A New Generational Divide: Living with(out) the Bank of Mum and Dad (Dr Eliza Filby)

29:53That's their moment of adulthood. That's when they feel like they have to grow up. Those that are over 45, I think, by and large within reason let's say 50 have lived a three-stage life that that education period of your life stops you know was there it had a definite finite point then your working life and then retirement okay which is probably guaranteed okay may not be a triple lock in 10 years time but there's a retirement coming right anyone under the age of 45 you've lived different chapters you've lived different chapters and you've you've you it's much more complicated It's a multi-stage life.

30:30So number one, we're delaying adulthood, okay, either for financial reasons or freedom. And the adulthood is when do you leave home? When do you finish your education? When do you get married, have kids, and are financially independent of your parents, okay? And for my mum, it was 16. For me, you know, arguably, she's looking after my kids tonight. It's never-ending. So we're delaying adulthood, right? And we're extending, as I said, that adolescence, that kiddlethood period of our lives. We're also not going to be able to give up education or training at the age of 21 because we're going to be working longer inevitably.

31:09So we're going to have to sort of upskill and retrain. And many people do so out of desire, but also I think increasingly we're going to have to do it out of need. And then the big shift is if you like that three-stage life, education, work, retirement was based on the male breadwinner. Okay. Now, Now, women have always worked. Of course they have. But by and large, that male breadwinner operated because there was also a carer at home. Predominantly the one. So funny. I've got to tell you that my Instagram feed is full of clips of Dental Washington, a very macho guy in some ways, a guy behind Man on Fire, no less, saying there are three stages of life.

31:45You learn, then you earn, and then you return. And I thought that was such a simple way of looking at it. but it was rather based on, as you say, the male breadwinner model. Again, I feel like that's a very male perspective because women are always returning. So that three-stage life was based on the male breadwinner. But we have now a majority of millennial households are dual-income households. And dual-income, women have stepped up in the economic contributions to the household, of course. And then you have quite often dual careers. And we saw the pandemic be this chaotic time where partners were fighting against You know, whose career is more important?

32:22Who's who's going to do the homeschooling? That that battle of the dual income household. Wow. She's got an insight to your kids. Yeah, totally, totally. But then if you add kids to that, right, what you have, what women have done in order to contort themselves into particularly the professional track, they have delayed motherhood. They've delayed motherhood until they can. Right. So when's the best time? So this idea of planning pregnancy around your career came into being really, I think, late 80s, but really came to the fore for the millennial generation. And this idea has sort of materialized into women have become incredibly efficient breeders.

32:59And what I mean by this is they've had kids later, they've had them closer together and they've had far fewer children. And, you know, Margaret Thatcher famously said when she gave birth to twins, this is the most economically efficient way of, you know, having children. because she'd done it, you know, in one round. Didn't she not know they were twins until they came up? I don't know. I think Dennis Thatcher might have been at the Oval or something. But, you know, the key thing here is, is that in order to contort themselves into that professional track, women have adapted how they have children.

33:30Now, what's also happened is that as women have risen sort of economically in their contribution to the household, men have risen, although it's a half-finished revolution, in their contribution to the home. So, you know, millennial dads spend more time with their kids, push more prams, you know, change more nappies, do more school runs than any other generation of dads before them. It's not because they love their kids more. It's because fundamentally dual income households, dual career households don't work unless men step up domestically, just if women have stepped up economically. So the shit that the economics of marriage and the responsibilities of marriage have been reordered.

34:10Schools don't really understand that yet and neither do workplaces and neither does legislation. But I think the key, this is that middle rump of life is very much now just much more overwhelmed. And childcare, actually looking after kids before they go to school, has actually, you know, become less and less of our lives because we're having fewer children. We're having them, you know, close together. But looking after our parents is going to be potentially a 30 year commitment. You know, so we have this real challenge of elder care potentially going to be more of our lives than childcare. And so it's actually a fundamental issue.

34:46So if we're talking about men stepping up, you know, changing more nappies, they're also going to have to step up and change more catheters. Because that responsibility for elder care cannot fall entirely on women in an ageing society. What does the data show about the fact that the motherhood penalty, even in this age of feminism or post-feminism, whatever you would call it, to what extent is there still a motherhood penalty in the UK? Yeah, I mean, the gender pay gap is increasingly becoming a pregnancy penalty. And it's really obviously mostly impacts, you know, the trajectory of the female, the woman's career.

35:23So it's not just that you have a child and you have time out of your workplace. You then for, you know, contribute less to your pension. The pension gap begins and basically never closes. Then potentially you've got the child returned to work part time or reduced hours. You know, we still have with hybrid working this culture of presenteeism that may impact you. You know, the impact on your career of having children is profound. And, you know, no one's really come up with sufficient answers as to how you resolve that. It's interesting you say that millennial dads don't necessarily love their kids more.

35:56I would slightly say that maybe millennial dads have imbibed a different cultural script or narrative about the importance of being around their kids more for moral reasons as well as because women have entered them. I think we've entered an era, and I'll give you a personal example here, where public declarations of fatherhood are beginning to serve men really well. In this post-MeToo era, being a dad rather than being a man is much cooler. And I remember when my son was about eight months old and I was giving a speech, couldn't look after him. So Christian, my husband, took him to an event he was doing and he was on stage.

36:35What a great guy. What a great guy. What a great guy. Doing the same thing that women have done for millennia. Yeah, I know. Great guy. What a great guy. He was looking after his own children. Anyway, this particular incident, it was my son sort of was parked at the back of the auditorium, was asleep for most of Christian's speech. And then he woke up and basically Christian, this is how he described it to me, ushered someone to pick my son out of the pram and bring him on stage. and there's pictures of Chaplin, my son, being sort of bounced on his knee and then being fed by Christian while he continued to deliver this speech about comms and newspapers or something.

37:17And I had so many messages from people in that audience adoringly going, what a magnificent public display of fatherhood and what an amazing man to be able to... And I thought, you know what? I have a huge problem with this because... Can I just say you and my wife are going to get on so well. He's a brilliant father. He's a brilliant father in many ways. So much better than I am as a mother. But what's fascinating to me was if that had been me with my kid at the back of the auditorium and then him screaming and me trying to, you know, fancy. Number one, I would never have done it because my authority would have been questioned.

37:55number two I personally couldn't have coped with that cross identity of being mother and professional on one stage all at once I wouldn't have been a very good feeder or speaker and number three I sort of feel like we are lavishing praise on fathers for doing things that as you rightly said women have done women have done can I say am I allowed to say I could not agree with you more strongly on my husband knows this by the way i've repeated yeah i'm sure i feel like you might have sanctioned it um so i get this sometimes if i'm you know if i've got four kids if i'm looking after them you do get let's just be honest you do get people even at the school run i try and do the school run yeah as much as possible which is quite a lot and you get people say fantastic you're here all the time you think but this is just normal for women why why why is it sort of so sort of unequal if you're as a dad you've got four kids after before young kids maybe you're changing a nappy there is this kind of like sort of adulation oh what a great dad you're like this is just what women have done for ages so i i've learned a and my wife is unbelievably smart about this stuff very much like you are it's a really useful corrective and actually as a dad you benefit from doing it because you get to have a fantastic relationship with your kids which is something that previous generations of dad didn't necessarily do but this gets us onto your thing about couples which is there is this phrase that sociologists use called assortative mating.

39:16Yes. And this is about basically marrying off within a class or with half an eye towards economic prospects. And you see, again, maybe I'm following the wrong people on Instagram, but you see lots and lots and lots of social media clips where people say, what do women find attractive in men? And obviously I don't have to think about this too much. But one of the things that is a meme is that men need to be able to indicate future resources. This is an idea out there. What does your work, and you're thinking about this stuff for as long as you have done, show about the extent to which people are increasingly marrying, women in particular, are increasingly marrying for money?

39:58Is that happening or is it an illusion? Right. So the key thing here is assortative mating. You know, it's in nature. and to a certain extent there's biological proof. We tend to marry people that look like us, like us etc etc. But in the 90s as more and more women went to university the sort of mating was that graduates started to marry graduates. So it was no longer the secretary marrying the doctor or not the doctor, the nurse marrying the doctor or the secretary marrying the boss that sort of aspirational a lot of female social mobility came through marriage now it's suddenly like well where's my equal?

40:37Where's my equal? Graduates marrying graduates. Okay. And, you know, what you referred to as future prospects. The future prospects was the fact that you were a graduate, right? Or future resources, yeah. Future resources. What's happened, and the Resolution Foundation's got some excellent work on this. What's happened really since 2008 is it's less that graduates are marrying graduates. It's more that one individual with the bank of mum and dad is marrying another individual with the bank of mum and dad. The families are mating. Yes, which is why. So actually, we've seen the rise of, you know, much more sort of gender fluidity and sexual fluidity in the last 10 years, hardening class fluidity.

41:24You know, there's less interclass marriages. And we may say, you know, that whole sort of TikTok meme of let's let me marry a guy in finance. You know, that whole idea. Actually, don't marry a guy in finance. Marry a guy whose dad was in finance. Right. Because actually what we're talking about here is not marrying someone of wealth through wage, but marrying another family with wealth. And so what you have is indications that one individual with the bank of mum and dad is seeking out someone of equal family wealth. So, yes, we are returning to the age of Jane Austen. I was just about to say that.

42:06I was literally just about to say that. Let me just say. Did someone whisper that to me? Well, it's not my line. I was going to come back and say, this is all Jane Austen, isn't it? No, but it's not. It's not. Because in Jane Austen, the women have no financial power. Whereas today, to be very clear, women aren't marrying for money. They're marrying someone with, you know, equal security. And so it's about financial independence rather than financial dependence. And this is in the context of, you know, 40 % or so marriages end in divorce. And one of the fascinating interviews I have, I had in the book with someone who she was a product of a divorce.

42:51She had now a blended family. Her father had remarried. But she had a partner that she didn't want. She didn't want to ever get married. Her partner and her been together 20 years. They'd never got married. She had a joint bank account, not with her partner of 20 years that she didn't want to get married to. And she said, you know, I've seen divorce. I know marriage can end badly. But she had a joint bank account with her mother because they had co-joined properties and it was a useful way, frankly, of managing those properties. But it's a really interesting indication, particularly for millennial women, I think, that there's greater financial security in aligning yourself with your family than with a man.

43:35we ran some fascinating you gov data for the book and we asked to what extent is financial compatibility important for a relationship 57 of gen z has said yes wow far fewer millennials far fewer gen x's and far far far far fewer boomers said yes wow and and so the evidence shows it is an increasing the family wealth of the person you might spend the rest of your life with is an increasing consideration. But it's not framed as family wealth. It's framed as financial compatibility. And frankly, in a cost of living crisis, you know, and in a very tight, you know, economic set of conditions that young people are seeking to build a life in.

44:23And in a context of social media, all being about financial education, investing in stocks, how to double your wage, how to ask for a raise. It's all about financial education for Gen Z because quite rightly, they know you cannot live by one wage alone. They are taking money and money conversations in relationships so much more seriously than I ever did. And I would say any of my friends did. And the evidence would suggest previous generations do.

44:58If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

45:36I really hope you're enjoying this conversation with Dr Eliza Philby. What a fascinating thinker about the deep trends that we care so much on Radical about. If you are enjoying this, please do us a favour and subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds. That way you won't miss future episodes. And if you do subscribe, just make sure you've got your push notifications turned on. And that way you'll get an alert whenever we publish a new episode. You could leave a review as well. So many of you are being so nice with all of your messages to me. And I love it. And I'm trying really hard to respond. You know what?

46:07Make that very nice message of response, that little review of Radical, a public thing. And if you do that and say nice things about us, maybe other people will find us too and we can expand our club. Right. Enough from me for now. Back to Eliza Philby.

46:24I really want to ask you what you think about whether or not meritocracy is a good idea in principle, even if it's not really been achieved in practice. I think the idea of working hard and getting rewards is a fun, should be a fundamental promise of democracy. feels like a clever way to organize a society doesn't it but let me be clear i very specifically said work hard rather than be intelligent pass exams effort not iq yeah and i think we're going to have to spend the next 30 years redefining what wisdom and intelligence and learning is or redefining meritocracy away within that right so if you want if you said the meritocracy is the worst way of organizing a society except for all the others that have been tried because the idea of merit feels, as you say, there should be some connection between effort and success.

47:16You might just need to, maybe this is the radical idea, you might just need to evolve the idea of meritocracy to get it away from that one form of human aptitude, which is exam passing. But I mean, just getting away from grammar schools would be a start. I mean, I think that fundamentally, we have a narrow, narrow view. Of education? Of education, even compared to the Americans, I would say. So I think that's part of it. I think we have a economic system right now that doesn't reward hard work, doesn't reward work, actually. And and that certainly needs to be addressed. And and we cannot have a system where work doesn't pay.

47:58Work needs to lead somewhere. Even, you know, as we see this great shake up of work. Yeah, I mean, that's my one caveat to what you say would be we might be about to see might. and it's not a prediction or a forecast, we might be about to see the mass evaporation or extermination of huge parts of our economy because functional cognitive tasks are done better, cheaper, and faster by AI, which doesn't need to take holidays. And in that plausible, if not certain scenario, work is even less of a route to wealth or meaning or purpose. isn't the really, dare I say, radical implication of what you're saying that we need to organise our society around the idea that work may not be the route to wealth.

48:47And that family is. I mean, this is... Well, that sucks if you're poor. What's interesting about the inheritocracy is that, yes, obviously, if you are from an affluent middle class family, you are doing very well because you quite often have that triple privilege of a good education, a good job, and family wealth behind you. But also what's interesting is the way that the family has stepped up across all income brackets. So, you know, the hotel of mum and dad, we tend to sort of consider as, you know, middle class young person staying at home to build a deposit for a flat. No, the majority of people still living with their parents into their 20s are in working class households.

49:26And the solidarity of the family within working class communities is a major part of this story of inheritocracy. And the bank of mum and dad, yes, we talk about in respect to housing, education but also grandparents looking after grandchildren you know that there is a there is been there has been a stepping up of the family that um has happened across all income brackets now that is not to say that they are you know um that that there's not huge inequality in this system of course of course there is and this is the major challenge is we have created over the last 15, 20 years, a society where basically it's not what you earn or learn, it's whether you have access to the bank of mum and dad.

50:10And that's fundamentally a divide between those that can have a safety net and a springboard into adulthood when and as they need it, and those that don't have that. The nuances of this are really important. We talk about the bank of mum and dad as it's, you know, there is a mum and a dad. You know, one of the most disadvantages of that you can have in an inheritance is divorce amongst your parents and a blended family or you know you don't get on with your family and and so it's it's it's a lottery of birth in a way that is very hard to rectify unless you start pulling some levers in the economy which ensure you have greater fluidity within the housing market you know 50 % of baby boomers live in houses with two spare bedrooms.

51:02Well, that was one of the arguments for the abolition of stamp duty, which recently can be made. Now, I'm not begrudging that they live in those houses, by the way. Let me be very clear about that. I'm not talking about compulsory purchase here. No, no, no. But there is a stickiness. And the housing market feels gummed up and they say, they've got no incentive to move. They've got no incentive to move. There's not enough, actually, properties they want to buy, et cetera, et cetera. It's also we have heard ceaselessly time and time again of politicians saying building more houses, building more houses, building more houses.

51:32Are you building houses or are you building flats? Because actually what's happened is it's no longer a housing ladder. It's now a housing leap. So actually building flats is now not really the answer to the housing problem. Building family homes is. And that's actually now more and more expensive than ever before. and the house building program in this country has completely slowed down because of the cost of materials. So, you know, all of those promises and planning, I mean, you know, let's not get into housing planning, but, you know, there is a fundamental stickiness there after decades, frankly, of politicians promising, promising, promising, promising.

52:09And then when, you know, we're thinking about radical solutions, how can we really create an education system that is built for the 21st century, not the 19th century? What does that look like? I think it's first of all, cannot stop at 21. Secondly, we cannot saddle people with a graduate tax that won't see them through a working life, which probably now looks increasingly into this seventh decade. I think you've got to be enabling people to upskill in a way that is inexpensive, keeps them agile, keeps them interested. and fundamentally companies have outsourced learning to universities. This is the thing that never gets talked about, is that it used to be you learnt at work.

52:56You were an apprentice. You watched, you observed, you learnt your craft. Now approximately most companies spend on average around 2 % of their budget on L &D. They do not train and invest development. They do not train and invest in their workers. And what we've done in the last 30 years is slap the bill on training on workers themselves through degrees. And actually the responsibility, particularly in the age of AI, I think, and the onus is on companies to start training their workers and not expect these ready-made beings with amazing CVs and these perfect workers to turn up at their door. companies need to be paying attention as to we should have apprentices at 60 we should have apprentices at 30 we should have apprentices at 20 because work needs to be a place not where you do the thing you're good at but you learn how to do the thing you become good at apprentices at 60 does sound like a radical idea on housing it's worth just saying without wanting to come over all nostalgic a century ago in this country we did it you know i've done a lot of presenting the today program from a place called dagenham which is on the borderlands between london and essex one of the many reasons that Dagenham is perhaps the most interesting place in Britain to me is it's right next to a place called Beckon Tree Beckon Tree was this council housing development, council housing for basically people coming back from the war and they built over 100 ,000 homes family homes which were affordable and beautiful in a big green area and that is just very very hard to do at the moment for the complicated reasons you say I should say I don't think that families can't live in flats by the way I think what I'm trying to say is that the way that certainly certain parts of London and certain parts of Manchester, big major cities, where these pods were built for young professionals to get on the housing, I do think needs a slight rethink.

54:45But I think you're right. You know, the state used to do things. And one of the things that I think is part of the story of the distrust, overall distrust, widening distrust that the population has with politicians and the state at large is they don't believe politicians when they say they're going to do something. They don't believe the state can do things. What's going wrong in terms of tax? And what would a radical reconfiguration of the tax system look like to address some of these generational injustices? Well, I think inheritance tax up until last year when there were significant changes has been a tax you can avoid.

55:23With a good financial advisor, as I interviewed a load of them for the book, you know, inheritance tax is a tax that the rich don't pay and even the middle class don't pay because you can move your money around and gift it at the right time and basically end up not paying it. And one of the biggest rises in payers of inheritance tax are those outside of London who get caught without planning and end up paying the tax. Now, that's slightly changed since the last budget because Rachel Reeves integrated pensions into inheritance, the inheritance tax threshold and pot. So there is obviously changes that are happening to inheritance tax in order to really, frankly, the Treasury get hold of that wealth in the baby boomer generation.

56:04And I think that will just happen more and more. But doesn't it seem anomalous to you that you've talked about the advantages that those baby boomers, again, not one big lump, but we're talking about them in generational broad terms, pensions, wages and housing. It's amazing. Lots of them still have final salary pensions, but housing or the increase in the value of those assets hasn't been taxed very much. We've got Council tax bans based on 1991 levels. We've not got a land value tax in this country. And at the same time, taxes on work and on businesses are very, very high. And a lot of people would say that in the context of what you've described, it seems bizarre that we tax work as much as we do.

56:42Yeah, I mean, the fiscal drag is completely debilitating. I mean, I wrote an article quite controversially a couple of months ago saying 100K is not a big salary anymore. Because although sort of psychologically, symbolically, passing 100K seems like a big salary, But actually, the things you lose and the fiscal drag have meant that actually the rewards on that salary are not what they were. And I think you're absolutely right. I had doctors emailing me saying, you're absolutely right. I've gone down to four days to ensure that I still get access to certain benefits and childcare allowance. And that's the last thing we want in an economy that's not growing is doctors only working four days, not five.

57:18So I think there is a huge question mark over how work has been taxed. And I think there is also the dark shadow of the poll tax riots. And that being the reason why, obviously, the council tax system hasn't been changed. Council tax re-evaluations and introducing new bans involve people, a former chancellor told me this, involve people being quite intrusively visited by members of officialdom who look at extensions and side returns and all of that. So they can say, oh, actually, I think you do need to pay an extra 7 ,000 more. So the great promise of the... So do you have a real radical idea?

57:58Tell me. Because we've been going around the houses, as we say, right, in South London. The reason why I'm quietly optimistic about Britain, not many people I know are, by the way, is because we're not deluded anymore. I think we spent post-2008 up until probably a couple of years ago, probably least trust actually thank you liz being deluded about the problems of our economy the problems of our state the problems of of within the treasury and and the budget and the public debt and all of that i think there was a certain level of delusion and you know like the 1970s you have to reach rock bottom before you then rise and and and and and really understand the tough choices.

58:48And unfortunately, this country, like most in Europe, frankly, because of demographics, because of public debt, because of waning trust, because of tech, we have to make radical choices. Now, we can't make those radical choices from an ill-informed, deluded, ideological place. We're all going about meritocracy and grammar schools and build more council houses. No, the situation has changed. We're not in Thatcher's Britain. We're not even in Cameron's Britain. We are living in a society now where there's growing disillusionment and someone needs to come up with an answer. The beverage report was about finding answers, but it wasn't about quick soundbites.

59:37It was about research. It was about rigorous questions. And yes, huge politicking, of course. And, you know, actually withdrawing on some of the promises they made very quickly. But there was a narrative of what went wrong. What was the challenge? And what was the promise out of the ashes of the Second World War? And that's my solution, right? However trite it is, is I wrote a book about the Bank of Mum and Dad, because we need to talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad. it. It's not just the all this Nepo babies relying on. No, this is fundamentally shaping opportunity and outlook and optimism. And the people that are emigrating now to Dubai, America are often the ones without the bank of mom and dad who think they can make it elsewhere because this system here is rigged.

1:00:28And that's what, you know, I find some of the work that I do really depressing because it's not like, hey, just tinker with this tax system and this type No, we need to fundamentally ask ourselves, what kind of society and state do we need? What one realistically can we provide? What people know is the old scripts are dead and they're scratching around trying to find new ones, whether it be on what should our kids do? Where should I invest? What jobs do I, you know, should my kids do? Where should I buy a house? You know, all of this kind of this sense of, I don't know what's next. what do I need to be doing?

1:01:04You know I spend a lot of my time working with we've got a whole team of researchers that I work with helping sort of you know horizon scanning and thinking about where the specific problems are and as I said some of my work is very negative but what it does I think ultimately fill you with knowledge that should be empowering because if you know a certain system is operating in a certain way you then think how can I subvert it and there are people that subvert the inheritocracy there are certain people that you know choose to live in certain ways or you may invest in certain things or think about life beyond wage there are and i think it's about being real with people and them understanding the choices that people now have the main one being subscribed to this podcast dr eliza philby author of inheritocracy it is such a pleasure and a privilege to chat to you thank you for coming in thank you freedom for tooting

1:02:00I've got just a little sneaky feeling because I'm getting to know some of you extremely well that there will be some of our listeners who are a little bit older than Eliza, Philby and me maybe you're in your 50s or 60s, even 70s who are a little bit gently, how can I put this cheesed off at the suggestion that baby boomers those people born in the decades after the war or the years after the Second World War have had it really good Some of you will be really happy to hear that because you think of yourselves. But I know some of you will say, you know what, try growing up in the 1970s or 1980s.

1:02:33There were no smartphones around and there's plenty of inflation. Or try growing up in the 1990s when interest rates were 15%. I hear you. I hear all of that. I really do. But I'm afraid the facts do support what Eliza Philby was saying on those three fundamental pillars of wealth. She said for millennials, people like her and me born, say, around 1980 or the years after, you don't have access to the pensions that baby boomers had. There has been this extraordinary explosion in housing wealth, which has massively benefited the old and the rich rather than the young and the poor. And then we got on to this really profound economic revolution where there is a declining share of national wealth making its way to the labour force, i.e.

1:03:17workers. And the implication of that being that work is no longer a route to wealth. And it all adds up to, yes, I'm afraid the facts do support her argument, a stacking of the odds against people of her age and mine, basically people in their 40s. And yet, as she also argued, these trends are getting significantly worse so that if you're in Gen X or Gen Z, the odds are even further stacked against you. A couple of things that she said that I found most remarkable and I think the most profound that we all need to grapple with is the great kind of meritocratic boom or social mobility golden age of Britain in the post-war years was really driven by the expansion of white-collar jobs and the mass entry of women into the workplace.

1:03:59That's now, to a large extent, happened. Obviously, it's an incomplete or unfinished revolution. But there was more room at the top, to quote a famous novel of the 1950s, I think it was. and that expansion of white-collar jobs has not just slowed but pretty much stopped and with artificial intelligence it could go dramatically into reverse those of you who heard dario amade the boss of anthropic an ai giant on this podcast a few weeks ago would have heard him say that up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs could be under threat from ai in just the next few years this has really profound implications for the social contract in this country and the message that we give to young people about how they can get on and improve their lives.

1:04:42And I think it's got some pretty dark implications for what we're doing with young people at the moment to prepare them for not just the world of work, but the life that they want to lead. I'm conscious all of this might seem a little bit gloomy. The fact is, you know, times are pretty tough for people who are young these days. But there were moments of hope there as well, where Eliza was talking about some fundamental reforms, for instance, to taxation and how we approach education, making it a lifelong thing rather than something we cram into our first 21 years, which I think do offer an attractive way forward to get away from what she calls the inheritocracy.

1:05:19Thank you so much for all the messages that you have been sending in. We love receiving them and indeed playing them. Here's one from Zara. Hi, Amal. As a young person keen to enter into media, I wanted to ask you if the media landscape is a dying one in the face of AI and underfunding, and one worth pursuing. In more dramatic terms, is media dead or is it transitioning? If the latter, what is it transitioning into? Zahra, thank you so much for sending that message. Massively, massively appreciate it. And I love the idea of young people still keen to enter the media. Is it one worth pursuing? Yes.

1:05:53Above all, because journalism, and I hate to sound like that, I remember when I was applying to university, there was always, what's that thing called? it manifest no prospectus in the prospectus there was always some uh geezer or young female student who would say the thing about philosophy is it's not so much a subject but a state of mind uh and i hate sounding like that person but you know the thing about journalism is it is a bit of a state of mind it's a way of being engaged in the world it's a way of being actively connected to unfolding events not because you necessarily have skin in the game but because you care about the things that are in the news behind the news the trends behind the news which means that as a state of mind it's wonderful and also generally speaking i mean quite a lot of journalists are quite annoying and i've worked with a few of them but actually for the most part journalists are pretty cool pretty nice people and if you work at the right institution especially one that's growing and it's got some liquidity and some ambition then yes i definitely think it is one worth pursuing is it is media dead or transitioning it's definitely not dead and it definitely is transitioning what's it transitioning to well um i've given a few speeches on this subject i'll give you the headlines.

1:06:56I think the big underlying trends that are happening in journalism is that the shift in power is broadly speaking, this is generalities, not specifics, broadly speaking from it's moving from institutions to individuals. Most journalistic institutions, like many institutions, are facing a massive crisis of trust. And it's individuals who increasingly have more power is moving from curators to creators. So it's moving from people who are, you know, commissioners of TV channels who decide what 10 million people watch, you know, who are these sort of gatekeepers or editors of newspapers who decide what goes into the public domain.

1:07:30It's much more kind of user-generated and much more about individuals being creative. If you listen to the fantastic episode we had a few episodes ago with someone called Jordan Schwarzenberger-Zar, I really recommend that. He's the manager of The Sidemen, Europe's biggest YouTube collective. He talked about the movement from a mass culture to infinite monocultures. I think you can overdo that. I think there is still a mass culture, but we are moving into a world of niches. And I think that basically what's happening is that humans in the world of media and AI will massively accelerate this. Humans are in decline and algorithms are taking over.

1:08:07I'm not saying we're being controlled by secret puppet masters or anything like that. But in general, algorithms are doing more and more of what humans used to do, i.e. making decisions about what does and doesn't capture your attention or enter the public domain. And so the big thing I recommend is getting ahead of this revolution, getting really familiar with the tools. You should be using chatbots all the time, but you should also be using all the free AI technology out there to build products if you can, Zara, which I know sounds bonkers, but you can do this stuff and it's free. And if you do that, then you can make sure that you escape the doom loop of this golden age of stupidity that AI could create.

1:08:44And instead, you have the power of thinking to shape your future. Zara, thank you so much for that message. thank you to all of you who've been in touch in general we really really appreciate it if you've got a radical idea you want us to pursue you've got a question you want a guest suggest a guest do please get in touch you can whatsapp us on 0330 123 9480 that's 0330 123 9480 or you can email us radical at bbc.co.uk

1:09:15That is it for this episode. To make sure you don't miss future conversations, please do subscribe to Radical with Amol Rajan on BBC Sounds. You can also watch episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan on iPlayer, which is a wonderful thing. I know with the recent episode of Jacob Dunn, I got loads of messages from people saying, just finished watching it. And I thought, how cool. It's not a podcast. It's a podcast that goes on TV, which you can either call a vodcast, or you could just call TV as they used to. Anyway, Radical is very much on iPlayer, and worth your time. Speak to you next week. Goodbye.

1:09:47How did Bruce Springsteen become the boss? And what did it cost him to get there? Maybe I was the guy that gets the guitar, I get the car, I get the girl. Then it adds up to a big so what? From the makers of the award-winning first season of Legend, join me, Laura Barton, for the story of my favourite artist, Bruce Springsteen. We'll get to know the life beyond the legend to discover how a scrawny, long-haired introvert from small-town New Jersey transformed into the iconic rock star figure of his 80s glory. We're all going, he has muscles now, which was a little hard to take because we were scrawny.

1:10:27Do we have to go get muscles? Legend, the Bruce Springsteen story from BBC Radio 4. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

1:10:40draft of history. What happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.