Being 80: A Conversation With Former Washington Post Editor Leonard Downie About Older Age

Diane Rehm: On My Mind

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🗓️ 26 October 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

About 1.3 million, or one in 25 Americans, are over the age of 80.

On My Mind has covered issues regarding our aging population in the past, from the coming crisis in care to whether enough legal protections are in place to prevent elder financial abuse.

On this episode, Leonard Downie, former executive editor of the Washington Post, joins Diane to talk about the experience of what life feels like in older age.

“I’m determined not to fear the future,” he says. “Of course, sometimes I do.”

As Downie approached his ninth decade, he started keeping a journal about the experience of becoming an octogenarian. For more than a year, he documented the daily changes, challenges, and unique pleasures of older age, and has now released his musings in a new book titled “80: An Octogenarian’s Journal.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Diane. On my mind, octogenarians. About 1.3 million Americans are over the age
0:15.3	of 80. That's 1 in 25. And of course, I'm one of them. We've talked about our aging population
0:24.8	on the podcast before, the coming crisis in care, whether our nation's policies are ready
0:32.3	for us. Today, we talk about the experience of what life is like after the age of 80.
0:42.6	The determination, on my point, to live every moment as richly as I can.
0:47.0	Leonard Downey is the former executive editor of the Washington Post. As he approached his
0:55.2	ninth decade, he started keeping a journal about the experience of becoming an octogenarian.
1:03.4	He joined me to discuss his new self-published work titled, 80 and Octogenarians Journal.
1:15.4	Leonard Downey, tell me when you actually began writing this octogenarian journal.
1:24.0	Leonard Downey Well, I think I thought about doing it when I saw a book, actually a
1:29.0	bought and read a book called 60, by a very good Canadian journalist, whose name I'm not
1:33.8	recalling right now, but a really marvelous Canadian journalist. And he wrote about what it was
1:38.5	like to turn 60, and it was very interesting and included what he was doing in his work and
1:45.2	travels that he was having and so on. And also just what changes he thought were going on in his
1:49.6	life at the age of 60. So, you know, makes and pains and different things. And I thought, 60,
1:56.2	I'm running a newspaper. I was running a newspaper at 60 years old. And you didn't have any
2:05.0	thought about aging at all, whatsoever. But now I'm approaching 80, so it was probably my 78th or
2:12.1	79th year. And I was approaching 80 and I thought, well, why do I do a journal about 80? That would
2:17.4	be more interesting or useful to people because the changes are more profound. And also, I've
2:24.0	decided on a certain lifestyle by continuing to work and so on that I thought would be interesting
2:28.1	to people. So I decided that I would start it on January 1st of 2022. And because then I would
2:38.5	turn, I would turn 80 on May 1st, 2022. And then I would stop it when I turned 81 on May 1st of 2023.
	...

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