#440 The New Elderhood - Louise Aronson, MD
The Not Old - Better Show
Paul Vogelzang
4.7 • 106 Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The New Elderhood - Louise Aronson, MD
The Not Old Better Show Author Interview Series
Welcome to The Not Old Better Show. I'm Paul Vogelzang, and this is episode #440. Today's show is brought you by Skylight, makers of the Skylight Frame.
As part of our Art of Living, Author Interview series, we are joined today by Physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson. We will be speaking with Dr. Aronson about her revolutionary perspective on growing old in her new book, ELDERHOOD: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life.
Dr. Aronson will share stories from her personal and professional life, and draws from history, science, literature, and popular culture, to offer a powerful roadmap for how we approach old age. Full of joy, wonder, frustration, and outrage, Aronson's moving book offers hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself, knowing that we may be 'Elders' for 40 years or longer, but old age needn't be a disease to be denigrated and neglected.
That, of course, is our guest today, Dr. Louise Aronson, who urges us to re-examine the meaning of aging and to reframe our later decades to better prepare for and thrive in our final years. In speaking with us today, Dr. Aronson recounts vividly her conversations with doctors and laypeople, the aged and aging, their children and their children—anyone who will be old one day, which in theory, is all of us.
My thanks to Dr. Louise Aronson, joining us today to talk about Elderhood, the title of her new book, wherein she breaks down our preconceived ideas about aging and old age, diving deep into the counterproductive ways our medical system and societal attitudes shape life from age sixty forward. My thanks, as well, to today's sponsor, Skylight, maker of the Skylight Frame, and my thanks always to you, my wonderful Not Old Better Show audience. Remember, stay safe everyone, practice smart social distancing, and Talk About Better. The Not Old Better Show. Thanks, everybody.
* Now, as a special holiday offer, you can get $10 off your purchase of aSkylight Frame when you go Skylight Frame dot com slash OLD and enter code OLD.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Not All Better Show, I'm Paul Vogel saying and this is episode number 440. |
| 0:06.8 | Today's show is brought to you by Skylight makers of the Skylight Frame. As part of our Art of Living Author interview series, we are joined today by physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson. |
| 0:21.0 | We will be speaking with Dr. Aronson about her revolutionary |
| 0:24.5 | perspective on growing old in her new book, Elderhood, Redefining Aging, |
| 0:29.0 | Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life. Dr. Aronson will share stories from her personal and professional life, |
| 0:35.2 | and she draws from history, science, literature, and popular culture |
| 0:39.3 | to offer a powerful roadmap for how we approach old age. |
| 0:43.7 | Full of joy, wonder, frustration, and outrage. |
| 0:47.2 | Dr. Aronson's moving book, Eldarhood offers hope about aging, |
| 0:51.9 | hope about medicine, and hope about medicine and humanity itself, |
| 0:55.0 | knowing that we may be elders for 40 years or longer, |
| 1:00.0 | but old age needn't be a disease to be denigrated and neglected. |
| 1:05.8 | For more than 5,000 years old has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. |
| 1:12.3 | That means most people alive today will spend more years in |
| 1:15.2 | elderhood than in childhood and many will be elders for 40 years or longer. |
| 1:20.1 | Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. |
| 1:30.0 | Like many doctors, I went into medicine because I wanted to help people. |
| 1:34.0 | And like many medical students, I quickly discovered that medical education is more about chemical structures and biology, |
| 1:40.0 | diseases and organs, than about humanity and healing. |
| 1:45.0 | Midway through my first year I knew every dean and had a collection of catalogs to other graduate programs, |
| 1:50.0 | public health and medical anthropology, English, policy, and psychology. |
| 1:55.0 | This wasn't entirely surprising. |
... |
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