Guardian Australia has launched a special five-part podcast series: Who Screwed Millennials? runs as part of the Full Story podcast feed. 

Australian millennials are the first generation to be worse off than their parents – and things are only heading in the same direction for Gen Z. In this deeply researched series, Full Story co-host Jane Lee and reporter Matilda Boseley investigate ‘who screwed young Australians’ and examine why inequality is rising in Australia.

Connecting the dots with red string and expert interviews, they unravel the topic and transform it into an accessible and entertaining exposé of what went wrong, and why. 

Each episode delves into topics including housing, education and work. The series asks: how bad is the generational wealth divide and who is to blame? How did John Howard inadvertently create the economic conditions for high house prices in Australia? And what is a fair price to pay for your university degree? 

Full Story host Jane Lee says many young people are experiencing a kind of malaise about our economic circumstances.

“When we try to talk about it we’re told we have nothing to complain about. But millennials and Gen Z have legitimate reasons to be worried. Younger generations are far more likely to be renters than their parents were at the same age, as incomes have not kept up with rising housing prices.”

“Despite being more highly educated than previous generations, we’re also more likely to be in casual jobs or working short-term contracts, making it hard to save or plan for the future. All of this is making young people’s lives far more uncertain, despite our best efforts to get ahead.

“In Who Screwed Millennials? we try to understand what’s driving this generational divide. We want to open up a conversation about how things could be different, if not for us then for the next generation of young people.”

Reporter Matilda Boseley says when she finished university, she moved out of home and entered the ‘adult’ world, “I found it incredibly overwhelming. From housing costs, to finding a stable job, to realising just how ridiculously expensive a block of cheese was”.  

“When things are tough it’s easy to feel hopeless and that these issues with society were inevitable and immovable. But that isn’t the case. Many of the struggles young people are facing today are knock-on effects of specific decisions made by leaders – and voters – in decades past.”

Boseley says by tracing it back and understanding the history surrounding the decisions that were made has helped her to realise that the world today isn’t set in stone. 

“Who Screwed Millennials? is ultimately a podcast about hope, because if society created these problems, society can fix them. And by understanding the mistakes of our past, we can ensure us millennials and Gen Zers don’t pass on these struggles to the future generations.”

Special guests on the podcast include: Former minister of finance for Greece Yanis Varoufakis, Policy director at the Centre for Future Work and economist, Greg Jericho, US journalist Malcolm Harris, US author and attorney Jill Filipovic, La Trobe University emeritus professor and author Judith Brett, UNSW tax expert Dr Chris Evans, University of Sydney professor Julia Horne, Human rights advocate Thomas Mayo, and more.

Guardian Australia's Who Screwed Millennials? podcast is hosted and distributed by Acast.

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