Answer: Here is half of a podcast to get you started!- Sally O’Brien: Good evening, everybody. My name is Sally O’Brien, and I’m absolutely
delighted to welcome you all here on behalf of my colleagues from The Pew Charitable
Trusts and the Pew Research Center. And it’s just great to have you here to join us for a
conversation about how today’s generations are changing the world.
We actually launched into this conversation downstairs already. I’ve already learned an
enormous amount from our panelists. Sarah has informed me that I am the child of
Victorians, which is really interesting to know, as is, I think, she as well. So hopefully
we’re going to learn a lot more about how we define generations and how we look at data, but also how we think about attitudes and behaviors and the way we think of
ourselves in a slightly less structured way and identify in our generational cohorts.
But first of all, you might be thinking, “Well, what does any of this have to do with
Pew?” And for those of you who know anything about Pew, you might think of us as
primarily a policy organization. And we certainly are, and known for our research
initiatives, where we engage in public policy and try to influence governments to
improve policy for the public.
So, for example, in the environment, we have played a role in working with
governments to protect more than 2 1/2 million acres of ocean around the world; on
land, to protect great tracts of land in the Canadian boreal and in Australia; and in the
U.S. in domestic policy areas, where our corrections reform efforts have resulted in a 30
percent reduction in crime rates and savings of more than $17 billion.
But we are also committed to informing the public. And it does this in large part through
the Pew Research Center, which last year released over 500 publications on a wide
range of domestic and international research areas, from the global image of the United
States to the growth of major religious groups around the world.
Trend magazine, which I see some of you holding, is another tangible way in which Pew
seeks to inform the public by disseminating experts’ insights on topics of interest to our
board audiences and convening discussions like this one we’re having this evening.
And the most recent issue brought together experts from both sides of the Atlantic to
share their expertise and perspective with us today. And that’s why we’re here. So it’s a
subject that’s naturally grounded in demographic data, but numbers alone don’t tell the
whole story. And for that we turn to social and cultural norms and differences.