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Zoomers and Boomers is focused on the evolving Society and Culture each of these Generations has experienced and now mostly share side by side. Each generation will be represented by a participant of each gender to provide balanced and unique insights into the topic of generational contrasts. We will touch on the role of tech, love and friendship, humor, life paths, education, work and purpose, community, fun, and curiosity.
Blaine Benedict moved to Las Vegas nearly 75 years ago from New Jersey at the age of 3. He attended local schools and graduated from the original Las Vegas High School. He then earned a B.S. degree in Agriculture and Environment Science from Rutgers University. He served two years in the U.S. Army as an artillery officer. Returning to Las Vegas with no particular career plans, he began a career in gaming which led to senior positions at both the Dunes Hotel and Binion's Horseshoe. After retiring from gaming, he finally used his degree as an environmental educator and non-profit executive with the Southern Nevada Conservancy. He now stays busy and active as an OLLI at UNLV student.
Fran Smith holds a B.A. in political science and an M.A. in International Relations. Her first career was on Capitol Hill. Her second was in housing development in Honolulu. And her third was non-profit management. After retiring, she returned to her love of learning through OLLI. Since joining OLLI at UNLV, she has chaired the Fundraising Committee, is currently Chair of the Steering Council, and has taught numerous art history classes.
Announcer 0:00
This is a KU NV studios original program.
Wesley Knight 0:04
The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education,
Music 0:21
mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don't criticize what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand or the times they are a changing.
Blaine Benedict 0:53
Hello and thank you for listening. My name is Blaine Benedict. I'm an ollie student at UNLV, a retired casino executive, and had a second career as an environmental education director, and we became interested in doing a podcast of boomers and Zoomers. Well, actually, it's Zoomers and Boomers. When we had a class speaker at Ollie who was talking about the role of this radio station, and it sounded the title, sounded really cool, Zoomers and Boomers, pretty catchy. And then I did some research on each of the generation, Gen Gen Z and our own, my own generation, baby boomers and each of us are the largest component of the United States population, about 60 almost 65 million people are boomers. That's almost 20% of the population, and 71 million people identify as Zoomers, Generation Z, that's about 21% of the population. So we thought it would be a good idea to compare and contrast and study and inform each other about our generation. So today I have a co host, Fran Smith, who is an instructor and student at Olli, and two students who will briefly introduce themselves as well. So I'm going to let turn it over to Fran and have her say a few words.
Fran Smith 2:51
Thanks for joining us. I have been a member of Olli for, I think it's 11 or 12 years now, and I probably wouldn't have known it beforehand, but I I am a lifelong learner. I decided I was addicted to school, and school's a lot more fun when there aren't any grades, papers, exams, and that's what all he's about. We are group of retired and semi retired people who get together to share the joy of learning. And we have the opportunity to learn about lots of different subjects, and I think that this opportunity to learn more about the upcoming leadership generation is an essential part of our lifelong learning.
Blaine Benedict 3:50
Thank you, Fran, and I definitely agree with Fran about the grades. No grades is important. Nobody gets put on probation for being late, and the classes have been great. I've been an ollie student for about 10 years, and our student body is very interesting to ourselves, because we have people from Careers all over all over the map, and we also like being part of UNLV, which is a good connection in this community. So I'm going to ask you, Risa, if you would say a few words about yourself.
Risa Federico 4:33
Yep, thank you. Blaine, so my name is Risa. I am currently a master's of public health student here at UNLV, and Dave is School of Public Health. I am in the social and behavioral track, and what I'm researching right now is if having a purpose in life leads to decreased social isolation and loneliness, you know kind of what that looks like as you after you retire. So older adults, specifically, I have worked at UNLV. For about 10 years now, started as a student assistant, and I do currently work at Olli as well. So it's great to be here. Richard.
Richard Green 5:08
Yes, sir. Hello. Hello. My name is Richard. I'm in my third and final year at tour University in Nevada, which I'm completing my doctorate of occupational therapy. There, as a part of the final year, we actually do a community project, and that project I have the great opportunity of doing at Olli. So my project is digital literacy for everyday living. So I'm helping adults and older adults become more confident and independent in the digital world.
Blaine Benedict 5:35
Well, thank you. Thank you both for joining us. Fran and I are really excited about having you with us. One of the things I didn't mention to Fran in detail earlier baby boomers, one of our I was talking to Fran, and one of the principal ideas and thoughts that Zoomers are famous. Boomers are famous for is that we never trust anyone over 30 years old. So I did some careful math calculations, and you both are just below the limit of where we wouldn't trust anything you said. But what's interesting about this is boomers have been around so long, the generation ahead of us, we didn't trust anything that they said that was one of the principles of our of our lifestyle, and now the people who are behind us are almost 30. So we're going to take advantage of this brief window to get some valuable information. So just wanted to let you know where you sit in the in the mathematical structure of things. Another thing I wanted to tell you, Fran probably has her own ideas about what boomers did, so I'm going to give you a bit of a of a test to see, and you'll be impressed that all these things came into being. Well while Fran and I were approximately your age, have you ever heard of the zone improvement plan? No, you haven't, oh my gosh, that's also known as a zip code. And zip codes were created when Fran and I were growing up. So just let me know. Another, another thing are you? Are either of you sports fans? I'd say so moderately, moderately. You know, a little about baseball, the national sport. The designated hitter rule was invented while Fran and I were growing up only
Fran Smith 7:49
for the American League, yeah,
Blaine Benedict 7:51
but then it was, then it was for both leagues. So we are not totally out of touch. So a couple more little quizzes, just to get everybody on the same page. Now, Richard and I went over this before, one of the things near Las Vegas is one of the great engineering wonders of the world. And can you, either of you, tell me what computer they used out there to build that structure. I mean, it was, it's fantastic. It's been in operation for nearly 100 years, and it's an amazing structure that's changed the way of life in the southwest. So do you have any idea what what brand of computer they used?
Risa Federico 8:40
No, I wouldn't have said any. That would be my guess, right?
Blaine Benedict 8:43
Well, they use this, which we used in in school when I was growing up. This is called a slide rule. Has three moving parts, and they built, at the time, the world's tallest dam, just using this. And you can, if you go to the visitor center out there. You can see some of the original slide rules they use. I used to know how to use one, but now I use my phone, I think, to add and subtract. And another thing that's really important that came about when Fran and I were growing up that I'm still confused about, and that's barcodes. Okay, it's, it's something, I mean, it's affected every, probably everybody in the world. And I have a sample of the first product that ever had a barcode, Wrigley's Spearmint gum. So this, this package cost like, two and a half dollars. Okay, when Fran and I were growing up, a pack of gum was a nickel So, but it didn't have a originally, didn't have a barcode. So the barcode has been great.
Fran Smith 9:56
It's increased the price by, you know, like 500 Percent.
Blaine Benedict 10:02
And another thing, this will be the last little nudge for you. When Fran and I were growing up and we first started to drive, we could go into a gas station for gas. That was 29 nine, and you know, they had somebody come out and pump it for you
Fran Smith 10:19
and wash your wind and wash your windshield.
Richard Green 10:21
I think that actually still pump your gas in Oregon
Fran Smith 10:24
and New Jersey. Yeah. So, so how much is that? How much does it cost?
Blaine Benedict 10:31
So that's it. Those are the main contributions of boomers that that we're going to present today. So we like to how can, how can we learn about you? Is there any opportunity for boomers to be mentors? I think we should learn about some of your challenges and struggles. So I'm going to friend you want to turn it
Fran Smith 10:57
back to them? Yeah, let's reverse the table here. And can you identify some things that have come about since you were born that we can attribute to your generation, that might be comparable things of pride, like the zip code and and barcodes? That is a great question. And actually, I've got one in my pocket. That's the
Richard Green 11:26
first thing that comes to mind for me. The Apple iPhone really was, like, a very innovative thing that I think changed everything. You know, there was initially the flip phones and the slide phones, blackberries, all those. But whenever the Apple iPhone was created, I think that shifted everything and really made everybody start to compete to make The Next Best Thing. And it's, it's created a lot of good opportunities, pros and cons
Risa Federico 11:53
to it. Yeah, it's just really allowed for a lot of connection to information, you know. And that, like you said, has its pros and cons,
Blaine Benedict 12:00
for sure. Yeah, that was one of the things that I wonder about. It's so easy to get information now that you formally Fran and I would have to go to Encyclopedia Britannica, or go to the library or look up in a dictionary and a thesaurus. How, how has that changed? You do?
Risa Federico 12:24
You think it's, you know, and then you have so you're able to look up anything, you know. You google it, and so you can find pretty much anything. And nowadays you have to make sure that it's correct or not, you know. But you had to do that before, too, I'm sure. So just kind of having that always at your fingertips, you know, it kind of changes you a bit, you know, and you kind of come to expect that, why can't I find the answer to this? You know, a lot of that sort of stuff, for sure. I think,
Richard Green 12:53
I think it can be information overload, overload. Sometimes, actually, there's just so much access to so much information that sometimes it feels like we know too much, and it can create new stressors in our lives and things we shouldn't worry about, we worry about. I think that's definitely a factor. And then, like Risa said, filtering between what's actually accurate and inaccurate out there, information wise, is really important.
Blaine Benedict 13:18
So I think this might be a problem with some of the Olli lifelong learners, we tend to go down rabbit holes
Fran Smith 13:28
a lot. Oh, well, I think everybody can go down a rabbit hole. Depends on what you're working on.
Blaine Benedict 13:35
But because, maybe because we have longer experience in society and education and work, we'll go look something up, and there'll be this little factoid that we say, Oh, gee, I wish I knew more about that. And we go down that rabbit hole, and then we find another little factoid. Do you have? Do you have problems with or trouble disciplining yourself, for sure,
Richard Green 14:03
I would say social media especially has made that even worse, because you'll find something that you're fascinated with online, and maybe you'll go to the profile, and the entire profile will be revolved around that context, and you could just kind of click through and find so many related things that which is, it can be educational sometimes, but sometimes it's more just what a lot of people are calling today, brain rot.
Fran Smith 14:31
My okay, this is an intergenerational stereotype. My sense is that social media is a source of inaccuracy. Yeah, it definitely can be junk. It's hard to say information, and if, if most of your information is coming from social media, how do you how do you decide what's real, what's somebody? Is fantasy. Do you then go to maybe another source that is based on something besides an opinion for sure, like even Google is going to have, I would have more confidence Google than in Facebook.
Richard Green 15:17
Yeah, I personally try to cross check as much as I can the thing with social media and getting information, sometimes you get a lot of unfiltered and blunt to the point information, which can be good, but like you said, you can definitely find some inaccuracies. So I think Risa can agree with this too. Is with growing up with seeing social media slowly develop. We kind of learned and we're able to have an eye for what's actually real and what's fake. We kind of learned that earlier on. It's definitely getting harder now, with like aI being implemented in the mix, I get tricked even sometimes. So we kind of have a little bit of experience like that. But it can, it can be easy to be tricked,
Fran Smith 16:00
especially now, maybe that's something we can learn from you. Is what you have learned through experience on social media? How to, you know, separate the wheat from the chaff or
Blaine Benedict 16:12
whatever, for sure. Yeah. And how do you view that as a as a challenge for your generation? I mean, like I said, there's a 7070, some million of you, and if not everyone is totally aware of the impact of false information, or in in inaccurate, incorrect whatever. Is that, how are you going to meet that challenge?
Risa Federico 16:40
I know that because, you know, with my public health background, during the pandemic, misinformation was such a big part of it, you know, and a lot of it was just trying to build trust, and knowing who you can trust information coming from, or trusting that. You know how to try to find out. Like you said, Richard, you know, what are good sources? You know, how can i Fact Check this sort of thing? And you know, a lot of new stations will try to do their best with identifying, you know, the fake AI and all of that. But you know, there's other ones that don't try as hard, you know. So you kind of trying to, you know, pick which news station in which source you're getting from, and if you trust it or not, and kind of building that reservoir with yourself and just, you know, and then it's up to them as well, to establish trust with, you know, our generation, upcoming ones, previous ones, of trying to make sure that, you know, we do our due diligence. This is accurate information. You know, this is transparency.
Fran Smith 17:35
And do you feel that enough? Let's say of your peers have that approach,
Richard Green 17:43
I would say it's a wide variety, because Hal Blaine to mention our generation is so large, and the people from the early part of our generation, maybe the late 90s and early 2000s I think, lived pretty different lives from the people at the end of our generation, because they were at the tail end of the development of the iPhone and a lot of technology advancements while we were right there at the beginning living with it, maybe when we were in elementary or middle school, so we were a little bit more, I guess, able to consciously remember a lot of those things.
Blaine Benedict 18:21
What is well to go back to what you both just said when Fran and I were growing up, there would be newscasters who virtually everyone in the United States trusted, like Walter Cronkite, if he had an opinion on the Vietnam War or the economy, people. People really listened to that because he had they had a great deal of confidence in his research and experience. And there were another one, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. People would listen to them, and they had a lot more credibility than some of the folks we have now. And I think that was a big help to us.
Fran Smith 19:04
Yeah, and what is, what I find difficult today is finding a newscaster, let's say however you want to label them with who would project the same level of objective credibility, because, from my perspective, almost every newscaster is approaching what they're saying, whether it's news or not, from some kind of opinionated perspective. And I think most of us lean towards those who come from things come from information from the same direction that we're coming from. It makes it harder, I think it makes it harder to come together, for the different
Blaine Benedict 19:53
sides to come together. So another question I have that's appropriate for this. First podcast is, are you both registered to vote? Yes, yeah, okay, have you, either of you voted before? Yes, oh,
Fran Smith 20:08
great. You're approaching 30.
Blaine Benedict 20:11
Oh, that's right,
Richard Green 20:12
yes, we should probably, probably say our born years. I was born in
Multiple Voices 20:17
2000 I was born in 1997 amazing. Yeah. I was just moving to Las Vegas.
Blaine Benedict 20:26
So what another thing that I was curious about? Have either of you had summer jobs that are not related to your career?
Risa Federico 20:37
I did not once I got a job junior or senior year in high school, but that was an all year, you know, sort of thing. So I never had the ability to do a, you know, just summer only job I have,
Richard Green 20:50
but it was when I was younger. It was just helping with dry cleaning with a friend's business.
Blaine Benedict 20:56
Well, that's, that's a job, and you got to see other people working, how they worked, and so that was really I thought. When I was growing up, my parents thought that was very important. I remember being a newspaper boy, and some of the things we had to learn, you needed to throw the newspaper in the right area, and you had to count your customers and collect the subscription. Today, it's done by automobile, by people you never see, and if your paper's not underneath the car in your driveway, you're lucky.
Fran Smith 21:39
But Elaine, how many people receive a paper newspaper?
Blaine Benedict 21:45
Yeah, that's That's true. So there's an Fran just gave you an example of a boomer me, who, in a lot of respects, is still back in the late 60s and 70s, with what I think is, is going still part of of culture, when, when I would go for a summer job, one of the things you had to tell your prospective employer is, yes, I have reliable transportation, whether it was a bus, a bicycle, a car. Yeah, mom and dad, that was one thing. A lot of times they would ask a question that is probably unheard of today. They would want to know if you were honest, if you had some references to validate your honesty, and his work was different. Then it wasn't so much credit cards as if you were a grocery clerk or I worked in a produce warehouse that sold produce to the public, and the owner, he just wanted to know, can you make change, and can you keep all the money that I have in my cash register.
Fran Smith 23:02
I'd be surprised if that wasn't still and a criteria, if you're working in a grocery store, if you're a checkout clerk, you still have to be able to make it. I would like to turn the tables again. What questions do you have of our generation, particularly that you think you you can learn from as you pursue your career, your lives in the future.
Risa Federico 23:33
So one question that you know Richard and I had kind of come up with was, you know, we, you know, like the song had said, times are changing, even back then to now. So we kind of wanted to see what your, you know, senior year of high school was, you know, and kind of get a sense of what that was, you know, back then, and kind of, you know, just to kind of see in, you know, because it's different from ours, but I'm really curious to see how it's the same as well.
Fran Smith 24:01
You know, we were talking about that getting ready for this podcast, and I hadn't really stopped to think about it. But my senior year in high school was a really significant year for me in terms of my life. Primarily, I read a book that determined what career I was going to pursue, and I fell in love for the first time. And it was, it was a huge it was a really important year. And the year before, I'd spent thinking about not wanting to do anything but just go off to college. So all of a sudden I was more focused on what was happening then,
Blaine Benedict 24:43
and me too. I my high school was in Las Vegas, and UNLV was in its infancy. It was only a couple of buildings, and my parents thought I should I was a good student. I got high scores in my SATs and. And my parents thought I should go back east to college to get to be immersed in a different lifestyle than was here at the time. And I wanted to go, like, to the University of Alaska so I could go hiking and, you know, or University of Washington so I could go fishing. But they wanted me to go actually get an education. So I did go back east to Rutgers University. And of course, I was physically fit at the time, and there was a draft in a war, and I knew that that I would either be drafted or I could take the route to being an officer, so I joined ROTC so that the guide, the guide, the guardrails were pretty close. It wasn't a lot of room to just take off and go to Europe for two years and be a vagabond or something that no gap year. Yeah, gap that's, that's a good term. There were no gap years. Hadn't been invented yet.
Fran Smith 26:10
One other thing of real significance my senior year in high school, which probably had a more profound effect on me and my generation, was the assassination of Kennedy. And, you know, it just kind of exploded all our dreams. And it probably had a major effect on the anti war movement and the extent to which it
Blaine Benedict 26:34
really thrived, yeah, and we also had the moon landings, which was a high point in the science and technology capabilities of the United States, and it's hard to relate to you how important that was to most people. I mean, those guys were real heroes, and it was just an incredible sequence of flights.
Fran Smith 27:01
I got to meet John Glenn,
Blaine Benedict 27:04
and sorry, I showed you the slide rule. That's how, one of the ways that Apollo 13 got back to Earth, they had a slide rule on board. So you're all up to date in science now. So thank you for joining us today. We're going to hopefully have another one of these in May, and we'd like to have you come back, both of you, so we could continue our discussion, and maybe now that we know a bit about each other, get into some more detail and provide some valuable lessons and information to our listeners. So thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Fran for
Risa Federico 27:48
sure. Thank you. Thank you. Blaine set
Music 28:00
the world set the world.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai