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12-05-2025
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How to Age Up on a Warming Planet
Listen and subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts How should we think about aging when the impacts of climate change can make the future feel so uncertain? That's a question Sarah Ray, professor and chair of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, has been helping her students consider. Though climate anxiety can cause some to feel overwhelmed, Ray has tips for how to minimize doom loops and inaction. How to Age Up co-hosts Yasmin Tayag and Natalie Brennan talk about how current climate concerns compare to the existential crises of previous generations, and how to practice hope during uncertain Brennan: What did you want to be when you grew up? Yasmin Tayag: Honestly, Tomb Raider. Brennan: I hate to have to admit I have no idea what that is Tayag: Natalie! The iconic video game Lara Croft: Tomb Raider? Angelina Jolie's best movie role? She's a hot archeologist who travels around the world searching for lost artifacts and fighting off enemies. Brennan: I'm obsessed. That's actually perfect for you. The next logical step in your science-reporting journey. Tayag: It's still kind of my dream job. Brennan: Hey—I believe in you! :) Tayag: I'm Yasmin Tayag, a staff writer with The Atlantic. Brennan: And I'm Natalie Brennan, producer at The Atlantic. Tayag: This is How to Age Up. [Music ends.] Tayag: Natalie, what was your dream job? Brennan: I don't know that growing up I had a dream job. Tayag: That's very Gen Z of you. Brennan: What do you mean? Like, in a 'I don't dream of labor' way? Tayag: No; I've just been thinking a lot about how your generation struggles to imagine the future. Brennan: And can you blame us? Tayag: No. But it's something I think about with younger generations, too—I worry about the future of my son, Jaime, a lot. Brennan: Yeah. I mean, economically, politically—most of all because of climate change—I was already worried about a lot of these things when I was a teen, and that feeling has just become more intense as I've gotten older. So, yeah. I imagine that kids now, who are constantly exposed to fears about the climate from such a young age, picture an even bleaker future. Tayag: Right. But when you just rattled off that list, what happened to you? Brennan: What do you mean? Like, how do I feel right now? Tayag: Yeah. Brennan: Awful. Like, frozen. Tayag: And who wouldn't be? Psychiatrists have given what you're feeling a name: It's called climate anxiety. And in the same way in therapy you may work through paralysis in regards to your personal anxiety, scientists are starting to think through, psychologically, how we could move through our climate anxiety. Sarah Ray: 'Cause I'm that weird person who's like, No, we don't need action. We just need better thoughts. It's not about 10 things you can do to save the planet. There's a hundred million books out there. This is like 10 things you can think about to save the planet. Tayag: Natalie, that's Dr. Sarah Ray. She's a professor and chair of the environmental studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt. And she studies how emotions play into our thinking about the climate. She wrote the book A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety—and she pointed to one moment that really launched her into action about all this. [Music.] Ray: I was trying to do an activity with my students. Where I kind of guided them through almost a meditation, if you will, which was my first time ever doing anything weird like that. I was like, 'This is gonna be a little weird. You gotta just go with me on this.' And I had them kind of close their eyes and visualize a future that they would desire. Tayag: Mm-hmm. Ray: A future where everything that they had hoped for and worked for in their life had come to manifest and come to pass. And I asked them to feel it and smell it and taste it and all that. And the whole thing is very embodied, which is unusual for me at the time. And when the exercise ended, I expected them to come back after this trance I'd put them in, and have all these visions of utopia to share. And then, of course, what we would do is sort of backward design: 'Okay, what's the very next step to kind of get from here to there? Now that you've visualized what you want, let's start moving in that direction'—instead of constantly being gripped by fear of a future that they dread. Right? So with climate change and all of the things that are happening, one of the things I noticed with my students is that they didn't desire their future. They were afraid of it. Tayag: Oh! Ray: And so they turned to me, and they said, Sarah, we didn't, we couldn't really imagine a future. We don't have any tools for imagining what we would desire, and all we could imagine was, like, either blankness or the apocalypse. That they had seen in the most recent whatever, video or film or whatever that they'd seen, or news, right? Tayag: Yeah. Ray: So that was a real moment: a wake-up call for me. I thought, How can we expect these young people to do all the work we want them to do, to fix all the problems that are out there, if they don't even want to exist in that future? [Laughter.] Tayag: Yeah. Ray: They don't even desire anything about that future. Tayag: It's just so grim. Ray: It was really depressing. Tayag: It's really depressing! Ray: Yeah. I cried. Yeah; that was the first moment I thought, This is really bad. Tayag: So what happened next? Ray: So it wasn't just that they were living in a scary world; it was that they were getting information about a scary world in a very particular way. This was maybe 10 or 12 years ago. And the real shift towards all of us getting our news through social media, and the real shift to making the algorithms reinforce negativity, was really just beginning at that time. So that was the first step of trying to peel apart the layers of the onion. Are they gonna be able to live on a planet and grow food and breathe air and drink water? You know? And why would they have children in this world? And are they gonna retire? Or can they have a job that doesn't just add to the problem? How will they pay the bills? Why even go to college in this kind of world? And that's something that, like, Greta Thunberg really brought to the fore when she was like, I'm not gonna go to school, 'cause five years hence, when I get my degree, when I'm qualified to do anything about it, our planet will be radically different and I don't wanna wait around for that. That kind of impatience was something that I was really starting to detect in them. Tayag: One thing I hear so much in conversations about youth and climate dread is that, you know, older people always say, Oh, well, every generation had something to worry about. We had the nuclear threat; we had wartime dread. And so on. Is climate dread different from those past experiences? Ray: Yeah; I think that there's a 'yes and no' answer to that. The yes part of that answer is: It is just the same as all those other really difficult generational traumas in that the lessons that those folks learned by going through those experiences are things that young people need to get caught up on pretty quick. So I think about civil rights, or I think about, you know, the Holocaust, Vietnam War—all kinds of things that in the last few generations we've heard a lot about. And these people who have been sort of activists or involved in resistance movements in these spaces have had to overcome an incredible amount of stuff. They've had to sacrifice a lot. They've had to do the work without any evidence that it was gonna come out the way it did. The collective organizing skills—the kind of resilience and grit to do the work, the sense that the little things that you do—do matter, a lot. Those kinds of things are what I call climate wisdom. They're like wisdom that we get from the elders. You know, like we should take these tools from our elders who have gone through this stuff and ask them: How do they get through, how do they keep going? On the other hand, it is a qualitatively different problem. And the reason why I would say so is because the very functioning of the entire biosphere is at stake. And so all of the systems that humans rely on are going to be challenged and, uh, might in fact fall apart. Nuclear war, you know, might be something similar. Like, the annihilation of all life in one fell swoop feels scarier, in a way, than climate change. But it has the same kind of existential … the ability to grow food, to work, the ability to get water in our bodies, all of these things will be challenged. The very capacity of the Earth to produce the materials on which human civilization relies to function could be undermined. Tayag: Right. Ray: Is being undermined; is happening. It's happening. It's already on its path. [Music.] Tayag: Natalie, when I was talking with Professor Ray, that song 'I Melt With You' by Modern English was totally in my head. Do you know that one? Brennan: Remind me? Tayag: [Sings.] 'I'll stop the world and melt with you…' Brennan: Of course—I just wanted to make you sing. Tayag: Oh. [Laughter.] Well, it's actually about having sex when a nuclear bomb drops. Brennan: Oh, whoa! Tayag: That's why they melt. The song came out in 1982, during the Cold War. I imagine that the band grew up being bombarded with all this messaging about the nuclear threat, and so when I hear this song it sounds to me like they'd just accepted total annihilation as a very real possibility. Brennan: I don't want to downplay, in any way, the threat of nuclear war! But I do think that it's different—it is the threat of a possibility. It is something that could happen. Tayag: Whereas climate change is something that is happening. Brennan: Is happening, every day, and it feels like we are all walking around going about our days as the red button gets pushed, with no alarm. Tayag: And you think that the psychological impact is different? Brennan: Yes. What is so different to me about the emotions of this moment is that people are trying to make sense of what we rationally know to be true about climate change. And then there's anger and confusion about why we aren't doing more to stop it. Tayag: Right. The anxiety and anger that comes with feeling like society has decided that we are okay with our own destruction. Brennan: Exactly, and it feels sometimes like even if we were to do something it would not be enough. Tayag: Yeah; that, in part, is climate anxiety in action. There are things that people can do—have been doing—to limit that cognitive dissonance. To feel like their actions align with their beliefs. And it's something Professor Ray and I spoke a lot about. [Music.] Ray: Well, you maybe experienced, as I was describing, why this was qualitatively a unique threat. It doesn't really land well with one's nervous system. Tayag: Yeah. Ray: Right? Like, you take that information in, whether or not that's the first time you've ever heard that stuff or you've been hearing it for a long time. The nervous system, in order to keep homeostasis and to feel like it can function and keep going in the day, doesn't take that in very well. And we have particular patterns in our bodies about what we wanna do about that. The obvious ones that you're probably most familiar with are, like: fight, flight, or freeze. And I think that when young people are taking in this information and have been doing it for a long time, they they figure out how to move from the kind of shock of it to integrating it, to figuring out how to do something about it. And that is a whole series of things that they have maybe gone through by the time they were 15 or 16. And then they try to translate this to somebody who maybe has never thought about it. And I think that that's where the stress of that amygdala of those people they're talking to. There's some empathy there; there's some grace there around if this person's taking this in at all. That's taking a lot of courage. There's nothing about this information cognitively—in terms of our neuroscience, of our wiring and our brains—that can handle this. So it is actually far more natural for our brains to disavow, deny, put our heads in the sand. Because if you square this information with your daily life, there's a big cognitive dissonance as they call it. Tayag: So what are the ways that we should be teaching young people to acknowledge their feelings of dread and fear in a healthy way? Ray: One of the things that's happening is that there's a whole movement of climate-aware therapists, to figure out new tools that they didn't have before. 'Cause it's one thing to say uncertainty in your family. It's another thing to bring uncertainty of the planet into the therapy room. I think a lot of my students, for example, will tell me that they brought this up in therapy—and had their therapist tell them to stop consuming the news and to not worry about it. So that's not helpful. Tayag: No… Ray: Right? Like, that's just being told that your feelings are irrational, right? And that's never a good technique. Tayag: And also, that you have to completely detach from literally everything. That's not exactly feasible. Ray: If the therapists themselves haven't figured out how to face this kind of stuff, you can see why that would be happening. But there is an alternative, right? And that alternative is: Let's look clear-eyed about how bad things are, and let's have that be a call to action. Because it turns out that the kind of debilitating effects of climate anxiety are assuaged most effectively not when we do an action that solves the problem, which is really what you'd think it would be like. This is a problem that can't be solved by any one person's action. So why should I even do anything? That's what most young people feel, right? Like, I'm not even gonna try. But that's, um—that particular assumption rests on the idea that if we did the action, our climate anxiety would be assuaged by fixing it. It turns out that the psychologists who have studied this show that this is not true. The act of being in a group is actually the thing that alleviates anxiety and makes us feel efficacious, which is really an interesting and important tool. Especially, I think, in, um, culture that's so individualistic. So Bill McKibben is sort of famous for saying, you know, 'People constantly ask me all the time. You know: What's the most important, effective thing I can do as an individual?' And he always says, the one most important thing you can do is not be an individual. You know, not think of individualism as the mechanism by which this is gonna get accomplished. And it turns out, from a psychology perspective, it's not just good for the planet; that's actually good for our mental health. So that's really, I think, the key. How can we solve climate anxiety? Well, yeah; it'd be great to solve climate, that would be the main way. Sure. But the fact that that feels impossible actually causes that depression loop to get worse. So I think when we're talking about how to teach young people, or how to bring this up to young people, it's always with showing them models of how people are solving the problem. Tayag: Mm-hmm. Ray: Always, always, always—Because we're social creatures, psychologically, if we see other people doing things, we're way more likely to do something. And actually, it's an interesting piece of data that psychologists have also proved—that the vast majority of Americans think that only like 30 or 40 percent of other Americans care about climate change, when the number is more like 70 or 80 percent. So that right there accounts for a lot of our inaction. If we just think other people around us and our neighbors don't care, we're less likely to do stuff. Tayag: So I wanna go back a tiny bit. Because I wanted to tease out a bit more, you know, the consequences of not correcting or not teaching people how to deal with their climate feelings. So what exactly happens, from a psychological perspective, when a person feels that an issue is just too big to conquer? And, you know, how can we make that feel smaller? Ray: Psychologists often call this concept pseudo-inefficacy. And the definition of it is basically this: The negative feeling of not being able to solve the whole problem outweighs the positive feeling of being able to solve just a little part of it. With climate change, we're talking about this big, humongous, intractable problem that no one person could possibly touch. 'It's too big. I can't even face it. I'm gonna go and binge Netflix.' Right. I mean, that's how climate change is being addressed right now. So there are sort of two solutions to this, right? One is to frame the problem in smaller chunks: How do we break it up into small chunks, that any one person can feel like, Oh, I can get up in the morning and have that sense of accomplishment that I finished a task by the end of the day? Because—as we know from nudge psychology—that creates a feedback loop of positive reinforcement. We're more likely to get up the next morning and do it again, do some more. It feels good. And sometimes that means that the work that we're doing has nothing to do with climate change. It has to do with getting to know our neighbors. It has to do with building community trust. It has to do with all kinds of things that are going to cumulatively add up to building more resilience for what's coming. Tayag: Mm-hmm. So, frame things in smaller pieces. And you said there were two solutions? Ray: Yeah. The second dimension of solving this pseudo-inefficacy puzzle is to see ourselves as much bigger than we actually are. And so, a lot of what happens with sort of the way young people are raised is that the vast majority of what they're consuming is telling them that they don't have any power. That they don't have political power. And for the most part, unless they have a lot of money, they don't even have economic power. And so the sense of powerlessness—some people talk about this as learned powerlessness or manufactured powerlessness. Which is basically saying, We give up our power before we've even tried to exert it. And so what I try to do with young people is to show all the places that they do already have a lot of power. And it's not just economics; it's not even just politics. There's all kinds of social places and cultural places that they have power. They have power in being kind. They have power in being a role model. They have a power in throwing even the tiniest little bit of energy into a larger movement. When we are part of a larger movement, as part of a collective, we are magnified way more than just individual people. If you're feeling despair, you might be suffering from individualism, because really the cure is seeing yourself as part of a larger group. Tayag: So, you know, once people feel like they have a little more agency, a little more power, what's a tool for people to use when they're ready to start thinking about how to get involved? What's a small step we can take? Ray: People often think of action as, like, Oh, I'm gonna ride my bike to work, or I'm gonna join this march, or I'm gonna call my representatives. These are all really important things, and I'm not dismissing that. But I'm trying to break it down to even how to even get to the place where you could do me, my favorite one, the one I always have as my lifeline, is: As I'm consuming all this news, as I'm trying to understand the lay of the land—which is happening at a quick clip right now—I get really overwhelmed by the monster in the room. And I think of all of the fear I have, and my amygdala and my nervous system is just really agitated. And I will say that I'm in that state even talking to you right now. So it's helpful for me to redirect my attention. And it's also what neuroscientists will tell you to do in cognitive behavioral therapy. Tayag: Okay. Ray: Which is to redirect my attention to the thing that I love, because it turns out the fear and the anger that I feel are secondary emotions for my love, right? They are signposts that are helping me figure out what I love. And usually it's like, I love nature. I love my children, I love my students. I love justice and health. And the thing, the monster in the room, is so upsetting to me, because it's threatening those things that I love. Okay? So instead of just fighting the monster—which I feel I do not have any power to do—what I do have power to do is tend and nurture the things that I love so they grow. So, adrienne maree brown says: Feed what you want to grow. And this is a beautiful mantra for me that I hold onto when I'm feeling really overwhelmed. And that is very much about attention, really at the scale of attention. This is not about taking shorter showers. This is about 'What am I paying attention to?' It's very micro-scale. Tayag: Mm-hmm. And it's a reframing in itself, right? You know, Let's not focus on the monster; let's focus on tending the garden. Right. And doing so, I guess, motivates you to fight the monster so you can continue to tend the garden. Ray: Yeah. And maybe you titrate; maybe sometimes you have energy for fighting the monster. And maybe when you're feeling the most depleted and you don't even know what to put the next foot forward at, you think, Okay, I know I can nurture the thing I love. Okay, so how do I do that? And then the emotion of love turns out to be way more sustaining in terms of our energy and our resilience. That means that we can generate that energy that we need to go back and fight the monster. Tayag: Can you give me an example of turning your attention toward something you love? Maybe something from your own experience? Ray: So I stupidly have a terrible daily practice of looking at the news first thing in the morning. It's a terrible practice. But the way that I solve that practice, or the way that I heal around that practice, is that I immediately know that it's gonna leave me feeling really bad—so I need to have a rescue thing. And that thing is to turn right directly toward what I love. So I always have, once I put my phone down, I always have 15 things in front of me that I love. I've got my dogs, I've got my children, I've got my house, I've got my husband. I've got all the stuff that I know that—if I let the bad news get to me—I will actually feel like not giving them love; I will feel like withdrawing. And the real problem with living in a story of apocalypse is that if we are not thoughtful about it, it will make us want to withdraw even more. And so we really have to actively intervene. In my work life, this happens all the time as well. I often look to the administration or the people in charge and get despairing. No shade on them. They're just in their structure, you know, doing the things they have to do. You know? And I get, I get despairing, and I think: I can't control that thing. I cannot get into the president's head and have them think differently. And then I immediately think, Why am I in this job? I should just quit. I hate this. Right? This gives me, sends me in—just the scale of my job sends me into cynicism and burnout. Tayag: The despair loop. Ray: Despair loop, right? And I'm like, I'm in it. I'm in it, I'm in it. So how do I then use the mantra—'feed what you want to grow'—to get outta that? I immediately think, What gives me pleasure here? I really touch into that, and I spend some time thinking about it. I know that it is a great, an incredible, vocation and calling I feel—to have an effect on my students. Okay, so what I'm afraid of is that this scary monster in the room is gonna destroy my students' capacities and experiences. How can I turn and use the position that I have—the relative power that I do have—to have an effect in that space? And so I often have this 'turn to my students' moment, where I'm like, Remember that I'm here for the students. Okay, let's go back to that. 'Cause once I go back to that, my cup is always full. I come away from my classes always feeling like, Ah, this is what I'm here for. This is the juice. [Music.] Brennan: Yasmin, this conversation is so helpful, because I feel so much shame whenever I get that feeling that this is all too overwhelming and I just want to run away to our lavender farm! Tayag: Same, but even the lavender farm will be affected by climate change. Brennan: Well … it's true! But this instinct to want to run away or to isolate when there's a threat is real. Right? I try to at least remind myself that's just how, evolutionarily, we're wired to react to danger. Tayag: Yeah. This reminds me of one review paper on the threat of nuclear war that found that it made adults prone to fantasy and make-believe—like, as a way to respond to the danger. I just finished a fantasy book called Legends & Lattes that was a nice temporary escape. Brennan: You really are such a nerd. I think fantasy is a great way to recharge. It's okay to take a break, to get you back into the game. That feels very different from avoidance or denial. Because the only way to truly push through the overwhelm and paralysis is to figure out what you need in order to be able to take action after you've had that rest. Tayag: Exactly. If it wasn't for Legends & Lattes I wouldn't have had the will or brainpower to read that review paper I mentioned. But yes: Addressing these issues head on is how to move through them. The nuclear war study even actually said that parents shouldn't ignore their kids' anxieties and misrepresent reality to them—kids who were more aware of the situation actually tended to be the most optimistic. Brennan: I think that is definitely something we need to focus on now with climate change, too! I saw a survey that most teens learn about climate change from the internet. And so when we're thinking about how an entire generation is aging up and learning about such a huge and existential issue, we want to figure out how to facilitate those conversations, right? The same way we do when we talk to children about death or divorce or illness. Learning about this alone—on your own, on the internet—can make the problem a lot bigger and lonelier. Tayag: I actually think the 'turning your attention toward love to break out of overwhelming thoughts or paralysis' is a practice that would be so helpful to teach children and teens to help them with so many aspects of aging, not just climate change. Brennan: Right, like with first heartbreak! Or puberty! Tayag: Applying to college… adolescence is just such an overwhelming part of aging, and the earlier you work on these habits, the better prepared you are for them when the overwhelm pops up in bigger ways. [Music.] Tayag: We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back: Ray: Oh, you guys wanna go there? Tayag: Hey, aging up is complicated, and we're willing to get into it. [Midroll.] Tayag: So, Professor Ray, I'm curious, among your students, you know, what else are you noticing that affects them, or that they're thinking about when it comes to aging up in a very uncertain world? Ray: Absolutely: The No. 1 thing is economic precarity. No. 1. In fact, I would say that even overrides climate. And then the climate stuff might come into focus more through college classes. Or like—the intersection of climate and how climate change is going to exacerbate existing inequalities and problems in the world. So climate change is often called the great magnifier, right? Like, all the inequalities that exist, and all the places where people are already suffering, are just gonna get much worse. So the main thing that they've been taught as they're growing up is economics, right? That going to college is really expensive. This has really gotta be worth it, right? Tayag: Yeah! A lot of younger people feel like they are worse off than their parents' generation—I mean, I definitely do—even if statistically, it still isn't clear if we actually are. But I can see how that would play into questions about whether college is worth it, if it doesn't guarantee them a job. Ray: Yeah. In that sense of Maybe I can escape that problem individually, myself. Right? With my own marriage or my own hard work and my own degree. And so there's the scarcity politics of that—perpetuates that individualism, perpetuates that fear, perpetuates this cycle that you just talked about. The doom loop. Tayag: You know, so much of our conversation today has touched on this theme of individual versus collective action, which is a theme that's come up a lot this season. Ray: Yeah; if we rely on a sense of being able to do this ourselves, we will always fall short. We will always feel like we're failing. And the feeling of failing, as we just discussed, doesn't generate more engagement. [Laughter.] So that's a model that just can't work. That can't work for where we're going. There's all kinds of ways that people are trying to create alternative models for how they would live. There's research out there that says that the best investment you can make in making your home, or yourself, be safe in a natural disaster is to have good neighborly trust—have good relationships with your neighbors. That makes intuitive sense. These are the people who, like, when all communication breaks down, are gonna be the people you rely on to, like— Tayag: Run across the yard! Ray: Run across the yard, help you with some extra water or whatever. And so it makes sense. But it's not something that people are spending every day thinking about: How do I build trust with my neighbors today? You know? But one of my neighbors in the last couple of months has decided, once a month, to have a bunch of people she likes in the neighborhood over for tea on Sunday. And she did this because she just felt desperate and alone. Then when I started to bring some of this research in, she was like, Oh my gosh, I didn't realize I was doing this political action. By, like, attending to my aloneness in this particular way. That's actually very functional, very utilitarian—but also has a side effect of just feeling good. Tayag: Yeah; I mean bringing together neighbors, especially if they're from different backgrounds or life experiences, or ages, to discuss climate—that totally is a political action! There's a lot of intersectionality at play in the groups who are most active in the climate movement. This isn't just about young people and their climate anxiety. Can you tell me more about the people who are showing up? Ray: So there's all kinds of reasons that, depending on your relative vulnerability, you might care more about climate change. Queer communities care more about climate change than straight communities. There's data also that shows that Latinx people care about climate change more than white people by double digits. And, like in a sort of hierarchy of order: Latinx communities, then Black communities, and then white communities are like the bottom of the list. Tayag: Interesting. Ray: The theory there is that the more vulnerable a community is to climate change itself—and the less faith they have that the government will help them, because of historical structural oppression—the more worried they'll be about it, right? The vast majority of times when—especially—people with power experience fear around environmental problems, what often happens is not that they go about creating more just structures and distributing wealth more equally and making sure people who are vulnerable are supported. In fact, the opposite usually happens with people who are already in positions of power. Generally speaking, when they hear about climate-change threats, they tend to hoard resources more. They tend to actually enact violence against people who they think of as threatening those resources or who are causing the problems in the first place. So there's all this language around immigrants coming to America and having a greater ecological footprint when they get to America, and therefore 'That's why we shouldn't allow immigrants into America.' This kind of argument, which is often called eco-fascism, can lead to some pretty, well, racist ideas, underwritten by climate change falsely. And even violence. Tayag: That's really concerning. The tendency, by some, to find scapegoats to try and just evade personal responsibility—that actually makes me think of another, pretty extreme, way of evading the climate crisis. It's this idea that we should just escape Earth entirely. Like, Earth is screwed, so let's go move to Mars. It's obviously still a very moonshot idea, but it does come up! And it gets a lot of investment from really wealthy billionaires, like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. They've both put a lot of money into exploring space. What do you make of that—is that a valid way to be dealing with climate anxiety? Ray: So the idea that we might be able to escape the limitations of capitalism—of the planet's limits, of resource limitations—that's really the fantasy here, right? So when we hear about economists or fossil-fuel folks saying the goal of the future is not to get rid of climate change; it is to separate humans' dependence on the planet systems. That's what they explicitly say is the goal. So the next obvious conclusion to that—if you're one of those tech bros who's into that kind of stuff—is to think, Well, the best way to do that is to find other planets. Right? And there's a fantasy of transcendence there. Of transcending the messiness of human life, using money to transcend the planet's limits, using money to transcend the muckiness of inequality and the social movements. So that might arise from that. We're seeing so much evidence of wanting that just to go away … all that stuff to just go away. Tayag: Yeah. It's, you know, the escape plan. That's a withdrawal in itself. Ray: Yeah. Tayag: It puts the focus back on the individual and ensuring your own survival. And I think that's the opposite of what we need. Ray: Yeah, absolutely. It's the opposite of what we need. And I think that's the nervous-system solution there, right? Like, if you think about when we perceive big threats, if we don't train our nervous system culturally or individually, we don't have a process by which we train our nervous system to respond to threats through social engagement, it's very possible that our response might be 'flight or fight or freeze,' or some of these other—maybe less constructive or less healing—responses that actually don't get to the root cause of the problem at all. Escape is a real nervous-system response. It's legitimate. But it's not medicine for the planet's woes. Tayag: Well, Professor Ray, thank you so much for being here today. Ray: Thanks so much. Brennan: Yasmin, I feel like I am going to have Professor Ray's voice in my head—reminding me that if you're not thoughtful about it, apocalyptic living will lead you to withdraw for quite some time. Tayag: Apocalyptic living begets more apocalyptic living! Brennan: No, truly. I mean, we're now at about five years out from the start of the pandemic. And I only now feel like I am at a place where I am ready to start unlearning a lot of the habits that I developed during that time, which led to a lot of isolation. I find that I withdraw as default, now. Tayag: Have you read Derek Thompson's Atlantic piece 'The Anti-Social Century'? Brennan: You know, I really could have used hearing your interview with Professor Ray before I read that piece—because it definitely led to a lot of overwhelm! The piece does a beautiful job of outlining how American society is on an anti-social streak. And how solitude has almost been marketed to us as luxury. Tayag: Me time! Brennan: Right, me time: ordering takeout, meditating. Going to work out, headphones in. I have really bought into the idea that to recharge is to be alone. Tayag: Mm-hmm. Brennan: And what we've been hearing throughout this season, again and again, is that to live a healthy, long life is to instead find our way back to a social society. Tayag: Right. We set out to answer the question of how to age up—and we heard a lot, from experts in vastly different fields, about how to connect. Brennan: Totally. It's funny the lengths we'll go to try and figure out the secret to living longer, when the answer—if there is to be any one singular answer—is to think less about yourself as the main part of the equation. Tayag: I read something recently that really captures this sentiment—on the vulnerability of being an individual and the possibility and power in teaming up. It acknowledged what so many of our experts have been saying. Our ability to age up relies on pushing back against forces as huge as climate change, ageism, housing insecurity … but you just can't do it alone. It says the more you band together with others—first with one person, then two, then even more people—the better chances you have at succeeding. Brennan: Yasmin, are you quoting a poem to me? Tayag: The tables have turned. To end this season, I'd love to read you part of a poem. Is that okay? Brennan: Welcomed, even. Tayag: This is a passage from the poem 'The Low Road' by Marge Piercy: With six you can rent a whole house, eat pie for dinner with no seconds, and hold a fund raising party. A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred fill a hall. Tayag: And the poem goes on to drive home the point that there's power in those numbers. It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again and they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more. Tayag: That's all for this season of How to Age Up. How to Age Up was hosted by me, Yasmin Tayag. Brennan: And co-hosted and produced by me, Natalie Brennan. Tayag: Our editors are Claudine Ebeid and Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Our engineer is Rob Smierciak. Rob also composed some of the music for this show. The executive producer of audio is Claudine Ebeid, and the managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez. Brennan: How To will be back with a new season very soon. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
How to Age Up on a Warming Planet
How should we think about aging when the impacts of climate change can make the future feel so uncertain? That's a question Sarah Ray, professor and chair of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, has been helping her students consider. Though climate anxiety can cause some to feel overwhelmed, Ray has tips for how to minimize doom loops and inaction. How to Age Up co-hosts Yasmin Tayag and Natalie Brennan talk about how current climate concerns compare to the existential crises of previous generations, and how to practice hope during uncertain times. The following is a transcript: Natalie Brennan: What did you want to be when you grew up? Yasmin Tayag: Honestly, Tomb Raider. Brennan: I hate to have to admit I have no idea what that is Tayag: Natalie! The iconic video game Lara Croft: Tomb Raider? Angelina Jolie's best movie role? She's a hot archeologist who travels around the world searching for lost artifacts and fighting off enemies. Brennan: I'm obsessed. That's actually perfect for you. The next logical step in your science-reporting journey. Tayag: It's still kind of my dream job. Brennan: Hey—I believe in you! :) Tayag: I'm Yasmin Tayag, a staff writer with The Atlantic. Brennan: And I'm Natalie Brennan, producer at The Atlantic. Tayag: This is How to Age Up. [ Music ends.] Tayag: Natalie, what was your dream job? Brennan: I don't know that growing up I had a dream job. Tayag: That's very Gen Z of you. Brennan: What do you mean? Like, in a 'I don't dream of labor' way? Tayag: No; I've just been thinking a lot about how your generation struggles to imagine the future. Brennan: And can you blame us? Tayag: No. But it's something I think about with younger generations, too—I worry about the future of my son, Jaime, a lot. Brennan: Yeah. I mean, economically, politically—most of all because of climate change—I was already worried about a lot of these things when I was a teen, and that feeling has just become more intense as I've gotten older. So, yeah. I imagine that kids now, who are constantly exposed to fears about the climate from such a young age, picture an even bleaker future. Tayag: Right. But when you just rattled off that list, what happened to you? Brennan: What do you mean? Like, how do I feel right now? Tayag: Yeah. Brennan: Awful. Like, frozen. Tayag: And who wouldn't be? Psychiatrists have given what you're feeling a name: It's called climate anxiety. And in the same way in therapy you may work through paralysis in regards to your personal anxiety, scientists are starting to think through, psychologically, how we could move through our climate anxiety. Sarah Ray: 'Cause I'm that weird person who's like, No, we don't need action. We just need better thoughts. It's not about 10 things you can do to save the planet. There's a hundred million books out there. This is like 10 things you can think about to save the planet. Tayag: Natalie, that's Dr. Sarah Ray. She's a professor and chair of the environmental studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt. And she studies how emotions play into our thinking about the climate. She wrote the book A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety —and she pointed to one moment that really launched her into action about all this. [ Music.] Ray: I was trying to do an activity with my students. Where I kind of guided them through almost a meditation, if you will, which was my first time ever doing anything weird like that. I was like, 'This is gonna be a little weird. You gotta just go with me on this.' And I had them kind of close their eyes and visualize a future that they would desire. Tayag: Mm-hmm. Ray: A future where everything that they had hoped for and worked for in their life had come to manifest and come to pass. And I asked them to feel it and smell it and taste it and all that. And the whole thing is very embodied, which is unusual for me at the time. And when the exercise ended, I expected them to come back after this trance I'd put them in, and have all these visions of utopia to share. And then, of course, what we would do is sort of backward design: 'Okay, what's the very next step to kind of get from here to there? Now that you've visualized what you want, let's start moving in that direction'—instead of constantly being gripped by fear of a future that they dread. Right? So with climate change and all of the things that are happening, one of the things I noticed with my students is that they didn't desire their future. They were afraid of it. Tayag: Oh! Ray: And so they turned to me, and they said, Sarah, we didn't, we couldn't really imagine a future. We don't have any tools for imagining what we would desire, and all we could imagine was, like, either blankness or the apocalypse. That they had seen in the most recent whatever, video or film or whatever that they'd seen, or news, right? Tayag: Yeah. Ray: So that was a real moment: a wake-up call for me. I thought, How can we expect these young people to do all the work we want them to do, to fix all the problems that are out there, if they don't even want to exist in that future? [ Laughter. ] Tayag: Yeah. Ray: They don't even desire anything about that future. Tayag: It's just so grim. Ray: It was really depressing. Tayag: It's really depressing! Ray: Yeah. I cried. Yeah; that was the first moment I thought, This is really bad. Tayag: So what happened next? Ray: So it wasn't just that they were living in a scary world; it was that they were getting information about a scary world in a very particular way. This was maybe 10 or 12 years ago. And the real shift towards all of us getting our news through social media, and the real shift to making the algorithms reinforce negativity, was really just beginning at that time. So that was the first step of trying to peel apart the layers of the onion. Are they gonna be able to live on a planet and grow food and breathe air and drink water? You know? And why would they have children in this world? And are they gonna retire? Or can they have a job that doesn't just add to the problem? How will they pay the bills? Why even go to college in this kind of world? And that's something that, like, Greta Thunberg really brought to the fore when she was like, I'm not gonna go to school, 'cause five years hence, when I get my degree, when I'm qualified to do anything about it, our planet will be radically different and I don't wanna wait around for that. That kind of impatience was something that I was really starting to detect in them. Tayag: One thing I hear so much in conversations about youth and climate dread is that, you know, older people always say, Oh, well, every generation had something to worry about. We had the nuclear threat; we had wartime dread. And so on. Is climate dread different from those past experiences? Ray: Yeah; I think that there's a 'yes and no' answer to that. The yes part of that answer is: It is just the same as all those other really difficult generational traumas in that the lessons that those folks learned by going through those experiences are things that young people need to get caught up on pretty quick. So I think about civil rights, or I think about, you know, the Holocaust, Vietnam War—all kinds of things that in the last few generations we've heard a lot about. And these people who have been sort of activists or involved in resistance movements in these spaces have had to overcome an incredible amount of stuff. They've had to sacrifice a lot. They've had to do the work without any evidence that it was gonna come out the way it did. The collective organizing skills—the kind of resilience and grit to do the work, the sense that the little things that you do—do matter, a lot. Those kinds of things are what I call climate wisdom. They're like wisdom that we get from the elders. You know, like we should take these tools from our elders who have gone through this stuff and ask them: How do they get through, how do they keep going? On the other hand, it is a qualitatively different problem. And the reason why I would say so is because the very functioning of the entire biosphere is at stake. And so all of the systems that humans rely on are going to be challenged and, uh, might in fact fall apart. Nuclear war, you know, might be something similar. Like, the annihilation of all life in one fell swoop feels scarier, in a way, than climate change. But it has the same kind of existential … the ability to grow food, to work, the ability to get water in our bodies, all of these things will be challenged. The very capacity of the Earth to produce the materials on which human civilization relies to function could be undermined. Ray: Is being undermined; is happening. It's happening. It's already on its path. [ Music. ] Tayag: Natalie, when I was talking with Professor Ray, that song 'I Melt With You' by Modern English was totally in my head. Do you know that one? Brennan: Remind me? Tayag: [ Sings.] 'I'll stop the world and melt with you…' Brennan: Of course—I just wanted to make you sing. Tayag: Oh. [ Laughter. ] Well, it's actually about having sex when a nuclear bomb drops. Brennan: Oh, whoa! Tayag: That's why they melt. The song came out in 1982, during the Cold War. I imagine that the band grew up being bombarded with all this messaging about the nuclear threat, and so when I hear this song it sounds to me like they'd just accepted total annihilation as a very real possibility. Brennan: I don't want to downplay, in any way, the threat of nuclear war! But I do think that it's different—it is the threat of a possibility. It is something that could happen. Tayag: Whereas climate change is something that is happening. Brennan: Is happening, every day, and it feels like we are all walking around going about our days as the red button gets pushed, with no alarm. Tayag: And you think that the psychological impact is different? Brennan: Yes. What is so different to me about the emotions of this moment is that people are trying to make sense of what we rationally know to be true about climate change. And then there's anger and confusion about why we aren't doing more to stop it. Tayag: Right. The anxiety and anger that comes with feeling like society has decided that we are okay with our own destruction. Brennan: Exactly, and it feels sometimes like even if we were to do something it would not be enough. Tayag: Yeah; that, in part, is climate anxiety in action. There are things that people can do—have been doing—to limit that cognitive dissonance. To feel like their actions align with their beliefs. And it's something Professor Ray and I spoke a lot about. [ Music.] Ray: Well, you maybe experienced, as I was describing, why this was qualitatively a unique threat. It doesn't really land well with one's nervous system. Tayag: Yeah. Ray: Right? Like, you take that information in, whether or not that's the first time you've ever heard that stuff or you've been hearing it for a long time. The nervous system, in order to keep homeostasis and to feel like it can function and keep going in the day, doesn't take that in very well. And we have particular patterns in our bodies about what we wanna do about that. The obvious ones that you're probably most familiar with are, like: fight, flight, or freeze. And I think that when young people are taking in this information and have been doing it for a long time, they they figure out how to move from the kind of shock of it to integrating it, to figuring out how to do something about it. And that is a whole series of things that they have maybe gone through by the time they were 15 or 16. And then they try to translate this to somebody who maybe has never thought about it. And I think that that's where the stress of that amygdala of those people they're talking to. There's some empathy there; there's some grace there around if this person's taking this in at all. That's taking a lot of courage. There's nothing about this information cognitively—in terms of our neuroscience, of our wiring and our brains—that can handle this. So it is actually far more natural for our brains to disavow, deny, put our heads in the sand. Because if you square this information with your daily life, there's a big cognitive dissonance as they call it. Tayag: So what are the ways that we should be teaching young people to acknowledge their feelings of dread and fear in a healthy way? Ray: One of the things that's happening is that there's a whole movement of climate-aware therapists, to figure out new tools that they didn't have before. 'Cause it's one thing to say uncertainty in your family. It's another thing to bring uncertainty of the planet into the therapy room. I think a lot of my students, for example, will tell me that they brought this up in therapy—and had their therapist tell them to stop consuming the news and to not worry about it. So that's not helpful. Tayag: No… Ray: Right? Like, that's just being told that your feelings are irrational, right? And that's never a good technique. Tayag: And also, that you have to completely detach from literally everything. That's not exactly feasible. Ray: If the therapists themselves haven't figured out how to face this kind of stuff, you can see why that would be happening. But there is an alternative, right? And that alternative is: Let's look clear-eyed about how bad things are, and let's have that be a call to action. Because it turns out that the kind of debilitating effects of climate anxiety are assuaged most effectively not when we do an action that solves the problem, which is really what you'd think it would be like. This is a problem that can't be solved by any one person's action. So why should I even do anything? That's what most young people feel, right? Like, I'm not even gonna try. But that's, um—that particular assumption rests on the idea that if we did the action, our climate anxiety would be assuaged by fixing it. It turns out that the psychologists who have studied this show that this is not true. The act of being in a group is actually the thing that alleviates anxiety and makes us feel efficacious, which is really an interesting and important tool. Especially, I think, in, um, culture that's so individualistic. So Bill McKibben is sort of famous for saying, you know, 'People constantly ask me all the time. You know: What's the most important, effective thing I can do as an individual? ' And he always says, the one most important thing you can do is not be an individual. You know, not think of individualism as the mechanism by which this is gonna get accomplished. And it turns out, from a psychology perspective, it's not just good for the planet; that's actually good for our mental health. So that's really, I think, the key. How can we solve climate anxiety? Well, yeah; it'd be great to solve climate, that would be the main way. Sure. But the fact that that feels impossible actually causes that depression loop to get worse. So I think when we're talking about how to teach young people, or how to bring this up to young people, it's always with showing them models of how people are solving the problem. Tayag: Mm-hmm. Ray: Always, always, always—Because we're social creatures, psychologically, if we see other people doing things, we're way more likely to do something. And actually, it's an interesting piece of data that psychologists have also proved—that the vast majority of Americans think that only like 30 or 40 percent of other Americans care about climate change, when the number is more like 70 or 80 percent. So that right there accounts for a lot of our inaction. If we just think other people around us and our neighbors don't care, we're less likely to do stuff. Tayag: So I wanna go back a tiny bit. Because I wanted to tease out a bit more, you know, the consequences of not correcting or not teaching people how to deal with their climate feelings. So what exactly happens, from a psychological perspective, when a person feels that an issue is just too big to conquer? And, you know, how can we make that feel smaller? Ray: Psychologists often call this concept pseudo-inefficacy. And the definition of it is basically this: The negative feeling of not being able to solve the whole problem outweighs the positive feeling of being able to solve just a little part of it. With climate change, we're talking about this big, humongous, intractable problem that no one person could possibly touch. 'It's too big. I can't even face it. I'm gonna go and binge Netflix.' Right. I mean, that's how climate change is being addressed right now. So there are sort of two solutions to this, right? One is to frame the problem in smaller chunks: How do we break it up into small chunks, that any one person can feel like, Oh, I can get up in the morning and have that sense of accomplishment that I finished a task by the end of the day? Because—as we know from nudge psychology—that creates a feedback loop of positive reinforcement. We're more likely to get up the next morning and do it again, do some more. It feels good. And sometimes that means that the work that we're doing has nothing to do with climate change. It has to do with getting to know our neighbors. It has to do with building community trust. It has to do with all kinds of things that are going to cumulatively add up to building more resilience for what's coming. Tayag: Mm-hmm. So, frame things in smaller pieces. And you said there were two solutions? Ray: Yeah. The second dimension of solving this pseudo-inefficacy puzzle is to see ourselves as much bigger than we actually are. And so, a lot of what happens with sort of the way young people are raised is that the vast majority of what they're consuming is telling them that they don't have any power. That they don't have political power. And for the most part, unless they have a lot of money, they don't even have economic power. And so the sense of powerlessness—some people talk about this as learned powerlessness or manufactured powerlessness. Which is basically saying, We give up our power before we've even tried to exert it. And so what I try to do with young people is to show all the places that they do already have a lot of power. And it's not just economics; it's not even just politics. There's all kinds of social places and cultural places that they have power. They have power in being kind. They have power in being a role model. They have a power in throwing even the tiniest little bit of energy into a larger movement. When we are part of a larger movement, as part of a collective, we are magnified way more than just individual people. If you're feeling despair, you might be suffering from individualism, because really the cure is seeing yourself as part of a larger group. Tayag: So, you know, once people feel like they have a little more agency, a little more power, what's a tool for people to use when they're ready to start thinking about how to get involved? What's a small step we can take? Ray: People often think of action as, like, Oh, I'm gonna ride my bike to work, or I'm gonna join this march, or I'm gonna call my representatives. These are all really important things, and I'm not dismissing that. But I'm trying to break it down to even how to even get to the place where you could do me, my favorite one, the one I always have as my lifeline, is: As I'm consuming all this news, as I'm trying to understand the lay of the land—which is happening at a quick clip right now—I get really overwhelmed by the monster in the room. And I think of all of the fear I have, and my amygdala and my nervous system is just really agitated. And I will say that I'm in that state even talking to you right now. So it's helpful for me to redirect my attention. And it's also what neuroscientists will tell you to do in cognitive behavioral therapy. Tayag: Okay. Ray: Which is to redirect my attention to the thing that I love, because it turns out the fear and the anger that I feel are secondary emotions for my love, right? They are signposts that are helping me figure out what I love. And usually it's like, I love nature. I love my children, I love my students. I love justice and health. And the thing, the monster in the room, is so upsetting to me, because it's threatening those things that I love. Okay? So instead of just fighting the monster—which I feel I do not have any power to do—what I do have power to do is tend and nurture the things that I love so they grow. So, adrienne maree brown says: Feed what you want to grow. And this is a beautiful mantra for me that I hold onto when I'm feeling really overwhelmed. And that is very much about attention, really at the scale of attention. This is not about taking shorter showers. This is about 'What am I paying attention to?' It's very micro-scale. Tayag: Mm-hmm. And it's a reframing in itself, right? You know, Let's not focus on the monster; let's focus on tending the garden. Right. And doing so, I guess, motivates you to fight the monster so you can continue to tend the garden. Ray: Yeah. And maybe you titrate; maybe sometimes you have energy for fighting the monster. And maybe when you're feeling the most depleted and you don't even know what to put the next foot forward at, you think, Okay, I know I can nurture the thing I love. Okay, so how do I do that? And then the emotion of love turns out to be way more sustaining in terms of our energy and our resilience. That means that we can generate that energy that we need to go back and fight the monster. Tayag: Can you give me an example of turning your attention toward something you love? Maybe something from your own experience? Ray: So I stupidly have a terrible daily practice of looking at the news first thing in the morning. It's a terrible practice. But the way that I solve that practice, or the way that I heal around that practice, is that I immediately know that it's gonna leave me feeling really bad—so I need to have a rescue thing. And that thing is to turn right directly toward what I love. So I always have, once I put my phone down, I always have 15 things in front of me that I love. I've got my dogs, I've got my children, I've got my house, I've got my husband. I've got all the stuff that I know that—if I let the bad news get to me—I will actually feel like not giving them love; I will feel like withdrawing. And the real problem with living in a story of apocalypse is that if we are not thoughtful about it, it will make us want to withdraw even more. And so we really have to actively intervene. In my work life, this happens all the time as well. I often look to the administration or the people in charge and get despairing. No shade on them. They're just in their structure, you know, doing the things they have to do. You know? And I get, I get despairing, and I think: I can't control that thing. I cannot get into the president's head and have them think differently. And then I immediately think, Why am I in this job? I should just quit. I hate this. Right? This gives me, sends me in—just the scale of my job sends me into cynicism and burnout. Tayag: The despair loop. Ray: Despair loop, right? And I'm like, I'm in it. I'm in it, I'm in it. So how do I then use the mantra—'feed what you want to grow'—to get outta that? I immediately think, What gives me pleasure here? I really touch into that, and I spend some time thinking about it. I know that it is a great, an incredible, vocation and calling I feel—to have an effect on my students. Okay, so what I'm afraid of is that this scary monster in the room is gonna destroy my students' capacities and experiences. How can I turn and use the position that I have—the relative power that I do have—to have an effect in that space? And so I often have this 'turn to my students' moment, where I'm like, Remember that I'm here for the students. Okay, let's go back to that. 'Cause once I go back to that, my cup is always full. I come away from my classes always feeling like, Ah, this is what I'm here for. This is the juice. [ Music. ] Brennan: Yasmin, this conversation is so helpful, because I feel so much shame whenever I get that feeling that this is all too overwhelming and I just want to run away to our lavender farm! Tayag: Same, but even the lavender farm will be affected by climate change. Brennan: Well … it's true! But this instinct to want to run away or to isolate when there's a threat is real. Right? I try to at least remind myself that's just how, evolutionarily, we're wired to react to danger. Tayag: Yeah. This reminds me of one review paper on the threat of nuclear war that found that it made adults prone to fantasy and make-believe—like, as a way to respond to the danger. I just finished a fantasy book called Legends & Lattes that was a nice temporary escape. Brennan: You really are such a nerd. I think fantasy is a great way to recharge. It's okay to take a break, to get you back into the game. That feels very different from avoidance or denial. Because the only way to truly push through the overwhelm and paralysis is to figure out what you need in order to be able to take action after you've had that rest. Tayag: Exactly. If it wasn't for Legends & Lattes I wouldn't have had the will or brainpower to read that review paper I mentioned. But yes: Addressing these issues head on is how to move through them. The nuclear war study even actually said that parents shouldn't ignore their kids' anxieties and misrepresent reality to them—kids who were more aware of the situation actually tended to be the most optimistic. Brennan: I think that is definitely something we need to focus on now with climate change, too! I saw a survey that most teens learn about climate change from the internet. And so when we're thinking about how an entire generation is aging up and learning about such a huge and existential issue, we want to figure out how to facilitate those conversations, right? The same way we do when we talk to children about death or divorce or illness. Learning about this alone—on your own, on the internet—can make the problem a lot bigger and lonelier. Tayag: I actually think the 'turning your attention toward love to break out of overwhelming thoughts or paralysis' is a practice that would be so helpful to teach children and teens to help them with so many aspects of aging, not just climate change. Brennan: Right, like with first heartbreak! Or puberty! Tayag: Applying to college… adolescence is just such an overwhelming part of aging, and the earlier you work on these habits, the better prepared you are for them when the overwhelm pops up in bigger ways. Tayag: So, Professor Ray, I'm curious, among your students, you know, what else are you noticing that affects them, or that they're thinking about when it comes to aging up in a very uncertain world? Ray: Absolutely: The No. 1 thing is economic precarity. No. 1. In fact, I would say that even overrides climate. And then the climate stuff might come into focus more through college classes. Or like—the intersection of climate and how climate change is going to exacerbate existing inequalities and problems in the world. So climate change is often called the great magnifier, right? Like, all the inequalities that exist, and all the places where people are already suffering, are just gonna get much worse. So the main thing that they've been taught as they're growing up is economics, right? That going to college is really expensive. This has really gotta be worth it, right? Tayag: Yeah! A lot of younger people feel like they are worse off than their parents' generation—I mean, I definitely do—even if statistically, it still isn't clear if we actually are. But I can see how that would play into questions about whether college is worth it, if it doesn't guarantee them a job. Ray: Yeah. In that sense of Maybe I can escape that problem individually, myself. Right? With my own marriage or my own hard work and my own degree. And so there's the scarcity politics of that—perpetuates that individualism, perpetuates that fear, perpetuates this cycle that you just talked about. The doom loop. Tayag: You know, so much of our conversation today has touched on this theme of individual versus collective action, which is a theme that's come up a lot this season. Ray: Yeah; if we rely on a sense of being able to do this ourselves, we will always fall short. We will always feel like we're failing. And the feeling of failing, as we just discussed, doesn't generate more engagement. [ Laughter.] So that's a model that just can't work. That can't work for where we're going. There's all kinds of ways that people are trying to create alternative models for how they would live. There's research out there that says that the best investment you can make in making your home, or yourself, be safe in a natural disaster is to have good neighborly trust—have good relationships with your neighbors. That makes intuitive sense. These are the people who, like, when all communication breaks down, are gonna be the people you rely on to, like— Tayag: Run across the yard! Ray: Run across the yard, help you with some extra water or whatever. And so it makes sense. But it's not something that people are spending every day thinking about: How do I build trust with my neighbors today? You know? But one of my neighbors in the last couple of months has decided, once a month, to have a bunch of people she likes in the neighborhood over for tea on Sunday. And she did this because she just felt desperate and alone. Then when I started to bring some of this research in, she was like, Oh my gosh, I didn't realize I was doing this political action. By, like, attending to my aloneness in this particular way. That's actually very functional, very utilitarian—but also has a side effect of just feeling good. Tayag: Yeah; I mean bringing together neighbors, especially if they're from different backgrounds or life experiences, or ages, to discuss climate—that totally is a political action! There's a lot of intersectionality at play in the groups who are most active in the climate movement. This isn't just about young people and their climate anxiety. Can you tell me more about the people who are showing up? Ray: So there's all kinds of reasons that, depending on your relative vulnerability, you might care more about climate change. Queer communities care more about climate change than straight communities. There's data also that shows that Latinx people care about climate change more than white people by double digits. And, like in a sort of hierarchy of order: Latinx communities, then Black communities, and then white communities are like the bottom of the list. Tayag: Interesting. Ray: The theory there is that the more vulnerable a community is to climate change itself—and the less faith they have that the government will help them, because of historical structural oppression—the more worried they'll be about it, right? The vast majority of times when—especially—people with power experience fear around environmental problems, what often happens is not that they go about creating more just structures and distributing wealth more equally and making sure people who are vulnerable are supported. In fact, the opposite usually happens with people who are already in positions of power. Generally speaking, when they hear about climate-change threats, they tend to hoard resources more. They tend to actually enact violence against people who they think of as threatening those resources or who are causing the problems in the first place. So there's all this language around immigrants coming to America and having a greater ecological footprint when they get to America, and therefore 'That's why we shouldn't allow immigrants into America.' This kind of argument, which is often called eco-fascism, can lead to some pretty, well, racist ideas, underwritten by climate change falsely. And even violence. Tayag: That's really concerning. The tendency, by some, to find scapegoats to try and just evade personal responsibility—that actually makes me think of another, pretty extreme, way of evading the climate crisis. It's this idea that we should just escape Earth entirely. Like, Earth is screwed, so let's go move to Mars. It's obviously still a very moonshot idea, but it does come up! And it gets a lot of investment from really wealthy billionaires, like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. They've both put a lot of money into exploring space. What do you make of that—is that a valid way to be dealing with climate anxiety? Ray: So the idea that we might be able to escape the limitations of capitalism—of the planet's limits, of resource limitations—that's really the fantasy here, right? So when we hear about economists or fossil-fuel folks saying the goal of the future is not to get rid of climate change; it is to separate humans' dependence on the planet systems. That's what they explicitly say is the goal. So the next obvious conclusion to that—if you're one of those tech bros who's into that kind of stuff—is to think, Well, the best way to do that is to find other planets. Right? And there's a fantasy of transcendence there. Of transcending the messiness of human life, using money to transcend the planet's limits, using money to transcend the muckiness of inequality and the social movements. So that might arise from that. We're seeing so much evidence of wanting that just to go away … all that stuff to just go away. Tayag: Yeah. It's, you know, the escape plan. That's a withdrawal in itself. Ray: Yeah. Tayag: It puts the focus back on the individual and ensuring your own survival. And I think that's the opposite of what we need. Ray: Yeah, absolutely. It's the opposite of what we need. And I think that's the nervous-system solution there, right? Like, if you think about when we perceive big threats, if we don't train our nervous system culturally or individually, we don't have a process by which we train our nervous system to respond to threats through social engagement, it's very possible that our response might be 'flight or fight or freeze,' or some of these other—maybe less constructive or less healing—responses that actually don't get to the root cause of the problem at all. Escape is a real nervous-system response. It's legitimate. But it's not medicine for the planet's woes. Tayag: Well, Professor Ray, thank you so much for being here today. Ray: Thanks so much. Brennan: Yasmin, I feel like I am going to have Professor Ray's voice in my head—reminding me that if you're not thoughtful about it, apocalyptic living will lead you to withdraw for quite some time. Tayag: Apocalyptic living begets more apocalyptic living! Brennan: No, truly. I mean, we're now at about five years out from the start of the pandemic. And I only now feel like I am at a place where I am ready to start unlearning a lot of the habits that I developed during that time, which led to a lot of isolation. I find that I withdraw as default, now. Tayag: Have you read Derek Thompson's Atlantic piece ' The Anti-Social Century '? Brennan: You know, I really could have used hearing your interview with Professor Ray before I read that piece—because it definitely led to a lot of overwhelm! The piece does a beautiful job of outlining how American society is on an anti-social streak. And how solitude has almost been marketed to us as luxury. Tayag: Me time! Brennan: Right, me time: ordering takeout, meditating. Going to work out, headphones in. I have really bought into the idea that to recharge is to be alone. Tayag: Mm-hmm. Brennan: And what we've been hearing throughout this season, again and again, is that to live a healthy, long life is to instead find our way back to a social society. Tayag: Right. We set out to answer the question of how to age up—and we heard a lot, from experts in vastly different fields, about how to connect. Brennan: Totally. It's funny the lengths we'll go to try and figure out the secret to living longer, when the answer—if there is to be any one singular answer—is to think less about yourself as the main part of the equation. Tayag: I read something recently that really captures this sentiment—on the vulnerability of being an individual and the possibility and power in teaming up. It acknowledged what so many of our experts have been saying. Our ability to age up relies on pushing back against forces as huge as climate change, ageism, housing insecurity … but you just can't do it alone. It says the more you band together with others—first with one person, then two, then even more people—the better chances you have at succeeding. Brennan: Yasmin, are you quoting a poem to me? Tayag: The tables have turned. To end this season, I'd love to read you part of a poem. Is that okay? Brennan: Welcomed, even. Tayag: This is a passage from the poem 'The Low Road' by Marge Piercy: With six you can rent a whole house, eat pie for dinner with no seconds, and hold a fund raising party. A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred fill a hall. Tayag: And the poem goes on to drive home the point that there's power in those numbers. It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again and they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more. Tayag: That's all for this season of How to Age Up. How to Age Up was hosted by me, Yasmin Tayag. Brennan: And co-hosted and produced by me, Natalie Brennan.
Atlantic
05-05-2025
- Health
- Atlantic
How to Define Old Age
In 2021 Dr. Kiran Rabheru, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Ottawa and a geriatric psychiatrist, found himself at the center of a medical debate. The World Health Organization wanted to officially designate 'old age' as a disease, but with more than 40 years of work with aging populations, Rabheru saw this as another example of ageism that needed to be challenged. Dr. Rabheru talks with Yasmin Tayag about how he fought the WHO and about the impact such designations can have on research and our understanding of growing old. The following is a transcript: [ Phone ringing. ] Natalie Brennan: I'm Natalie Brennan, producer at The Atlantic. Yasmin Tayag: And I'm Yasmin Tayag, a staff writer with The Atlantic. Brennan: You've reached How to Age Up. Leave us a voicemail after the beep. [ Beep. ] Jennifer Motiff: Hi. I am 60 years old. Toscan Lahy: Most people think I'm 45, 50, but I'm actually going to be 63. Marla Mclean: And I am 60-wonderful years old. That's 61. Brennan: Yasmin, over the last few weeks, we've been asking people to call in and tell us their age and about some of their experiences of aging. Myron Murray: I'm 75 years old. Thank God I'm Italian, and I don't wrinkle, so I don't look my age. I feel 20. Susan Brown: My age is almost 80, so I am actually aged, not aging. Doug Rutholm: I'm 88 years young. I'm only 88, and I'm married to a younger woman: only 85. So one of our secrets is youthing. We're not aging, we are youthing. And we eat well, we exercise, and looking forward to getting older. But we're getting younger. So that's it. Bye-bye. Tayag: Youthing! I like the sound of that! Brennan: Not wrinkling because I'm Italian … I like the sound of that! But as I was moving through the collection of voicemails, I noticed a pattern. We also received a lot of callers sharing very similar anxieties about the unknowns of what could lie ahead … Gary Schuberth: And what aspects of aging am I nervous about? Living to a very old age, and not being very healthy. Jes Chmielewski: I am nervous about feeling older. Just all the aches and pains and failures of organs and body parts. Jennifer Moffat: The things that make me nervous about aging are just physical breakdown, like, I don't want to break a bone. I don't want to get cancer. Stella K.: I'm really afraid of getting dementia. I mean, it just seems like a terrifying thing, and the older I get, the more afraid of it I am. Brennan: And Yasmin, you know, we asked about aging, and we heard a lot about disease and decline. Tayag: Yeah. I mean, I'm not totally surprised to hear that people are worried about getting sick as they age. I mean—I do think culturally we conflate aging and disease. It actually made its way to the center of a debate in the medical field. A few years ago, the World Health Organization tried to connect aging and disease more officially. Brennan: How so? Tayag: Well, they proposed defining aging itself as a disease. Brennan: To make aging a disease? Tayag: A classified disease. In the ICD—The International Classification of Diseases. Brennan: What benefit would that have? Tayag: Well, the idea is that if old age is officially considered a disease, then drugs can be developed to treat it … the way we have drugs to treat diseases like diabetes and cancer. So a lot of it comes down to funding. Brennan: But how do you treat old age? Aging is … time passing. How do you stop that? Tayag: You make a good point! And these kinds of details are exactly what I wanted to know more about. Kiran Rabheru: We don't have a good clear definition of old age. And that is still up for debate. What is old age? [ Music.] Tayag: Natalie, that's Dr. Kiran Rabheru—he's a professor of psychiatry at the University of Ottawa and a geriatric psychiatrist. He's been focused on aging populations for over 40 years. And he spearheaded the team that challenged the World Health Organization when it wanted to officially designate 'old age' in the ICD. But before we get to that, it can help to know more about Dr. Rabheru and why he's so interested in aging populations. Rabheru: That's an easy one: my grandmother. Rabheru: [ Chuckling.] My parents were, they were around, but they were busy: setting up a business and so on. And when I was growing up, my grandmother was the main sort of person in my life. She had a huge amount of influence on me. She was not educated. She couldn't even write her own name. But she was, in my opinion, totally biased, probably the wisest and smartest person I've ever met in my life. And every time I see an older person, I see a bit of her in them. Tayag: That is lovely. So how did that shape your view of older people? You had, what sounds like, the privilege of getting to know a grandmother. But that hasn't always been common, right? Rabheru: So aging, historically: If you go back a century or two, if you look at the numbers, if you were walking on the streets in the year 1800, most people would not have been old. You would hardly see an older person. Most people died by the time they got to the age of 30. Tayag: Yikes; I would have been long gone. Rabheru: If you fast-forward a hundred years, if you were walking around the streets in 1900, most people would be no more than 40. So there's a difference of 10 years in that 100-year span. But if you fast-forward another hundred years, in the year 2000, that number went from 40 to 70. So now, even across the lower- and middle-income countries, most people live to old age. So, on one hand, we've increased the lifespan of people. But on the other hand, we have devalued that population. Rabheru: And therein lies the crux of the matter that we're talking about, and that is the way people think and feel and behave or act towards the whole aging population. Tayag: So it sounds like there have been some big, positive improvements for aging, but that may have led to an increase in the disparaging thinking we call ageism. Rabheru: It's very subtle, and it's largely unconscious, and it's institutionalized. It's part of our policies and laws, and it's part of our processes. It's structures, in every sector, and that's embedded as an unconscious bias. Tayag: Sure. Rabheru: The COVID-19 pandemic really shone a light on the gaps we have in our system, particularly towards older people. And ageism became so much more rampant. The future is not about young versus old. Although our government sometimes tries to pit the old against the young. But it's about designing a society where everyone, at every age, can live together with dignity and purpose and opportunity. Tayag: One thing that I think makes those conversations difficult is that we don't have agreed-upon language to talk about age, and our society's perspective on aging seems to reflect that. Like, to me, our conception of age seems very rudimentary. Old and young are relative terms. I understand that one of the attempts to assign a definition to old age came when the World Health Organization wanted to classify it as a disease in the ICD. Can you explain what that actually means, and the implications for how we think about age and illness? Rabheru: Oh, Yasmin, absolutely. I used to teach the course on classification diseases, and classification is really important. It's not perfect. We have to adapt it as societal values change and our thinking changes, and we gather more data. Biologically, the environment changes, and we need to change the classification system to match it, right? The ICD is not published every year. It's published every 10–15 years apart. So, once it's in there, it can change a whole generation of people going through the treatment and through the hospital or clinical system. Tayag: You know, I'm thinking, for example, of alcohol-use disorder. You know, it used to be seen as this moral failing, a failing of willpower. And then it was classified as a disease, and that seemed to change some of the cultural thinking around it. So that's an example of defining a disease that really helped the culture find more empathy—and also more investment in the recovery and success of many people. Could you give me an example of a condition that, you know, went through the process of being considered and classified as a disease but is no longer considered to be one? Rabheru: You know, we've gone through 'diseases' like homosexuality—classified as a disease. And think about the stigma associated with those terms. We don't use them anymore. And words matter; it tells people what value you place on that human being. Tayag: It's so obvious to me that these official classifications matter. You know, it makes me think of the legalization of marijuana in Canada. where I grew up. My parents were always super strongly opposed to it. But ever since it was legalized, I've noticed their tone softening a little. It's not like they've gone and flipped and started using it, but now they talk about it as a thing that some people do, and that's okay. And it's been fascinating to watch that shift just because there is some sort of, like, binding declaration of this being legitimate. Rabheru: Exactly. Tayag: So I want to talk about disease classification specifically in relation to aging. In December 2021 you found yourself in the middle of some very high-stakes deliberation. Set the scene for me. Rabheru: It was the most fascinating experience, I've got to tell you, Yasmin. As part of my work, I've worked with a lot of people, across the world, that lead different organizations in aging. And it came to our attention that the WHO was updating the International Classification of Diseases, the ICD. And part of the changes that they were proposing was to include 'old age' as a disease. Tayag: Wow; just old age. Rabheru: Just old age, quote, unquote, as a disease. And, you know, look: The WHO is highly respectable. but it's an unconscious bias. And this is an example of ageism within WHO. Now, in March of 2021, the same organization put out the global report on ageism. To combat ageism. Tayag: It seems a little hypocritical. Rabheru: In the same organization. Yeah. So we wrote; we got together and we organized a campaign. There were like eight or 10 different organizations that all wrote to the WHO, and collectively we represented millions of people across the world. Our team and the people that I work with immediately thought: Aging is a privilege. That's not the disease. And you know, look. As a clinician, I know that it's not always easy. The older people are much more challenging to see and treat because of the multiple medical and psychosocial conditions they have. Having a diagnosis of 'old age' would automatically just lead people to put them into that category, that 'This person's just old'—and they move on to something that's easier to deal with. Tayag: Well, one of the big questions that the proposal to call aging a disease brought up for me was: Where do you draw the line? Where does aging start? Rabheru: It's not the age. Like, Yasmin, if you have a car accident and you can't walk tomorrow because of a spinal-cord injury, you would have the same level of intrinsic capacity as someone who's had a stroke at the age of 80. So the number, chronologically, is—not that it's not important; it is a risk factor, of course. Every organ ages over time. So it is definitely part of the risk factor, of course, but it's not the main driver of functional capacity. Tayag: And so what happened next after you wrote to the WHO? Rabheru: They did, in fact, give us, four hours of their time. It was Thanksgiving Day! Tayag: Thanksgiving Day? Rabheru: And we went through it in a systematic, scientific way. And we explained we understand what they're trying to do, and they want to go after the biological aspects of aging—which absolutely we need to do! There's no question. There is a lot of pathology that we can reduce the risk of, etcetera. But to call old age a disease is not going to play well in society. Tayag: Okay; so sounds like it was a worthwhile way to spend your Thanksgiving that year. Rabheru: Totally, 100 percent. Tayag: So how did it turn out? Rabheru: They came back to us a few weeks later saying they've met several times, and they've decided to change it. We were very happily shocked that they rescinded it. And that was the right thing to do. We were very pleased. Aging is universal and should not be pathologized. And it's time to reframe aging in a more positive way. [ Music. ] Brennan: Okay, Yasmin, I want to work through some of this tension I'm feeling. Yasmin: I can see the wheels turning. Brennan: I'm having a hard time. Because hearing Dr. Rabheru talking about challenging the WHO—it does sound like a win for how health professionals and society in general think about older people. And, as we know, this perception has tangible effects on the care and treatment that people receive. So that's a win! Tayag: Yeah. Brennan: But I'm still trying to work out if treating aging is a worthwhile pursuit or not. On the one hand, I'm like, Okay, if we think about aging as time. And time has a physical effect on our cells—building up damage, getting worn out. I could understand a world where we are working to heal or repair that damage, and if we were able to do that, I am guessing it would relieve some of the anxiety that we heard in so many of the voicemails we received. But at the same time, I'm like, What does treating aging even look like? Tayag: Well, there are existing drugs that are being repurposed to maybe slow aging. Brennan: Okay, so what does that mean? Tayag: Metformin is used for diabetes. Rapamycin is an immunosuppressant. And researchers are trying to determine if those or other existing drugs could slow the passage of time for cells, or clear out old cells, or the molecular junk that time leaves behind. Brennan: I have Timothy Caulfield in my ear from Episode 1 telling me to assume nothing works! I'm skeptical about the ability to achieve these things. And I'm just immediately wondering if something else is going on here. Tayag: I mean—a lot of this does come down to money. There's a hope that there will be more investment in research on slowing aging. Which, in turn, will save money in the long run, because if people get sick less often as they age, it will bring down the costs of health care. Brennan: Hmm. Tayag: So that's one argument for exploring it. There was a report in 2021 from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission showing that much older people tend to be the most costly to the government, health care–wise. Brennan: Right. I guess what I am trying to understand is: Although aging is not a disease in and of itself, and it should not be classified as such, it is associated with disease, right? And we could work harder to address the concerns that people have when it comes to aging. Tayag: Exactly. So aging is a risk factor for disease. But aging itself isn't a disease. This was something I was really trying to work out, too, when I was talking with Dr. Rabheru. [ Music.] Rabheru: It's a risk factor. Aging is a risk factor—in fact, the strongest risk factor—for cognitive impairment or dementia, barring, you know, all other illnesses. So, if you have a stroke or a genetic predisposition, that's different. But if you're healthy and you're getting older, the biggest risk factor is aging. One in three people by the time you're 80 will have some form of dementia, regardless of any other conditions. And the biology of that should be explored to mitigate it. Tayag: Being a science journalist, I'm always looking at new research going on. And it does seem like there is continuing research that still treats aging like a disease, even though the World Health Organization decided not to classify it that way. One thing I saw recently was an effort to delay or stop menopause altogether, which is complicated, right? Because, on the one hand, the symptoms of menopause can be really tough to deal with. And not to mention, the way that postmenopausal people are treated in society. And so I can understand why there's a desire to delay menopause or stop it altogether. Rabheru: Mmhmm. Tayag: But, on the other hand, menopause is a part of aging. It's just a normal life stage. Rabheru: Exactly. Tayag: And it's in these sorts of questions that I'm not really sure where to fall. Rabheru: The solution depends on what your agenda is; like, where you put your values. So for example—if your values are coming from the financing side of things, the aging industry, the anti-aging industry, is huge. Tayag: Oh yeah, I have been victim to a lot of face creams. Rabheru: There might be things that you can do from a scientific point of view, from a medical point of view, to make the person's life better. But to completely alter the course of a human being: Just because you can doesn't mean you should, right? We don't really understand the medium- and long-term implications of doing some of those things. And the science is advancing so quickly with AI and with technology, but the long-term ramifications of what it does to humans and our society are not well studied. Tayag: Okay, so we don't know if reversing or stopping aging is even going to work, and you're saying it's something that maybe we shouldn't pursue. Yet we still have this problem of people assuming that old age means they will get sick. But, you know, I think a lot about my grandfather-in-law. He's 96 years old and walks two miles every other day! Rabheru: Good for him. Tayag: He's my hero. He's awesome. And so, he's definitely old in numbers, but I would never think of him as unhealthy. Nobody would. Rabheru: Or worth less! Tayag: Or worthless, exactly. Rabheru: The older population is growing. We have, you know, we're going to—we'll have billions of people by the year 2050 who are older. And that's a resource; that's not a burden. If we keep them safe and healthy and happy, they can provide support for the world. [ Music. ] Brennan: Okay, Yas, I have to admit when I hear those statistics about risk for diseases as you age. I do pretty immediately tense up. Disease does still sound so inevitable to aging. Tayag: I hear you. I mean when I think about my family's heart-health trajectory, I feel like it's inevitable that I'm going to get all the same diseases as my parents as I get older. Brennan: Oh my god, I hope my dad isn't listening right now, because I had slightly high cholesterol this year, and I couldn't bear to tell him after years of me pestering him about this. [ Laughter. ] Here I am on my little lentil-and-sweet-potato high horse, and I still had slightly high cholesterol. Meaning the same genes that came for his heart might just come for mine. Tayag: You know, I have been on this same spiral lately! Brennan: Yeah. Tayag: But have you heard of the concept of healthspan? Brennan: I have not. Tayag: It's what comes to mind when I think about my grandfather-in-law. And all the other older people who called in telling us how they're thriving and living their best lives. Healthspan is the idea of extending the period that a person is healthy. And that's different from lifespan, which is about how long you actually live. Brennan: Okay so, instead of trying to live longer, until 105, it's about making it longer in your life without disease? Tayag: Exactly. Just like: staying healthy for as much of your life as possible, no matter how long you live. Which is the case for a lot of older people. Brennan: Okay—how do we do that? How do we extend healthspan? Tayag: So we don't know how to guarantee an extended lifespan yet. But we do know how to increase healthspan: Eat well, exercise, sleep a lot, connect with people. It's all the stuff we've been talking about this season. Brennan: And did Dr. Rabheru have any more advice, too? Tayag: Well I thought you might ask. So I asked Dr. Rabheru what his advice to his patients is. Rabheru: So for many, many years, I have given the same prescription to every single patient I see. Tayag: That's after the break. [ Music. ] [ Midroll.] Tayag: Dr. Rabheru, I have one last question for you. As a person who is aging yourself, like all of us are, what is one piece of advice you think we could all benefit from? Rabheru: Well, I'll tell you—so, for many, many years, I have given the same prescription to every single patient I see. When you leave my office or clinic or hospital, when you go home, here's my prescription for you. It's the rule of 20s. So: I need you to give at least 20 smiles a day. Okay? Because as soon as you're smiling, it changes the way your brain works. Second is to do 20 minutes of activity of some sort; and I usually say walking, because physical activity is really important for health, right? But try and get 20 minutes of walking. And thirdly: Socialize for 20 minutes a day. And not just with the person you're living with; that's fine too, but try and do something outside of yourself. So, those are three basic things you can do, and then all the treatment I give you will be much more effective. Tayag: I love it; the 20 rule. I'm going to do this today. It seems easy enough. I'm smiling a lot after this conversation, and so I smiled a lot. I've talked to you for way more than 20 minutes, and I guess I just have to go on a walk later. Dr. Rabheru, thank you so much. Rabheru: Likewise, Yasmin; thank you. [ Music. ] Brennan: Yasmin, I do think that a really important part of this conversation is making sure we highlight the aspects of aging that people are excited about. When we asked listeners for those voicemails, we didn't just ask what people were nervous about as they aged. Sue: What are you looking forward to? Well, the biggest thing is no more shoulds. I'm tired of shoulds. You should do this. You should do that. I don't care about shoulds anymore, and the freedom of doing what I want when I want to. John Shuey: What are you looking forward to as you age? Well. Staying mobile and fit and able to get around. And I really do get around. I, despite my age, I can shovel snow for two hours. I ride bikes 35 miles at a time. I just, I basically feel like I'm 40. Is there someone in your life who has made you excited to get older? And yeah. It's this girl from high school. I married her, and we have a great time together. Lynn Clark: I wanted to leave this message for all the women who are nervous about aging. At age 30 I started my own business. I've raised two children and was widowed by age 59. At age 60, I started weight-resistance training and cycling. I am slowly backing out of my company towards full retirement. I moved part-time to another state, something I wouldn't have dreamed of when I was younger. Susan Anthony: I do stand-up comedy. I do all sorts of weird and wonderful new sports, whatever really takes my fancy. And I kind of enjoy that, and I can just, like, head off in whatever direction I feel like. And all of it is about just that desire to continue to grow. The next question you had was: Who do you hope to be like when you are older? That phrase that I think Clint Eastwood is known for—'Don't let the old man in'—and I think that's really where the secret lies. I see so many people who just let the old person in, and I don't want to do that. And so I admire anyone who really doesn't allow that to happen. Tayag: Don't let the old man in. Brennan: Or, maybe better: Change your idea of what the old man is like! Tayag: Right. My dad is on a 70+ senior basketball team, and I like the old man they let in. Like, they are just always looking forward to the next game, the next tournament, and just getting to hang out. And they're still so excited for what's to come. Brennan: Yeah, I think for me it's like: healthspan, lifespan … I want to extend my curiosity-span. Tayag: Zest-span. Brennan: Joie de vivre–span. Tayag: Exactement. Looking forward–span. [ Beep. ] Myron Murray: I want to see 'em land on Mars. I want to see 'em land and live on the moon. I want to see all the new things that are gonna come and we're going to get to see. [ Music. ] Tayag: That's all for this episode of How to Age Up. This episode was hosted by me, Yasmin Tayag, and co-hosted and produced by Natalie Brennan. Our editors are Claudine Ebeid and Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Our engineer is Rob Smierciak. Rob also composed some of the music for this show. The executive producer of audio is Claudine Ebeid, and the managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez. Tayag: Looking to the future doesn't always feel easy when climate issues loom large.
Gulf News
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf News
Miss Universe Philippines 2025: All you need to know about pageant and how you can help choose winner
Sixty-six dazzling candidates. One glittering crown. And now? One massive twist: you get to help decide who gets it. Miss Universe Philippines 2025 is going full democracy glam this year, announcing that fans can vote in real-time to push their favorite candidates all the way to the top. That's right—from Top 24 to Top 12 to Top 6, your tap could make someone's sash dreams come true. 'It's your turn to help shape the destiny of Miss Universe Philippines 2025!' the organisation posted on Instagram. Voting is live on the Miss Universe Philippines app—so may the best queen (and fanbase) win. The coronation night, set to light up the SM Mall of Asia Arena tonight, is already being billed as one of the grandest ever. National director Ariella Arida and executive VP Voltaire Tayag are promising a spectacle packed with power, poise, and a whole lot of pageant prowess. 'These girls are running on a schedule three times tougher than ours back in the day,' Arida told ABS-CBN News. 'But you wouldn't know it. Their energy? Unmatched.' Just one night after the elaborate National Costume Show, contestants were still in high spirits during Thursday's all-day rehearsals. Tayag praised their stamina and savvy: 'They're maximizing every break. It's pro-level discipline.' And Arida? She's feeling the chills. 'I've watched their entire journey—from auditions to now. This is their moment.' The pageant is also coming off its global high: reigning queen Chelsea Manalo made history earlier this year when she became the first Miss Universe Asia 2025. The pressure is on—and the competition has never been fiercer. So what separates a contestant from a queen? Tayag says it's all about real, effortless confidence. 'When she's not pretending—when she's just being —that's when she lights up the stage.' 'There's always fan favorites,' Arida added, 'but Miss Universe Philippines has a way of revealing the one right when it counts.' In fact, so many candidates brought their A-game that the org had to bump the Top 3 National Costume awardees to a Top 5. As they say: too much fabulous to contain. Catch the action live via Empire Philippines' YouTube channel, or watch the delayed telecast on GMA Network on May 4. One thing's for sure: the sash, the crown, and the crown-worthy drama are all coming in hot.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How to Age Up Together
Listen and subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts In the next 10 years, our society will become more old than young. How do we leverage this time to build stronger intergenerational connections? Eunice Nichols, the co-CEO of CoGenerate, has spent more than two decades bringing older and younger people together to address issues that affect us cross-generationally. She explains how a history of structural policies, some of them great innovations, have contributed to this age-segregated era and about what a future could look like if people from different generations choose to partner together more Tayag: Well, you said that we were the same generation, and we're not! Natalie Brennan: Technically, that's true, but I was raised alongside a Millennial six years older than me and one four years older than me, so culturally I feel like I grew up with a Millennial core despite my Gen Z rising. Brennan: I'm Natalie Brennan, Gen Z producer at The Atlantic. Tayag: And I'm Yasmin Tayag, a Millennial staff writer with The Atlantic. Brennan: This is How to Age Up. Brennan: What do you think your most Millennial quality is? Tayag: I am very self absorbed. [Laughter.] I would say an obsession with myself and always putting myself in the center of everything and thinking that everything that's going wrong is directed at me. Like the failing economy and the climate: It's all directed at me. Brennan: Yeah, I have that too. I kind of thought it was a Gen Z quality. Maybe that's just the Millennial core in me. [Laughter.] Tayag: Okay. Well, what do you think your most Gen Z quality is? Brennan: I've been thinking a lot about this. I wear baggy, big pants. Okay. Tayag: Okay. But I do too. Brennan: Yeah, that's true. But I think I'm wearing even baggier. Tayag: Yes. And I'm doing it because I wanna look like you. [Laughs.] Brennan: I'm like, I don't know. You don't feel that different from, like … me. Tayag: Perhaps I'm just an exceptional Millennial. Brennan: Correct. And I'm just an exceptional Gen Z. Tayag: I mean, maybe we have a lot of overlap because we generally spend most of our time with people within a decade of our own age. Brennan: Yeah. Tayag: Like, there's research showing that most adults don't have close friends who are either 15 years older or younger than them. Brennan: Wow. Tayag: A few years ago I used to work with a much younger colleague who asked me out for coffee, and we had this lovely coffee date where we talked about life, talked about working in media, and then after I saw that she tweeted— Brennan: No… Tayag: She wrote, 'As a 22-year-old woman, making friends with 27- to 34-year-old women has been the best thing I've done this year.' Brennan: No! Tayag: And I read this, and I'm like, Excuse me, am I the upper limit of your age range? Kudos to her for going out of her way to make older friends. Brennan: 'Older friends!' Tayag: I'm glad she got something out of it. But still, even if I'm at the end of her age range, I'm just 12 years older than her. Brennan: Right. Tayag: Like, is this really as age diverse as we can get? Brennan: I mean, 25- to 45-year-olds are only about 25 percent of the U.S. population, but make up almost the entirety of my day-to-day interactions. Tayag: Which is kind of wild, because statistically it shouldn't be so difficult to meet people of different generations. Brennan: Right. But your friend is onto something. You do get something out of meeting people outside of your age group. With older people, you get a different perspective on work and relationships, on what really matters over the course of a lifetime. And I'm sure, for you, as the older person in this relationship, I'm sure you learned something too. Tayag: Yeah. After I got over being the 'old friend,' it actually helped me realize I had something relevant to share, like my experiences amounted to something interesting and useful to someone else. [Music.] Eunice Nichols: We're living in the most age-diverse time in human history. And, for the next 10 years, this incredible diverse-age population is a gift to us if we seize that opportunity. Tayag: Natalie—that's Eunice Nichols. She's the co-CEO of CoGenerate, an organization focused on intergenerational partnerships. She's spent over two decades witnessing how bringing older and younger people together can be really transformative for everyone involved, and that it's a really effective way to tackle societal problems. And we spoke about how much interest and movement there is in this space right now, even if it's not how our society is currently structured. Nichols: So I'm the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan, and like many children of immigrants, I grew up in an intergenerational home because my parents, once they got settled, brought their parents over. Much of my community was the extended immigrant community that my parents were part of. I was surrounded by many aunties and uncles and grandmas and grandpas. Most weren't related to me, but they felt like family. And it wasn't until after I left for college and launched out in my own adult world that I realized not all of society is structured that way. And I think I didn't actually know what I was missing until many years later, when I realized I felt a little unanchored—because my whole world from college and then my early career was surrounded by other people my age. And it was fun, and I loved it. But I definitely felt like I was missing something. It wasn't until I circled around and started working for the nonprofit I'm now part of, CoGenerate, where I started running programs that brought older adults into, at that time, public schools, helping kids read. And turning these institutions into places that felt like extended family kind of reminded me of the fabric of love and care that I grew up with, and I've followed that thread ever since. Tayag: I totally relate. I didn't grow up with my grandparents, but I grew up going to babysitters who were other people's Asian grandparents. And so I spent a lot of time with my friends' grandmothers, and they would make us soup. And yeah, now, being a mom myself and my parents not being around, I think a lot about how much I wish they were here. Nichols: Yes, absolutely. Tayag: Not just to help with the day-to-day of raising a kid, but to give him perspective on things that I don't know myself, like growing up in the Philippines, or being an immigrant. Nichols: Well, and I think that also brings up the importance today of building the skills of collecting found family—aunties and uncles, grandmas and grandpas that might not be blood related but can actually play some of those same really critical roles. Tayag: So where are we at as a society now? Why aren't we seeing more of these intergenerational relationships? Nichols: Yeah, so we're living in the most age-diverse time in human history, in part because of this extended life that's come from innovations in health care, technology, etcetera. And, at the same time, we have a birthrate decline, because of women having children later in life. I think I talk to a lot of young people that aren't sure they want to have children and bring them into such an uncertain world. So, these are sort of the trends in why we have a declining younger population and a growing older population. Tayag: So usually, a typical population chart looks like a triangle—where there are almost double the number of young people as older people. But if we look at a population chart today, it's getting closer to a rectangle—where there are almost as many 5-year-olds as 15-year-olds as 50-year-olds, right? Nichols: Yeah, that's never happened before. And, for the next 10 years, this incredible diverse-age population is a gift to us if we seize that opportunity. While we are the most age-diverse society we've ever been, we're simultaneously the most age segregated by institutions, by infrastructure, by policy. It's like everything in our lives are designed to separate us. Tayag: How did it come to be that we are living through the most age-diverse era in human history and yet it's also so age segregated? Nichols: Yeah, so on the age-segregation side, we went from having kind of these age-integrated one-room schoolhouses, and the agrarian society meant younger and older people worked together, side by side out in the fields. But then, there were all of these great innovations in policy. So child-labor laws: I think we all agree that's a very good thing. Universal schooling, I think we agree that's a really good thing. Social security, which provided a safety net for older adults, and at the same time made room for young people who are experiencing massive un- and underemployment. These were parts of societal infrastructure built to help us. But the unexpected part of that innovation was that it pulled generations apart. All of a sudden, kids were in schools, middle-aged people had jobs, and older people were in retirement communities. Tayag: Tell me more about how those retirement communities came about? Nichols: It used to be that we lived generationally together, and in a lot of immigrant communities that still happens the way I was raised. When retirement became recast as the 'golden years,' sort of 'graying as playing' and this time of endless leisure, some very scrappy entrepreneurs developed the idea of retirement communities. And Sun City [in Arizona] was formed, and these spaces where you only see older adults. And I think the idea was: If you don't see young people, then you'll never feel old. And so, it was sort of a, in some ways, beautiful concept for older folks who are feeling very marginalized. But we now have places like the Villages in Florida, which has a population of 145,000. There are ramifications when you wholesale pull older adults out of society, especially those who have the most lived experience and the resources and the networks, and there are no young people interacting with them. Tayag: And does there seem to be momentum to want to reintegrate? Nichols: We did a national opinion survey where we asked people across the country of all ages if they think bringing older and younger generations together is a good thing, and if that might actually solve some of our essential divides. And we were surprised to find that people of all generations actually said yes. The thing that actually was fascinating was that young people wanted it two times more than older adults. Even though everybody wanted it, the real momentum for young people is to connect with older adults, in part because they know they need it. They need the resources, the networks, the learning, the life experience. Again, there's a drive to be connected, especially in a very disconnected society. So in that sense, helping older and younger to find common ground is a critical thing. Tayag: So what's a practical example of how different generations can find common ground? What does that look like? Nichols: Think about where you might encounter people of different generations to build that found family. Doing what we call co-generational service is a beautiful way to both make a difference in your community and connect across generations. The other thing where we've seen beautiful partnerships is around housing. I don't look around and see communities that I want to live in when I'm older. There are few and far between. And they're not accessible and available to everyone. We think that housing could also be the path back into reintegrating society and bringing generations back together. Young people right now are experiencing incredible anxiety around housing affordability. How many young people think that they will actually own a home in their lifetime? Very few. Tayag: I don't think I'll own a home, and I'm 38. You know, I'm not exactly young. Nichols: Yeah. Exactly. There are a number of older people that do own a home, and they're struggling to age in place. You look around; what are the options? If you could afford it, you could sell that house and move to a retirement community, maybe to a place with extended care. But most older adults would actually like to stay in their home—and many can, but not if they're isolated and alone. And so here you have a bunch of older adults who own homes and they're empty-nesters; they've got a couple spare bedrooms. You have young people—often in college, or they've moved to a place. They're far from family and, you know, it's their first time in a job, and they can't afford a place, and rent is too expensive. There's once again a solution that's just waiting to happen. And there are some organizations out there that are actually becoming the matchmakers, like an Airbnb for empty-nesters' spare bedrooms. Tayag: Oh, really? Nichols: Yeah; and at a discount, you can get cheaper rent and in return help around the house. And then the beauty is, in the process, you get companionship that becomes equally important for the older person and the young person. These innovations—we need more of them. There's some of this happening on college campuses. There's a whole trend of university-based retirement communities. So instead of building far away from society, what would it look like to build a retirement community literally on campus? There's one I visited at Arizona State University called Mirabella. And the residents there get an ID card. They can go use the gym, they can use the library, they can take classes. Drexel University in Philadelphia is located in a very urban area, and it borders a very African American neighborhood with a lot of elders who own homes. There was a program that was a creative-writing class, and students and elders in the community would come together for this class and just do creative writing together. And they got to know each other and these beautiful relationships that were built. But one day, one of the elders came in and, because of the gentrifying neighborhood, was going to be kicked out of her housing. And one of the students said, 'Oh my goodness; what is the point of connecting and getting to know these wonderful elders in the neighborhood if, at the end of the day, all we've done is written creative stories together?' It did get the students and older adults having what became extensive conversations around different ways to live together because the students were themselves feeling pretty housing insecure. And so, this concept of the Second Story Collective happened. It was just a concept for a long time—of the idea that it would be awesome if students and older adults could live cooperatively together. They were able to attract the attention of Charles Lomax, an African American real-estate developer. The plans are to build duplexes where the older adult could live on the ground floor, and then the students could live upstairs, and then they could actually live together. [Music.] Tayag: I've also heard about intergenerational relationships being formed around fostering. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Nichols: So, there are a lot of foster families out there that are doing amazing work to provide a loving home for a child. But, man; is it hard to do that if you don't have a robust community connection. So one of my favorite organizations is called Bridge Meadows, in Oregon, and they actually created a built community around foster families and older adults who are retired. There are homes for these retirees. They agreed to move there to Bridge Meadows. There are homes for these foster families raising kids. And then all of it's built around a community center where the olders and the youngers gather together. And if you're an older adult, out on your porch, you actually get to hear kids on a playground or running across your lawn. That's so joyful, rather than being isolated and alone. And if you're a foster parent with kids and you have grandmas and grandpas all around that chose to be in this neighborhood in order to be part of the extended family, that's the dream. And so we need more communities creating the infrastructure for connection to happen. Tayag: Are most of these partnerships built around children? Nichols: There's an amazing organization in L.A. It's the LGBT Center, and it's a senior center focused on creating space for older members of the LGBT community. And at the same time, they recognize that a lot of young people from the LGBT community that were aging out of the foster-care system or were transitioning into early adulthood would need to find housing and were falling through the cracks. And so they had the idea of creating intergenerational housing that could be used both for the seniors and young people. And there are so many people in the LGBTQ community who are in their 70s and 80s and are at much greater risk of aging in isolation and alone without the kind of blood family or even found family that we talked about. So, creating a housing structure where they can be connected through infrastructure to young people and create those bonds is a wonderful thing. And meanwhile, young people who are just starting out on their own, even though they've aged out of the foster-care system, can be living with older adults in the community who have so much to give, and so much they can learn from. [Music.] Brennan: You know, when I think about aging up, the thing that I get the most anxious about is where to age up. Both my grandmothers lived in assisted-living facilities and were pretty isolated, and a lot of the responsibility fell on my mom. And it's the part of getting older that freaks me out the most is thinking about where or how to age up in America, when a lot of the options feel like they require … an incredible amount of wealth. Tayag: Yeah. This is why I have this fantasy of buying a property with my friends and all of us getting older together. My group chat with my girlfriends always comes back to: Okay. We're all retiring on a lavender farm together, right? No kids, no partners. Just us having wine on the porch every sunset until we all die at the same time. Brennan: Holding hands. Holding hands in twin beds across the aisles. No, but really, I hear this all the time. It's such a common fantasy for women. Tayag: I think about it as linked to the eldest-daughter theory. Do you know what that is? Brennan: I'm familiar. Tayag: Right? It was this idea going around social media a few years ago that eldest daughters have it especially hard—because so much is expected of them, because they're both the eldest sibling and they're also women. And so eldest daughters tend to end up having to take responsibility for long-term care for aging parents. Brennan: Right. Tayag: But they're worried about who's gonna take care of us when we're older. Brennan: Our friends. Tayag: Exactly! So it feeds into the lavender-farm fantasy. Brennan: I mean, I think there's a lot at play here. I think it's also that, you know, women tend to live about five years longer than men on average, though it's not necessarily clear yet why. Women are also 80 percent more likely to fall below the poverty line after 65. Tayag: Oh my god. Brennan: So there's a lot of factors that might lead to this fantasy. Brennan: But, you know, any escapist fantasy doesn't work to build structures that offer support. It looks to flee them. Tayag: Right. Brennan: And from your conversation with Eunice, I find myself getting defensive. I'm like, You can't move to the lavender farm. We need you. And you know, our collection of elders. Here with us in society. And they need us, too. [Music.] Nichols: About a year, a year and a half ago, there was a report that came out called The Belonging Barometer, and it was a barometer checking on the state of belonging in America. You can imagine the data was not good. People across all identities are not feeling a deep sense of belonging in our country right now. I actually think for older people, to hear specifically from young people that they are wanted and needed, that they're still relevant, that they matter, is far more important than hearing it from their peers. And the inverse is true, too—that young people can be told by their peers that they're awesome. It feels really different to have somebody in their 60s or 70s say, 'Hey, I love this thing that you're doing,' or 'I want to learn from you about this interest of yours or the skill set you have.' There's something that just bumps it up a few levels on that belonging barometer. Tayag: You know, we've described all these positive outcomes from these intergenerational relationships. Surely there's some friction, right? Nichols: Yes, yes. Tayag: What does that look like? Nichols: What we heard from young people is Don't start with the advice-giving. Get to know me. And when I get to know you, I will ask for advice that I need and want. We interviewed 30 young leaders who were all under 31 years old, who have a touch point with working with older adults. They really need older adults to know that they're experiencing a different reality right now than the older adults did back then. So lead with a relationship instead of advice. That's actually really hard for a lot of older adults, who've actually been taught to think that their primary purpose is advice-giving and mentorship. The other thing I think that came through loud and clear is—a lot of young people hear what older folks think is a compliment, which is: 'You're so inspiring, you're going to save the world.' Right? 'It's all on you.' That can actually feel really overwhelming. And it's actually not fair to young people to say the salvation of our world and many of our problems is on their shoulders. If we're going to live 100-year lives, there's plenty of time for older generations to come to the table, and young people are going to need that collaboration to stay the course. It's not just about the compliments. This generation is breaking through a lot of the hierarchy and infrastructure. I think that's one of the biggest cultural shifts we need to make to have good intergenerational partnerships. Older adults saying: I'm ready and willing to have a younger person co-design, co-lead, co-create with me. And my best role might be to let go of a lot of things I've spent a lot of time doing and support in a different way. [Music.] Brennan: We're going to take a short break. But when we come back … You know, as you were discussing, um, how what younger people are going through is completely different from what an older generation might have experienced, the first thought that popped into my head was, Mom and Dad, I hope you're listening to this episode. [Laughter.] [Midroll.] Brennan: Okay, one more time for the parents everywhere! We love your wisdom! And we really want you to listen! Tayag: I do think it is the hardest issue we are up against—trying to communicate to elders that the issues young people are facing today are unique. But also that it's not a generational conflict. It's a product of the weird time that younger people just happen to be living in. Brennan: Right, but there is a lot of generational anger. The National Debt Relief survey from 2023 reported that 65 percent of Millennials and Gen Z are worried about Boomers' impact on their financial future. Tayag: It's 'OK, Boomer.' Brennan: It's 'OK, Boomer.' Tayag: Right, or that's the story we keep repeating. But that's not a good place to be at, as a society, right? If in the next 10 years, our country will have a population with more older than younger people, a lot of the country's resources and attention could shift toward supporting them. We're already seeing policies designed specifically for the aging population, and so much money going into health-care and retirement communities. Brennan: Right, which could mean … even fewer resources for younger people. Tayag: Yeah, if we continue to treat older and younger needs as completely separate—if we keep stoking animosity between generations instead of figuring out ways to get everyone on the same page, fighting for the same causes. Brennan: Like Bernie Sanders showing up at Coachella with Clairo talking about climate change! Tayag: Yeah, he's meeting the youth where they are! Brennan: Yeah; the reason that seemed so interesting to me is that, of course there are lots of older people who stand up for the climate, but we don't often see them in the same space or definitely not at a massive festival in the desert where most of the people are under 35. Tayag: Right, and also older and younger people being positioned as a team. Bernie used the phrase 'You and I' in his speech about standing up to the fossil-fuel industry. Brennan: 'You and I' is very intergenerationally coded. Tayag: It's not language we hear often! And I think climate is a good example, right—like, if it could be an issue that more older people championed because they care about the world they're leaving the youth, but also one that more younger people champion because they want a safer and healthier environment for their elders … maybe we'd be making a lot more progress. We just need to get rid of the idea of generations first. Brennan: Get rid of them? Tayag: I know we were joking before about our Millennial versus Gen Z attributes before, but … generations aren't real! Brennan: What do you mean, 'generations aren't real'? Tayag: I once wrote this piece about how generations are not scientifically defined. There is no set definition for what a generation is. And the people who study generational differences acknowledge that what they're doing makes a lot of generalizations, and anything they come up with is an imprecise observation at best. But the concept of generations persists in American culture, because we're just obsessed with categorizing everything. And we're very attached to identity. But I think by holding onto this notion of generations, we're unnecessarily pitting people of different age groups against each other. And there's a lot that we lose in doing that. Brennan: Yeah, and I wonder if this would still be the case if our society was structured in a way where we more naturally had access to one another. [Music.] Tayag: So, okay, let's say I'm a listener, and I'm interested—but I'm not really sure where to find a community like this. Or I don't have access to elders. What's one thing, one really easy way I can connect with people from another generation? Nichols: I would say service is still one of the best ways to connect across generations. Older adults are still amongst the most actively civically engaged generations we have. The generational values of caring about your community and serving are deep. Younger people are some of our most activated. They're looking at a life that may not go well for them. They're motivated to be involved. So if you find a cause in your community that you care about, chances are good you're going to run into older and younger people there. Just be friendly. You never know when that might be the start of something else. It's just rewiring to leave room for natural conversation to happen. Book clubs are actually really wonderful! There was a young woman who, she had an elder neighbor. And an Amazon package with a book got delivered to her house incorrectly. She didn't know. She opened it up, and she was like, Oh, I want to read this book. And when she walked over to the older neighbor's house to give him his mail, they talked about the book and they decided to start up a neighborhood intergenerational book club. And I was like, how sweet is that? And then she would choose one, and then he would choose one. So you'd get books that were more interesting to one generation or the other, but there was curiosity of, Oh, I want to read this. Even if it's not the top of my list, so I can understand the perspective of the other. Tayag: It's funny; everything you've just described to me just sounds like 'just do stuff you would do with your friends'—and I think that's the idea, right? Nichols: Yes, but expand who you think could be your friend. Tayag: Eunice, thank you so much for being here today. This is so much fun talking to you. Nichols: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. [Music.] Brennan: Yasmin, I don't have an intergenerational book club—yet. But when I think of close relationships with people of different ages, I think of my parents. And while parent-child relationships are different than straight-up friends, I'm really lucky to have a dynamic with mine that has evolved in a way where it often feels like both now. Tayag: You're really lucky. Brennan: And in my life, my dad is pretty much the most adult person that I know. And he once told me that internally, he often still feels the same way he did when he was 17. And I found it really helpful to know that, because here's this person who to me is so not 17—and to think of him thinking of himself in this younger way really shifted my perspective of what it could mean to age up. And it's helped to not hold myself to some unimaginable standard of what it is supposed to feel like to age up. Tayag: Right. It's really common for people to feel this way—that their subjective age, which is how old they feel, is different than their chronological age. We ran a story at The Atlantic about this—that usually people feel roughly 20 percent younger than their chronological age … unless they're below 25, and then they usually feel older than they are. And maybe that discrepancy can be a good thing, right? Like, if you view yourself as younger than you actually are, you feel like you're still more useful and relevant. Brennan: Yeah. At least you know in societies where older people are made to feel like they're not useful and relevant. Tayag: Right. Brennan: What I found so interesting about that story is that in places where older people are treated with a lot more respect—like in the article, they mention Japan—there isn't as much of a discrepancy between subjective age and chronological age, which might be because culturally, there isn't the same pressure to defy aging. Tayag: Right. I wonder if the big discrepancy between subjective and objective age reported in Western societies could still be useful in some ways. Brennan: How so? Tayag: Like, if everyone is walking around thinking they're younger than they actually are, and we were able to focus on that rather than their actual age, maybe we wouldn't have such a hard time imagining relationships with people who are chronologically much older. It's the subjective age that really matters in a friendship, right? It's what people bring to the table. Tayag: Like, subjectively … [Smiling.] I'm basically Gen Z! Brennan: Yasmin! Don't make me tweet about you! [Laughter.] [Music.] Tayag: That's all for this episode of How to Age Up. This episode was hosted by me, Yasmin Tayag, and co-hosted and produced by Natalie Brennan. Our editors are Claudine Ebeid (a-BADE) and Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Our engineer is Rob Smierciak. Rob also composed some of the music for this show. The executive producer of audio is Claudine Ebeid, and the managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez. Brennan: Next time on How to Age Up: Kiran Rabheru: We don't have a good clear definition of old age. And that is still up for debate. What is old age? Tayag: We'll be back with you on Monday. Article originally published at The Atlantic
