The Charlie Kirk Show - DIGITAL HERMITS: A Dire Generational Warning with California Teacher of the Year, Jeremy Adams

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, Jeremy Adams joins us, author of Hollowed Out, very interesting conversation about the next generation.

00:00:08.000 It's one of the most important issues happening in America.

00:00:10.000 So listen to the entire episode if you can, and I think you'll learn a lot about the damage that is being done to this generation.

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00:00:56.000 Here we go.

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00:01:42.000 This is a topic I care deeply about, and there's a new book out called Hollowed Out by Jeremy Adams, a warning about America's next generation.

00:01:52.000 This is one of the most important topics happening right now in America.

00:01:56.000 It's not political at all.

00:01:57.000 It's cultural.

00:01:58.000 It's spiritual.

00:02:00.000 If we do not address this issue correctly and honestly, then you're going to have a generation that is so unrecognizable, that has so many problems.

00:02:10.000 And the older generation, the boomer generation, and Gen X is going to say, what happened here?

00:02:17.000 You have to listen carefully.

00:02:19.000 There is a massive crisis happening right now with young people.

00:02:23.000 And it's not just one issue.

00:02:24.000 It's multiple.

00:02:25.000 Jeremy Adams is Teacher of the Year in California and has just published this book, which again is Hollowed Out, a warning about America's Next Generation.

00:02:36.000 And he joins us right now.

00:02:37.000 Jeremy, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:02:39.000 Charlie, thank you for having me.

00:02:40.000 I really appreciate it.

00:02:41.000 Thanks for having me on.

00:02:42.000 So, Jeremy, a lot of different ways we could start here, but let's just start this way.

00:02:46.000 Tell us about your book and why you decided to write it.

00:02:49.000 Yeah, well, I've been a teacher for almost 25 years now.

00:02:52.000 And one of the really interesting and unique things about being a teacher is that you start to see things in the classroom that the broader society takes a while to figure out.

00:03:02.000 And having taught for 25 years, I'll tell you in the last five to seven years, there have been some profoundly disturbing changes in the way that my students spend their time, in the way that they look at the country, in their value system, in the way that they look at adulthood.

00:03:16.000 And this book is really essentially a battle cry.

00:03:19.000 It's me waving my hands in the abyss saying, hey, other adults in America, we have a profound problem here with our young people.

00:03:26.000 And I was, I couldn't agree with you more.

00:03:27.000 This is not a political issue.

00:03:29.000 It is a cultural, spiritual, and moral issue.

00:03:32.000 Our children are literally being hollowed out of the values and the behaviors that typically give life its meaning and its purpose.

00:03:39.000 So tell me, what are you seeing?

00:03:40.000 What is that warning?

00:03:41.000 What is the canary in the coal mine?

00:03:43.000 Yeah.

00:03:44.000 The problem is that our young people literally are living their lives untethered to adult values, adult responsibilities, adult morals.

00:03:52.000 They spend their time in a way that you and I, and I know you're a bit younger than I am.

00:03:56.000 I'm sorry to say.

00:03:57.000 But they literally spend nine to 10 hours a day on their cell phone.

00:04:01.000 That's right.

00:04:02.000 And think about that.

00:04:04.000 When you spend nine or 10 hours a day on your cell phone, that means you're not dating.

00:04:08.000 You're not going out.

00:04:09.000 That's right.

00:04:09.000 You don't have intensive friendships.

00:04:11.000 You're not reading.

00:04:12.000 And nowadays, literally, the attention span of our young people has been destroyed.

00:04:17.000 I don't know if you saw this, Charlie, but a few days ago or a few weeks ago, our friends at Netflix realized that teenagers were reading the subtitles and they thought, oh, this is great.

00:04:25.000 Now the young people are reading.

00:04:26.000 No, no, no, no.

00:04:27.000 They were reading the subtitles because they didn't want to miss anything in the scene and they wanted to go right back to their cell phones.

00:04:33.000 Okay.

00:04:33.000 So we're talking about a generation that is not only more lonely and more isolated, but you know, it's interesting because our friends on the left, you know, if they want to insult the book, they'll say, well, you know, every old person is a curmudgeon and a crank and they think the next generation is going to hell.

00:04:48.000 No, what I'm seeing in my classroom is that my students who I care very deeply about are the most unhappy people in American history.

00:04:57.000 They are depressed.

00:04:58.000 They are isolated.

00:04:59.000 Look at the data.

00:05:00.000 Even the New York Times is doing articles about how young women are going to the ER.

00:05:05.000 They're literally going to emergency rooms because their mental health is in crisis.

00:05:08.000 Look at the self-harm.

00:05:10.000 Look at the rates of suicide.

00:05:11.000 And of course, it makes sense, Charlie.

00:05:14.000 They don't have the kind of connective tissue that typically gives life its meaning.

00:05:18.000 They don't have intensive friendships.

00:05:20.000 They don't go to church.

00:05:21.000 They don't have meals with their parents.

00:05:23.000 And, you know, as you've pointed out before, these problems were here before COVID, you know, and COVID, oh my goodness, just put them on steroids.

00:05:32.000 I mean, amplified them and made them worse.

00:05:36.000 I mean, I couldn't, I mean, I enthusiastically agree with this, and we talk about it all the time.

00:05:40.000 I don't feel as if I'm taken seriously when I talk about this with adults.

00:05:44.000 They just kind of scoff it off.

00:05:45.000 It is the most depressed, suicidal, alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted, least married, least dating, most anti-social generation in history.

00:05:56.000 You're in the classroom.

00:05:58.000 You are dealing with these kids at a fundamental age.

00:06:03.000 Boy, there's so many questions I have on this.

00:06:05.000 So let me just do this.

00:06:07.000 How bad is it actually?

00:06:08.000 Okay, so some people agree, they say, okay, but they'll just grow out of it.

00:06:10.000 It's not that, you know, they'll just kind of eventually become adults.

00:06:13.000 Your argument is not that.

00:06:15.000 Tell me why.

00:06:16.000 Well, yeah, I mean, what's interesting is if you look at the things that have just happened very recently, I mean, you look at marriage rates, historic lows, you look at our birth rate at historic lows.

00:06:28.000 When you look at why people don't have kids, there was a study that came out a few weeks ago about how Gen Zers are more interested in having a dog than they are in having children.

00:06:38.000 And it's not just so, so I'm not making this stuff up.

00:06:42.000 Again, the data supports you 100%.

00:06:45.000 100%.

00:06:46.000 It does.

00:06:46.000 And this is not, first of all, I'm not a boomer.

00:06:49.000 I want to be clear.

00:06:49.000 I'm way too young to be a boomer.

00:06:50.000 Are you a Gen Xer?

00:06:52.000 I'm a proud Gen Xer.

00:06:53.000 Thank you very much.

00:06:54.000 The most ignored generation.

00:06:55.000 I have a whole thesis on Gen Xer.

00:06:56.000 I think Gen X is going to save us.

00:06:58.000 I really do.

00:06:59.000 Thank you.

00:06:59.000 Read the book.

00:07:00.000 I completely agree with you, Charlie.

00:07:01.000 We are completely ignored.

00:07:03.000 We get no love because the millennials and the boomers are screaming at each other. 1.00

00:07:07.000 But I digress.

00:07:09.000 At any rate, though, I'm a public school teacher, right?

00:07:11.000 So it's really not my business who you vote for.

00:07:13.000 And it's really not my business if you're religious or not. 0.90

00:07:16.000 But what bothers me, Charlie, and this is what's so bad, is we have a young generation that is completely ignorant about American history, completely ignorant about where, I mean, I am a bleeding heart American romantic.

00:07:29.000 I believe that the creation of the United States of America in 1776 and 1787 was literally an act of human evolution when it comes to civilization.

00:07:39.000 And the people in my classroom are the healthiest, wealthiest, most fortunate human beings to ever exist.

00:07:47.000 And as a teacher, I want them to understand where did these institutions and these values come from?

00:07:52.000 What made you wealthy?

00:07:53.000 What made you free?

00:07:55.000 Why is it that people all over the world do the most important voting not with their fingers, but with their feet?

00:08:00.000 They want to come here.

00:08:01.000 Why is that?

00:08:02.000 And young people really don't know.

00:08:04.000 And the other thing that they really don't know about, again, it's none of my religion, none of my business what religion they are, but young people don't know anything about religion.

00:08:11.000 I mean, the level of ignorance, I mean, it's just kind of a bunch of tropes about how it's judgmental, and religious people are very stiff and they, you know, they don't want to accept me and they're not very empathetic and tolerant.

00:08:22.000 I mean, all those kind of axioms that you hear.

00:08:25.000 But I remember a few years ago, a disturbing story, I was talking about Easter, and I teach, you know, kind of the advanced classes, and only half of my students even knew what the resurrection was, much less what Easter was.

00:08:37.000 I mean, they thought Easter was about, you know, putting on your swimsuit and, you know, dying some eggs.

00:08:43.000 So it is bad.

00:08:44.000 And as you said, the data supports it.

00:08:47.000 So your book hollowed out, it's kind of in some ways a warning in your own description, right?

00:08:54.000 And I'm sure we can get into solutions here, but it's a lot more complex than that, than just kind of a couple solutions here and there.

00:09:01.000 But I want to read one thing from the preview.

00:09:03.000 You reveal why students have rejected wisdom, culture, and institutions of Western civilization.

00:09:08.000 Why have they rejected them?

00:09:11.000 Yeah.

00:09:11.000 So here's the big theory of the book.

00:09:13.000 And I hope people will still go read the book anyhow.

00:09:15.000 But I think that we have a generation that has fundamentally misunderstood individual liberty, right?

00:09:20.000 So when we think of the liberty of kind of the classical liberal Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address, we think of individual liberty as a vehicle for living a meaningful life, right?

00:09:31.000 I am free to worship whatever God I want.

00:09:33.000 I am free to be whatever political party I am want.

00:09:35.000 I can't free to say whatever I want to say, love whoever I love, live wherever I want to live.

00:09:41.000 That's the winning recipe of a meaningful existence.

00:09:44.000 And this is what is so extraordinary about America: we're not subjects of a king, right?

00:09:48.000 We're not forced to worship at a certain church.

00:09:51.000 We don't believe in limiting associations.

00:09:55.000 And yet, I think we have an entire generation that has confused the freedom of or freedom to do something with the freedom from something.

00:10:03.000 So a lot of young people now see freedom as, well, hey, I don't have to commit to marriage because it makes demands of me.

00:10:09.000 I don't have to be a parent.

00:10:11.000 That makes demands of me.

00:10:12.000 And by the way, why would I ever go to church?

00:10:14.000 Talk about a bunch of people who just want to limit my freedom and judge me and want to tell me that I'm always bad.

00:10:21.000 So your thesis, and it's brilliant, is that this generation wants freedom from responsibility.

00:10:26.000 Yes, I think that there's essentially a cult of radical individualism.

00:10:31.000 I'm not talking about the good individualism in the marketplace and becoming your own unique person.

00:10:35.000 I'm talking about an individualism that makes it so that you are unmoored.

00:10:39.000 You are unattached to the traditional things that give life its meaning and its purpose, Charlie.

00:10:44.000 I mean, I don't want to wax poetic in front of thousands of people here, but I mean, I'll tell you right now, my life is hard because I try and be a good Christian every day and I fail.

00:10:52.000 I try and be a great father every day and I fail.

00:10:55.000 I try and be a great teacher, a great husband, a great friend.

00:10:58.000 But even though those ties bind me, they also define me and make my life meaningful.

00:11:04.000 I mean, I think at the end of the day, when we talk about the things that kind of fill our lives with the possibilities of joy, those things are just not there for an entire generation of young people.

00:11:15.000 I mean, imagine, you know, a life without intense family and friendship and faith.

00:11:20.000 And I mean, don't even get me started.

00:11:22.000 I teach American civics.

00:11:23.000 I've taught civics for 20 years.

00:11:24.000 Don't even get me started on how the view of the country and our history has changed because a love of country supplies a lot of meaning and purpose in people's lives and it always has.

00:11:34.000 And imagine a generation where that is missing as well.

00:11:37.000 So, Jeremy, I want to ask you: so, you've been doing this for 20, 25 years, you said?

00:11:40.000 Is that right?

00:11:41.000 Yep.

00:11:41.000 Okay.

00:11:42.000 So that would mean your first year of teaching was 1997, more or less, right?

00:11:47.000 98.

00:11:47.000 Yep.

00:11:48.000 98.

00:11:48.000 Okay.

00:11:49.000 So just let's take a sample year.

00:11:51.000 Average junior or senior in high school in 2000, average in 2010, average 2015, and then average now.

00:11:58.000 The reason I'm asking is because your detractors or your critics will say, oh, these kids go out of it.

00:12:04.000 But no, you have a couple decade sample size where you could, would you say that the average student in the year 2000, 2010 were marginally within the same issues worldview, and then you saw it just go off a cliff?

00:12:16.000 Can you expand on that, please?

00:12:18.000 Yes, that is such a great question.

00:12:20.000 Thank you for pointing that out.

00:12:21.000 Is if you look at students from, you know, 1998 to 2010, you know, roughly, roughly the same experience.

00:12:27.000 But in the last 10 to 12 years, there has been a radical change.

00:12:32.000 I mean, I could go on and on, but I mean, so many things.

00:12:35.000 Number one is students used to, when we talk about politics, you know, students used to say, well, my mom says this, or my dad says this, or my grandparents say this.

00:12:42.000 Charlie, nobody talks about their parents anymore.

00:12:44.000 Nobody talks about their grandparents anymore.

00:12:45.000 They don't care about it.

00:12:46.000 People don't eat, well, and they don't talk to them. 0.99

00:12:48.000 You know, people don't eat meals with families anymore.

00:12:51.000 I remember about five or six years ago, I mentioned the phrase, the family dinner, and my students looked at me like I was on something.

00:12:56.000 Like, what are you talking about?

00:12:57.000 I said, you know, you know, you sit down with your two parents and, you know, you sit down and eat a meal.

00:13:01.000 They're like, we don't do that.

00:13:02.000 Most of my students, because I live in an impoverished area, most of them have a single parent.

00:13:07.000 They're working multiple jobs.

00:13:09.000 When they get their dinner, they go to their room and sit on the couch.

00:13:11.000 The kids, they go to their room.

00:13:13.000 I mean, let's be honest, when the students talk about politics nowadays, they are more likely to quote somebody on Twitter or TikTok than they are their own parents.

00:13:21.000 But the big, big, big seismic change, and this is the big one.

00:13:27.000 Cell phones, the technology has changed everything.

00:13:31.000 It is a, there is a chasm, a grand canyon between, you said 2015, about 2014, 2015, and today, everything changed.

00:13:40.000 I mean, if you think about it this way, if you were an alien and you came down and you looked at kids in the year 2010, and then you came back in the year 2022, you would think that we had evolved to look down all the time, that we now have something that's evolved into our hands.

00:13:54.000 The attention spans are zero.

00:13:56.000 I mean, one of the most disturbing things that I saw last year was that a student at the end of the year said, Mr. Adams, you know, you keep recommending all these great movies for every unit.

00:14:04.000 Like, you know, I was teaching World War II, and I'm like, when you get older, you got to watch Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan.

00:14:08.000 And they're like, we don't watch movies.

00:14:10.000 And I said, well, why not?

00:14:11.000 And they're like, well, we can't pay attention to them.

00:14:13.000 We can't sit there for two hours.

00:14:14.000 There's no way.

00:14:16.000 And not only that, by the way, but when you talk about anxiety, I mean, think about this, Charlie. 0.55

00:14:21.000 When you and I were growing up, if we had a bad day at school and you got in a fight with your friend or a teacher was a jerk to you or you're just stressed out, you know what?

00:14:28.000 You go home and you get 16 hours away from it.

00:14:32.000 Our kids are on all the time.

00:14:35.000 You know, and when they're having a fight with a friend, it follows them home.

00:14:39.000 They're on their devices nine or 10 hours a day.

00:14:41.000 And again, the pandemic made this so much worse.

00:14:44.000 It added on average four or five hours a day of being on their devices.

00:14:48.000 So these kids, I mean, imagine being a boxer and you go into the ring.

00:14:52.000 And when you go back to your corner, imagine there's nobody there, right?

00:14:55.000 There is no family dinner.

00:14:56.000 There is no church service.

00:14:57.000 There are no adults.

00:14:58.000 There's nobody to give you water, say it's okay.

00:15:01.000 And the next day, they're going back into the ring.

00:15:02.000 No wonder they're stressed out of their minds.

00:15:05.000 I want to just re-emphasize this point.

00:15:07.000 I've said it before.

00:15:08.000 If you give your child a cell phone, it's like giving them digital heroin.

00:15:12.000 You have no idea how damaging these things are.

00:15:15.000 And parents, they might mean well.

00:15:16.000 And our next top, our whole next segment is going to be about parents because that's a huge component here.

00:15:23.000 It's the most medicated generation in history who says they have anxiety, but these phones right here are overheating our primitive brains.

00:15:32.000 We are not designed, I believe by the Lord, to be staring at a screen 10 hours a day.

00:15:38.000 You cannot handle it.

00:15:40.000 And especially when you have the neuro associations that are still being developed for a 13, 14, and 15-year-old, that's why our generation is killing themselves more than ever before.

00:15:50.000 They're addicted to substances and they don't believe in anything.

00:15:54.000 And parents, you give your kid a smartphone before age 18.

00:15:58.000 It's the same or worse than giving them a form of digital heroin.

00:16:01.000 I have not come to that conclusion lightly.

00:16:04.000 I see it firsthand every single day.

00:16:06.000 And Jeremy, you say it a little differently.

00:16:08.000 I'm a little bit more blunt to it, but it has changed everything.

00:16:13.000 You pinpointed the year.

00:16:14.000 The year iPhones were widely distributed was 14 and 15 when the cost went down and they went everywhere.

00:16:19.000 It has created a generation in misery.

00:16:21.000 Parents, take those phones away. 1.00

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00:17:24.000 So, Jeremy, what role do parents play in this?

00:17:28.000 Because you've seen this devolution, but have you taught in the same community for the last 20 years?

00:17:34.000 Is that right?

00:17:35.000 I've same school.

00:17:37.000 I actually teach at the high school where I went.

00:17:40.000 So I've spent 28 years of the year.

00:17:41.000 So you know the community well.

00:17:43.000 No, I'm asking for a reason because you say that these kids don't talk to their parents anymore and there's a disconnect and parents aren't parenting.

00:17:50.000 So it's not a socioeconomic question, right?

00:17:53.000 Because the socioeconomics remain the same because you have a control here, but it stopped happening.

00:17:59.000 So it's not as if it's a wealthy versus poor thing.

00:18:01.000 Why have parents basically abdicated their responsibility or their role?

00:18:07.000 I believe it's the worst generation of parents in the history of parenting.

00:18:12.000 I could prove it through a lot of different things.

00:18:13.000 Am I wrong here?

00:18:14.000 Or do parents just not understand the severity of this?

00:18:18.000 You can be right about both things there.

00:18:19.000 If I'm going to be perfectly honest with you and your audience, I wrote Hollowed Out 95% because of the things I was seeing as a teacher.

00:18:27.000 But you know what?

00:18:28.000 I haven't been a perfect parent either.

00:18:30.000 I am guilty of one of these people who gave my children devices before they absolutely should have.

00:18:36.000 And here's the thing: if anybody wants a panacea, if anybody thinks that there's some magical elixir out there, you know, we love shortcuts in this country.

00:18:44.000 I mean, there's an entire industry of self-help about, oh, it's easy to lose weight.

00:18:47.000 It's easy to be rich.

00:18:48.000 Guess what?

00:18:49.000 It's not easy to raise another human being.

00:18:51.000 And here's why.

00:18:52.000 This is what the ancient Greeks, this is what everybody throughout time and eternity has known, which is that as human beings, we learn by example.

00:18:59.000 And we are either improved or depraved by the examples in front of us.

00:19:04.000 And so what we have done by giving our children these phones is we have displaced the connective tissue of adulthood and replaced the, you know, the toxicity of these phones instead.

00:19:17.000 I mean, think about it this way.

00:19:19.000 You know, I can't believe I actually have to say this, or you have to say this, but you know what?

00:19:22.000 You actually have to raise children.

00:19:23.000 I think that we have a fetish in this country with childhood and elevating childhood values and elevating childhood behavior.

00:19:30.000 I mean, one of the things I hate all the time is when we start talking about politics and they're like, well, the young people understand these things more than we do.

00:19:36.000 No, they don't.

00:19:37.000 They don't know.

00:19:38.000 Don't tell me to go read my book or do the work.

00:19:41.000 Trust me, no, I don't need to be lectured by a child.

00:19:45.000 We actually have to stand up and be the adults again.

00:19:48.000 I mean, at the end of the day, we have to model adulthood for young people.

00:19:53.000 And, you know, I think, Charlie, I think of liberty as kind of like a license.

00:19:57.000 You know, we have a whole generation of young people who have been given the car keys without getting the license first.

00:20:04.000 Same thing, they've been given the liberty without the values of how to live that liberty well.

00:20:08.000 And that's that's the magical recipe of America.

00:20:12.000 This is what conservatism has always understood.

00:20:14.000 And I'm probably in a different place politically than most of your audience, but conservatism understands that if you're going to have a free people, you have got to teach them how to use that freedom in a meaningful way.

00:20:25.000 And there are no new values, there is no new wisdom.

00:20:29.000 We have to bestow it and model it for each generation.

00:20:32.000 And we haven't done it for this one, and it's hollowing them out.

00:20:35.000 But do you think parents are noticing this or making the proper interventions?

00:20:40.000 You know what?

00:20:40.000 I think I'm detecting a little bit of a seismic change.

00:20:44.000 And I'm not saying my book is the reason.

00:20:46.000 I wish it was.

00:20:48.000 But, you know, when you start to talk to teachers and you start to hear other parents, you know, there is, I think, a movement to really take the phones away from the classroom, to really delay when we start to give children these phones and how we use them.

00:21:02.000 I do, you know, with the technology, I think I do have some hope.

00:21:05.000 When it comes to, you know, reintroducing religion into the home, when it comes to kind of the way that we talk about the country, I frankly haven't seen much movement there from my quarter of the country.

00:21:17.000 But as far as the technology, I do feel that we're starting, the message is getting through for sure.

00:21:22.000 So you're right here, often friendless and depressed, they eat alone, study alone, and even socialize alone.

00:21:28.000 Let's talk about solutions then.

00:21:30.000 How do you turn a generation that is the unhappiest generation in history? 1.00

00:21:35.000 Which, again, it is so at odds with a lot of what Marx would say.

00:21:41.000 Marx would say that access to material kind of satisfaction would then make you be able to satisfy your needs and your desires.

00:21:50.000 It's the opposite.

00:21:50.000 Everyone has everything, and yet they feel as if they have nothing.

00:21:53.000 There's this massive spiritual darkness.

00:21:55.000 How do you solve it?

00:21:56.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:21:57.000 Yeah.

00:21:57.000 And if you want to kind of extrapolate from that, look at that as a nation.

00:22:00.000 I mean, you could say that we are freer and wealthier than we've ever been, more tolerant, more pluralistic than any point in American history.

00:22:06.000 And yet young people have a darker, more cynical view of America than they ever have.

00:22:10.000 But as far as solutions are concerned, there are no shortcuts.

00:22:14.000 And I think at the end of the day, the adult, you know, we have to, especially when it comes to parenting and being teachers, we have to stop mistaking parenting and teaching with friendship.

00:22:27.000 I think we have a whole generation that thought, you know, I can be a friend to my child as a teacher.

00:22:32.000 I want to be your friend.

00:22:33.000 But the problem is that those relationships are predicated on a ground of equality, that, you know, friendship is about, you know, we're equals.

00:22:41.000 Well, parenthood and teaching are not like that.

00:22:43.000 Don't befriend.

00:22:44.000 I mean, you can be friendly as a teacher, and I feel like I'm friendly.

00:22:47.000 I'm nice to my students, but I'm not your pal.

00:22:49.000 I'm not your buddy.

00:22:50.000 I'm your teacher.

00:22:51.000 And that's the other thing in our schools is that, you know, I think a lot of the public doesn't understand how many things we teachers are now responsible for.

00:22:59.000 I know it's, I know, we bash, it's very easy to bash on teachers and say, well, look, all of our students are turning on the country and they can't read and they're illiterate.

00:23:06.000 I get that and I'm sensitive to that.

00:23:07.000 But all of the problems of civil society, the poverty, the violence, the lack of traditional behavior, that all ends up in the school.

00:23:18.000 And we teachers have to handle all of it in the classroom.

00:23:21.000 And it makes it profoundly hard to do our jobs.

00:23:23.000 And I think that we have to get back to actually seeing teachers as academic positions and parents as moral positions, not friendly positions.

00:23:31.000 Yeah.

00:23:32.000 And so, and you've said this, that, okay, they're no longer having dinner together, right?

00:23:38.000 Yeah.

00:23:38.000 But that's parents that dictate those terms.

00:23:40.000 What changed with parents then?

00:23:41.000 Why do they not want to have dinner with their kids? 1.00

00:23:44.000 I think a few things are happening.

00:23:46.000 And I think this is a class distinction.

00:23:48.000 I think for a lot of my poorer students, their parents are working two or three jobs.

00:23:51.000 I mean, they are working all the time.

00:23:52.000 You said that changed, though, over the decades, right?

00:23:54.000 With the controlled variables, right, right, right, right.

00:23:57.000 So, those are the poor kids.

00:23:58.000 But some of the wealthier students I have, because I have a mix here where I teach, is that a lot of parents are working.

00:24:05.000 They're on trips.

00:24:06.000 Sometimes they are so busy that they're going from soccer practice to football practice.

00:24:10.000 Let me give you a statistic about this that's, I think, disturbing.

00:24:13.000 We now spend more money eating out as a country than we do on groceries.

00:24:16.000 And that really shows you how we've kind of decided to spend our time.

00:24:20.000 And not only that, I mean, this is a totally other discussion, but they're also very unhealthy.

00:24:25.000 I mean, this is an overweight generation. 0.97

00:24:27.000 I don't know if you saw that study the other day that blame climate change for obesity.

00:24:32.000 I would say that maybe processed foods and sugar and energy drinks and not exercising has a little bit more to do with it.

00:24:37.000 Yeah, I would say so.

00:24:38.000 I want to read a question here we got here, Jeremy.

00:24:40.000 And again, for those of you listening, very, very wise here.

00:24:43.000 Again, it's not a political issue.

00:24:44.000 It's just a ticking time bum.

00:24:46.000 Hollowed out, a warning about America's generation by Jeremy Adams.

00:24:48.000 We got this question here: freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:24:51.000 Dear Charlie, approximately eight years ago, I took wife and kids to a family dinner.

00:24:56.000 I would always take away everybody's cell phone and pile them up on a corner of the table.

00:25:01.000 A waiter remarked to me that in his seven years of being a waiter, I was the only second parent he saw do this.

00:25:06.000 My wife and I were shocked.

00:25:07.000 That was a wake-up call for me.

00:25:10.000 And so it comes down to a lot of the parents, right?

00:25:12.000 So let me ask you this.

00:25:13.000 So, and I love the thesis here when you describe your book: Do teachers have a front row seat to America's decline?

00:25:19.000 In some ways, you are the canary in the coal mine, you're the harbinger, you're the warning of things to come.

00:25:24.000 I mean, so let me ask it this way: how does this generation mature?

00:25:29.000 What does this look like 10 years from now, absent immediate intervention?

00:25:34.000 You're trying to say it's really bad.

00:25:37.000 Yeah, no, I mean, I'm trying to say that, you know, when you look at, you know, essentially the relationships and the institutions that build a civil society, I mean, Aristotle understood that the first family, the first political unit you're ever born into is the family.

00:25:51.000 And when we look at the amount of, you know, family time that young people are spending with their actual family, it is, it's less.

00:25:59.000 You know, you see this, and it's, and like I said, it really is down to the parents.

00:26:03.000 I love that question from your audience member because, you know, you go to a restaurant and you'll see a family, and we, my home family, we've been guilty of this and we are working on it.

00:26:11.000 Is you know, you sit there in silence.

00:26:13.000 I mean, let me let me tell you a quick story about this.

00:26:15.000 So, as a teacher, about 10 years ago, or more than that, if you ended the day early and said, Okay, kids, you know, we're done with the lecture.

00:26:23.000 We got two minutes till the bell rings.

00:26:24.000 You know, do whatever you want to do, you know, the class would erupt, right?

00:26:28.000 And kids would just talk and talk and talk and talk.

00:26:30.000 And they'd be gossiping and flirting.

00:26:32.000 Same with parties.

00:26:33.000 You go to a teenage party, people are loud, they're getting rowdy.

00:26:36.000 Let me tell you something.

00:26:37.000 Nowadays, if you in class early, silence, Charlie.

00:26:41.000 Silence.

00:26:42.000 Nobody is engaging.

00:26:44.000 I went to a teenage party a few years ago to pick up my daughter, and I walk into the room.

00:26:48.000 I expect them to be, you know, yelling and whatever.

00:26:51.000 Everybody's in there on the couch looking at their phones.

00:26:53.000 The adults have got to remove it.

00:26:56.000 Again, if the adults are not going to be the adults, at the end of the day, you're going to have an infantile society.

00:27:01.000 I mean, you're talking about what does this look like 10 years from now?

00:27:04.000 We're looking at the fact that they don't want to commit to things.

00:27:07.000 They don't particularly think that the country is worth defending or revitalizing.

00:27:12.000 And most of all, their attention spans are dead.

00:27:14.000 I mean, again, reading is a gateway skill.

00:27:18.000 If you can't read, if you can't pay attention, you can't master.

00:27:20.000 Well, I mean, I'm just going to be honest, though.

00:27:22.000 I mean, hiring and dealing with some Generation Z, they don't know anything. 0.85

00:27:26.000 I mean, I don't care where they went to college.

00:27:28.000 I mean, again, some Generation Z is going to get mad.

00:27:31.000 We got some wonderful Gen Z people, but it's really bad. 1.00

00:27:35.000 I mean, and I also, have you noticed at all also?

00:27:37.000 I think this is interesting.

00:27:38.000 And you've seen all these articles about how after the pandemic, a lot of them don't want to come back to work.

00:27:42.000 You know, I want, I want to stay.

00:27:45.000 Why is that?

00:27:46.000 Because it, well, I mean, I think we all know.

00:27:48.000 I mean, why did the students, why did so many of the students, you know, we could have a whole nother day talking about what teaching was like during COVID.

00:27:53.000 I mean, the kids didn't turn on their cameras.

00:27:56.000 Okay.

00:27:56.000 They literally were scrolling and playing Call of Duty while teachers were lecturing.

00:28:01.000 You had to accept work for forever.

00:28:04.000 I mean, I actually had a day where, you know, you have a class of 35 people and maybe two or three have their cameras on, right?

00:28:11.000 And there's one day where I'm lecturing them, going, you know, going on and on.

00:28:13.000 All of a sudden, what do I hear, Charlie?

00:28:16.000 Like the kid had fallen asleep.

00:28:16.000 Yep.

00:28:18.000 And like, we're trying to wake this kid up through Zoom.

00:28:20.000 And so, I mean, if you could stay in your pajamas all day and pass class and, you know, play Call of Duty all day, I mean, and engage in pajama learning, you do it too.

00:28:29.000 I mean, they're kids.

00:28:31.000 But at the end of the day, the problem is that the majesty of education and the power of getting, you know, into a place where you have strong knowledge and skills, that's not happening.

00:28:41.000 And I'm afraid that's what's going to happen to a whole generation.

00:28:43.000 I mean, that's my answer: it's pleasant.

00:28:45.000 It's more easy to work that way, of course.

00:28:49.000 Jeremy Adams, the book is called Hollowed Out.

00:28:51.000 I love this right here.

00:28:52.000 Digital Hermits of a Sort Unfamiliar to an Older Generation.

00:28:55.000 They have little interest in marriage and family. 0.98

00:28:57.000 They largely dismiss and are shockingly ignorant of religion. 0.58

00:29:00.000 They sneer at patriotism, sympathize with riots and vandalism, and regard American society and civilization as so radically flawed that it must be dismantled. 0.65

00:29:10.000 Often friendless and depressed, they eat alone, study alone, and even socialize alone.

00:29:14.000 Okay, we're going to talk about: is there any good news here, Jeremy?

00:29:16.000 Which is, is it possible that they're so depressed and so awful, they might actually latch on to something that is rooted in goodness, truth, and beauty if they'd even believe in such constructs of postmodern America?

00:29:30.000 We shall see.

00:29:33.000 Look, rents are going way too high.

00:29:35.000 The rent is too high.

00:29:37.000 If you're renting or have a friend or family member, that is, right now is the time to make the move to homeownership.

00:29:41.000 My good buddies, Andrew Del Rey and Todd Avakian at Sierra Pacific Mortgage have helped so many people to make that leap from renting and owning.

00:29:48.000 I know what you're saying, oh, Charlie, rates are too high.

00:29:50.000 Listen, you could always refinance.

00:29:52.000 The problem is, though, why are you giving all of your money to rent when you could be building equity with lots of programs that offer first-time buyers assistance with little to no down payment needed?

00:30:02.000 I encourage you to visit andrewandtodd.com right now.

00:30:06.000 They're beautiful people.

00:30:07.000 They're wonderful.

00:30:08.000 The thing I love about these guys is it's not about the transaction.

00:30:10.000 They're about helping you.

00:30:11.000 They just helped me through a whole problem right now.

00:30:13.000 They were amazing.

00:30:14.000 There's no one like it.

00:30:15.000 And by the way, I dealt with the banks before them.

00:30:17.000 I mean, never again.

00:30:20.000 The banks, the worst.

00:30:22.000 Andrew and Todd made the whole process seamless.

00:30:25.000 They're helping you create a plan to help you reach your goals, whether it's for today or a year from now.

00:30:29.000 With today's still historically low interest rates, it's easier than you think to become a homeowner.

00:30:34.000 I've relied on them and producer Andrew has as well.

00:30:37.000 I highly recommend you take action right now.

00:30:39.000 I use them and you should too.

00:30:41.000 I know them personally.

00:30:41.000 They're patriots.

00:30:42.000 They're Christians.

00:30:43.000 Unlike these big woke, godless banks.

00:30:46.000 Why would you do your loans with banks who hate you?

00:30:48.000 And if you know someone who's still paying rent, tell them about Andrew and Todd.

00:30:51.000 Again, you might say, Charlie, now's the worst time to buy.

00:30:53.000 That's not true.

00:30:55.000 Okay.

00:30:55.000 Property values are going to go up.

00:30:57.000 And if you're renting, you're getting poorer.

00:31:00.000 So stop paying rent.

00:31:01.000 Start putting your hard-earned money into a home.

00:31:02.000 Again, there's some packages you might be available that might be available for you or no down payment.

00:31:06.000 Go to andrewandodd.com.

00:31:08.000 That is andrewandodd.com.

00:31:10.000 Tell them Charlie Kirk sent you.

00:31:11.000 They're wonderful people, enthusiastic.

00:31:14.000 They send me scripture.

00:31:15.000 They love the Lord.

00:31:16.000 They love the country.

00:31:18.000 Stop renting.

00:31:19.000 Start buying.

00:31:20.000 They're wonderful people.

00:31:21.000 AndrewandTodd.com.

00:31:26.000 Okay, so Jeremy, is there any part of the book that we haven't discussed yet that you want to make sure our audience is aware of?

00:31:31.000 Any themes or arguments or a thesis within it?

00:31:34.000 Yeah, I just want to be very clear.

00:31:36.000 And I don't think it contradicts anything we've talked about, is that I don't blame our young people at all.

00:31:41.000 I mean, this is 100%.

00:31:42.000 The adults have got to get their act together in our civil society.

00:31:45.000 And you asked this question right before break.

00:31:47.000 You know, what's good about our kids?

00:31:49.000 There's a lot that's great about our kids.

00:31:50.000 I mean, let me just be clear.

00:31:52.000 They're pleasant to be around.

00:31:53.000 I mean, they're funny.

00:31:56.000 They're actually very optimistic.

00:31:58.000 Even though they kind of have this mental health crisis, when you look at what they're interested in, they do have this profound ability to think that the world is changeable.

00:32:08.000 I mean, I guarantee your audience probably doesn't like their kind of environmentalism, but their environmentalism is a belief that we can change the world for the better.

00:32:16.000 They don't think in small terms.

00:32:18.000 They are ambitious.

00:32:19.000 And the other thing I would say, and this is really important, and this is in the book, what drives me loony about my students, but also makes me hopeful, is that on one hand, they are the least patriotic generation in American history, and yet they have a thoroughly American view of justice.

00:32:34.000 And when they're tearing down statues, I want to say, folks, this belief in equality before the law, this belief in individual liberty, this belief in ubiquitous due process rights, this belief in the 14th Amendment and Martin Luther King's dream, where do you think that came from?

00:32:50.000 Okay, I mean, literally, that was, you know, those are our founding documents.

00:32:54.000 When we talk about American exceptionalism, I know people like to laugh at that term, but I'm sorry.

00:32:59.000 We are the first country in the history of the world to take these classical liberal ideas and actually make it into a reality, to pluck it from the clouds of theory and to make it into an actual civil society.

00:33:11.000 And that's something that has to be renewed.

00:33:12.000 And so, you know, they actually do have a thoroughly American view of justice and what's possible.

00:33:18.000 They just kind of don't make that connection between where that sense of justice came from and what it's going to take to renew it.

00:33:24.000 So, battle plan for parents, what's the big takeaways?

00:33:27.000 What are the action steps?

00:33:29.000 Yeah, the biggest takeaway is you have got to put yourself back into the physical place of your children.

00:33:35.000 What does that mean?

00:33:35.000 That means taking away their phones.

00:33:37.000 That means family dinner.

00:33:38.000 That means being involved in school.

00:33:40.000 That means, number one, talking to them.

00:33:42.000 The studies are very clear.

00:33:44.000 Conversations, even if you're talking about silly stuff, actually talking to your students every day is the number one thing you can do.

00:33:50.000 You have to understand one of the worst things about the COVID lockdown was a lot of our young people forgot how to engage.

00:33:58.000 The kind of membrane that connects families and connects communities were destroyed.

00:34:02.000 Young people aren't going to football games and you ask them why, and they say, well, because it's awkward. 0.72

00:34:07.000 I might have to have a conversation with an adult.

00:34:09.000 They don't like to look you in the eyes as much anymore.

00:34:11.000 So we've got to put ourselves back into the physical spaces.

00:34:14.000 But the other thing I would say, and this, I cannot underestimate this enough.

00:34:18.000 I mean, imagine that my words are italicized, underlined, and bold, and with an exclamation point.

00:34:23.000 Okay.

00:34:24.000 You have got to also put yourself back into the moral and spiritual space of our young people.

00:34:30.000 If we allow them to peddle in this kind of soft nihilism that says there is no right, there is no wrong.

00:34:36.000 All countries are equally just, that I'm okay, you're okay.

00:34:39.000 And the worst people are the judgmental people.

00:34:42.000 If that's the value system that we're going to bestow upon this generation, then they are not going to have the virtues and the values and the moral metal, which allows them to get through the difficult storms of life.

00:34:54.000 Because let me tell you right now, you're not middle-aged yet, Charlie.

00:34:56.000 You're still young.

00:34:57.000 It just gets harder.

00:34:58.000 And if you don't believe that there's a kind of moral fortitude that's necessary to get through life, then you're not going to get through it very well.

00:35:06.000 Yeah, I mean, 30 seconds, I guess, remaining, but some of that's curriculum, isn't it, though?

00:35:09.000 I mean, post-modernism, post-structuralist, these teachers are being taught to teach that stuff, aren't they?

00:35:14.000 You know, I would disagree a little bit with that.

00:35:16.000 Yes, I mean, a little bit.

00:35:17.000 You're not wrong on that.

00:35:18.000 But that, you know, where that seeps through?

00:35:20.000 That's all in their memes.

00:35:22.000 That's through their social media, the kind of moral relativism.

00:35:25.000 America's bad.

00:35:25.000 I mean, we all know what the tech industry does.

00:35:28.000 We all know that these algorithms, if you see something and you like it, you're going to watch it over and over and over again.

00:35:34.000 If you see all of this stuff, you know, hours a day, you're going to start to buy into it.

00:35:39.000 Jeremy, thank you for joining us.

00:35:41.000 Hollowed out.

00:35:42.000 A warning about America's next generation, Jeremy Adams.

00:35:45.000 Thank you so much.

00:35:46.000 Thank you for having me.

00:35:47.000 Appreciate it.

00:35:48.000 Email is freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:35:50.000 Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.

00:35:52.000 Take out your podcast app.

00:35:53.000 Type in Charlie Kirk Show.

00:35:55.000 Very important conversation, everybody.

00:35:57.000 And this is something we're going to keep on hammering.

00:35:59.000 If you have kids who say they're depressed or they say they're anxious, they say they need Xanax, they say they need Zolof, they need benzodiazepans, slow down, monitor their screen time, get them down to dopamine zero, no more music, no more flashy screens, have them read books, fiction especially.

00:36:16.000 Anxiety and depression are usually extrapolations of the imagination gone wrong.

00:36:22.000 These kids are largely not depressed.

00:36:24.000 Their brains are overcooked by a device that we have no idea what's actually doing to them.

00:36:30.000 Something we're going to keep on talking about.

00:36:32.000 And by the way, have them in actual conversation, spend time in nature, and challenge a child to stop being comfortable.

00:36:38.000 Comfort actually might kill you.

00:36:41.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:42.000 Email me your thoughts as always.

00:36:43.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

00:36:44.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:36:46.000 God bless.

00:36:48.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - August 16, 2022

DIGITAL HERMITS: A Dire Generational Warning with California Teacher of the Year, Jeremy Adams

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