, youths are are able to have the rights that we associate with, you know, freedom, you know, so the right to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness in less kind of regimented ways that, you know, go beyond the right to produce and the right to consume. Um, you know, there's a long history of kind of radical thinking about this, you know, what what radical education might look like, education that prepares students for, you know, something other than production and consumption might look like. So if anyone is interested in learning more about some of those visions, I would I would encourage you to look toward like the history of youth liberation and the you know the history of radical education which I think are both trying to imagine what it would mean to exist on the other side of capitalism. Uh which I hear is coming any day now. So >> late stage they keep saying it's like man this is a long late >> I know >> long late and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It's very comfortable up on the ottoman. It's feeling real comfy.

[00:58:12]>> Again, Lauren, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me. And again, wherever you guys are watching or listening to the show, there's a link in the description. Before I even write the description, it's a link to Lauren's article in Jacquin. And what are you working on next for the people?

[00:58:25]Um, I have forthcoming some writing on the Prairieland uh the Prairieland trial in Texas, which if you haven't haven't followed that in the last couple months, I really encourage you to check it out.

[00:58:37]>> Um, yeah, this is like a trial of nine people who were arrested at a noise demonstration in Texas last summer >> for people that are facing 35 years for protesting. Yes.

[00:58:46]>> Terrorism trial. So, yeah, this is like the first successful prosecution of Antifa members. I have some writing about and you know Antifa. Does it exist? Find out in my article in the Bachelor.

[00:58:58]Um I I think it does not exist.

[00:59:00]>> Oh, you were you're in the Baffler.

[00:59:03]>> Yeah.

[00:59:03]>> Did you go Did you go to the thing last week that the Baffler had in New York?

[00:59:07]>> I did. Were you there?

[00:59:08]>> No, but my bestest friend was Bert Cooper was there.

[00:59:13]>> Oh, really? Okay. Now, >> he spoke. He was one of the speakers. He was the black guy.

[00:59:19]>> Yeah. I'll be honest, I skip the readings almost every time.

[00:59:24]>> Um, >> he didn't I don't think he read anything. They just had a panel discussion and >> maybe I went to a different thing. I was at a party that they had. I >> Yeah, it was an art gallery, right?

[00:59:33]>> Oh, no. Different events. Um, >> I should have gone to whatever you're talking about.

[00:59:38]>> Should have went. You should have went.

[00:59:39]You could have seen the Bertrand Cooper who has a great article in the latest uh Baffler edition. Bertrand, you said >> Bertrand Cooper.

[00:59:49]>> Bertrand Cooper. I'll have to check it out. Cool. Yeah, they do great stuff.

[00:59:52]Yeah, the article I have coming out is in an issue all about Texas. So, I I think that will be fun.

[00:59:59]>> Well, again, thank you, Lauren, and have a good rest of your evening because it's late where you are.

[01:00:03]>> Yeah, likewise. Thank you.

[01:00:05]>> All right. Peace out. That is Lauren Fedman, famously of Jacabin.

[01:00:14]Nuri says the baffler sounds like Timu Riddler.

[01:00:19]That's not what the baffler is.

[01:00:24]Zahire says the befuddler. God damn it.

[01:00:27]Light-skinned Bert, as Jason calls him.

[01:00:29]I don't call him Well, I do. So Bert and I talk almost daily.

[01:00:37]And I was sending a message to Bert and I erased it. And Bert goes, he saw that I erased this. It was like a long message. It was like a 20 minute message I sent Bert and I erased it. And Bert responds back, "You called me the n-word for all 20 minutes, didn't you?"

[01:00:58]And I was like, "You know me so well.

[01:01:01]You know me so well. Look, I'm going to change shirts and go into the champagne room with you guys and we're going to talk about teens of the past. Let's talk a little 80s. Let's talk a little peak cold war American exceptionalism and let's talk about two controversial figures that both have movies about them that have come out recently that I wouldn't say are laundering their reputation. I wouldn't say that. But let's just pull back a little bit and look at them beyond the scandal and have a fun deep dive. Again, thank you Lauren. Wherever you guys are watching or listening, there is a link in the description in the to Lauren's article, the creation of the teenager that I really dug. It was super informative. Um, please check it out. It is worth it. It's a longer read, but it is really, really worth it. Very, very well written. Um, I look forward to reading what she has to say about this Prairie View case cases. I've been I haven't been following it super closely, but it should be shocking to most people uh what's happening with that. And on that note, we are out Heat.

[01:02:50]Heat.

[01:02:58]Yeah.

[01:03:05]Heat.