The Literacy Crisis Is Real (And It's Not Just About Kids)

Support #Millennial!⁠⁠⁠ Visit Patreon.com/millennial to get exclusive bonus episodes, live stream access, and more! Visit our merch store: ⁠⁠https://shop.millennialshow.com⁠⁠ Follow the show in your favorite podcast app and leave us a review! This week we're joined by Shelby, a middle school teacher who's here to tell us exactly how worried we should be about America's literacy crisis — spoiler, it's bad, but also more complicated than "kids these days." We get into what's actually happening in classrooms right now: sixth graders who need to be taught basic sentence structure, reading stamina that's been eroded by screens, and the widening gap between students who are thriving and students who are falling behind. Shelby gets real about what's driving all this — curriculum shifts, tech in the classroom, socioeconomic factors — and shares why she made the call to limit device use in her own classroom this year. If you're a millennial parent who grew up on Hooked on Phonics and whole language, this one's for you, but honestly it matters whether you have kids or not. This week's recommendations: Donate to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library (Pam), 826 National (Shelby), and Overtone (Laura). And in this week's installment of After Dark: Who remembers the olds fear mongering about how we'd never get jobs with our tattoos, piercings, and funny colored hair? Jokes on them! We did find careers (but now we realize how draining they are). Join us for a discussion on the things we thought would impact us more when we were younger. We also have some predictions for which current trends we think will bite us in the ass later! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support #Millennial!⁠⁠⁠ Visit Patreon.com/millennial to get exclusive bonus episodes, live stream access, and more! Visit our merch store: ⁠⁠https://shop.millennialshow.com⁠⁠ Follow the show in your favorite podcast app and leave us a review! This week, we're hitting close to home by exploring the similarities and differences in cell phone usage across generations. Have the Boomers forgotten they used to yell at us for being on our phones too much? Because they are in their phones. We compare the commonality of falling for the algorithm across generations, and explore the ways in which over reliance on mobile devices hinders us. We're also looking at cell phone usage amongst Gen Alpha: at least half of U.S. states have now passed media literacy laws aimed at helping kids spot AI-generated fakes, and several of those states are pairing the requirement with new limits on phone use in schools. This week's recommendations: Laura's got you covered with the FDA's safety alerts tracker so you can keep an eye on the next recall before it hits your kitchen, Eric's deep in a Two Dots addiction, and Pam is recommending 'The Emotion Thesaurus' for anyone who wants to write feelings better than "sad" and "happy." And in this week's installment of After Dark: We love it when state laws change for the better (and tbh, more with the times). We're recounting some of our youthful indiscretions behind the paywall this week... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support #Millennial!⁠⁠⁠ Visit Patreon.com/millennial to get exclusive bonus episodes, live stream access, and more! Visit our merch store: ⁠⁠https://shop.millennialshow.com⁠⁠ Follow the show in your favorite podcast app and leave us a review! It's Confessionpalooza time, and honestly, you all outdid yourselves this round! We're diving into a mailbag of listener confessions ranging from "haha relatable" to "wait, we need to sit with this one for a second," and we're doing our best to hold space for all of it. From AI boyfriends and 4th grade cringe moments to conspiracy theories and health anxieties, #Millennial is here for you! Please note this is not therapeutic or legal advice, and you shouldn't make life decisions based on it. We're strangers on the internet. Have we taught you nothing about the dangers of parasocial relationships? Are you interested in your confession being featured on a future installment? Submit to the #Millennial Confessional: https://millennialshow.com/confessional/ This week's recs are Laura's pick of Maptap and Pam's pick of the Caffeine app for staying focused at your computer. And if you're a Patron or Apple Podcasts subscriber, stick around for After Dark, where we're getting into fandom drama, soft-blocking, and what to do when an online friendship implodes without warning. A little bit of tea from our fandom days brings this conversation to life! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're kicking things off in the Dumpster Fire Corner, where the GOP has apparently decided the best way to distract from a failed Iran war, a military running low on weapons, the Epstein files, and an affordability crisis nobody in Congress seems to be fixing is to dust off Anthony Fauci and blame him for the pandemic. Again. But for our main discussion, we're bidding adieu to summer with a nostalgic chat about summer travel, childhood vacations, and affordability. New data says a majority of Americans are scaling back this summer, with cost — gas, groceries, hotels, all of it — driving people toward day trips or just staying home altogether. But weirdly, road trips themselves are booming, with Hertz reporting a huge chunk of Americans planning to hit the road this year, many of them chasing America's 250th anniversary with Route 66, Boston, and Freedom Trail itineraries. Recs this week include a case for solo travel, the Travle.earth app and Raddle Quest for your next trip planning obsession, and a gentle nudge to protect your mental health by muting triggering keywords on social media. And in this week's installment of After Dark... Pam digs into some serious lore that has us on the edge of our seats. The tea is piping hot! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support #Millennial!⁠⁠⁠ Visit Patreon.com/millennial to get exclusive bonus episodes, live stream access, and more! Visit our merch store: ⁠⁠https://shop.millennialshow.com⁠⁠ Follow the show in your favorite podcast app and leave us a review! This week we're doing our annual SDCC download, and there is a lot to unpack. We start with Avengers: Doomsday, because obviously, and get into the very Dr. Doom-heavy footage from Hall H. From there we hop to Disney+'s Percy Jackson, which just dropped a season 3 teaser and a release date (November 20!) that has book readers buzzing about how accurate this season might actually be. Then we talking about Mike Flanagan's Carrie reboot — yes, with cell phones, yes, we have thoughts — landing on Prime October 7, plus Matthew Lillard's casting as the principal, which, honestly, correct choice. And because no Comic-Con recap is complete without a little discourse, we get into Kevin Feige comparing the Doctor Doom buildup to Thanos and why fans are very much not here for it. Rounding things out, we've got Spaceballs news (Rick Moranis showed UP, people), a surprisingly moving story about how fan campaigning got Coyote vs. Acme un-shelved and into actual theaters, and just an overall reminder that this fandom stuff still means something to people. We close things out with recs: Laura's hydrating her face with the Elf Holy Hydration moisturizer, Eric's deep in Star Trek mode with the Improvised Star Trek podcast (start on episode 85, "The Search for Sock"), and Pam wants you to buy local produce when you can to avoid the current explosive diarrhea outbreak sweeping the nation. And in this week's installment of After Dark... the girls haven't had a chance to catch up on life things in a while! So listen in as we fill each other in on all the updates, family drama, and life happenings of recent weeks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support #Millennial!⁠⁠⁠ Visit Patreon.com/millennial to get exclusive bonus episodes, live stream access, and more! Visit our merch store: ⁠⁠https://shop.millennialshow.com⁠⁠ Follow the show in your favorite podcast app and leave us a review! Grab your popcorn and your feelings, because this week we're diving headfirst into the YA romance takeover happening on your TV right now. We're joined by Christine Riccio (author of 'Thirty, Flirty, and Forever Alone' and 'Attached at the Hip', host of Those Forking Fangirls podcast) to talk through whether we're actually living in a golden age of YA romance television, or if it just feels that way because Netflix and Amazon can't stop greenlighting shows built for people who grew up on The CW and obsessed over the Twilight saga. We get into what's different about the hype around shows like Off Campus, Heated Rivalry, and The Summer I Turned Pretty, how much of this we can credit to BookTok (and social media more broadly), and whether virality now matters more than a built-in fanbase ever did. Christine also brings her perspective as a published romance author to weigh in on how this boom is rippling into publishing. Plus: why does it seem like contemporary romance is winning while sci-fi and fantasy YA (RIP Vampire Academy and First Kill) can't get a second season? We break down what we think is really going on, and what we'd love to see more of on screen. Recs this week: Laura's got Obsession, Pam's bringing author Elissa Sussman, and Christine is serving up 'Cherry Baby' by Rainbow Rowell. Where to find Christine: Instagram, YouTube, Those F%#king Fangirls, Amazon And don't go anywhere after the credits roll — After Dark is getting personal this week with a round of "get to know each other better" questions pulled straight from Teen Vogue's best-friend deep-cuts. Head over to Patreon and support the show at the OTP tier or higher to get instant access! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support #Millennial!⁠⁠⁠ Visit Patreon.com/millennial to get exclusive bonus episodes, live stream access, and more! Visit our merch store: ⁠⁠https://shop.millennialshow.com⁠⁠ Follow the show in your favorite podcast app and leave us a review! This week on Millennial, we're deep in Dumpster Fire Corner territory, and honestly, we can barely keep up. Is Mitch McConnell alive? Is he not? We talk through the whispers, the hypocrisy math, and why nobody inside or outside the beltway is even surprised anymore. Add in a looming primetime Trump address that may or may not relitigate the 2020 Georgia Senate races (again), and you've got a news cycle that feels more like a fever dream than a Tuesday. Then we shift gears to something a little more grounded, but no less infuriating: hobby inflation. Turns out that pottery class or new fishing reel isn't in your head — the cost of having a personality has genuinely gone up. We talk about how TikTok turned hobbies into status symbols, why the pandemic sent everyone sprinting toward socially-distanced pastimes, and how tariffs are somehow now a factor in whether you can afford new lures. We get into what happens when hobbies price out the middle class — the community you lose, the people you no longer get to know, and how this all feels a lot like losing another third space. Basically: it's not just rent that's gotten unaffordable, it's joy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi PALs! Since we're off this week, we're releasing a recent installment of After Dark to give y'all a taste of what life is like behind the paywall. We're sharing personal medical tales, as well as reflecting on someone's lesson learned about assigning beneficiaries. If you like what you hear, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/millennial and consider throwing some support our way! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're turning 250 this weekend, and honestly? We need to talk about it. Join us as we reflect on what it means to be American right now—the good, the bad, and the absolutely infuriating. We're checking in with ourselves and our audience about where we're at as a nation and what patriotism actually means when you love your country but are genuinely horrified by what it's doing. What does patriotism actually feel like? Is it possible to be critical of America without being branded anti-patriotic? And whose history gets left out of the American story we're celebrating? And in this week's installment of After Dark: We're looking back on the participation trophy—how it became a caricature for millennial stereotyping, and why we're still hearing about it in the workplace. Come feel that generational rage with us! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Millennial Special Anniversary Edition—we're celebrating 50 years of Star Wars by doing what we do best: connecting fictional universes to our very real problems. Then we get into the real meat: how the Prequel Trilogy—Episodes 1-3—basically predicted the slow-motion collapse of democracy. We draw the obvious parallels to modern executive overreach, the erosion of checks and balances, and how Congress just... stopped checking anything. We even dig into what George Lucas actually said about all this—spoiler: he was thinking about Vietnam, Nixon, and the way democracies don't get overthrown, they get given away. We're also connecting the dots between fictional servitude and the very real greed on display right now, complete with a deep dive into Walmart's electronic price tags that could—with existing tech—charge you a different price based on what the system thinks you can afford. On theme for this week, we're keeping our recommendations pop culture centric: The 'Family Guy' Star Wars parodies (Eric) and the 2009 film 'Fanboys' (Pam). In After Dark, we're getting personal with some lighter questions: What's your Roman Empire? Have you experienced a friendship breakup? What do you think you'll be like at 80? Join us as Pam and Eric get to know each other better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices