Hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm your host, Joshua Topolski. Well, I'm back. I haven't been around for a little while. I gotta tell you the listener. I got to confine in you that I have been dealing with some family business. My family is of course in the mafia and no my dad broke his hip and I had to go to Pittsburgh and help out for a little bit. And during that period I had to walk away from all of my many many projects, including including this podcast, which is very hard, and I barely looked at the internet. I barely read the news. I did watch a lot of nightly news in Pittsburgh, which is where my parents live, and they love watching the news. They put it on at like four o'clock because apparently there's just news, not CNN, but like local news. You can start watching it, I don't know four in the afternoon. They would put on the news at four and then it would just be on until ten or later, and it was really just all about local stuff happening. So I learned a lot about the many homicides that took place in Pittsburgh while I was there, and I wasn't responsible for any of them for the record. But anyhow, but I'm back and it's so good. It's so good to be back because I really have missed rambling like this. I haven't been able to ramble to anybody. My parents when we're around, they do most of the rambling, so you know, it's a very different environment for me. Anyhow, we have a great showed it. I'm very excited. I have to say, I have been excited to have this conversation. We had to move it a bunch of times, which of course pained me emotionally. But we have an amazing guest today, Philip Bump, who is a national calumnist for the Washing and Impost. He also has a newsletter called how to Read This Chart. He's kind of a data genius, and he has written a book called The Aftermath about the Baby Boomers and what they've done to America. So let's not waste one minute. Let's get right into it and talk to Philip. I want to tell the listener that Philip has been instructed to sit as still as possible because his mic is picking up some noises in the room, some fabric noises from his shirt moving, or the many flags in the background. We're not sure what it is. It's something. Yeah. You know, if you end up seeing any video from this and you're thinking, why is Philip sitting so still, it's just in service of the audio quality. All right, So I thank you for coming on the show. First off, of course, I knew you're running around because you've got a new book and you've got to talk to a lot of people. I do appreciate you taking the time, of course. But before we get into the conversation that I would like to have with you, can we talk about how much sleep you had last night? Sure? Do you know how many hours you got? Actually? Yeah, last night was unusual because I took my kids into the city and we spent all day in the city, took the train in, and you know, it was an excursion a life of which we haven't usually had. We have a three year old who usually naps, and so we all were very worn out. So I got more than usual last night, which is probably about seven hours. Seven hours is not even what they recommend. That's still a short night. Yeah, I don't know what time to usually go to sleep, twelve to twelve thirty, Okay, so you're kind of a night out a lot of parents go to bed very early. Of course you're a news persons that might have something to do with your sleeping habits. But I stay up very late and wake up very early, and I think it's terribly unhealthy. What time do you usually wake up? Quarter to seven. We're on a sort of similar schedule, though you're probably getting a little bit more sleep than maybe because you seem I don't know, better adjusted. Well, you know, we also have the occasional kid having a nightmare, or dog howling, coyotes and things alone those lines, Right, do you have a lot of coyotes around your house, Well, you seem to the dog picks them up. I can understand people be very upset about that sound or a dog. Our dog starts starts barking as well. So you're a calmness at the Washington Post. A lot of your stuff is data based, right, and you've been doing this for a long time. You tell stories through data very often, or help to sort of break down stories using data or correct people for misunderstanding data. Actually, I see you do this a lot on Twitter, or I feel like I see you do this a lot where you sort of trying to explains something to people that seems to have been misinterpreted. I mean, at this point in time, do you feel like you're are you getting through to people? Is it working? Because I feel like we're not. We're not paying attention to the facts that much like it. Is it frustrating for you? I mean yeah, I mean, look, absolutely, there are occasions on which it is frustrating. I mean, the the the extent to which Americans broadly are willing to set aside very obvious logical leaps in favor of the rhetoric that they would like to believe is sort of astonishing. I mean, the fact that, you know, Donald Trump could spend as much times he did lying about a voter front and there's obviously nothing to it. The fact that the next DECUSA could have millions of dollars of revenue coming for his terrible and totally idiotic movie two Thousand Mules. You know, these are these are sort of the exemplars of the type. But yeah, on a daily basis, we get nonsensical claims about data which are very easily disproven. It's just but people have little to no interest in having them disprove it. You know, this is it's true, very much more on the right. There are instances on the left as well, but it's just it can be frustrating. But I really do feel like my role to some extent is simply to be the voice of reason, even if people aren't necessarily listening to it. Right, That's a tough role. I mean, I would be very frustrated by it. I think it's like in the same way I would be bad at being a waiter because I would eventually have to wait on someone like me. You know. I think trying to convince people over and over again in the particular way that you do, which is like very fact based, right, very database, which often shouldn't be up for debate, is like, yeah, widely and loudly debated. I got into an argument with somebody when I was in California and I was at a bar and somebody started talking about, you know, COVID vaccines or whatever and that they didn't do anything. And I don't know why I decided to enter the conversation the guy. It's like, there were four people at the bar and he was just happened to be sitting next to me, and I started talking about the data of if you look at you know, death rate of unvaccinated versus vaccinated. Very early on, it was pretty clear like there's a correlation, which seems to be a correlation between getting vaccinated and not dying. I feel like if I had to do that as a job, I would I kind of go crazy. Well, I mean, but part of the problem, honestly, is that I spend a lot of time and energy writing pieces for the posts that explore the stuff, and then I'll tweet about it, and then people will respond to the tweet and not getting to any of the actual analysis, and they'll be like, well, what blah blah blant. It's like, well, look click the link it you'll see like that's accounted. You know. The exception here being that I did this really the only time I've ever done a Twitter thread is I pulled out a lot of my stuff on two thousand mules just to be like, you know, to have this benchmark of here are all the reasons two thousand mules is nonsense. And even then people wouldn't read further in the thread. They'd respond to like the first one like you obviously haven't seen the movie and show. It's just like social media in particular make this worse I can imagine being in a bar doesn't necessarily help either. Well, you know, the thing about it is people are less bold in person. That's true. I mean, you know, not to go down a social media rabbit hole or anything. But in fact, I just looked at Twitter for the first time in actually in like kind of several days. I feel like, or at least I haven't been looking at it very much, and sort of wild what's going on there. It's kind of like it's really a strange experience now. But yeah, but I just think people are very bold on social media. I mean it's classic internet stuff, right, there's no consequences really, like you can say anything and do anything, and what are people going to do? They're not gonna you know, there's no there's no physical barrier, right, and in person people are usually like you have to consider just I don't know, what is it that feeling of being in a room with somebody and making people uncomfortable, Like people don't want to do that a lot of the time, or they don't want to worry that they get somebody angry enough that they get you know, punched in the face exactly. Not I I would be the one getting punched in the face. Just to be clear, for the rector, I wouldn't be punching anybody. But so you've written a book called The Aftermath. Yes, well, I should say I have not read the book, and that's on me though. I have been in Pittsburgh for the last two weeks dealing with some stuff, so I have not had a chance. And we were trying to schedule stop and I thought, well, I'm going to read it, or at least skim it, you know, so I know what I'm talking about. So I will join. If there's anybody listening to this who has no idea what the book is about, could you talk about what the book is about? Sure? So the Aftermath is I realized a couple of years ago that we were going through this very tumultuous period in politics and culture in particular, and that we are also going through this transition with the baby boom, that the baby boomers started going into retirement, and so I decided I wanted to look at the extent to which those things might overlap. And what I realized as I was researching the book is there's an enormous amount of overlap. That there are a lot of characteristics of the baby boom, and that the sheer scale of the baby Boom, which I think people tend to underestimate or not recognize, really helps to find the ways in which American politics and economics and culture are all contributing to are all seeing this same this level of tension between old and young that manifests in a lot of different other demographic ways. And so the book is an exploration of both what this moment looks like, how it's driven to a large extent by what the baby Boom is, but then also what happens after the baby Boom is gone, which won't happen for decades, and the subheads to the last days of the Baby future Power from America. But it's really an exploitation and basically what happens over the next several is as the baby Boom loses its script on the power that it's held since you know, the nineteen fifties. Right, Okay, there's a lot there, but that's along. But let me just I want to back up and talk about the baby boomers for a second. Define a baby boomer. Sure, you know, if for someone who's listening who maybe does not know, give me the kind of stock definition of a baby boomer. Yeah, so a baby boomer is someone who's born between nineteen forty six and nineteen sixty four. And the reason that's important is twofold. The first is that the baby boom is defined by those births. So this is not just a you know, am gen X because I was born in this general range of years. And this is what we call is this is a hard thing that the demographers that the Census Bureau said, this is a defined and distinct generation that is identifiable, will wipe the search in births, and so it's actually, you know, we include anyone who's born in forty six through sixty four, even though demographers actually see the boom starting sort of in the middle of forty six and ending in about the middle of sixty four. So you know, there's some vagueness there, but the baby boom is a clear event, demographic event that happened with this surgeon worse. And the statistic I like the site to give some sense of perspective is that there were one hundred and forty million Americans in nineteen forty five. That's the total population of the country over the next nineteen years for the baby boom, Almost seventy six million babies were poor, right, So that's more than fifty percent of the population nineteen forty five are then boor okay, and so that means that you know, a third of the country essentially is nineteen or less at the end of the page, right, right, And then you just consider how that reshapes everything moving forward as they get older, and that's the effect of the baby booms. Hat on the cot is there is there no know this may be a stupid question, but is there no other generation since the baby boomer generation that has a comparative sort of birthrate? That mean, is it just unmatched? Like who's after the Baby Boomers? It's is it gen x X, right? That's that's right, Yeah, that's me. That's me the greatest generation in my opinion, absolutely, which is another generation. But I think we should just take it, honestly, I think we're outed at this point. And Gen X birthrate, like comparatively, do you know the number offhand, like how many babies were born? You said seventy seven million from forty six to sixty four, is that right? Almost seventy six Okay, almost seventy six million, seventy six millions, So do we start at sixty five? Gen X starts sixty five and goes to what that goes to eighty eighty, so how many babies were born? But no, but this is key according to Pew Research Center, which is the the go to for the delineation so generations. But it's made up, you know, I mean, this is not a demographic with a distinct event to your questions or answering your question in two ways. No, there was not a similar, like defined period of births that tells us what gen X was right. It was just sort of like, well, this makes sense as a truncation point that Pew decided, same with millennials. Money, that's what else started eighty one and then go to I think it's like ninety five something along those lines. But again not a hard demarcation. The generation that is next closest in size total population to the boom is the millennial generation, which at the age of forty, there are about you know, nine for every ten boomers at the age of forty, it's about ninety percent the total number that Boomers were when they hit forty, and so it's almost as big. And millennials are the children of boomers. Is that correct? Well, I mean, look, you know there were boomers that were the children that boomer right, right, if you're eighteen, you know it's crazy. So you know, again this is all made up, right, sure? But what's interesting you're kind of hammering on this point the baby Boomer generation, where Gen acts or gen y or whatever, gen Z millennials may be a kind of a marketing or just a way to categorize a group of people from at a certain period. Certainly is used in marketing, obviously, and some of it is fueled by marketing. But you're saying that one of the characteristics of the baby Boomers that is distinct is that there is an actual demographic event that occurs in that era that is different from what we would consider to be previous generations. That there is a huge uptick in births. That's right, That we have populated America full of these people in a way that no other generation. I guess you're saying millennial, But it's interesting to consider that millennials are the future boomers, which kind of checks out to me in a way. But so there's a real defining characteristic of it that isn't just like a marketing term. Yeah, that's right. I mean it's almost as if the analogy like to use is to astrology. But it's as though there was evidence that people who were born under the star sign of cancer actually had a certain set of attributes and that you could define that, you know, cancer has had the set of attributes, and then they just made up the rest of the zodiac in order to sort of flesh it out and has something to spear right, Right, So generations are very much like the zodiac in that, you know, they have these sort of theoretical attributes that everyone shares, and they have sort of vaguely defined boundaries and you can be on the cusp and what does that mean? Like, you know, there are a lot of parallels there, but there is this real thing, you know, that that the baby boom itself is actually real, right, And so as a result, you've got a bunch of people who appear on the planet at a certain time. Right. You said it's an eighteen year period, right, it's nineteen years inclusive. Yeah, raise in a certain environment, raised in a certain way in a certain state of America that has had you know, massive impact on the political and cultural landscape that we currently navigate. Is that correct in saying that, well, it's it's understanding, right, the Baby boom forced I mean, you know, I mean not to be melodramatic, but you're like, no, that's actually totally wrong. But the Baby boom really reshaped what America looks like. You know, if there were external factors, the development of television, transistor, radios, you know, geopolitical affairs, those things had an effect as well. But when you consider what it means you have to accommodate this massive search and population, you understand how America had to reshape itself. Right, Like imagine, you know, in the mid nineteen fifties, you have to get not only a bunch of DW elementary schools to accommodate everyone. You have to get a bunch of elementary school teachers by the time they hit eighteen. Like, what jobs are they gonna do? Are they're gonna go to college? Who are the college professors? You can't just whip up college professors, right, you send that, You send a decent chuck of them off to Vietnam, right, you know you give them to give them right different. They are all these ways in which America change because it had to deal with this, and this is the key point. Now we're reaching the point where they're all hitting sixty five somehow, a lot of us some sort of blinds. I was like, oh my god, all of a sudden, there's all these seniors. It's like, yeah, man, we've seen this covering since nineteen forty six. Well, now now we have to figure out what we're gonna do. Right. Uh, When you put it in these terms, it's like shockingly obvious that this is a problem like that, of course, this huge disparity in certain sort of expectations or politics or cultural norms or whatever. Of course, like it makes a lot of sense given what you were just saying. But people talk about boomers, and it's a very broad term to mean like a person who's like uncool and has bad ideas and is selfish. There's more to it than that, I'm sure. Can you can you like just hit a couple of the points of like what is the defining boomer characteristic? Yeah? Okay, so you asked a couple of questions that, I mean, did it's your last point about you know, what is what is a boomer? That's sort of the astrology aspect of it, right, you know, like who who they are sort of conscientiously is is you know, I think there there's an answerable component to that, which which I'll get to. But you also asked, you know, what are the ways they recipe America? They answer that as simple. I think nearly everything in America's recipe by the baby boom. And you know, that's part of what the book goes into what differentiates a boomer from someone else. And this has a very clear and I think of poor Nancier, You're you're absolutely right. This is a very very large generation of tens of millions of people. So it is certainly by you know, by no means are they are they all the same, but they are. They do share some characteristics. One is that they are much whiter than younger Americans. And you have to consider that it's about a century ago the United States imposed new restrictions on immigration. Partly is a backlash to immigrants from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe. Also immigrants from Asia. Those weren't lifted until after the boom ended. So at the time of the baby boom. Time baby booms started, the average immigrant was someone's grandparent would come over through the allis Island era of immigration. Right right then one immigration laws were loosened, we saw a lot of immigrants from Asia and Central America in Mexico who helped to diversify the United States. And so we have a younger generation in America that is much less densely white than the Baby boom generation. Right O. That's interesting. I mean you're saying like we based like hit pause on like a more diverse form of immigration like during this period. That's exactly what I mean. That's that alone is just a kind of fascinated, you know. I mean maybe if I had read more history books, that would be obvious to me, but that is not obvious as a component of like the Boomer generations. Sorr. I didn't mean to cut you off, but I find that kind of fascinating. Yeah, but I mean you can immediately understand how that overlaps with lots of different strains of American politics, right. You know, when you have this older, wider generation that all of a sudden is very frustrated, and when they look at younger Americans and they literally look different than they do, that sort of freaks them out, Like you can see. Again, not to oversimply, you can see how this plays out. But there are other things too, and so the Boomers started this trend, for example, of moving away from people belonging to institutions. You know, they're less likely to go to church than their parents, they are less likely to participate in social groups and so on and so forth. But that's really accelerated post boom, and so younger Americas are much less likely to participate in institutions, much less likely be members so political parties, much less likely to go to church, mention less likely to be religious. At the same time, they're also much better educated, so boomers went to college more than their parents. But that trend also continued, so younger people are much better educated, and so over anyone who's pays its attention to politics again, and you can see how these things overlap with democratic and Republican orientation, right, you know, people who don't go to church and have our college graduates and our people of color are much more likely to be Democrats. Right, And so that then also contributes to the tension. So there are a lot of practical ways in which boomers and young Americans are different. That then you can very quickly see electricle selves. I mean this is maybe a really stupid question. But do Republicans skew older than Democrats across the board? Yeah? They do. I actually looked at analysis for the Post that this has included some extent in the book, but I pulled more recent numbers. You know, about a third of the Republican Party registered Republican is not including independent too lean Republican registered Republicans nationally, about a third of the sixty five or over you know, well over half of them at fiftyear over. Right, that's not great for the Republicans, it's not. But then you know this is this is like two chapters of the book is so what does this mean? Right? Right? But what does this mean? Over the wall? I was going to get to that, like it's you know, you predict the future. But in essence, you're saying that like boomers are actually I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, more progressive because they're more educated. I guess, I guess I don't understand the distinction because you said they're more educating, that trend is continued, But that would mean that like boomers are buying large Democrats? Is that correct? No? No, what I'm saying is when you look at the density of college education over time. The Boomers really started the upward trend, right, But then once the boom was done, it continued to shoot higher higher. So most boomers do not have a college education. Most young people don't have coulege education too, but they're much more likely to have a college education than that. That overlooks. I see that accelerated as the generation war on essentially right, and continued on that track. Okay, yeah, that's right, Okay, Okay, let's hear some other baby Boomer facts. This is like fascinating to me. So they are so they are very white. I think we just stopped them very white. That was well. You know what's interesting about it, though, is because immigration laws were loosing, they actually got less white over time. The Baby Boom generation kept growing in size until about the year two thousand because of immigration, even though you know, birth send in nineteen sixty four, because we kept bringing people in who were born in forty from forty six to sixty four, they weren't part of the American baby boom, but we're part of other countries births over that period, right, The boom itself actually got less white over time, which I think is also sort of fascinating, right, That is interesting. So you're saying, with a less limited immigration policy, there's an influx of non white boomer age people. Yeah, exactly, someone we moved here from China who was born in nineteen sixty. They're a baby boom, right, right, Yeah, but not not our baby boom, a totally different distinct one. I'm sure, all right, what else should we know? What are some other signs to watch out for, if you know, if you want to know your baby boomer, well, I mean, look, you know, again, drawing these sorts of distinctions is tricky, just because this is not a generation which is cohesively the statium in a lot of different ways. Right, They're not a monolith. But if we reshaped America around their needs and wants and likes and dislikes and whatever, the kinds of challenges we were presented with because of this new group of people that has appeared on the planet in this country, presumably there are some connective elements amongst that group that I mean, they may I'd just be like, oh, they prefer to eat you know, hamburgers or whatever, you know, Like I'm talking, there's got to be more, you know, sort of demographically speaking, I mean, what you're talking about is is a fact. Yeah, well, I mean from a demographic standpoints, there's not a lot of other things. I mean, younger people more like little live in cities, but not overwhelmingly so. And you know, there's a chapter in the book the looks at this. But when we talk about the things that define them, right, so, demographers look not necessarily generations, but at cohorts, people who are who are born in the same general time period and live through similar experiences. And so when you look at, for example, people who are young during the Great Depression, they have a certain relationship the money that other Americans probably don't. Right, So we understand that idea of how cohorts go. But when we talk about what are the defining characteristics of the cohort of the baby boomers, it's every goddamn movie you've seen in the past thirty years, right, you know, it's it's a listen to rock and roll and you know, I mean it's like it's like all of these stereotypes are born of young baby boomers who all of a sudden, marketers have this massive opportunity because they have this huge influx of teenagers who have a ton of disposable income and start driving decisions with the families making you have this emerge at the same time as television. They're buying stuff they see on television, so markets are pitching, and then you have you know, you have Dick Clark's American Dance. They're like all these things that we now associate with the very stereotypical that's the baby booming. Well, it's interesting that so much of Americana, or a nostalgia about the way America used to be that we hear now, particularly from people like Trump and you know Republicans often not just them. But it's funny when you said they were very white, Like the first thought I had was like, oh, well, that kind of explains why a lot of these older Americans perfect idea of like what America should be like. Is this like very white, suburban sort of place right like this classic like where they were on top. They were sort of like in the pole position all the time, and they lived in these very like homogeneous sort of environments that were that looked and felt very similar. Like I feel like the immigration thing explains it better than any anything I could imagine as to why their nostalgia is so seemingly one sided, or at least a lot of people. Not again, not across the board, but you do hear it a lot. So we've got this huge generation. Again not monolithic in their behaviors or their attitudes, but there is some stuff that has carried through. I mean, is there a moment where their politics or their way of living, or their thinking begins to truly clash with like their children or the generations that are following them. I mean it explained that to me. Yeah, no, this is this is a great question. And again, this is a generation the last of the course of nineteen years, and so it itself is divisible in some ways in terms of when things start to happen. We've had baby boomers hitting retirement age for some time now, for example. But consider in the moment. Consider you know that the State of the Union address is a really good example of the ways in which this manifests. And so for a long time, the Republican part, it's like, we gotta cut in title once, we got to cut social Security and medicare. We just talked about how Republicans are now much older than Democrats and are older than they used to be because America is older, and so all of a sudden, President Bonding gets up in the State of Union, says, hey, you know the problems want to cut Social Security Medicare, and the problem is like, oh my god, no, no, no, no, no no, we don't want to do that, which is not the position they would have had previously, in part because their base is so much older. Right, but when you think about the Gen X did not push back on the baby boomlat and part because we weren't. There weren't as many of us, and so we weren't able to sort of own culture in the same way that younger you know, millennials and Gen Z are able to do. So we own culture, just the cool parts that not a lot of people are interacting with. Yeah, I mean sort of which just comes as being young, right, you know you're not much beyond that. I mean, you know where we got our little blurp of the you know, the hip hop the super Bowl halftime show last year, which is about all we're going to get. That's true. I think if it as a generation that doesn't care about whether or not their culture is necessarily the most popular culture, I think a defining characteristic of gen X as they kind of don't care about being like the top dog. You know, well, you should then write about about generations and see how many Gen xers complain about not getting mentioned in every freaking interview. Maybe I will. But then consider the fact that when now we have this group of millennials and Gen Z people who again are almost as numerous as baby boomers when they were young, and now more numerous than baby boomers, who have a very different set of needs than the baby boomers. And so we have this increased senior population now, so we need to think about social security, and we need to think about medicare, we need to think about senior housing, we need to think about long term health re precautions of that. But you also have this competing large group of people increasingly voting, who are saying, actually, we also need to invest in schools and BRICA and things along those lines. And we know that historically that older Americans are less likely to support things like school bond measures because they're less locally have kids in schools. So this sets up a political tension by itself just in terms of where federal, state and local resources are going. This is the moment when that's happening, because now old Americans need those and now younger Americans also need to take care of their own families at an increasing rape right sore battling over resources. This is sort of like a water world situation. I mean, that's one aspect of it, right, Right, Do boomers get a bad rap? Like the word boomer has become associated with something very negative? I said this earlier. Is that a false representation? I mean the things you're describing are I don't know. I mean we're constantly being pulled backwards in this country, especially politically. I mean it's not like every boomer is a is a Republican or something, but it does feel like there's a very conservative element in this country, whether it is you know, conservative Republican or just somebody who is older and more conservative in their thinking. That we make a lot of progress, then it somehow gets like kind of there's always this group trying to pull us back. Is that the boomers? Is that our current you know, sort of the goal they've been depicted as you know that it is sort of like, you know, trying to rip us back to a simpler time, as they would describe it, or is that misrepresentation. I mean this is this is complicated and there are a lot of different aspects to it. So so one aspect is that we certainly do have older people tend to vote more than younger people, and a result of that is that the issues that are of concerned to older people tend to get overrepresented in politics. And that while boomers are themselves not robustly more republican than Democrat, that they are much more republican than our younger generations. And so if boomers themselves collectively just made a decision, they would still be more heavily republican than what you're younger people would do, just because they're more republican. But I do think the boomers get a bad rap in the sense that, for example, Baby boom controls, you know, a disproportioned sheriff the wealth in the United States. But in part that's because there are so many of them, and when you look at a per capita basis that per capita, baby boomers are no wealthier than any other generation. And I think that when we talk about the ways in which resentment manifests between generations who one of the challenges is not only do younger people feel like, oh, baby booms, they all got to buy houses, and you know they're also wealthy. Look how wealthy hours of generation the baby when we're saying basically are like, I'm not wealthy. What are you talking about? Like, right, you know, why why are you mad at me? I didn't do anything, you know, like, yes, I go on a house, but it's not worth that much in YadA, YadA YadA. Right, So you see some of that resentment, right, but you also see four examples that young people can get in the face of old people in a way that wasn't possible fifty years ago, right, And I think this is how to recognize we like, you know, in nineteen seventy, when young people wanted to cause a ruckus that go on college campus and carry signs and hopefully get coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle or whatever it happened to be. Now they get on TikTok. You know, there's a quote that I used in the book from a guy who's talking to Harpers and he's like, look, you know, you can be in your bedroom in Cleveland get a million followers overnight, and you can and you can get those million followers can be the you know, gloment onto your song, okay boomer and getting mad the boomers and making fun of that, right, and the boomers have to deal with that and see that in a way that was not the case previously. And you know, and that also increases generational attention. So there are all these ways in which this manifest that aren't specifically about the struggle for power, but still do reflect, you know, the elevated state attention between the generations, right well, but to be fair on the point about TikTok notes boomers that are worrying about or have to deal with the sort of instantaneous popularity of you know, hate being tossed at a certain group or whatever. I mean, it's it's sort of I mean, this is sort of a daily habit now, right that we have to navigate some new you know, movement of people right or wrong, good or bad that has kind of allied themselves against a group, some other group or some other person or whatever. I think. I mean, yes, Boomers get shipped for it, but you know, millennials get shipped for it too, a TikTok, you know, so sure, I think it's it's sort of evenly, somewhat even maybe not evenly distributed. But yeah, but again, the baby boom is used to wielding power, right, not necessarily consciously, but they're used to being the most important element of American society. You know, you and I are very used to online abuse. We like we can understand that world. You know, yes, of course, it's what makes our jobs fun. Big. There's a great story in Bandy Fair today that was looking actually at the generation in the NBA and how older NBA players want to just say, oh this, you know, these young guys were terrible because X, Y and Z in a way that we're you know, you and I grew up watching sports and you know, hearing commentators say things like that. But the young people in that and going out, the younger NBA players are like, now, to heck with this guy. Here's why blah blah blah been pushing back. And it really is this microcosm that that of the way in which they are not used to this. They help power in the enemy there and they're not used to having that be challenged in a way that is so immediate to fans, right, And I think that's a good microcosm of the effect that I'm talking about. So that element is more like, these are people who aren't used to being questioned when they when they're wielding their power or whatever. Right, that's it. Yep. I can see how that can manifest in all sorts of ways in this country, and does manifest in in kind of bad situations. Okay, So obviously Boomers very important to the current fabric of America, A very misunderstood generation. Not all bad, That's what I'm hearing. You know, we all probably know some Boomers that we love, no question. You know, we should be welcoming them and trying to understand them, right, we shouldn't be making them outcasts. But what do we do? How do we fix this? Is there a fix to it? Is we got people? Just have to die? Is that the answer to all of our current woes? When the boomers are dying off? Like? Do we know what's going to replace it? Are we gonna be plunged into chaos? Like without a shared enemy? I mean, what happens? You have to predict the future? Well, I mean, you know the second half of the you know the books called the Aftermath, right, So you know I do spend some time trying to figure out what this looks like. You know, I try and do so with humility, and you know, I recognize that a lot of people who made a lot of predictions in the past that are wrong. But what I try to do is I try to look at three things. I try to look at culture, economics, and politics and estimate as the Baby Boom power WANs what happens. And my determination was the Baby Boom has much less full cultural power now they're not the dominant cultural force, in part because culture tends to be the domain of youth, and in part simply because you know, these things change every time. You know, the cultural customs tend to change. Economically, you know, there is a real question what happens that some people with whom I spoke estimate that you know, last year, two trillion dollars worth of wealth was transferred out of the Baby Boom generation dot places and part to institutions, in part through bequeathments to family members, and a part through you know, just paying for things like buying a kid a house or paying for a kid's collapse, things along those lines. But you know, they estimate more than fifty trillion dollars or the course of the next two decades, where does that go? You know? The answer that I've gotten mostly from folks was probably too people who are already wealthy and their families. It's a generational wealth. Yeah, no, absolutely right, you know, but that also depends on how long boomers live and how much how much they have medical costs, and whether they're able to afford see your housing, and then a lot of the determinations that are being made now. Right when we talk about political power, you know, the immediate question a lot of people have is, Okay, if America is more diverse, as you know, among younger generations, they tend to vote more heavily democratic, does that mean we can't learn for an uber democratic future? And the answer to that I have to show. The complexity is that when you look at the Census Bureau's projections for what the demography of the United States is going to look like in twenty sixty, you break it out by age and by race. The state in the Union it looks the most like what the Census Spureau thinks, you know, the United States will look like on the whole in twenty sixty. The state that currently looks like that it is Florida, the state of Florida is not uber Democrat. No, that's not good. How is that possible? Why is it Florida. Here's here's why it's Florida. It's FLORIDAUS. Florida is very old, and Florida as the largest Spanic popular Yeah, okay, but it consider the qualifiers. Florida's old population is very heavily white and more conservative than the old population elsewhere. That's not going to be the case in twenty sixty because the old population is going to get more diverse as America ages, right. And Second of all, Florida's Hispanic population is very heavily Cuban American, which is a more conservative group of Hispanic voters, and so that probably doesn't reflect what Hispanic voters will look like in the future. It right, So there are caveats, but again, the point is the complexity here. What's number two? Do you know what number two? Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off, but Florida's number one? What is number two? Of course I do Joshua the state of New Jersey, which is a very blue state. I mean, that's interest, that's slightly I mean again, I'm sorry. It is kind of shocking to me that you're telling me, like when they look at what defines America in a way, maybe it all makes sense. But when you're saying number one and number two, it's what will define America potentially, what America will look more like in the future. Is number one Florida at number two New Jersey, two states that are often often considered to be two of the worst places in America. Now, I'm not saying I agree with that, but it is like, ye, but I'm not saying I agree with it. You know, there's wonderful parts of Jersey, wonderful parts of Florida, but but they are like a often like the joke, you know, the end of a joke for a lot of people. You know, Florida man is a thing because there's it seems like she know, every day there's some absolutely outrageous story about a guy who went crazy in Florida and Jersey. You know, let's we don't have a whole another hour to talk about all the but you know, these are cliches, but it is interesting. Okay, what's number three? Do you know? I'm just I gotta know, um, I don't know all the stuff I had to inform care let's say it's like Delaware or something maybe a little more. No, it's definitely not Dello Delwar is too white. Okay, not at the top ten states and look the most like what the census spar projects the demophy will look like. Our blue states are Biden votes. They are, which doesn't surprise interesting, right, Yeah, But the sense of spirits projections just a you know, and this is another chapter in the book. The sense of spirits injections are based on an assumption that Hispanic Americans will continue to identify as Hispanic. And they're all sorts of calveiats to that, all sorts of calveats to the way in which we measure diversity now, the way in which we expect diversity to unfold over long term, which may change that. It may mean that we actually have a more conservative America than people expect. I mean, isn't that in a way the assumption that an older generation of any voter will act like a younger generation, and sort of because that, I guess what would be considered more blue, right, the Hispanic population If it's more blue today, a younger probably. I mean, I don't know how it's used, but I have to imagine it's got to be maybe is it not younger, I don't know, but as it gets older, I mean, isn't there just there as an opportunity there for that older generation to become more conservative as older people seem to do, like because you're like, hey, I don't want people to get the thing that's supposed to be mine, or I don't you know, I don't want to be paying taxes for these new people who just showed up or whatever the whatever the I don't know. I can't put my mind in the in the space to really understand the complaints. But right, like, there's no guarantee that person who is today a Democrat young and not like worried about the same things would be sixty years old and feel the same way. Well, you get to a few things there, and one is that, hey, the parties themselves are fungible, right Like, the Republican Party in twenty years time doesn't have to have the same values and principles of the Romical Party today though, And in fact, I think you will. I think it will. Well, I mean, if it does, then it's going to get you know, twenty percent votes share, I think, right, And that's just good. Okay. So the other thing is that, yeah, I mean when we talk about this idea that people get more conservative as the age, you know, that's based on we don't really have a great, long, lengthy history of social science research, right right. You know, it goes back to you know, not even a century in terms of polling, goes less than that in terms of like solid scientific research on sociological trans and things along those lines. So even if we assume that's true though, which I don't know that we have a sufficient enough sample size to say it is. Even if we assume that's true, we're basing it on a very white population of Americans. Right, Older black Americans today, they they're not more conservative. Right, Older Spanic Americans to day still vote heavily Democrats, right right, There are a reason to think that those populations that are non whitey're going to get more Republican. I don't know who there is. Well, actually, I mean, just going back to that point about the future of the Republican Party. I mean, if anything, in my adult life, I have seen the Republican Party become less progressive. It was not normal when I was younger for people who were identified as Republican to be like kind of outspoken, full on racists or Nazis or like aligning themselves with like, you know, white supremacy. That's a pretty common thing in the Republican Party from what I can tell. Now. A lot of it maybe broad trudged up because of Trump, but like I mean, I remember when Obama was running, you know, the first time around, and it was like there was sort of unabashed like oh ooh, people are bringing like you know, monkeys to rallies, you know, to make fun of him, and just like really weird racist shit that I'd never seen happen in America in politics, not to that degree. That was just kind of out just people couldn't help themselves. It was like very outspoken. To me, I've seen the Republican Party seemingly go further into some kind of weird, you know, race based sort of conservative standpoint. Like so explain that to me, because it based on what you're saying, Like it kind of like the thing with medicare. They're like, no, we don't want that, we want to be whatever the boomers are asking for it. But but I don't know that. I mean, again, you said it was a very white generation. But I see a Republican Party that moves further and further to an extreme right position, which feels incompatible with what you're to. What you're saying the demographics of the country as they as they are evolving, And I am I mistaken and in reading it that way, No, you're not mistaken that. What you're doing, though, is you're you're restating the thesis of the book, right, which is that what happens in two thousand days, Barack Obama is elected and at the same time you start to see this extremely sharp divide between older and younger Americans. Now they vote, you have a new cadre of more diverse younger Americans coming out to vote for a candid who excites them, who isn't John Kerry, who is an al Gore. In two thousand they'd left Barack Obama. And then you have a reaction to that, which is a lot of people, older people joining this tea party movement thing which is heavily predicated on giving government funding to non white Americans, on a perception of immigration as this toxic thing. But also if you speak to people who study this thing, concerned by older Americans about their younger family members who are under the sway of this socialist who's not even white. Right, this is a moment in which all this becomes very impotent. Then you layer on top of that the census spirit of first pinkance, projection of oh, by the way, in the next couple decades, whites are gonna be a minority in the country, and everyone freaks out. And that's the moment. This is why we're seeing this now, You're right, it predates Trump. Trump leveraged it very successfully, leveraged BLM in twenty fourteen, the Immigration Surgeon twenty fourteen for his twenty fifteen launch of twenty sixteen campaign. But it predates him, and it centers around an older, whiter America suddenly coming to terms with they're losing their grip on power with the election of Barack Obama. Right. I have long felt that, I'm sure you have expressed this, that Trump's rise to power as the voice of the Republican Party is like the death rattle of this generational thinking or this party the way it has been. Like my hope was that like this was like close to the final most toxic, most sort of deranged element kind of trying to get its last gasp after they've experienced the Obama years and had to think about in America where we could have a black president and then some like you know, but it doesn't feel like that was a temporary death rattle. It feels like it was a more permanent, like realigning of I don't know, like a set of values, like I understand, holding onto the things that they feel like we're the way they were and that they want them to stay like. But it's unclear to me how a political party in this country can navigate from that position and we don't just end up in essentially like some kind of civil war, a race based sort of war here, because like, what's the logical end of that? I mean not to be overly dramatic, but it feels like, what is it We just wait for that generation to die out and hope that we don't meant too many new people Like that is that basically the solution? So I'll start by saying, there are four things that identified as unknowns that that you know could certainly change the shape of climate change is one of them. You know, how long people live? As another with the extent to which Hispanics continue identifies hispanic as. The third and the fourth is does America survive as a pluralistic democracy? And yeah, right, that is very much up in the air. It's not clear. I mean, I think twenty twenty two was a good step in that direction. But you know, you know, every time I spoke with political science, they'd be like, well, assuming America surprize as it is, ben X and I spell that people who were very much like you know, I mean, look, democracy, true pluralistic dromocracy in the United States began in the nineteen sixties, began at the end of the Baby boom. Right. You know, one of the fascinating things that I noted in the book, which is sort of the tangential here, is that you know, this this whole reaction to like schools being named after Confederate leaders, after Brown vers support of education. The reason there are so many schools to name was because the Baby boom and made them had to have to build all these schools. And so you see this entrenchment of a very particular style of American politics right at the moment the boom is on set, and right when all of a sudden you start to see blacks get more power. So yes, that's very much a question mark. I do think it's important to note three things. The first is that in twenty twelve, the Republican Party said, look, we either need to become pluralistic or we need to, like, you know, figure out what we're gonna do, and Donald Trump is like, you know, we're gonna just you know, triple down on appealing to the white vote. Then what happens is he wins in sixteen by the skin of his teeth, he loses in twenty and then the party gets demolished in twenty twenty two. Doesn't get demolished, it does it underperforms in twenty twenty two, do well, didn't do good? Yeah, what's the party's first reaction? Ronald McDaniel says, you know, what we need to do is reach out to a more diverse group of voters, which they do need to do, and the party recognize that. Right. Will they do it with the short term I don't know, but I think they internally recognize that something you have to do. The second thing is that the issues on which younger Americans are more concerned, the Republican Party actually has moved left, not on race based stuff necessarily, but on LGBTQ issues on things like climate change, the Republican Party is not as stringent as it was fifteen twenty years ago. Twenty two thousand and four, the party put all these anti seems that marriage ballot measures to try and boost George Bush's reelection right right, Nowadays, the party ostensibly and often you know, basically the subset of the party which is fervently anti same sex marriage. Yeah, is a minority that is a change, and that overlaps with a thing that is very central to younger voters. So it is already making changes to be different to this group of voters than it used to be, right. I mean, it is fascinating to think about a future state of the Republican Party that actually embraces that stuff, because I feel like, yes, on the surface, that is feels like it's true that there's been a loosening of sort of the conservative viewpoint on things like the LGBTQ plus community, But at the same time, I feel like, deep down they definitely would vote against anything that helps out that community. Right, They're not really all had problem boys that the junior says, sure, right exactly, and and and the leader of their party is absolutely not aligning around. I mean, I guess in a way, maybe Trump is more progressive on that front than than some of the other potential candidates, because he at least kind of acknowledges the existence of those people, where I think a lot of Republicans for a long time did not. But unfortunately we don't have enough time. I want to keep going because there's I'm so fascinating by this, but I gotta say, like these sort of big questions that you're you're opposing about, like the future of America, are absolutely fascinating. I'm dying now, dying to read the book because you know, I like the setup, but now hearing you actually dig into it, it's just to me, it's just it sounds like such a fertile and frankly confusing moment in our history. I mean, to your point about people saying, well, maybe we don't continue to be you know, this democracy that we've enjoyed. I know that it's talked about a lot. But what's interesting is I mean, and of course this is your forte presenting like data against the possibility of it and understanding the demographics that could drive something like that makes it feel a lot more real. And so that's just scary and fascinating to me. Philip. Thank you so much for coming on and doing this. The book is the aftermath what is the subtitle of the book, The Last Days of the Boom in the Future of Power in America. Yeah, so that sounds very dramatic. I know I was being dramatic during this, but I got to sell books, man, you know, absolutely fantastic conversation. You've got to come back and do this again soon, of course. Thank you. Well, that was a fascinating conversation. I feel like I learned a lot and yet have so many more questions. We're gonna have to have phill It back, especially with twenty twenty four being just around the corner, which sounds crazy, that sounds wrong, But with every passing day we're getting closer and closer to a presidential election in this country, which sounds very frightening and upsetting to me personally. But love to find out what a boomer thinks about it. Love to get in there and just chat with them. Maybe I will. So, yeah, I got to get Phillip back to discuss the florification of America. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week, finally, thankfully, with more what future, and as always, I wish you and your family the very best.