Confessions of a Gen-X Mind
A podcast about life, love, work, and the strange trip of growing up in the weirdest generation alive. Gen-X kids were raised on contradictions.
We were latchkey philosophers who worshipped Ferris Bueller, Marty McFly, Run-DMC, Metallica, and MTV as our holy texts. We grew up in the shadow of Reaganomics, the War on Drugs, “Just Say No,” moral panics, and ozone holes. We were told to follow the rules by adults who were breaking every single one behind the scenes. Some of us had BMX bikes. Some of us had skateboards.
Some of us had uncles who preached Jesus on Sunday and ripped off the federal government on Monday.
I had… all three.
Confessions of a Gen-X Mind is my attempt to make sense of the stories, traumas, cultural whiplash, and dark comedy that shaped my life. I grew up rich-adjacent in Texas, transplanted from Detroit, surrounded by pious fraudsters, land-flipping schemes, bankruptcies, private planes, jet skis, and family drama that could’ve made an entire season of Dallas look understated.
Now I’m a grown man, a voice actor, a creative, and an autistic Gen-X survivor with a front-row seat to the collapse of institutions, families, and the myth of the “Good Christian Businessman.”
This podcast blends:
- Personal stories from the S&L scandal era
- Growing up neurodivergent before we even had the language for it
- Love, loss, and late-in-life clarity
- Music, media, and the culture that raised us
- Dark humor and no-BS reflections on work, adulthood, and what it means to grow up with chaos and come out the other side
If you were shaped by skate videos, mixtapes, Sunday school guilt, and the sound of a modem connecting…
If you ever felt like the adults were making things up as they went along…
If you’ve lived enough life to finally tell the truth about it…
Welcome home.
Pull up a chair.
Grab your Walkman.
And let’s dive into the confessions.
Sleep Stories, By George and other stuff
A soothing collection of sleep stories, originally written for someone special, now shared with anyone in need of calm. Told in a warm, reassuring Texas voice by Gen-X storyteller George, each episode blends comfort, connection, and vivid imagery to help you unwind, feel safe, and fall gently asleep.
Confessions of a Gen-X Mind
So What’s It All About? Introducing Confessions of a Gen-X Mind
Confessions of a Gen-X Mind is a podcast about childhood, culture, media, music, and technology and how all of it shaped the people we became.
In this trailer, host George Ten Eyck introduces the perspective behind the show. He looks back at growing up Gen X, learning to adapt without instructions, and spending decades working inside media systems during massive cultural and technological change.
From early exposure to computers and the internet to a career in radio, live broadcasting, and streaming media, George traces how curiosity, creativity, and late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD helped reframe his personal and professional story.
This podcast is not about romanticizing the past. It’s about understanding it. About finding language for experiences many Gen Xers learned to carry quietly. And about making sense of how media, music, technology, and identity intersect over time.
If you’ve ever felt like you were expected to figure things out on your own, this podcast is for you.
In Confessions of a Gen X Mind, I look back at childhood, culture, media, music, and technology. Not to romanticize the past, but to understand it, to examine how a generation learned to adapt without instructions, and why so many of us are only now finding the language to explain ourselves. I'm George Tinike. I grew up in the space between two eras, before the internet explained everything, before algorithms shaped identity, before anyone talked openly about neurodivergence. I'm a media producer and a writer, and I host the podcast Confessions of a Gen X Mind. I was an early tech adopter. Movies like War Games with Matthew Broderick made computers feel powerful and dangerous in the best way. I learned how to build them from parts. MS DOS, Early Windows. I worked at Radio Shack. I explored the early online world through AOL at 2400 Baud with that dial-up modem. When curiosity mattered more than speed, that curiosity led me into the media. I got my start in Dallas with a lucky break and a walk-on-roll at Sports Radio 1310 The Ticket, a local sports radio station that shaped an entire generation of broadcasters. It was my dream job. It was my favorite radio station. I learned fast, and I worked whenever they needed me. After graduating from the University of North Texas, reality set in. I faced a choice. Stay in my part-time dream job that I loved working for the skydiving chief with all the guys I listened to on the radio all those years, or take full-time work with benefits inside the conservative talk radio machine at Salem, even though my own politics leaned progressive. I chose stability. Health insurance mattered, rent mattered. That trade-off taught me how media systems really work from the inside, how narratives are shaped, and how repetition becomes truth, how production discipline matters just as much as belief. That path eventually led me to Yahoo! Broadcast. Working in streaming and digital media after the broadcast.com acquisition, early in my career I met Mark Cuban at a ticket remote, a jeans and t-shirt tech guy who owned an NBA team. Amazing. That moment cracked something open. It showed me that unconventional paths were totally possible. I grew up between suburban Detroit and the Texas Bible Belt. I rode BMX. I found refuge in early rap and hip-hop and heavy metal. Music gave structure to chaos. Movement gave me calm. What I didn't know then is that I was autistic, level one. I also didn't know that ADHD shaped how fast my mind moved and how intensely I focused. Those neurotypes didn't limit me. They shaped how I see patterns, how I create, and how I connect technology, culture, and memory in ways that finally make sense. A midlife diagnosis didn't change my past. It explained it. Confessions of a Gen X Mind is a personal, cultural, and media literate exploration of growing up unsupervised in a rapidly changing world. It's about adaptation, resilience, and the long road to self understanding. I'm George Tenike, and this is Confessions of a Gen X Mind. Dig into all of our episodes and tell a friend, now available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.
