Today were hosting a rocking Panel Discussion that i am really excited for. And in her new book, cant even. She will be joining us with some amazing, kate young, smith. If you have not yet order a copy of the book, we ship everywhere. We have curbside pickup. Were also open to the public at capacity just make sure to come by on a monday or tuesday because weekends are really busy for us. Just remember that your purchase is supporting a bookstore rated and also if you order a copy of the book from bookpeople bookstore, you will be getting another thing. Just give everyone a quick platform event after this introduction number guest will be joining us on the screen. In taking questions and please make sure to submit them in the bubble below. Youre looking at your screen, the bar below always to the right you will see two little bubbles this a q a. To submit them there instead of the chats. And with that, we will be recording tonights event which will be aired on cspan and later date right just a heads up. Now on to introducing outcast of the night. Anne Helen Petersen is here, the former academic. At that university of texas at austin. Her focus is on the history of celebrity. Too loud too fat to study into lead. They were featured in mbr in the atlantic, she currently lives in montana and kate young is nelly based cultural critic. [inaudible]. Her book is on the intersection of race gender and sexuality. And is impaired in different media, cosmic cosmopolitan and paper magazine. She has a ba in journalism from boston university, masters and mathematician. At the masters in journalism and the arts from the university of southern california. In 2016, she served as inaugural talk criticism fellow. 2019 she was awarded the fellowship in Digital Innovation and criticism. And ms. Smith is a journalist based in northern california. And another is an editor and also writes in a daily newsletter. And is published work in catapults. [inaudible]. And then you have connie, the executive, and public consumer culture. She also posted become produced or 2019 documentary series title the reported on fashion, culture around the world. The Second Season one and news women of new york award. And with that, i would like to help me welcome our guests for the night. I think youll for being here. Anne Helen Petersen hi everyone. I am anne Helen Petersen and i am glad youre here and i am so grateful to have people host this. I lived in austin, people was a real refuge for me never to my come back to austin, it remains as much. I am so grateful for the work they do in the community and the things they preserve for books and reading. I am very happy to be here. I want to actually go around it and i love each of the panelists say just one thing about themselves like the place when they can find a piece of work that theyve done that they are really product. I think one of the talks of these panels is introducing internet thinkers. And also to say thank you for being on this panel. Donating 250 to an organization to each of their choice. Its like what is a a little about their Organization Get them on your radar sprayed people if you have 2 or 5, to throw their way, a little bit can add up to a lot. Let start with connie. Because shes to the left of me and resume. Hello, connie. Im very proud of but i think the most recent piece ive done is an assignment i wrote, the grateful generation with no apologizing to do. And again any of the same structures that we millennials throughout, it really focuses on the sort of personal reckoning that i underwent when i went through the workplace reckoning that where along with other editorials union where to address the people and structures that were responsible for things. To make sure the things changed in those changes were implemented and were sustainable. In a meaningful way. And when people ask, why were the changes. It happened in 2020, were all working from home in sort of like decentralized a lot of people said that it was because of like what is happening, and what i noticed is there some sort of switch that happened was based off of older generations that millennials like myself, the younger millennials entering the full workforce in a difference in the way that we saw the world and things that were possible and that things that we were capable of and the possibilities of collective action. So i wrote about all of that. And i wrote about how my generation sort of lost position. No what we have learned from a number of people and is been all of the various reckonings that have been happening this year. My organization,. [laughter]. Thank you for reminding me. I just had a baby two weeks ago. It so my brain is a little bit pride. But i will mellow on this by the end of this, i will have an organization dropped in your chat room. Anne Helen Petersen think your muted brain it. So im kate. The thing that i am real proud of this essay that i wrote for netflix makes essentially homecoming as a project in the thinking. [inaudible]. And really proud of them because i think because it encapsulates the kind of writing that i most enjoy doing. Specifically around how they are represented. And for my organization, i would like to Pay Attention to the overall. [inaudible]. Action network. And has all of this crucial, now and especially these days with. [inaudible]. It is more crucial than ever to put people on the ground. Hello. Ive already gotten introduced. My piece that is most relevant to the conversation and to make larger audience a fork is called good grief. It appeared in the sixth issue and offered online and features are looking at the the you get your one day off and then you need to come back and you need to be over it. This feature came out before covid19. Now it feels more intense than ever because everyones experiencing loss. Because loss and unable to process it or, its already a complicated grief. You need to get therapy. And the grief counselors the night interviewed said actually sometimes grief just sucks. And thats how it is. So is an amazing feature to work on. And great to be supported by one of the few black editors that i get to work with. In my charity is also local, the Childrens Fund. 111 of the lowest income counties in california. With really significant disparities with classes. Which techies are buying houses and people sitting on the streets. The Childrens Fund provides a ton of services and support. And i would say above their wage. Right now theyre both fire refugees and covid19 issues that are really testing their ability. So i would love to see them give our support. Anne Helen Petersen so shout out to the current fundraising for the yearly Capital Campaign basically. And aaron youre a nonprofit the desk truly intellectual work. Go to google which magazine you finally to donated tribute to that played an important project that i donate to every year. Thank you. A newsletter addition that are out is the q a i did with seven monies tiktok intern. L about you guys but i spent during the pandemic deep into tiktok. In the sort of thing excited about how creative everyone is. Especially the young people. One of the accounts have been totally blown away with money, so is able to get into the guys are like runs the whole thing. Any sort of like picked his brain and he i think will did you look it up. Its so weird accounts. But like explain sort of basic economics and blows you away. Any say oh yeah, now i get it. As i got to ask him about his background and everything in it turns out that he has studied film in college. Which explained everything. So if you google these likes, the money and tiktok. I highly recommend to visit him. I highly recommend him. [inaudible]. In their organization is the city. Nonprofit that covers at the grassroots level. I have been checking the coronavirus chat room and reducing everything a day parade oparade. [inaudible]. Their building like a sociable memorial for new yorkers who have died from covid19. Its like a huge undertaking. And then we also have this ongoing project with a few other in order to give the nypd accountable. Especially for the lesson in the black communities. Their so much in terms of that just to get to talk about their experiences. So i think, theres never a bad time to support journalism. I think it is how informative it is especially right now. Anne Helen Petersen thank you so much bring it to yesterdays panel, they were talking about the labor and the exhaustion of social media participation. In one thing that everyone talked about was how the only platform that doesnt make you feel bad is tiktok. Because first volcano feel that even his millennials, even the youngest, i know you guys are younger millennials. Youll feel the compulsion that you have to go out there necessarily. There are college kids who can go do that. So i just consume it. For myself. So the big question that we are going to do is a little bit more personal and talk about time in our lives when we felt that we had the most. The broad theme of this panel is culture, freelance culture. Again to be working all of the time at some capacity. Without that is a salary job or putting together a bunch of different gigs. And that compulsion which existed before Millennials Health become much more prevalent as millennials have entered the workforce. And then the recession in 2008, has become a defining feature of the millennials relationship with work. So just like feeling like i always had to be trying to put together other unpaid jobs in order to find a job that would pay me reasonable. But im curious to hear what everyone else has to say. For me is definitely college. Yet this whole amazing chapter new book that like the college emission classes. So when i did it reminded me of this nightmare of colleges, just to be the most fun years of your life or whatever. And i went to the university of missouri, the Journalism School there. And it was sort of like on top of just normal pressure to have the time of your life every day but also be like preparing for your entire life. It was his pressure coming from our professors the administration and our peers in terms of that you have to do your internship, you have to like never stop letting up because that is how youre going to make it. And theres this real sense that only a few will ever make it out of here. It was so competitive. It just seemed like any even if he took the weekend off, it was like youve had this sense that you are falling behind. Its i think i was definitely yet, most stressful during that time in my life. For my time as a professor, like how you make the connections to get those internships. Sometimes there through your university or college was sometimes professors are like, try to reach out to some people in the business. And you dont know how to do that. You dont have to like you dont have the connections to my parents or anything like that that would make that possible. I felt like such a huge boulder to keep rolling up the hill. Absolutely. So fulltime freelancer for 15 years so basically all of those years probably the most stressful point was my father had a heart attack in 2012. And he needed a quadruple bypass. We dont mess around when it comes to a problems in the system for any lawful out. I had this realization that he was an adjunct faculty member, no savings. And he could not work for months and actually ended up later leaving the workforce altogether. Which in a normal world, where people can retire at 60, it is fine. But was not for me i suddenly realized i was going to be keeping two households. One income and accounting that is very poor and a very high cost of living. So that was where i really started scrambling to the bottom of the barrel basement jobs like any, 50, i will take it. I think the scramble is really familiar to a lot of freelancers. It comes to this kind of dark side because it comes back to bite me in the oscillator with 70. Like, that should be essay that you wrote for 50 bucks in 2013. Or whatever. Which is something that i think we dont talk about is much as we should and in this pressure to do it all, do all of the things. Sometimes they will say like really you need to really take that assignment. Really did. Okay. Okay, thank you. I have that dotted all over the internet. Like some of them i didnt do anything for them. Like what connie talked about, i was just grateful to be published on the internet right. And that throws down one of the people can expect to be paid. And what i could be expect to be paid because if i were free, why would the pace nobody else. Kate, go ahead. Served for me it was slightly different because im an immigrant and when i graduated from college on back home. It was a frustrating experience for me because i thought if you had the opportunity, that we just dont have the expectation that you leave home in 18. I can do here. So that was kind of never really the pressure that i was under. That was under a lot of pressure to kind of find work that held prestige and wanted to talk about in the book. And for a number of years, i was kind of what, i like the crippling part but i was trying to on the internet the websites the people on twitter care about. And my parents had never heard of them and they dont think the real. Having to continually justify the work that i was doing meant something. I was also behind in a way because when i had entered the workforce, i was afraid of it. I was very like very cognizant of the fact that can be in the internet forever. And i was not willing to submit my work for 50 bucks. I was too scared. But im also very glad they dont have things floating around because by the time i started writing on the internet. Will kind of moving out of that phase and also had found that i had Something Else that i wanted to write about. It was a personal choice. So that aspect of my professional life well it kind of meant that it took a long time. In the woman predominantly who started in that time do have our art further along in their career now. In the tradeoff is was it worth it. And i held back that long. I was really ashamed eventually that i was not doing the work that my mother can brag about. Big time. That left a lot of conflict between us when i was back living at home. Because she did not understand the industry that i was working and in that how it functioned. This was during the time that it was routinely the pot entire publications were going under. And i was supposed to find a way to become a staff writer and publication that was going under that didnt Hire International people that i could not technically legally work for because also i couldnt work in the u. S. Is this whole thing. It sort of just fine with the efforts that she thought was nothing. It was essentially the boundaries of what i could accomplish. And took a really long time. When they started theres no ships, they open it up internationally. And then i was able to get a byline. Become recognized enough to keep going. In the interpretation that i was able to go through. It was very difficult. There is something that limits me specifically because it didnt for me as a culture credit, there certain things that you cant do. Like you cant do the premieres from the ocean. Its that kind of makes those things available, available opportunities. [inaudible]. I found a very strange relationship to how i view the work respect because i definitely grew up with the understanding that michael was to not have to do the kind of work that we are now recognizi recognizing. It you clock out at 6 00 oclock. Like if i went to school that i got my degree. That i would not have to be working at kfc or whatever it was. But they have benefits. Like it is fun. In the antidote, and about the gentleman who was going to teach or be manager of the Grocery Store. Why is not okay to simply have enough to support yourself. Like what more is there. I dont live to work a job. I earn money so that i can do other things i actually want to be doing with my life. So yeah, it is a lot. Anne Helen Petersen yes. A lot of people who dont know or dont work closely with people who are immigrants dont know how difficult it is to find an organization that is willing to go through the visa process with you. It is a huge prolonged deal and its incredibly stressful read on the worker and his socks. And i wish that there was a massive reform. So like youre right, its hard weeks going to other people. No i cant just apply for the job. A lot of the application specifically ask if you are allowed to work in the country replied something or a place and then i would find out a few days later that i had to have a visa to work there. So currently i am graduated from grad school. [inaudible]. You know, its a long process and the rules are constantly changing. And its very stressful because there is to be a certain point that you are recognized, that hasnt anything to do with how well he worker how hard he worked for haskell for your are. Is about who is willing to take you on as a commodity and willing to invest in and jumping through all of the the polls. Just the idea of the job. Its not like theres this job listing. Its just nonexistent. It. [inaudible]. People are not trying to be a cultural writer but difficult of the reality of the middle and the old jobs. Like part of i think the people keep asked me, how did millennials get this at reputation for being lazy and entitled. I think a lot of it is when we were raised to advocate for ourselves. Any of us especially people raised in middleclass into, a lot of our jobs do necessarily look like traditional understandings of work. Like im sure you get all the time, like you watch movies for your job. I got that so any times through the course of my life. Getting a phd in movies. It must be nice just to watch movies all day. Yet, theres just a lot more. So what about you. My first time experiencing burnout was my first time experience in media. I saved up all of my money for marking and college to spend the summer in new york city working through an internship. One was 12 a day. In one was 30 which i would do one post at this magazine. As no longer around. Im staying around prayer and bu besides paying around 6000 a month to share one apartment with six girls. I spent my nights reporting nice, weekend its not working. This visual brings me such shame and horror. Like hundred people, young people in business casual like sipping on wind. It was like trying to network with one another. That was what my summer was. We were trying to share tips about how to get the job and this was just months before the recession hit. We were all very bright idea idealistic about the prospect of what work look like. And th