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The Current Transcript for May 20, 2019

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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[Commentary from Raptors-Bucks Game 3 in Toronto]

VOICE: Kawhi Leonard plays a career-high 52 minutes and the Raptors grab Game 3. And they're back in the series.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: It was a barn burner of a game yesterday as the Raptors eked out a win in their quest for the NBA championship. The Raps are beloved, not just in Toronto, but right across our country, gaining fans for nearly 25 years now. It has been quite a ride. So we're starting today with a long ago Raptors player on the long road the Raptors have walked to make it this far. And the Raps were far from the only game on TV last night. There was also the epic finale to one of the most epic series in television history.

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VOICE: The fact that this is really a full stop on the story is sad because everyone's been so invested in this story. We never want to see this just come to a close, but it must and it will be good.

PC: That is actor Isaac Hempstead Wright who played Bran Stark on Game of Thrones and whether the show's conclusion was actually good, well that's now the debate among fans. But no matter because through eight seasons, Game of Thrones was a record breaker of a show. In half an hour, we're looking back on its unique allure and the cultural moment it created. And after that, what is the most defining trait of being a millennial? Please do not say entitled. Because according to writer Anne Helen Petersen, being a millennial is all about being burnt out.

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VOICE: There's these forces that come together to form a sort of like foundation of burnout and they just accumulate more forcefully on the millennial generation.

PC: More on millennial malaise in an hour. Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and this is The Current.

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Original Toronto Raptor Tracy Murray on how the team became so important to Canadians

Guests: Tracy Murray, Joleen Mitton, Steve Sladkowski

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VOICE 1: First of all you, do you hear this? Do you hear this?

VOICE 2: I do they're incredible.

VOICE 1: Unbelievable respect and much respect to these fans, to this country. This is unbelievable. I've never been a part of something like this in my 13-year career. This is special and they really appreciate what their team did. To get back to your question Doris, I knew this was going to be a tough game coming into this building.

PC: That was NBA superstar LeBron James acknowledging Toronto's basketball fans three years ago, after his Cleveland Cavaliers knocked the Raptors out of the Eastern Conference finals. It was a coming out moment for the team and for its rabid fans. For years Toronto was seen as a basketball backwater, in a hockey mad city, but it seems it's a backwater no more. Last night's double overtime win for the Raptors over Milwaukee cut the Bucks lead in the Eastern Conference Finals to two games to one and Raptors fans are certainly on a roll. They've earned a reputation across the NBA as some of the most passionate. They're fans that reflect the diversity of one of the most multicultural cities in the world and their base stretches far beyond Toronto's boundaries, all the way across Canada. Tracy Murray was part of the Raptors earliest efforts to grow the sport in the city and beyond. He played forward for the Raptors during the team's inaugural year in 1995 and came back again in 2001 and 2002. I talked to Tracy Murray from San Bernardino, California before last night's game. Here is our conversation. Do you tune into the Raptors nowadays?

TRACY MURRAY: Always.

PC: Always.

TM: I always keep an eye on the Raptors.

PC: Okay so when you watch a Raps game these days, what strikes you about the team's connection with its fans?

TM: It goes back to day one because if we didn't do our work day one, there might not be a Raptors organization in Toronto. I mean Vancouver came in the same time we did and we must have done something different than Vancouver because we're still here in Toronto, you know and I think we connected with the fans early and established a style of play, established how we're going to be in the community. We really connected with the fans and the fans are really supportive to this day.

PC: So we'll talk about how you know you connected to the community and the style play in just a sec, but take me back, like '95 right. You walk into this Canadian city, the Raptors are an expansion team. It's named after a dinosaur from a Hollywood blockbuster. What was that like?

TM: It was fine. You know I thought it was a good theme, I thought it was a good idea. And during those early days, you know they'll play the T-rex growl from Jurassic Park and then you might hear some of the Jurassic Park songs and stuff like that. And when we go to opposing arenas they would play the Barney songs when we were being introduced and it was pretty funny. And it was a lot of fun being a part of those early days.

PC: Right. Most of the players, maybe all of them at that time, weren't Canadian, right? What did you know about Toronto before you got here?

TM: Well I know a lot about Toronto actually because I came up there and I played in some friendly games. I was representing the USA team for the Pan American Games, so we were up there in the summer of 91, playing two friendly games against the Canadian national team. So I was up and down Yonge Street and walking around and seeing how clean and how the place is and how nice people were around there and it was almost like it was an introduction. Like some trial things going on for the Raptors to be created up there.

PC: So you had receptive fans asnd as you say Canadians, nice, welcoming, all of those things, but when did it hit you that you were going have to, despite the fact that you know James Naismith, Canadian, invented basketball, that you were going to have to teach us Canadians, Toronto sports fans, the intricacies of basketball?

TM: Well clearly it was a hockey town. So we were educating the fans with different things of what to do. It was like hey you know .

PC: What were you teaching us? You said you were educating us. What were you teaching us?

TM: There was a situation and Toronto has very enthusiastic fans. So they have the little balloon things in the back of the baskets for when you shoot free throws. So I was on the free throw line one day, and this was the first couple of games of the season, and I'm laughing at the free throw line while looking up there to shoot my couple of free throws. And so I get a question after the game in the locker room: 'Why were you laughing at the free throw line?' I said 'Well, people, this is an educational point now. When we are at the free throw line, you don't waive those things.

PC: These are like those thunder sticks that you bang together, yeah.

TM: Exactly. That's for the opposing team. You wave it at the opposing team when they're shooting free throws and you try to distract them, not us. So that was pretty funny. But we were all growing together. The organization was growing, the fan base was growing, and there was a lot of education going along with that.

PC: So I mean what fun first of all, right? Like building this all together. But part of the thing about anything new, and especially sports franchise, is that you've not only got to build the team, you've got to build the fans, but you've got to build the brand. So what kind of outreach were you and your teammates doing?

TM: Oh man. We're already a hard working team. So we're already tired. We played the way we practiced. So we practiced that hard as well. So after practices, now you have to go out in the streets and sell the game of basketball. So you know there would be a player that would jump in, a little small minivan with the Raptor and six dance pack members and we would go all over eastern Canada, driving, and selling the game of basketball. Going to do autograph sessions and take pictures and speak and all kinds of different appearances that we would do up and down from Toronto to Barrie from Barrie to Montreal from Montreal to Niagara Falls. We were all over the place and you would you sell the game of basketball. You go out there, you play extremely hard. You sign autographs. You take pictures, you may have appearances while you're there and just to gain the interest of fans all over Canada because basketball is here and we wanted it to be here to stay.

PC: So while you're doing all that, I mean you're playing basketball. I don't think I probably have to remind you that in that inaugural season, the Raps didn't have a whole ton of success, right. You finished the season at something like 21 and 61 -- 21 wins, 61 losses.

TM: Right. But that was probably the most success out of any expansion team.

PC: OK, so you felt OK?

TM: Yes we knew where we were at. We were a bunch of guys nobody wanted. We all wanted a second chance in the NBA. We were like brothers. It was like a brotherhood, you know, a band of individuals brought together to re-establish ourself. So everybody was on the same page. You know, it's not like we got our heads beat in that year. We lost a lot of games, but most of it was within 5 and 10. They weren't like 25 point blow-outs like you would think with expansion teams. We beat Shaq and Penny's Orlando Magic team that went to the Eastern Conference championship the year before. We beat the 72 and 10 Chicago Bulls team. You know we pushed Magic Johnson and the Lakers to the brink. I mean we beat the Phoenix Suns' Charles Barkley team inside Skydome. So we beat some people up coming up in there and you know it was a great success for an expansion team for the first year. It made people excited to come back and see more.

PC: Let's fast forward. Let's get to Kawhi Leonard. That ball against 76ers in a game 7, four bounces and then a shimmy and down that net and everyone across the city and across this country that was watching that game or watched it afterwards you know was exalted. Had some expression of joy and it was magical and awesome. What were you thinking?

TM: Our fans deserved that. Out of all of these years and ups and downs and highs and lows, disappointments, peaks and valleys, triumphs. Kawhi is living right. And that's my way of describing that shot is he is living his life the correct way to get that many bounces off of a fade away from the corner with a hand in his face, probably one of the toughest shots you can shoot and I think that that is the best shot in Raptors history. That one right there. It was almost like a movie.

PC: It was Mother's Day.

TM: Happy Mothers Day by the way with that shot.

PC: Thank you. That's what I tweeted: best Mother's Day present ever. What a great moment. So here we are, you know, playing the Bucks. We'll see how the Raptors do, but what do you think an NBA championship might mean for Toronto's Raptors fans and Canadians?

TM: It would mean the world to Canadians because of course with what Mr. Naismith has done to create the game. But it would mean so much more to Toronto Raptors fans. I mean to now be in this thing for 20, almost 25 years, to have a shot at the title, a legitimate shot at a title, it's an amazing feeling for everybody and everybody is excited; they're on edge.

PC: Tracy thanks a lot for helping start this all 25 years ago and for taking the time to take us back and to today.

TM: You know what it's been an honour and a privilege and a blessing to play for the Raptors that many years ago, to start off a franchise and to just see it grow to where it is now. It's just truly a joy.

PC: Thanks again Tracy. Take good care. OK.

TM: Thank you for having me.

PC: Tracy Murray is a former member of the Toronto Raptors. He's in San Bernardino, California. Well the Raptors are certainly beloved in Toronto, but the love spreads right across our country.

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VOICE 1: I'm from a place called Curling on the west coast of Newfoundland. As soon as we step on the court, we all speak the same language.

VOICE 2: I don't want to talk about any other franchises potentially because right now we're trying to get that one chip. Here's the thing, Canada is Raptor country.

PC: Some callers on Cross Country Checkup, which dedicated their program yesterday to exploring the Raptors connection to Canadians coast to coast to coast. Our next two guests can relate. Joleen Mitton plays basketball for an all women's Indigenous team called, All My Relations in Vancouver. We've reached her in Victoria today. And Steve Sladkowski is a guitarist for PUP, a Canadian punk band. He's well-known for wearing a Raptors jersey when he's performing. And we've reached Steve on PUP's tour bus. They're near Syracuse, New York right now. Hi to both of you.

JOLEEN MITTON: Good. Thank you for having me.

STEVE SLADKOWSKI: Hi there.

PC: Hi. I don't know what to say after last night's game, except for maybe a pheww and oh boy. Joleen Mitton, how are you feeling after the game?

JM: Oh yeah that stressed me out big time, but I'm feeling very good and confident about the next game.

PC: And Steve what about you, were you on the bus?

SS: No we were in Quebec at a festival and there was a huge crowd of people, English speaking, French speaking crowded around a little laptop in the catering watching the game and all kind of collectively melting down. It was great.

PC: So that's so interesting cause you were in Quebec, right? Some people like to think that the Toronto Raptors are a Toronto team, but you're in small town Quebec and people are gathered around.

SS: Oh yeah. There were a lot of confused looks. There were just as many excited and kind of nervous. It was great.

PC: So you, you know saw your first game as I understand it when the Raptors were playing in the Skydome, which is now Rogers Centre. What sticks out was you from that game?

SS: That's funny, it was the Magic Johnson game, where they pushed him to the brink though. You know at the time it was about, you weren't going to see the Raptors, you were going to see other team's superstars and it's amazing how much that changed.

PC: Joleen Mitton, do you remember the first time you watched the Raps play?

JM: It was probably against the Grizzlies when I was like 11 or 12 or something like that back in the day. And it was nice watching two Canadian teams go at it and I won't forget that.

PC: You play basketball on an Indigenous basketball team and basketball is very popular in many Indigenous communities across our country. What does basketball represent to you?

JM: Well it's now sewn in the fabric of our culture like it's how I meet friends and connect to my community. There's also a real pride playing with your city. Like I was listening to Tracy talk about how you're building a brand and you're going all over the place because my team travels all across Canada or Turtle Island, like I like to call it. So we get to meet different people and like build our brand that way and yeah it just means it's the most I guess like most beautiful thing to do because you get to meet all these different people from all these different nations and it's really brought me a sense of pride to be Indigenous here on Turtle Island.

PC: Steve Sladkowski, your day job or I guess night job is playing in a punk band, PUP. Basketball and punk rock aren't you know necessarily an obvious match, but you actually see similarities between the two things. What draws you to both?

SS: You know I think in terms of expressing politics they're the most parallel kind of between punk music and basketball, as any other sport. You know whether that be you know at the NBA moving the All-Star Game for Charlotte, during the transgender bathroom bill, you know there's a progressive through line in the NBA's politics that really kind of feel much in the spirit of what drew me to punk rock.

PC: You wear a Raps jersey often when you're on stage, yeah?

SS: That's right. Yeah.

PC: Why? I mean you can wear a Leafs jersey, you can wear a hundred jerseys.

SS: It's very practical. We have a pretty physical and active lifestyle. So I'm sweating a lot. And it's you know it's like a really great way to represent the city in a way that you know people have started wearing jerseys to our show, either of you know their teams sometimes. We were in Philadelphia during game two of the last series and people were wearing Sixers jerseys and there was some back and forth between the crowd and us on stage. So it's a fun way to just kind of engage people in a different way.

PC: Because at that game, when you were playing in Philly with your band, you're on stage. They're, lots of them in the crowd are wearing 76ers jerseys, you're wearing your Raps jersey, yeah?

SS: Oh yeah.

PC: And it went over OK?

SS: No, no, I was booed.

PC: Yeah. You were booed. That was it?

SS: Yeah that was mostly, that's kind of where it you know people were still, it was obviously in the spirit of fun. I think sports fandom has kind of an interesting way of bringing people together like that.

PC: Joleen Mitton you talked about you know when you were 11 or 12 watching the Raps play the Grizzlies, the Vancouver Grizzlies, who were an NBA team from 95 to 2001. We heard Tracy Murray reference that too. How was the transition for you from being a Grizzlies fan to a Raptors fan?

JM: It was gradual, but I love basketball so much that I actually liked Philly for a while. I loved Iverson, so it was like it was a very yeah. It was a slow incline to go to the Raptors, but you know what, they're Canadian and I have to support my country in that way. So yeah that's basically why I started enjoying Toronto and I really liked, when I was there, it was a great city. It's beautiful. It's very multicultural. I was just there a few months ago for Toronto Indigenous Fashion Week and I just love it there.

PC: What do you think it is about the Raptors? Because as you say you got to support your country, it's how you sort of approach it, so we're the only, Toronto is the only NBA team in our country, but what is it about this team and this franchise do you think that makes them resonate so strongly with fans, really no matter where you live in Canada? You can find Raptors fans everywhere.

JM: Well for me it's the individual player. I'm a huge fan of Kawhi and I usually fall in love with the player before I fall in love with the team and that's kind of been the way I pick my team in the past. But Kawhi is such a great leader and has a great story and he wanted to win and he's like he's a quiet leader, which like I'm all about. So it was great to watch him play and yeah that's that's basically how I'm looking at this franchise. And then how it's built around him in the last season.

PC: And Steve, what do you think it is? Because it isn't just Kawhi. I mean we can go back to Vinsanity and Vince Carter and all those things, what do you think it's about this team that makes it resonate for Canadians no matter where they live?

SS: I think there's just there's there's something about watching a team kind of come together and really kind of make a competitive run and there's always going to be that kind of outsider feel to the team, no matter how established it is. And I think that we're like gotten kind of deep on Raptors Twitter. You'll see that outsider kind of, it's bordering on paranoia, but that kind of really binds people to a team that feels like you know even from We the North and then kind of the whole attitude around the team as this sort of outsider, kind of underdog, collective mentality that I think people just rally behind.

PC: OK we'll leave it there. Joleen Mitton and Steve Sladkowski, thank you very much for your time.

JM: Thank you.

SS: Thanks so much.

PC: The CBC News is next and then we'll talk about Game of Thrones.

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Medieval era was more diverse — and less violent — than Game of Thrones would have you believe, says expert

Guests: Kavita Mudan Finn, Sadaf Ahsan, Eric Adams

PC: Hi again. I'm Pia Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

PC: Still to come, millennials tend to get a bad rap in the media for being coddled, entitled and unusually enamoured of avocado toast, but we will bring you my conversation with essayist Anne Helen Petersen who argues that the key to understanding this much maligned and misunderstood cohort is the fact that they're just plain burnt out. First though, winter has come and gone.

[Music: Theme]

PC: So last night was the long awaited finale of one of the biggest television shows ever. Game of Thrones set ratings records and records for illegal downloads. It was praised and it was panned and it was one of the few remaining watercooler shows out there. Its fans are legion, but if you are like me and haven't watched it, here's what it was in about 90 seconds. But before I play that, I just want to warn you that our conversation ahead may contain explicit discussion of Game of Thrones and that includes spoilers, if you're not caught up.

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[Game of Thrones theme]

VOICE: OK. So the story takes place on Westeros, which is a fantasy version of England in the Middle Ages, except with dragons, zombies and zombie dragons. You rule the country from the Iron Throne, which is that chair of swords your friends keep posting on Facebook. When the series started, the king was Robert Baratheon, but he died after a suspicious hunting accident.

[Scene of Robert Baratheon's death announced]

VOICE: Then his son Joffrey took the throne. Well actually, Joffrey was the son of the queen and her brother. Incest is big on the show, but he was poisoned at his own wedding.

[Scene of Joffrey dying]

VOICE: Eventually Joffrey's mother Cersei took over, but she didn't live long either.

[Scene of Cersei's death]

VOICE: So in the final episode, the whole fandom was waiting to see who would take the Iron Throne. Would it be Jon Snow?

[Jon Snow dialogue]

VOICE: He's the one with the fur cloak and the hipster beard who we all thought was the illegitimate son of the Warden of the North, but turns out he was secretly the grandson of the Mad King who ruled before Robert Baratheon. Or would it be Daenarys Targaryen?

[Daenarys Targaryen dialogue]

VOICE: She's the one with the fire breathing dragons and silver blonde hair and awesome robes. To make it even more complicated, turns out Daenarys is Jon's aunt and they've been getting it on romantically without realizing they were related.

[Jon Snow and Daenarys dialogue]

VOICE: So really this is a show about family.

PC: That is a very limited sketch of a sprawling eight seasons series. It didn't even mention Peter Dinklage, who has won three Emmys for his role. So it's basically impossible to condense Game of Thrones into the next twenty or so minutes, but we are going to try. We are looking at what happened during last night's finale. Spoiler alert: warning there for people if you haven't watched it. What made Game of Thrones such a cultural obsession and how it actually changed television. Joining me are three people, Sadaf Ahsan. She's a TV critic at The National Post. She's here with me in our Toronto studio. Kavita Mudan Finn is a medieval scholar who also studies fan culture. She's in Concord, New Hampshire. And Eric Adams is TV editor at The AV Club. He's in Chicago. Hello to all three of you.

KAVITA MUDAN FINN: Hello.

ERIC ADAMS: Hi.

SADAF AHSAN: Hello.

PC: OK. Again, I'm out of my depth here because I've not watched a single frame of Game of Thrones. But let me first get a hold of your sort of headline, a word or two on last night's final. Did it do the series justice, Sadaf?

SA: Absolutely not. I thought it fell incredibly flat. Let's put it this way. There was a literal actual budget meeting at the end of the episode and yet the entire episode felt like a budget meeting.

PC: OK. Eric, I think that's a pan, if we're choosing between pan and praise, but where are you on last night?

EA: Well I kind of liked the budget meeting side of Game of Thrones so I was happy to see that come back at the very end, but I felt the spectacle of it kind of overwhelmed everything.

PC: You are not the biggest fan of Game of Thrones, right Eric?

EA: I you know I would put myself as a medium fan of Game of Thrones. I covered it for a few years for the AV Club and I've continued watching it becauseit was the biggest thing on TV and it was kind of out of a professional obligation that I keep on covering it. I've never been very, very invested in it.

PC: Kavita, what did you think of last night's finale?

KMF: I thought it was better than I had anticipated, based on the prior episode, but I still think they needed 10 episodes in this season to wrap things up properly.

PC: OK. Again I don't watch this, but I am on Twitter and basically Twitter is a wasteland for me on Sunday nights because everyone is tweeting about Game of Thrones and the one thing I've taken away from that is that there has been a lot of criticism of this final season in general. Sadaf, is that fair?

SA: Oh 100 percent. I think the thing with this show is there's so much story, there's so much detail. It's very big and this last season has been very condensed and that's meant rushing through a lot of the plotlines, skipping a lot of important detail. People are travelling from one end of the country to the other in a matter of minutes when before it used to take seasons.

PC: OK. Eric there is I think it's a change.org or something, fan petition to remake, like let's have a do over of the final season of Game of Thrones with, these are other people's words "competent writers." What do you make of that? Like was it so bad that you wish you could just rewind the tape and have a new final season?

EA: I don't think it was that bad. I think some of the reaction has been unnaturally and inorganically amplified just by the sort of culture of fan entitlement that we live in now, where people are so accustomed to maybe having greater say in the entertainment that they engage with that they think that they can make a ship as large as Game of Thrones turnaround as it's coming to a completion.

PC: There have kind of been through all eight seasons, two talking points about this show. One is well, there's a lot more than that, but two that sort of stick out and have been debated. One is that there is a lot of female nudity in almost every episode, but also the use of violence and sexual violence and critics have called it gratuitous. Eric, from where you stand and reviewing this stuff, where does that all fit in? Like what do you think of that? Was it gratuitous violence? Was it too much? Was it over the top? Was it necessary?

EA: I mean it was very frequently gratuitous violence. I think, I'm not someone who's read the books. I came to the show kind of as a novice as to the world of Westeros. But you know like it establishes itself as this kind of brutal patriarchy, so we can expect that there's a certain amount of women being in as being so out of power that they could be only be looked at as objects to have sex with or to push around the way that Ramsay Bolton pushes Sansa around and abuses her. And it just, you know it's this part of this world that I think the show wound up putting a little too much focus on because the show itself became so interested in shock and awe, especially around its fifth and sixth seasons.

PC: Sadaf, what justifies in your mind or does it, that the use of extreme violence on the show?

SA: I mean so much of what these shows excuse has been is that this is essentially the Middle Ages. Things happen, but this is TV and you can kind of take creative licence in the way that you want to and I think what they've done is use rape as a plot device quite often and much more than we needed it. That loses its shock and awe after the first couple of seasons. So that's unfortunate. I mean we saw Sansa explain her rape and abuse from Ramsey, this season is the reason that she was able to become what she was and become this great ruler now. And I think that's a little bit unfortunate. I think women can have other motivations, but this show has made that quite limited and I think that's one of the issues.

PC: OK. So that point in Season 5, it was really like one of the biggest sort of controversies of this show. It caused a lot of anger. So explain that anger to me, Sadaf.

SA: So I mean in season 5 we see her forcibly married to Ramsey Bolton, who was a terrifying guy. Probably one of the worst villains the show's ever had. And part of his whole shtick was that you know he was essentially raping her day and night. That was the whole thing and you know the women essentially are used as chess pieces, you could say. A lot of the people are and I think a lot of the outcry was why are we seeing yet another female character being used in this way, especially this one who hasn't really kind of been "tainted" in that way in quite a bit of time. It was unfortunate and yeah I think it was just the final straw for a lot of viewers and I understand that.

PC: OK. So the Mary Sue, which is a popular feminist website covering geek culture, announced after that scene season 5, that it would no longer be actively promoting Game of Thrones. Kavita, what did you make of that decision?

KMF: Well it wasn't just because of Sansa Stark. I think it was partly because of Sansa Stark, but it was also because of the really awful treatment of characters of colour in the Dorne plotline because that also happened at the same time as the rape of Sansa Stark in Winterfell. So I think it was those two things put together that prompted the Mary Sue to make that decision. And I for one certainly understood it. I mean I kept watching the show afterward, but certainly I was less enthused about it than I had been for the first four seasons.

PC: The other point that Sadaf brought up was this was set in the medieval period and some fans of Game of Thrones have defended the gratuitous violence, sexual assault as a realistic portrayal of how it used to be back in the day, back in the medieval period. You are a medievalist. Is there anything to that?

KMF: It is an exaggeration. I've written a piece for the Public Medievalist that showed up last Thursday that essentially describes it as a refraction, rather than a reflection of the medieval period. I think Game of Thrones tells us far more about what we think the medieval period looked like than anything that the medieval period actually looked like.

PC: Break our fantasy bubble some more. What did it look like?

KMF: Well one of the things that I have noticed is that at least in terms of gratuitous violence and sexual assault and things like that, what George R.R. Martin has done is take in certain events that happened over periods of decades, even centuries and then squashed them together, so that it looks like these things happened over and over and over again. There was such a thing as a war crime in the medieval period. People didn't do that normally. For instance what Daenarys does in the penultimate episode of the final season, where she lays waste to an entire city, that did happen, but it did not happen often. And there would have been a much greater reaction to that than I think the show would lead us to believe.

PC: You were a fan. You're also critical and you have a lot of knowledge of what really happened historically and how this show you know made things up as fictional television tends to do, but how did you kind of reconcile those two things. You know it's like a lawyer saying I can't watch that legal drama or a journalist saying I can't journalist thing. Just you know the beeps on the computer don't sound like they really do in real life. How did you reconcile this stuff as a medievalist scholar?

KMF: Well one of the advantages of being a medievalist and an early modernist as I am, is that you get very comfortable with variant texts. You get very comfortable with the idea that it doesn't have to be, that there's no such thing as accuracy. There's only what people, the kinds of stories that people tell and how the same event can have eight different versions and none of them will match up. So I've just kind of accepted it within that. I just look at Game of Thrones alongside Thomas Mallory's Morte d'Arthur, the Vulgate Cycle from the 14th century, all of these different texts that tell the same story, but in very different ways.

PC: Eric, you know this show like many other things on our screens this day had an active fan base that and critics too that let it be known to the makers of the show what they were thinking about it as it moved along. So after that sort of turn in season 5 where some people are like I'm not sure about this and I'm out, what did Game of Thrones creators do that changed the relationship between fans and its creators or did they?

EA: Well I think it's a very interesting and complex question there because that's also around the time when the creators ran out of source material to work from. You know they're working from a book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, a title which was shouted out in very obvious and headbanging fashion during the finale last night. Those books by George R.R. Martin, that series is not complete yet. So what wound up happening is that the creators and show runners, Benioff and Weiss were kind of working ahead of things and so at that point you start to see you know not only, there had been periods in the show where they had diverged from the text. You know there's this very important supernatural force Lady Stoneheart that was kept out of the show, but is still a factor in the books. And I think at that point in time the expectations of what an adaptation of those books should be and what Game of Thrones was started to diverge a tremendous amount. And also it started building toward a much more conventional conclusion. I think in the midst of the show when it seemed like no character was ever safe and someone as beloved and as obviously heroic as Rob Stark could be used as cannon fodder, as much as any faceless goon in his army. I think there grew this expectation that it wasn't going to end the way that it ended last night, where you know like suddenly Jon Snow is handed this moment where he has to make the decisive decision to be totally redundant. You know I think that there was this expectation, you know in that fan petition. There's that line that's like subvert my expectations and that was kind of the reputation that this whole saga had was that like it didn't go in the directions that your average high fantasy saga did. It kind of took those things and turned them on their heads and eventually as Game of Thrones came to a conclusion, it became more and more apparent that that wasn't going to happen.

PC: Sadaf, you know the thing about when people who watch Game of Thrones talk about it, like they talk about it in this very passionate way. Like maybe they live in this place or like they cared deeply about it. It was a season finale last night, television shows end. People debated the end of Friends many years ago, but it wasn't this intense. What is it about this show that makes it have such die hard, really they're all in fans?

SA: I think people do feel like they live inside that universe and to a certain extent they do. That's the beauty of storytelling and I think the beauty of this show and it's very singular in this way for television is that it's always kind of been able to straddle the very large action set pieces of let's say an Avengers film. And it also has the very deep and intense emotional nuance of let's say a best picture. That's very rare. And I think it's kind of what's been able to pull in so many people and so many different kinds of people. And on top of that we've been with this show for 10 years. So you almost feel like I suppose it might be a family member in your life and I think also because it has this great source novels that people have been dedicated to for even longer and are still waiting on for now after the TV series. So it does become a part of your life and it's also event viewing. The last time we had that the best I can think of is Lost and I think a part of that is also on Monday morning when you see everybody talking about the show on Twitter and maybe spoiling, but also having these hilarious hot takes or whatever they made of it. That's been part of the fun.

PC: Kavita, why do you think Game of Thrones had such a big cultural impact? Had a cultural moment and as Sadaf said, it's been 10 years.

KMF: I think there's a couple of things going on. I feel like Game of Thrones hit at a very specific point. It was I feel like the show started maybe 10 years after the first Harry Potter film was made and shortly after the last Harry Potter film was made. So I think a lot of those fans by that point had grown up and had moved from Harry Potter into this fandom that was just starting to develop, well or at least the show fandom was starting to develop. The book fandom had been around for years. And there was also Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, which had also first was first released in 2001. So I think there was an appetite for these kinds of stories and Game of Thrones filled that hole when it first started airing. Plus it was drawing, as Sadaf said, on this enormous series of books that already had its own devoted fan following. The thing about the books is that the universe is so immersive. They've got encyclopedias, they've got map books, they've got cookbooks, they've got all kinds of stuff and it's one of those it does feel like it's own universe, which I think was part of why the kind of conventionality of the finale felt so disappointing to a lot of people.

PC: You know you said like since it came after Harry Potter. But in 2019, I mean it seems like there's kind of a nostalgia for this really ugly past, where racism and misogyny were everywhere, where might made right. Why do you think Kavita, we want to escape, at this point, to there?

KMF: I don't. I mean there's an ugly side to that and there was a very good piece that came out just I think yesterday morning on Game of Thrones and the treatment of the peasantry, which connected a lot of these themes to the growing white supremacist movement. And I think there is something in that because one of the problems with medievalism as it stands today, which is sort of the modern depictions of the medieval period, that are not necessarily accurate to the medieval period, is they fall back on these stereotypes that women were subjugated. That people who, people of colour did not exist. That white men ruled everything and they position that as though that's a good thing and that's something we should go back to which again, I feel like if, I feel like the series finale really doubled down on that. If you looked at the final scene with the small council, where were the women? Brienne was there, but nobody else was. And it sort of felt like people were returning to this status quo and there is something troubling about that.

PC: Sadaf, where do you see this, our desire, people who watch this show that go back to this really bleak past, but also the vision of the entire series is really bleak.

SA: I think so and I think as much of as much escapism as there is, this show is very heavily political. And I think it became so, especially towards the end and I think it started to maybe parallel life in ways that people didn't really expect and maybe didn't even quite see and I think that's part of why there was such a bit of a lashback towards the end. But I do think it's interesting in that sense. I mean I also think of Madmen, towards its end you know we rarely saw characters of colour in that show either and the excuse was always, well this is a period drama. You wouldn't see anybody in that way. And the fact that we're still kind of hammering on that detail, I think is a little bit sad, especially in television. So I think again, as much as there is an escapism value to it, this is an action adventure show. It's fantasy. We tell ourselves it's not remotely real, but I think there are a lot of elements to it that are kind of disturbingly real and to reckon with them is a little bit chilling in that way.

PC: Eric, I mean Game of Thrones, not just because it spent so much money making this thing and had record audiences, but because of the kinds of issues it delved into and we've been talking about and people debated it, it did change TV. I guess the question becomes did Game of Thrones changed TV forever, Eric?

EA: I think it'll certainly change TV for the next four or five years or rather long the current development cycle lasts, where broadcasters are chasing after the next Game of Thrones and are trying to convert all of these disparate genre sources into new TV shows. You know Amazon's spending somewhere upwards of a billion dollars to make a Lord Of The Rings show that isn't even based on you know the main books that everybody knows. Like this Lord Of The Rings show is going to take place before the Fellowship of the Ring even comes together. So like there are these broadcasters and these cable channels and these streaming platforms that are really banking on that appetite that we were talking about earlier and kind of hoping I think that you know this current confluence of interest in "geek culture" and the way that's kind of spilled over into the mainstream with the help of Harry Potter and the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Game of Thrones, will sustain itself for a little while longer. But you know chances are that the next show that is as big as Game of Thrones and that we talk about in this way, isn't going to be in this genre. You know like Game of Thrones kind of snuck up on us. So it's entirely possible that, hey, maybe five years from now, Monday mornings we're talking about like a really quiet family drama maybe or maybe there's going to be a big comedy that comes in and roars in and lifts everybody's spirits up, but yeah.

PC: Kavita, you know you have the long view on this. Medievalist scholar that is a big fan of this show and has watched it, what do you want us to take away from Game of Thrones, whether we watched it or heard discussions about it, like what do you want us to think about?

KMF: I would like people to think about Game of Thrones as just one example of this genre and I would like people to think about using their imagination a little bit more. And like if you can live in a world with dragons and zombies, why can't we live in a world where women get to do more and where people of colour get to do more? Why can't we live in a world that's more diverse and more interesting? Because that's what the actual medieval world looked like. It was more interesting and more diverse than Game of Thrones would have us believe. So I'd like to see some more imagination.

PC: OK we will leave it there. Thank you all three. You guys all have to make big plans for next Sunday because you have nothing to do apparently now. Thank you all three for joining me.

KMF: Thank you.

SA: Thank you.

EA: Thanks for having us.

PC: Kavita Mudan Finn is a medievalist scholar who also studies fan culture. She's in Concord, New Hampshire. Sadaf Ahsan is a TV critic at The National Post. She's here with me in our Toronto studio. And Eric Adams is TV editor at The A.V. Club. He is in Chicago. Alright, if you want to talk about Game of Thrones, do get in touch with us. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Coming up, what does it truly mean to be a millennial? They're often referred to as coddled, lazy or entitled, but the truth of the matter apparently is that they're burned out. We'll talk about that. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current. We're back in a bit.

[Music: Theme]

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Why this writer says burnout carries 'a different weight' for people of colour

Guests: Anne Helen Petersen, Tiana Clark, Vass Bendar, Shannon Palus

PC: Hello. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in Anna Maria Tremonti, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

It's noon. Time to start the day after checking our emails, social feeds and blogs in bed. The millennial springs to life then makes a quick organic, vegan, gluten free breakfast asai ball. She feeds on a diet consisting primarily of likes and instant gratification. After an arduous three months in the work force, this millennial has discovered that adulting is just too high. The struggle is real.

PC: That is David Suzuki on the Nature of the <illennial. And that's from a parody of The Nature of Things. The CBC comedy video was made last year. Although meant to be funny, it does touch on how some people tend to view those born between the early 1980s and late 1990s as lazy, entitled, coddled. And now according to a viral Buzzfeed article, we can add a burnt out to that list. Published earlier this month, writer Anne Helen Petersen says millennials are getting a bad rep, but they're not lazy. They're burnt out. We'll be speaking with some of those burn outs in a few minutes but first Anne Helen Petersen is a senior culture writer and Westrom correspondent for Buzzfeed and she joins us from Missoula, Montana. Hi.

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Hi. Happy to be here.

PC: What was on your To Do list when you first began to think, 'ugh, I'm burnt out'?

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Oh. It was- still on my To Do List which is bring the shoes to the cobbler and bring the knives to the sharpener. And there's other things too but those are kind of the most annoying ones.

PC: So you have, like many of us do, a long to do list. These kinds of things have led to you being burnt out. So tell me when you used the term 'burn out' what are you saying?

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Yes so it's not just that like bringing the shoes to the cobbler makes me burnt out. It's more, that I and a lot of other millennials - I don't want to say this is uniquely millennial thing I want to say it's our baseline in a way that also goes to other generations - but I am spending so much time working, all the time and always trying to optimize my time, that things are on that bottom half of the To Do list seem to never get done and I feel an incredible amount of shame about that.

PC: And so as you say, look this isn't a generational thing. We've all got all the bottom half of our To Do list that is done. And I'm a Gen-X, I'm burnt out too. So what is it though, because you're trying to get at something that is specific to your generation? What is that?

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Well in the piece they talk a lot about how there's these forces that come together to form a sort of folk foundation of burnout. And they just accumulate more forcefully and the millennial generation. And when I talk about some of these are pretty American and that includes monumental student debt. Precarity, when it comes to health care not knowing if you're going to be able to cover your health care or have any coverage in the first place. But also just the continual not knowing where you are in the job market, not being able to afford the milestones like homeownership that you know previous generations they're are like 'Oh' as soon as they owned a home 'I'm an adult'. But what happens when you don't think you're ever going to be able to own a home.

PC: And so some of those things are specific to the others the student debt, the home ownership. These are things that we hear from people of your generation here in Canada as well. But I guess a lot of you especially the older ones lived through the 2008 economic crisis. And that's when you were trying to enter the workforce or going to college or university with arguably a little hope of finding a job, yes?

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Yes and I am an old millennial, which means I'm on the upper end of that age group. So first the first time I graduated from college I entered into the after effects of the dot com bubble burst. And so there were no jobs when I graduated I went back to grad school, and then endured grad school and came out from grad school in the aftermath of the financial crisis. So there is little experience of adulthood that has not been incredibly influenced by economic precarity.

PC: It's a [unintelligible]. What's been the response?

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: The response has been massive. I thought that like maybe it might resonate with some people, but it seems to have given a name to something that a lot of people have been experiencing, in either thought that they were alone or that you know that it was something to be ashamed of. It was a personal failing instead of societal affliction.

PC: And I imagine you also got some criticism some eye rolls and give me a break, yes?

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: You know not as much as I was anticipating. There are people from older generations who say 'I'm feeling this too', but that doesn't mean that you are also feeling it. Or people who said that they were sent the article by their kids and that it really helped them to understand how different their kids relationship to work into working all the time has become.

PC: That's interesting that you say that, because I think colloquially many people kind would say look 'yes it's hard to get a job. You get precarious in employment. Yes you're broke like so was I when I was 20' right. But you're saying that you actually found some sympathy for what you and others in your generation are going through.

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Absolutely and probably that depends on whether someone with a boomer or like imaginary radar. Let's say you have to wonder whether they have someone in their life who they either feel sympathy for or they feel resentment towards it. So I think it indicates how they react to this article. Either they want to try to understand how things are different or they are firm in their position that life has always been hard and buck up.

PC: You as you said you categorize yourself as an older millennial. You're 38 years old. You used the word adulting in your article. What does that mean to you?

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: So I didn't come up with that word. That is the word that is often times used to describe millennials in a derogatory way. And what that means is that some mellennials online have adopted this view of like 'oh I did this adult thing, so I am adulting' or 'adulting is hard'. And that what I tried to do was think about the reasons why adulting has become a verb. And part of that is the way that life has turned into a massive to do list that never ends, in which joyful things get flattened alongside the less joyful things than. What that means is that nothing feels good. Everything feels real outworks, whether that's parenting, hobbies but also work and leisure activities.

PC: And millions of people have read this article from all different generations. What do you want kind of the takeaway would be? What do you want us to think about?

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Well part of the take away - and this is the immediate takeaway - is burnout is not something that is now suddenly happening to white millanials. There are lots of different communities and people of different backgrounds and different identities who have been feeling in similar things for generations. And so the first step forward I think is to acknowledge how burnout out works differently for people in different situations, and that acknowledging someone else's burnout doesn't mean diminishing your own.

PC: That's to stop being a jerk a Gen-Xer.

[Laughter]

PC: Anne Helen Petersen it's been good talking to you, thank you.

ANNE HELEN PETERSEN: Thank you.

PC: Anne Helen Petersen is a senior culture writer and Western correspondent for Buzzfeed. We reached her in Missoula, Montana. Well we spoke with Michelynn Lafleche. She was the vice president for strategy Research and Policy at United Way Greater Toronto, about what Anne Helen Petersen calls 'errand paralysis'.

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The idea that your mind is so full of other issues that you're so tired from thinking about others, from the things you need to get out that you just can get to your basic to do list - that's to real. People really- research shows that people really experience that. And this concept that you often hear that 'oh people are just being, just being lazy and they don't put enough time and effort towards it' simply it's not true. These are real phenomena that are affecting people's psychological and therefore physical even capabilities to be able to focus on the small things, as well as try to worry about the big things that are affecting their lives.

PC: Joining us now for their own takes on the tedium of tasks and this generational condition are three Millennials. Shannon Palus is a writer for Slate magazine. She's in our New York studio. Tiana Clark is a poet. Author and assistant professor in creative writing at Southern Illinois University in Edwards Bill, Illinois. That's where we have reached her today. And Vass Bednar works in tech and public policy. She served as chair of the federal government expert panel on youth employment between 2016 and 2017 and she joins me in our Toronto studio. Hi to all three of you.

TIANA CLARK: Hi.

SHANNON PALUS: Hi.

VASS BENDAR: Hi.

PC: Shannon Palus, what were you thinking as you listened to Anne Helen Peterson?

SHANNON PALUS: I identify so much with so much of what Anne said. I have a bunch of stuff in my closet at home right now that needs to be returned, that has not been returned. I'm super proud of myself because I finally dropped off a couple third love bras at the post-office that didn't fit me. They need to go back. So much of what Anne talks about really resonates with me, but I also question that all Millennials are sort of dealing with the same baseline level of hopelessness. I've been burned out to varying degrees throughout my 28 year old life. And I have dealt with it pretty successfully through going to therapy. You know I might have a hard time finding the time to return those bras, but I don't really feel good about it. I know that it'll get time or it won't do. And you know honestly about 100 hours is going to be a make or break for me. And that comes with enormous amount of privilege as a white woman with a job making a pretty good salary.

PC: And Tiana Clark, when you first read Anne Helen Petersen' article, what were you thinking?

TIANA CLARK: You know when it popped up on my phone. I was really excited. I am also an older millannial, I'm 34 year old. So not many articles are geared towards kind of that demographic. And so I felt like an had kind of put some language around the exhaustion I was feeling. However when I was reading the article, I didn't really see myself reflected. So often the Millennial conversation is centred on whiteness. When 43 percent of all American millennials are non-white. And there are certain consequences to not doing things and you're to do especially when they costs money. And I think we need you know as a POC millennial, not only in my dealing with the endless emails and the slack of notifications, but I'm still trying to prove my humanity inside and outside of the workplace. And that kind of has a different weight that I am carrying and I felt that wasn't really discussed in the article. And for me my response was to show a black burn off feels like and that I don't feel like I'm even allowed to be tired.

PC: So you're saying burn-out doesn't feel the same. Part of that for you see it differently for racial lines. So explain the point that you're just making which is I'm not even allowed to, or don't feel like I'm allowed to, express or be burnt out as a black person who was a millennial.

TIANA CLARK: Absolutely. I mean there's different stakes that we have to discuss. For example if I'm wanting to set my boundaries in the workplace so often I have to fight that stereotype of the angry black woman, or the aggressive black woman, or that I'm being difficult, or a diva, or demanding. So I can be very precarious for being a black woman in office or academic environment, trying to set your boundaries or even express your boss or your co-workers howl burn-out might manifest in your own life. When so often - and especially in America - there's a whole history of how black women's narratives and black women's pain has been erased. And when my article came out about black burn-out, so many black women reached out to me into that they were crying, that they felt seen, that they were actually so happy that someone kind of showed their lives. So I feel like that has to be brought to the forefront.

PC: And Vass, when you - obviously different demographic in terms of race - but when you read Anne Hellen's article what stood out for you?

VASS BENDAR: So it wasn't, for me as a reader, wasn't the burn-out piece as much as it was that 'errand paralysis'. So this idea that there's a generation of people who are maybe kind of concurrently haunted by the mundane to various degrees. And I wondered you know why is that. I think it's probably a combination of two factors. One is our changing attitude towards leisure. So when you look at times studies and you ask people how much leisure time do you have, people will self-report much less than a generation ago. But when you look at time diaries and how people allocating their time, what our generation has maybe done a better job of is ascribing the language of labor to housework to emotional labor. So though taking your shoes the cobbler, you know, who even knows a cobbler to take your shoes to. Or, donate your clothes, going through these things that maybe are just something on your To Do list and don't do or do not have a financial component, that we're characterizing these things as being work vs. being something in leisure. So now I think leisure is more about doing nothing. Like that's one of the most decadent things. Kind of vegging out to nothing. And the other thing is just the changing labor market for this generation, that different people of course feel and experience in different ways. But when you compare young Canadians now to generation ago, we know they're spending more on schooling. They have more credentials. They'll have a lower net wealth. There's an increasing short termism and erosion of work that I think contributes to this feeling that perpetuates feeling like you're either always working or need to be doing something that's going to contribute to the career you're trying to pay.

PC: It's why we're talking more about that, Vass. When you served as chair of the expert panel on youth employment for Canada, and hearing from other millennials, in what way is this form of burn-out particular to generation? And I know you just spoke a little bit about it, but parcel it up for me a bit more.

VASS BENDAR: I think it's the cognitive load of uncertainty. So we're telling young people, the messages people are getting about work whether they're new or recent grads is you've got to be a lifelong learner. Which sounds expensive and like it takes a lot of time. And that you know some of the jobs you're going to pursue don't even currently exist now and ,you know, the world is changing. And it's changing rapidly. Which on the one hand is exciting and probably to a certain extent true. But on the other hand sets people up - back to the mental health piece - the worry, the anxiety that whether or not you're able to access a therapist or more professional help is going to weigh heavily on you, because those secure middle class jobs are eroding.

PC: Let me ask all three of you. Are you, all three of you, working millennials? Like you all have a job with some security?

TIANA CLARK: Yes. I am a tenure track professor. So I teach three classes a semester. I also travel for readings and workshops and lectures for my book. I am also a freelance writer on the side. So yes I am always working all the time. On average anywhere from 60 to 80 hours a week.

PC: Sharon what about you?

SHANNON PALUS: Yes I have a secure job. When I first graduated from college I wanted to be in journalism and I started out as a freelancer because I couldn't find anything in my fields. And kind of worked my way up to having a staff job, where we actually have a union now and we just ratified a union contract. So I feel more secure than I ever have in my life.

PC: And Vass, you're gainfully employed?

VASS BENDAR: Card carrying millennial eight year out of grads school, seven of those eight years I've been on one year contract but I am definitely gainfully employed. Yes.

PC: Okay I want to ask you that because the three of you in some ways aren't the stereotype that many people have of mellenials, that you're living in your parents basement and that you're just being lazy. You can get work and all those things. So that's why I asked you that. But I want to go back to you, Tiana, because you as you said you penned this article, this is what black burn-out feels like. Can you explain some of that and why you feel it's necessary to add to the burn-out conversation? But I would like you to think of your own burn-out compared to what you saw with your mother, while you were growing up. What do you think about when you compare yourself to your mom?

TIANA CLARK: I had a single mother. I come from a long line of single mothers and tired black women, back to my great great grandmother [unintelligible] who had 12 children, had a farm during the Depression to feed her kids. My mom worked two, sometimes three jobs. She'd worked as an accountant during a day. Change clothes in the car. She'd work at various restaurants to make sure that we didn't have to have any kind of government assistance. But that meant I was also alone as a child, a lot. So even when I called my mom to tell her I was working on this article she was like 'Woo. I've been tired in my whole entire life'.

[Laughter]

PC: You think you're burnt out? My whole life I was burnt out.

TIANA CLARK: That's you know that was what I saw of what being a strong woman is always working. And I love my mom and I think that was an amazing lesson actually. But she also straddled so much debt. So another part of what she talks about not having college debt but having graduate school debt that I think for a lot of black mellennials. I had college debt and added with other things, but also we're paying off our student loans, were also helping a pair of parents bills. My mom is still not in financially secure place. I think some people are born upper middle class millennials are thinking about maybe parents in terms of like long term care in the future. But taking care of my mom now because she's still not financially secure. So I think that's an extra weight that Black burn-out feels like that kind of family load, too, of having that shared responsibility of taking care of your parents when they haven't been able to take care of themselves.

PC: I want to stick a bit with this worth aspect and I want to play a little bit more from Michelynn Lafleche. She was the vice president for strategy research and Policy of the United Way Greater Toronto, who we heard from earlier and her talking about millennial employment. So here is what she had to say about some of the findings of a report from 2017, United Way report into precarious employment. The report was about here in southern Ontario.

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37 percent of the workers that we surveyed reported being in work rules that had at least some degree of precarity. And that means that they didn't have full time permanent roles with benefits, basically. They had some kind of other employment form or work relationship to their employer, including growing self-employment especially among the young. So that really changes their experience of security and their ability to do lots of their life planning as a result.

PC: So Shannon Palus, you have a full time job. You're gainfully employed now. But understand how, in your past and for a lot of millennials, the precariousness of work affects who you are your identity and your place in the world?

SHANNON PALUS: Yes. So I knew that I wanted to be a journalist when I was in college and it was really hard to graduate and look at my options which were basically zero. I think I had some more experience to one of Anne's students, where she said she applied to all these fellowship and got zero. And that's what happened with me in journalism internships. I really feel like I had to stake out my own identity in terms of job. I had this idea that maybe you know I would get this job out of college and that would be who I was, but I had to really create it from the ground up.

PC: And Vass, in what way do you feel like you're always working? Because we hear that from-- I'm always on. Do you feel that?

VASS BENDAR: I have at times felt that. I think that the labor market overvalues experience and undervalues duration. So we want to see from people what kind of-- we're always quizzing them. What kind of experienced do you have? You know what have you done to get you to this next step or there's extra opportunity? We're also again back to that framing you know applying the language of labor to leisure. You know making plans with your friends becomes sometimes seen as work or there is a labor component involved. Or have you gone like a calendar invite from your friend when you're just like 'how are you?' Like 'I'd like to get a beer with you' and get it like an outlook invite. It's quite businesslike. It's just a recognition in terms of the blurring of how we exist, and a big part of that is just the digitization of our lives. So that you know maybe were performing but were also existing online, but that avenue also creates- it just adds to the to do list in a way that a generation ago we didn't have that. Your question was do I feel like I'm always on and working? Yes. Quite frequently I do.

PC: I mean that is an interesting example that you said that you get Outlook calendar invites from your friends. Which does take away from the fun of just calling up a friend or saying we'll me that the local-- everything is planned now right?

VASS BENDAR: It's scheduled, like my parents have enrolled me and having friends. You know what I mean? Like that trope of like how we grew up as a generation of being over scheduled. Yes I do sometimes joke I mean I'm an over scheduled school girl. Shannon and Tiana were giving their credentials, you know card carrying millennial. I'm 32 and like right in the middle of you guys, but was in school for the 2008 recession. And what that recessions done to this generation is it's up skilled entry level work. And we have not seen that go down. So that's where the five years of experience you might need to get that entry level job. It's totally incongruent and yet were perpetuating that rate. So people are trying to collect these differing experiences while also having friendships and extracurriculars and trying to complement those aspects of the life.

PC: Tiana where are you on this one? Where everything kind of feels like work that you always need to be on.

TIANA CLARK: Yes I definitely feel that in my own life. Especially you know being a professor and a writer I have my laptop and my family to me at all times. You know if I'm not going to answering emails, then you know I am working on a piece. I was even thinking of how Buzzfeed article came to me. I wrote a Twitter thread in response to Anne's - which is probably the most millennial thing you can do. And then they reach out to me you know like 'hey can you right an essay in response?' And I was like 'Okay well when do you need by?' Like 'three days'. And I was like oh. So I was kind of laughing that I was experiencing burn-out when I was writing this essay on burn-out. But it was like this important message that I wanted to get out. And so I definitely shifted and moved my calendar. But I think that - and Anne kind of pointed out an essay about fearing that were always on, or actually were awarded by employers for how fast you respond to emails. And how quickly that we can get things done. There seems to be this like fast paced go go go intensity that I think we see curated on Twitter. You know we have these curated moments that move really quickly and you feel like if you're not in zeitgeist that you're following behind. And that creates a lot of anxiety I think for all millennials, especially for me.

PC: What's a millennial to do - because you all carry this tension? You're burnt out and that's fair but also feeling that you have to keep going. So I want your anecdotes, Vass, what are your anecdotes?

VASS BENDAR: Maybe keep a time diary, this is like the more statistical research kind of piece. You know how people talk about do a food diary when you want to like find out about your health.

PC: What is a time diary?

VASS BENDAR: It's just a way to examine how you're allocating your time. So how much time. Now we're starting to talk more more at how- you know, your phone has an app. How much time have you been online today? Or setting yourself limits and helping train yourself in to how much you want to be using devices versus doing other things.

PC: Shannon?

SHANNON PALUS: I'm going to put in another plug forward: going to therapy. And aside from that I found posting on social media how I am really feeling, instead of trying to post curated pictures or just post a quote unquote "highlight real" has really helped me. And I went through an awful breakup last summer, I'd go on Instagram story is just post what I was feeling. That was so cathartic it will be so much pressure from having to try to make it look like I was having fun all the time, because I really wasn't. And a lot of people reached out to me, people who were having these amazing lives, and would say 'oh yeah I went to a break up six months ago yeah I'm feeling down too' . It really helps me connect with people on a real level.

PC: I also want to offer like it's not just what we post but it's also what we see. And that can be draining and emotional on social media too. So yes we do not have to project the perfection of our lives or our little kitchen for a dinner party or a perfect outfit. But the reality is when and if I'm going on Instagram I can be exposed to these other images too, that either push us or make us feel a particular longing or a deficit in our own lives or like we're creeping other people who are our peers. These seem that they're doing more work related or they had a different experience. That's a danger that is historically new and that this generation has uniquely had engrained in their lives that is difficult to name and talk about. And I think that the 'errand paralysis' piece, not the burn-out, is really kind of Anne's Betty Friedan contribution to how we're understanding what life feels like right now and how it maybe didn't before. Go ahead, Tiana.

TIANA CLARK: You know when I think about the cure for burn-out, a part of me thinks like we can't solve racism in capitalism today. So what do we do except for start the conversation. I think it has to be a cross cultural and cross generational approach. Burnout is not a new concept. It's just a particular kind of branding for our age of anxiety. We have to have more voices on the table. I think we need to hear from people who are not able bodied and [unintelligible] community and indigenous community and the list goes on and on, to figure out a diverse prospective on how burn-out manifests in each of our lives.

PC: I want to thank all three of you for just being your authentic self and being honest with me. I appreciate it a lot. Thank you.

SHANNON PALUS: Thank you.

TIANA CLARK: Thank you.

VASS BENDAR: Thank you so much.

PC: Tiana Clark is a poet, author and assistant professor in creative writing at Southern Illinois University. She was an Edwards Bill, Illinois. Shannon Palus is a writer for Slate magazine. She was in New York City. And Vass Bednar is former chair of the expert panel on youth employment for the federal government. She was in Toronto. And our conversation first aired back in January. Well that is The Current for today. Stayed tuned for Radio One for some of the best of Q, including an interview with Geddy Lee of Rush. Now if you want to weigh in on our conversation about millennials or anything else you heard on today’s program or earlier programs, please do. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. You can post on Facebook, facebook.com/cbcthecurrent is the place to do that. Or you can email us by going to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Once you’re there, you can click on the contact us link. And remember you can take The Current with you on the go by going to CBC Radio App. It is free from the App Store or Google Play. I’m Piya Chattopadhyay, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. She’s back to tomorrow. Thanks for lending us your ear here on The Current.

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May 20, 2019 episode transcript

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