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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now we conclude the oral history call-in series we're doing on the most defining news event of your lifetime. We've been taking this decade by decade as many of you know. We started last week with callers in your 90s, then 80s, then 70s. We've continued this week with people in your 60s, 50s, 40s, and 30s as we move forward in time. This final call-in today is for you if you're in your 20s or younger. What's the most defining news event of your lifetime so far and how has it shaped who you are personally or politically or in any other way?

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. For a little extra fun as we've been doing along the way you can mention the most memorable concert you've seen so far in your life. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Your most defining news event and your most memorable concert if you're in your 20s or younger. Yes, teenagers and nine-year-olds or anyone else in single digits, feel free to call in. I know we always have some homeschoolers listening to the show. We've actually had some great homeschool callers over the years which is one reason we try to keep it family-friendly.

Your most defining news event and your most memorable concert if you're in your 20s or younger, 212-433-WNYC. Now, as your calls are coming in and to help set this up, I mentioned yesterday that I could make a case that for anyone under 30 today, there have been more ginormously defining news events in your short lifetime more closely bunched together than for any other living generation. That as epic as the Great Depression and World War II, obviously, were 15 years plus of nonstop intensity right there in the 1960s and everything that implies and the very sudden end of the Cold War in 1989, which was a big, big deal.

Even with all those things from the Depression on up, I could make a case that for anyone under 30, there have been more monumentally defining news events one after another after another than for any other living generation. Let's go through that just a little. If you're turning 25 this year, let's say, born in 1998, you were three when 9/11 happened. I know a 25-year-old for whom 9/11 is he says his first memory, being in his first day of preschool and teachers not knowing what to do all of a sudden, and his mom coming and taking him out. You were 10 for the financial crisis launching the very long great recession.

You were also 10 when Barack Obama was elected president. You were 14 for the Newtown Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Some of you in your 20s were probably the first generation to have active shooter drills in kindergarten. How defining has that been? The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage when you were 17 and took away the right to an abortion, just now, when you were 24. The Me Too Movement broke out in 2017 when you were 19 and the intensity every which way of the Trump era, obviously, since you were 17 if you're turning 25 this year.

The epic era of 2020 which saw the pandemic arrive, the murder of George Floyd, and the big lie followed by January 6th, 2021. All of that doesn't even mention climate change which is not a single event but generationally defining for many folks I know. If you are in your 20s or younger, can you even catch your breath for all the ways that big things in the world have been coming at you basically your whole life? Choose one or just talk about the bigger reality of being in your 20s or younger in the world today and how those things are shaping your life. 212-4 33-WNYC and name a most memorable concert of your life so far if you'd like to throw one in. We'll take your calls after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now to your most defining news events and your most memorable concerts if you're in your 20s or younger. Ames in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ames. Thanks for calling in.

Ames: Hi, Brian. Longtime, first time. Happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Glad you're on. Your most defining news event?

Ames: For me, I think the big one is of course the COVID pandemic. Personally, I had been working in live experiences and event production and then in a very short amount of time had to see all that go away and switch careers to more of a project management role for a tech company. The two things that I wanted to call out with the COVID pandemic is one, the massive upward transfer of wealth that occurred during that time. Also, investment firms buying up homes and making it probably harder for people of my generation to hit certain financial milestones.

Then the other piece is the COVID pandemic in the context of climate change. As climate change worsens, I think we'll see more pandemics. I'm very curious to see how our governments and institutions respond to the massive human need that will come out of the climate disaster. If we're in a place where COVID is normalized, we're supposed to go on with business as usual and things like that. It's just a little troubling all of those things.

Brian Lehrer: Ames, thank you. Do you have a most memorable concert you want to share?

Ames: Yes. I'll go with seeing Japanese Breakfast at Central Park a few years ago in the city's [unintelligible 00:06:22]. I think it might have been a free concert but they're just so wonderful live and I've seen them again since and it was fantastic every time.

Brian Lehrer: Ames, thank you so much for starting us off. Samantha in Bushwick, you're on WNYC. Hi, Samantha.

Samantha: Hi. How you doing, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: Doing great. Under the circumstances, always, what's your defining news event?

Samantha: You did mention it already but I am 22 years old so one of the most defining ones is definitely the Sandy Hook event. I used to live about 20 minutes from there. I just think that it's something that'll stick with me for the rest of my life.

Brian Lehrer: In ways that you can put into words in terms of how it shapes your behavior or your attitude toward life or anything.

Samantha: I think that's something that's really stuck with me is I guess seeing the teachers that I had at the moment, how they had to communicate that to me and how to deal with something so catastrophic and also be responsible for so many small people. I think that's something that is incredible that they dealt with that.

Ames: Do you remember anything about how your teachers did communicate it to you?

Samantha: Yes. I think that it was one of those moments of figuring out whether or not they should have. I was lucky to have a teacher that I was very close with who decided to let us know and let us take the day and we all just leaned on each other in ways that we could. I think I really appreciated that and again, it's really stuck with me.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a most memorable concert you want to share?

Samantha: I will never forget my Justin Bieber concert.

Brian Lehrer: What was your favorite song?

Samantha: Oh man, I honestly can't even remember what songs he played but I remember he came out with these wings on his back. He came out flying into the crowd which was super memorable.

Brian Lehrer: Singing and performance art. Samantha, thank you so much. Zara in Jamaica, Queens. You're on WNYC. Hi, Zara.

Zara: Hi, Brian. I really love your show. I listen every morning. Thank you for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Your most memorable or defining news event?

Zara: I'm 23 and I think that the most defining news story for me out of my 23 years of life would have to be the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014. I say that because I was about 14 at the time, 15, and I remember that being the first time that I was ever viscerally mad at a news story because growing up as a young Black woman in upstate New York, I was very familiar with understanding how institutional racism plays a part in all of our, I would say, institutional systems in America like education and policing especially.

That was really defining because it had really solidified a lot of the conversations that my parents had had with me about how to conduct yourself as a Black child or a Black person living in America which is a very specific circumstance.

Brian Lehrer: Like if you encounter law enforcement in particular or beyond that.

Zara: Beyond that and just being seen by other people as trying to be respectable and always trying to make yourself unthreatening to other people. That has really shaped my identity as far as intersectionality because I'll always identify as Black before any other identity because it is an all-encompassing identity in America because it's what people see and that's how they treat you sometimes.

Brian Lehrer: The Michael Brown shooting, that's the Ferguson, Missouri shooting furthered that in you or changed it in you in some way? Is that what you're saying?

Zara: Yes, it definitely furthered how I see myself and how I believe I need to I guess live and just be when I'm outside, when I'm around other people, or when I'm trying to just live my life, I just can't be as carefree as some other people. I think that's true of a lot of BIPOC people all across any marginalized community, they think of these things. I think that the conversation that you had this morning with the Rabbi and the Reverend was really, really intuitive because those are conversations that I definitely had in my family growing up.

That being Black doesn't exclude you from being anti-Semitic or anything, but it's all-encompassing in the fact that even if you do identify as another identity, that is what people see of you first. You can be Jewish, you can be anything else, but they'll see that first.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a concert you want to share?

Zara: I do. I saw Ed Sheeran at Forest Hills Stadium when I was, I think 14, and I still remember to this today. I loved it.

Brian Lehrer: Zara, thanks so much for calling in, don't make it the last time. Alexander in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alexander.

Alexander: Hi, Brian. I wanted to call in about something that though not too unique, the election of Donald Trump. My perspective on it is what I want to share. I became politically aware during the 2nd Bush administration, I'm 29. With the election of Obama and various other things, everything, the arc of the moral universe seemed to be vending towards justice. Then my fundamental optimism changed to fundamental pessimism after 2016, everything seems to be getting worse. This country seems to be going downhill. There's not enough money for housing, not enough money for schools, not enough money for healthcare. I don't know, everything seems to be backsliding.

Brian Lehrer: It seemed to change around the election of Donald Trump. You're saying as a bright line defining or dividing line moment?

Alexander: I don't know if everything actually fundamentally changed or just my perspective and perception.

Brian Lehrer: You have a most memorable concert?

Alexander: I do. It's one I actually heard about from you and Jon Schaffer last summer. It was Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at Forest Hills Stadium.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, they're so good together.

Alexander: They are, but also Led Zeppelin was one of my favorite bands growing up. Most of my other favorite bands, they're disbanded too, but a lot of my favorite artists are dead by now. It was the first concert I ever got chills to see the performers because-

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Alexander: -he's such a hero.

Brian Lehrer: If we played a little role in putting that on your radar, I'm so glad. Thank you, Alexander. Chloe in Washington Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chloe.

Chloe: Hi, Brian. Longtime listener, second-time caller. You touched on this in your intro how there's a sense among people my age that there's just too much news happening and my peers who have called in earlier touched on a lot of events that I consider formative for myself. Yes, it's just overwhelming, and so just to pick a few to bookend my life. I was in second grade in Brooklyn when 9/11 happened and that changed our city, and it changed our country.

Then fast-forward, all of these what I consider right-wing extremism-related events happening, like the previous caller was saying just like backsliding, which I definitely feel myself. I want to talk about most recently the Dobbs v Jackson decision. As an adult now I work in perinatal health, I'm training as a midwife, and so that was just particularly devastating for me and my classmates and coworkers. Yes, it's something out of all of these news events that probably will have the most direct impact on me in my life and my work.

Brian Lehrer: Do you manage the sheer volume of news events that affect you in your life experience in any particular way? Do you take news media holidays or do you have to process it in therapy, or it's personal? You can not reveal that if you don't want, or any way just this constant barrage of big world events that might give you a hypervigilance or PTSD?

Chloe: Unfortunately, I am very attached to Twitter, but there have been, actually in the last year, I don't remember exactly what was happening because so much happened. I remember feeling like I couldn't listen to WNYC for a little while, which I've been doing pretty much every day for the past 10 years. [laughs] No, I probably could have some better coping mechanisms even though I like to generally be very aware of what's going on in the world and in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a most memorable concert?

Chloe: Yes. October 6th, 2016. It was the closing night of Beyoncé's Formation World tour. It was the best four hours of my life.

Brian Lehrer: Do you remember anything visual from that concert as well as oral, musical?

Chloe: Just the fact that that woman can dance, like I said, for four hours straight. It was just really special because it was the last night she brought Serena Williams, she brought Kendrick Lamar, she even shed a few tears. It was just amazing. My phone died before the concert started, so I was very present, and I don't regret that whatsoever. I could look at YouTube videos later. It was amazing.

Brian Lehrer: Chloe, thank you, and keep listening as much as you can stand it. [laughs] Thank you for your call.

Chloe: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to wrap up with one that's kind of different. Phillip in the East Village. You're on WNYC. Hi, Philip.

Philip: Hey, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I was just telling your screener, it feels a bit silly with all the events going on to focus maybe on one person, but to me, it was the death of Anthony Bourdain. That was really significant to me, which happened in the summer of 2018.

Brian Lehrer: Why him? I'm sorry to say, we just have about 10 seconds left, but why Anthony Bourdain?

Philip: Yes. Just this person that really inspires you to take pleasure and things in your life. It's such an inspiration in his writing [unintelligible 00:17:44] on TV, and I had no idea that he was struggling like that. It just made me realize that I don't have an image of everybody that I think that I know, and everybody is susceptible to mental health struggles.

Brian Lehrer: Nicely put, Philip, thank you very much. Well, that completes this series, but we've got some follow-ups in the works for next week, probably starting Tuesday. Thank you all for opening up the way you did from the 95-year-olds we heard from on Tuesday last week to all our callers in your 20s today. We did this because we live in such a tumultuous time, we thought it would be good to get a sense of where we are today in historical context through this oral history series.

Now on Monday, Martin Luther King Day, we'll do an oral history call-in for anyone old enough to remember the Civil Rights era, so we'll continue in this vein again. Again, thank you for today, and have a great weekend. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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