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Millenial Fears: Part 1 - Environmental Disasters
71 Plays5 months ago
You better watch out, there’s quicksand about!
In Part 1 of this series on Millennial Fears (yes, there are so many, we had to break them up into parts!), we’re deep diving into the plethora of natural hazards which seemed to be a real and present danger during our childhood – we’re talking volcanoes, tornados, acid rain, and the infamous quicksand! How much truth was there to the reality of these fears, and why have they stuck around with us to this day?
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Transcript
Introduction to Liminal Queens
00:00:11
Speaker
Hi friend, welcome to Liminal Queens, the podcast where my sister and i revisit weird, wonderful and oddly specific cultural moments that shaped us as millennials. Each episode, we explore one topic from 90s or early 2000s culture.
00:00:27
Speaker
We start by sharing our own memories and experiences, then we unpack where it came from, and finally we dig into the psychology behind why certain shows, fads, books and weird little fears stuck with us so vividly, even decades later.
00:00:43
Speaker
Now, full disclosure,
Midlife Hobbies and Episode Delay
00:00:44
Speaker
this episode was meant to drop around Halloween, but life gets in the way. And at first, that felt to me like a failure. But it's turned into a reflection on what it means to have hobbies in midlife when you're already at capacity.
00:00:59
Speaker
Do you drop them entirely because you can't do them as often as you'd like? Or do you just keep going, doing them when you can, without pressure or guilt, and count it as a win that you're doing it at all?
00:01:11
Speaker
So that's why we haven't locked ourselves into a weekly release schedule. We're averaging about one episode a month, but we still love it. It still matters to us and we hope it brings you a little spark too.
00:01:22
Speaker
And
Fears of Natural Disasters in Pop Culture
00:01:23
Speaker
if you've been putting off starting something creative because you can't commit to doing it perfectly or consistently, this is your sign to not let that stop you. Anyway, let's get into it. This episode is about the very specific fear we grew up with about natural disasters and nature trying to un-alive us.
00:01:41
Speaker
My name is Sabrina and I'm here to provide the weird childhood memories and examine cultural impact. And my sister Jen brings the psychological expertise to help us understand why and how pop culture shaped our brains and nervous systems.
00:01:55
Speaker
So if you've ever found yourself thinking, wait, Was i the only one who made my Sims go swimming and then deleted the ladder? You're in the right place.
00:02:11
Speaker
Imagine this, listener. It's 1990-something. You're sprawled on the carpet on a Saturday, chin propped on your hands, soaking up that golden window of kid freedom where the only thing on the agenda is TV.
00:02:26
Speaker
You flick the channel. A cartoon superhero is practically yelling at you, Recycle! Or the planet will die! He's pointing directly at the screen. Directly at you.
00:02:38
Speaker
at eight years old, you're suddenly accountable for the fate of the Earth. Click. Over to the weatherman. He's not smiling. He's pointing at a map splattered with red zones and gravely explaining how acid rain is dissolving lakes, stripping forest spare, eroding houses and cars.
00:02:57
Speaker
You take note not to get caught out in the rain ever again, lest your flesh melt off. Click. Okay, enough reality. A movie will lighten the mood. But, nope.
00:03:08
Speaker
Here comes a giant tsunami swallowing skyscrapers and thousands of screaming extras.
Childhood Fears: Quicksand, Lava, and More
00:03:13
Speaker
Hopefully that doesn't happen where you live. Click again. An action hero, muscles bulging, suddenly up to his armpits in quicksand.
00:03:22
Speaker
His sidekick shouts, don't struggle, it only makes it worse. You wonder how you'll be able to tell normal sand from quicksand. It all looks the same. No matter where you land, the message is the same.
00:03:35
Speaker
The Earth is fragile, your everyday choices are wounding it, and at any moment nature might snap back, with rain that burns, oceans that rise, or ground that swallows you whole.
00:03:47
Speaker
And there you are, sprawling the carpet in your trackies, being told that you're part of the problem and expected to do your bit to make it right.
00:04:03
Speaker
Hello, Jen. Hello, Sissy. How's it going? It is ah going well. It has been a busy week as per usual, but um good weekend so far. How about you?
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, good. I'm recovering from a Prosecco-induced hangover, but I feel okay and it's ah beautiful it's a beautiful day to be locked in a wardrobe. Indeed. Yes, it's the same here as well. Stunning outside. There's no place I'd rather be than my walk-in wardrobe.
00:04:32
Speaker
Well, frankly, we can't really be out when the UV is at its maximum anyway. so it was going to be inside until the sun goes away. Vampire style. Yes, ah ah we're both as white as white can be. And so we are really ill-suited to the climes of Australia, um but we were brought here against our will, so yeah wasn' it wasn't in our control.
00:04:54
Speaker
And we've decided to stay here and risk the skin cancer possibility. Oh, inevitability. Inevitability. Anyway, we've got to be inside, got to do vampire, but make it productive, so we'll make a podcast while we're inside. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:05:08
Speaker
And today, as we are approaching Halloween, we decided that we would do a cast about some fear-based themes, some millennial fears.
00:05:19
Speaker
And we listed out everything that came top of mind for us, and then there were just way too many. And so we have grouped them into themes. And just a quick shout out to one of our colleagues, Lisa Wright, for sharing one of her core fears or memories from being a millennial child.
00:05:37
Speaker
Quicksand, thank you, Lisa, for that fabulous idea. Yes, thank you for sharing your trauma. And we're going riff off it and expand on that topic a bit to cover some other natural earth-based fears. So on the menu for today, quicksand, lava, acid rain and tsunamis. What a fabulous combination of somewhat random but not random fears.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yes, and some highly dramatised and some unfortunately not and quite real. So it'll be great to unpack those a bit today. Indeed. So shall we jump into our core memories, Jen? Let's do it.
00:06:21
Speaker
My first question for you is, do you remember the first time that you saw quicksand on screen? Okay, I'm not sure if this is the first time i came across this or if it was just the one that stuck with me and I know it's I'm not the only one, but it's from the never-ending story where the protagonist in the book, Atreyu, loses his horse Artax in the swamps, the quicksand swamps. The swamps of sadness.
00:06:49
Speaker
of sadness, yeah. um And they basically suck in anything that gives in to despair. And so obviously the horse is like in despair, which we assume. And he gets sucked and you're just watching this horse and it's a totally helpless case.
00:07:04
Speaker
It's hopeless. It's so traumatic. And I think that it was just so intense. i can't get that out of my head. So I think that was the first one for me. Yes, I think it's that one.
00:07:16
Speaker
And then it is also the Princess Bride where they get stuck in the the lightning sand, right? They get caught by it because it's not it's not like slow, sinky, quick sand that draws you down over time. It's like you just step in it and then you disappear basically. Yeah. Princess Buttercup.
00:07:36
Speaker
Is that correct? Princess Buttercup? Yeah, it is. ah She just disappears down there and then Wesley, he grabs onto a vine or something and he just dives straight in and pulls her out.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Those are the key ones for me. But I know that there's also a very famous scene in the movie Flash Gordon. Oh, yeah. And then I can't be more specific, but I have the vibe that it was in many, many cartoons.
00:08:03
Speaker
including Captain Planet. yeah Yes, yes, definitely. And then also i do remember playing quicksand a lot at school. Yeah. So either sandpit or just anywhere where you're imagining it and you're like, someone's in there in the sand and they're help, I'm stuck in the quicksand. And then the other kids around the side are like, ah don't move, don't struggle, otherwise you'll sink faster.
Media Influence: Quicksand and Volcanoes
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah. And then you're looking around the playground for sticks and you're trying of like throw sticks in and then you all sort of dramatically... pull out the other kid and in the process of saving that victim someone else falls in and then it just ends again it's like endless cycle of quicksand accidents and rescues so yes doing that a lot definitely do you remember how you first heard about acid rain acid rain for me has got to be captain planet i definitely remember that that had something to do with prompting the idea that of the existence of acid rain for me
00:09:05
Speaker
Okay, quick sidebar, because we feel duty-bound to ensure that everyone is aware of Captain Planet, and we know not everybody had a childhood that involved a lot of before and after school television watching.
00:09:18
Speaker
Captain Planet was a cartoon about environmental awareness, advocacy, and action. In it, Gaia, that's Mother Earth, voiced by Whoopi Goldberg, if you can believe that, gives five rings of power to some teens to help them fight pollution and environmental destruction. And the rings of power are Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Heart.
00:09:42
Speaker
Each episode focused on a particular environmental or social issue. And the teens were really educating you about it and then they were solving it or fighting some kind of villain like Mr Pollution. And it had a theme song that absolutely slaps.
00:10:06
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. That's such a good song. Okay, now back to the normal show.
00:10:27
Speaker
i hope you enjoyed that as much as i did that's such a good song okay now back to the normal I don't specifically remember it from Captain Planet, though of course I do remember Captain Planet.
00:10:39
Speaker
I think that I just heard about it from an older kid. Maybe it was you. Probably. Or maybe someone in the playground. And if it started raining, we would all run around screaming hysterically, ah, it's acid rain, and pretend that our faces were melting off.
00:10:56
Speaker
yep yep and I've spoken to other people who are like just terrified all the time that it would rain and that it would be acid rain isn't that awful yeah the angst the angst that brings to your life when the likelihood of it is so low but you just don't know that as a kid right exactly and because you don't understand the facts around it you actually think that if this acid touches your skin it will burn like hydrochloric acid like it will eat your face your face will melt off your so flesh will melt off that's what you think is going to happen yeah well it's it's easy to think that when you see it in a cartoon or on tv and that's what actually happens right so next question what about volcanoes what is your central memory
00:11:40
Speaker
Well, I think somewhere in the mid-90s, there was a couple of movies that were centered around volcanoes, right? I think the one I saw, because I feel like for everyone, like if there were duplicates of movies about like some kind of disaster, you either saw one or the other. I think I saw Dante's Peak and that was terrifying. That had a bit of acid going on in that as well as the volcanoes, right? Like all associated disasters almost all in one in that movie.
00:12:06
Speaker
You're right, that was the phenomenon. Sometimes Hollywood releases twin movies for one reason or the other. Sometimes it's coincidental. Sometimes it's because it's competing studios who decide that they want to get a similar blockbuster out at the same time. But yes, one movie was Volcano and that starred Tommy Lee Jones.
00:12:25
Speaker
And then there was Dante's Peak, which is the one that we saw first, which starred Pierce Brosnan. And you've told me that the key imagery for you in that is that when the old lady walks through that? Oh, no it's a the river. She's crossing a river, like trying to get across to Pierce Brosnan and the rest of his the family he's with. And the river is turned acidic because of the ash and whatnot coming out of the volcano. And her legs are basically like sloughing off, like the skin and the but and the muscle and stuff. It's horrifying. It's just basically like what you talked about with the acid rain and people's face melting. or was happening to her legs. It was awful because she got to the other side and her legs were basically just like dissolving. It was so horrific. It was terrifying.
00:13:06
Speaker
Oh, that really was a very traumatizing scene. My main memory from Dante's Peak is in one of the opening scenes, there's um a teenage couple on a date in a national park and they decide to go for a nudie swim in a hot spring. Yes. And they get in the water and they're commenting, oh, it's super hot. Oh my God. Surprisingly, the hot spring was hot. And anyway, they get in and they start making out and all of a sudden the water, I suppose, superheats because they can't get out of it and they basically boil alive.
00:13:44
Speaker
It's really gross. Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, it was so scary. Just as an aside, that jumping into hot spring and stuff, that still happens. People still do that. And like Yellowstone and stuff, like stupidly jump into these pools at night and't and sometimes jump into the wrong ones and just boil alive. It's horrible. That's just got to be the worst way to go.
00:14:07
Speaker
Totally. My other core memory around lava is, you know, really playing the floor is lava. yeah You know, when you can't touch the floor, you've got to be up on the furniture. And I always remember playing it at our friend Hannah's house. And when I think about the like coffee tables and stuff that we were stepping on, they were probably really expensive had and they had like glass tops as well. And they contained nice things, maybe even antiques.
00:14:32
Speaker
Artifacts and things, yeah. And we were just like, nobody cares. Just like smash, break everything. And it's quite hilariously ironic because the real potential of lava for us is like 0% where we live. There was very real probability that you would put your foot through glass, fall off some furniture, crack your head open. That didn't really seem to matter. Okay, for our last few that we're exploring today, tsunamis. Jen, tell me, what is your core memory for this?
00:15:09
Speaker
Oh, like tsunamis for me is a big one. oh is that a pun? Tsunamis is a big one. It's unintentional. It's just a big fear for me, I think is what I meant. Because, yeah, I've always i've certainly have a deep respect for the ocean.
00:15:25
Speaker
Probably like what they called, tide they were calling them tidal waves, but actually we know that they're actually not the same thing, a tidal wave and a tsunami. But probably, again, Captain Planet and some sort of tsunami that was caused by someone doing something bad to the planet that's kind of because otherwise anything after that is actually probably related to more realistic events yes well i always think of the movie deep impact which came out in oh yeah right and that was a tsunami triggered by an asteroid oh yeahm packing yeah and in the final scenes uh
00:16:03
Speaker
Taya Leone's character, she gives up her her spot on a helicopter to a mother and child instead. And so she's like, that's her last chance. She's trapped. And so she drives out to somewhere along the beach where her father lives, like on the coast. Yes, I remember that scene. Yeah. They're just standing on the beach and he's holding her and they're just standing there as the tsunami comes in. And it's just like. That's right. They're hugging. yeah they're hugging oh it's so that was so traumatic i remember that scene now it's coming back to me and you're just like it's just not doing anything like they've just at they've made peace and i'm just like that is just not the ending i was expecting as a kid like you're always hoping there's going to be some kind of resolution the person the person's gonna be okay
00:16:52
Speaker
that was probably yes yeah why it was so traumatic and the fact that there's like very realistic the traffic jams of people trying get out of the city traffic jams are the worst and like they always like seem to be associated with tsunamis but other things too like i'm thinking about independence dave oh just when people panic and they have to get out and it's like everybody out at the same time uh-oh traffic oh just don't get in a car people because everyone's having the same idea so like just start running do nothing or just don't do anything just give up you know what it's probably better to be there and to get over and done with than actually be one of those people that's left to survive in the the fallout on the other side it's a lot of work living in an apocalypse but there was another plot in there which was like elijah wood and um lily sobieski oh god but some like childhood actors there my goodness wow
00:17:43
Speaker
And she was stuck in the traffic jam with her parents and the baby and yeah they can't get away. And Elijah would, he's got like a dirt bike or a scooter or something and he finds her and her parents make her go and they make her take the baby and then they just stay. And it was, that was really upsetting. Oh, that's, yeah, that really hits a chord when you have your own kids as well.
00:18:05
Speaker
I know. Yes, I know And so, okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your core memories. Oh, it's nice to reminisce on them. Right, so the core question here is how real were these
Environmental Realities: Acid Rain and Emissions
00:18:18
Speaker
fears, right? Because some of them were legitimate and some of them were dramatization, may not have happened sort of level. um So let me go through them fear by fear to unpack them. So let's start with acid rain. I think this one is, I had the most questions around this and I found it the most interesting. So this wasn't a myth. This was happening, actually happening in the world. And the way that most of us found out about it, if it wasn't Captain Planet, is you probably found out about it through the news cycle.
00:18:46
Speaker
Right. And images of real destruction and real impact happening. So by the 1970s and eighty s emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from coal-fired power plants and vehicles were creating acidic rain. So if you want to understand how that works, so when those gases react with water and other particles in the atmosphere,
00:19:08
Speaker
They end up forming sulfuric and nitric acids and those then fall back to earth as acid rain. But it would be more accurate to call it acid precipitation because it means you also got it in acid snow, acid sleet and fog, oh which is like so much more horrifying.
00:19:27
Speaker
so normal rain has a pH of about 5.4. On a scale of 1 to 10, like the lower that number, the more acidic something is. um So 5.4 is what the normal pH is and it's like a little bit acidic but harmless because you know rain isn't just water. It's like I said before comprised of yeah water and whatever other particles are in the atmosphere. um During the height of the crisis, Scientists recorded readings as low as 3.7.
00:19:56
Speaker
And so that's roughly the acidity of orange juice. And it doesn't sound catastrophic. It doesn't sound like if you've dropped orange juice on your face, your skin doesn't slough off. Like, you know that.
00:20:08
Speaker
Thank goodness. ah But over time, the compounding effect is really quite devastating. So... Lakes in North America turned too acidic for the fish to survive. Forests across Germany's Black Forest and Scandinavia were actually stripped bare. Oh, wow.
00:20:24
Speaker
So even though the causes were really well known, they were politically contentious because everybody was quite reliant on the coal power plants that burnt that high sulfur coal. And then also there was industrial emissions and car exhausts as well, but the power plants were the main offender. And so environmental scientists had been warning of that for a while, but it was just inconvenient.
00:20:48
Speaker
It was inconvenient to industry and to governments to do anything. Isn't it always? Yeah, inconvenient truth. But by the late 80s, you couldn't really ignore what was happening because, like I said before, lakes were dying and forests were dying. And so eventually in the US, the governments imposed emissions controls and put in place a Clear Air Act in 1990 and then as those regulations tightened the acid rain level began to drop dramatically and yeah after the u.s did that a lot of the rest of the western world like europe and australia and are followed suit which is great but it did take a long time for that to actually cycle through from when awareness was first raised to when action was taken Yeah, fascinating.
00:21:32
Speaker
But it sounds like it was an actual problem rather than being something that we totally met up in our mind. Yes, it was very real. And really, largely, the problem is solved. But in parts of the world that still rely on that high sulfur coal, they kind of still have this issue, right?
00:21:46
Speaker
So ah what would you like to talk about next in our menu of fears, Jen? How about quicksand?
Misconceptions and Realities of Natural Disasters
00:21:54
Speaker
Quicksand. Quicksand's funny because of all of the environmental dangers that we're sort of speaking about today.
00:22:01
Speaker
It was very popular in movies and shows and games and books. Yeah. So it made us feel like, oh, I'm seeing this a lot, so i' I probably will encounter it. Yeah, exactly. But none of us had ever seen it with our own eyes and probably will never see it.
00:22:17
Speaker
And from a scientific perspective, quicksand is real. It forms when loose sand becomes saturated with water. So the grains lose friction and then they start to behave like a liquid. When you step in a ah your weight displaces the water and it creates suction that can make it difficult to pull free.
00:22:36
Speaker
But usually it doesn't form any deeper than a couple of feet and you cannot be sucked under oh because the mixture is denser than the human body. So you'll end up floating. Yeah, right. That's good to know. the real danger if you do step in quicksand comes from panic or exhaustion or rising water levels. So if you are stuck in it and you are near a river and the tide comes in, then you end up getting stuck and drown and that can be a thing. I've heard Mr Balan share a story on that before on his podcast. Yeah. In an area where the tide comes in very quickly and a woman got stuck in the sands near that tidal area. Yeah, yeah, like in mudflats and stuff. So, yes, you can die, but it's not going to be in the form of being devoured by the earth. Oh, well, that's a relief, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
00:23:29
Speaker
But then so why why was it everywhere? Yeah. Why was it in our face? Why did Hollywood love it basically? To tell. If you think about it from a practical perspective, it would be quite cheap to do.
00:23:42
Speaker
You know, no special ear effects required. Just get some sand, just get some water and it creates like i instant tensions, very perilous. It draws out that tension like I'm going to drown but this is very, very slow It is. Well, if you think about Artax in Neverending Story, that scene is quite a lengthy scene and it really draws out the despair of that moment and the helplessness of that moment. Yeah. It's agonising. Yeah, it is.
00:24:13
Speaker
Next, next lesson, guys, I think tsunamis slash tidal waves, you were sort of touching yeah on earlier that there was a bit of um a misunderstanding around the terminology for that, which is true. Yes. um And so when we were kids, we were saying tidal wave a lot, I think, because there was Again, not an understanding, but a tidal wave is just a normal wave, which is caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. Whereas a tsunami is triggered by sudden geological events, like an undersea earthquake or a volcanic eruption or a landslide. or an asteroid hitting the earth, I suppose. Scientifically speaking, tsunamis are not a single giant wave, which is often how it was portrayed when it was dramatised. But unfortunately, we all know now because of...
00:25:02
Speaker
natural catastrophes involving tsunamis that have happened you know in our adult lifetime as well as our childhood. Yes. We know that tsunamis are more like a series of long, powerful waves yes that are triggered by a sudden displacement of water. When the ocean floor shifts abruptly, it pushes a column of water upward, sending waves racing outwards across the entire ocean basin at up to 800 kilometers an hour. I'm scared of these facts.
00:25:27
Speaker
I can't even process what that speed is and thinking about it like you drop a penny into water. It's not going in one direction. It goes out in a circle, right? It's ripped like a ripple. Yeah.
00:25:39
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. um And when that's happening out in deep water, it's really not noticeable, right? So it might just be like a couple of like a gentle rise and fall of a few dozen centimetres.
00:25:50
Speaker
Great. So basically what you're saying is i just go out to where it came from and you'll be all right? Yes. Maybe. Maybe not. I don't remember that being in the ah official ah notices.
00:26:04
Speaker
So when it reaches shallow coastal waters, the wave's energy compresses, forcing it upwards into the towering walls of water that devastate coastlines. And it's not really about their height, it's more about their momentum and the sheer volume of water that moves inland and just like sweeps everything in its path.
00:26:21
Speaker
Mm. So scary. It's so scary. And then don't even talk about when the water actually goes back out to sea and sucks everything with it. It's terrible.
00:26:32
Speaker
I think we've got one more in our little science lesson here, which is... Volcanoes, guys, I don't need to educate you really on what a volcano is. Exfuse lava, ash, toxic gases into the atmosphere. And depending on the type of eruption, the results can range from, you know, slow glowing rivers of lava to catastrophic blasts that alter global weather patterns. And we've all lived through that shit.
00:26:56
Speaker
And so... We've talked about Volcano, the movie. We've talked about Dante's Peak, the movie. Yes, they were very um successful for obvious reasons because it's, you know, like watching towns being swallowed by lava, bridges melt, um people racing to get away from pyroclastic flows, avalanche of gas and rock. like there's There's a lot to work with there in terms of creating tension, creating fear, creating urgency. You can see why it's a great storytelling vehicle.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. But in terms of real events, in 1980 there was the eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state. ah Its sideways explosion obliterated forests, flattened towns, darkened skies across the US Pacific Northwest. Eleven years later, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted with such force that it cooled global temperatures for nearly two years.
00:27:47
Speaker
Wow, it is wild, yeah. And they were photographed, televised, played on the news. like It's not like these things had never happened before in the history of humankind. It's about the fact that they could be...
00:28:01
Speaker
recorded, televised and sent to parts of the world where, you know, volcanoes are not a fear for us where we live in Australia. Yeah, no, they're not. But it felt like they were, especially when you're a kid and you don't understand that you don't have one down the road. You're like, cool, just let me be scared of everything just in case. Just to cover all bases, you know.
00:28:19
Speaker
Thanks for sharing that science overview, Sissy. That's really helpful. I mean, some of us might remember it from our high school biology or um geology classes. ah I guess in thinking about that then, it sounds like there's really one out of these fears of ah that we have in our core memories anyway that's the least relevant to the broad group and population of the Earth, right? Yes.
00:28:44
Speaker
And that's quicksand, which I feel like a lot of millennials probably can resonate with as being a really core fear. But actually, very few of us, if at all, are going to ever come into contact with quicksand in our life. And actually, the real danger of it is actually not as high as we thought of as kids.
00:29:06
Speaker
Would that be fair to say? Yeah, not as high. It's like nothing. It's like we all hyper fixated on the wrong thing because we're like acid rain. But it actually was happening. Like that was real. yeah um And, you know, depending on where you live. um i mean, if you lived in Japan, earthquakes and tsunamis, yes. If you are living like – at the cross section of like tectonic plates. Yes, that's very real for you. As are for volcanoes if you're on that in the, um but on the edge of a tectonic plate.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. But for us, geez, like we could have just relaxed. Yes.
00:29:55
Speaker
Now, Jen, over to you.
Imagination, Media, and Childhood Fears
00:29:57
Speaker
Let's talk about the psychological scars. Okay. So there's a few things feeding into these fears that you've well articulated for us that I'll run through. And it's just sort of a broad psychological perspective.
00:30:13
Speaker
What feeds into these things really sticking in our mind, being of any relevance to us if we think about our our child brains? So i guess the first... One to touch on is that developmental anxiety and also magical thinking, which is essentially thinking that what you think can actually change anything in your environment, right? So astrology is kind of an example magical thinking. Oh, like your thoughts have power? Yeah, thoughts have power, yeah. So childhood is already really rife with exaggerated threats, right? So you've got like really extreme things like monsters under your beds or shadows in the dark and disaster imagery kind of slots in really neatly into that cognitive space. So for a lot of us, quicksand wasn't just a rare geological curiosity. It actually became like the embodiment of the fear that the ground itself could betray you. So for children still learning to separate imagination from probability, so that really concrete thinking and abstract thinking, these portrayals, they weren't just background noise. They were really encoded as real possibilities because we also kind of like that broader context around how frequent they are or where it exists.
00:31:23
Speaker
So that's one thing, right? So from a developmental perspective. kids just can't deal with it as the same way as adults. There's also the availability heuristic and also media saturation, which you've touched on as well. So the availability heuristic is really the more often we encounter an image, the more likely we believe it to be common.
00:31:42
Speaker
right which happens a lot in the media, when we are particularly in social media. That's really exaggerated by by the algorithms that social media uses nowadays. But you know for millennials and for us as kids that didn't have that social media, things like lava, the earth collapsing, it wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime abnormality, but like a near-dally exposure. When you've got it in cartoons, movies, you have people talking about it at school. This kind of leads to a generation prime to expect danger everywhere. And I really do feel like...
00:32:11
Speaker
We often did. i mean, I don't know. It's also got to do with how you're brought up in your family too. But that mental landscape where irrational fears felt rational because they were so cognitively accessible to your mind because they were just, you kind of felt like you surrounded by them and people were talking about them quite a bit. The next thing I'll talk about is eco-anxiety and that early kind of moralisation.
Media's Role in Environmental Awareness
00:32:33
Speaker
So like thinking about acid rain as an example, it reveals kind of how children, we were kind of we kind of drafted into environmental politics and like Captain Planet as ah a cartoon is a perfect example of that. The fear of toxic skies, rain down all this acid on us wasn't simply about survival. It kind of had moral weight to it. So if kids believed their crayons or hairspray, burning holes in the sky that links to personal behavior and planetary collapse in our minds when we're kids like If I do this, then this will happen, cause and effect type of thing. so And with those kind of shows like Captain Planet, it starts to seed like this anxiety, like eco-anxiety. For anyone who hasn't seen Captain Planet in like 30 years or ever, i went to have a look at some clips the other day and at the end of it, there's always a part about doing your bit. So it's trying to put like a capability straight on the viewer and the chart. And one example was even talking about overpopulation on the planet, right?
00:33:33
Speaker
And it was hol like, oh, the population's like five billion and and expected to increase to like six billion in the next few years. And this puts a lot of- Which it has. which yeah oh it's like way, way over that now, way over And it puts a lot of strain on the planet and the resources, da-da-da-da. And I was like, so remember, kids, when it's your turn to have a family, keep it small. And there and we and then we hear, like, there's not enough people to support the aging population. like, you told us to have small families. I'm just doing what Captain Planet told me to do.
00:34:08
Speaker
You could almost think of that as propaganda ah in a sense. Like not totally inaccurate but like pretty extreme and also places a lot of moral obligation on children who are actually not really equipped. But also an extension of that is that kids don't have a lot of autonomy or control yeah over the things that they can or can't do. And so the consequence is anxiety because there's so little agency that kids have. oh, okay, well, I'm supposed to do this, but ah my parents don't live, like, they don't live that way or I can't really choose to do things that way. So now I just have to be anxious that I've done nothing and the now the earth is going to collapse.
00:34:48
Speaker
You know, this is really intense for kids. It is. So I don't know who was programming that stuff at the time, but clearly, like, you know, standard 80s, 90s content, not really thinking much about the impacts on children long term. And yet these exaggerated fears can also double as resilience training. So sort of the flip side. So pretending the playground floor was lava, you know, rehearse quick thinking, imagining escape routes route from earthquakes or tsunamis is sort of rehearsed agency. So even as these fears were were terrifying, they actually suddenly taught children how to strategize under imagined threats. So you're actually like lessons that echo into how millennials like navigate modern anxieties.
00:35:28
Speaker
from climate doom scrolling to financial instability now like that's a little bit of a stretch but it is a really intriguing thing to think about when it's the flip side of okay i have no control it's like all right kids almost being like well how can I turn this into something that almost I can have some control in and like making it a game and playing is a way to sort of process that a little bit and yeah actually like oh well what would I do if someone was in quicksand oh throw some sticks at them and see if they can grab hold of a stick and i pull them out or yeah you can't touch the floor as love you have to find somewhere if the lava comes you got to find somewhere higher ground where you can stand and that's a good idea or if there's you know you know tsunami you would do a similar thing and like where can we get together and like quickly we have to all run to this like this hill over here and we'll be okay so that's kind of like a positive thing
00:36:19
Speaker
at the end there to think about it wasn't all bad and freaking us sad out it was actually hopefully building us into those the resilient generation that we are today i know we talk ah there's a lot of talk about millennial burnout and stuff but but also like pretty awesome generation like let's own that as well because all the other ones do too for the various reasons yeah So I guess out of that, there's some key learning. So millennial disaster fears weren't irrational. They were exaggerated echoes of real environmental and geopolitical anxieties, which you've touched on. We do know that pop culture overrepresented certain dangers, so like definitely quicksand and while underplaying real ones. So like, you know, things like heat waves, pollution are actually pretty massive issues, particularly nowadays, but like that wasn't actually really talked about a lot. Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
And the last one sort of that these fears shaped how millennials process today's global risks.
Millennial Humor and Environmental Responsibility
00:37:12
Speaker
So whether it be climate change or pandemics. So with a little bit of a, a little bit of both humor and dread, that's kind of our approach to things. I feel like it's pretty accurate, you know, yet we've taken it seriously, but also if you can't laugh, then you just cry.
00:37:29
Speaker
try and balance out. Yeah. That was super helpful, super insightful, Jen. And, It just sort of makes me reflect on, i don't know, like I get definitely absorbed this, whatever the proper, probably let's call it propaganda that made me believe that I had way more of a responsibility and had way more of an impact when it came to my decisions and the welfare of the planet. So i get pissed off because it is misdirection. Like we're sitting there as kids being like, I've got to recycle. And it's like meanwhile there was like the Exxon Valdez oil spill and like coastlines covered in oil and animals covered in oil dying. And it's like, well, let me focus on the giant corporations who don't give a shit. And it remains the same today. So remember when you and I were very diligently saving all of our soft plastics to recycle them and then we would recycle them. And it's like, you know what, it's a load.
00:38:27
Speaker
It's extra work. right absolutely and ultimately it's like the corporations who keep packaging in this shit maybe they should stop it and also at that time it turned out that that red cycling soft plastics program that we were giving all this plastic to weren't doing anything with it just keeping it that's right house and then like basically it became biohazard and just had to be destroyed and i was like fuck you guys like i have so many things to do and then you want me to like you want me as one individual to like shoulder the burden where like what i do pales in comparison to what you do as a corporation give me shit and we're still and we're still yeah we're still in that cycle you know sometimes i remember and then sometimes i go back to being whatever my programming was from captain planet you know
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, like, we're not necessarily saying, like, don't don't do anything. I think so for me it's like a moral thing as well. So I can i still compost and and I, you know, ah do what I can to reduce my plastic use because that's important to me.
00:39:36
Speaker
But i I think there's also that balance of recognising that there are people that are doing much worse things, organisations and individuals. Think about those individuals that have private jets. Yeah.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like, yeah, just how do you kind of moderate the angst or anxiety that you have around that and and maybe are there other things you can do that can deal with those people that are making more of an impact? It's a very interesting, yeah, it's very interesting that that kind of flows out of this childhood experience.
00:40:04
Speaker
And when you're right and you're raising little people, how do you strike the balance between getting them to respect spaces and respect the environment and actually care about it and be interested in it, right? So if you get them interested in it and they care about it, then I think they're automatically going to respect it. But get the balance right between that and then understanding how much guilt and responsibility they should be shouldering as like a little person, you know.
00:40:32
Speaker
Versus where the majority of the impact actually is made. So yeah, that's just my reflection on that. We've got a bit of anger around that. So think that's more or less it. We have talked about our core memories around it. We've had a bit of a science lesson behind what these phenomena actually were. So we now understand acid rain. Hooray for us.
00:40:54
Speaker
I think we've had a good reflection on how much of this was real versus dramatized and understand... how our little brains were processing this this stuff as well.
00:41:06
Speaker
So I think that's us done for this episode. Thanks, Nis. That was fun. Thank you, Sissy. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Okay. Bye. Thank you, everybody.