Ep. 1012: How Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age - Caroline Paul
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2024
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Author Caroline Paul has always filled her life with adventure. Now in her late fifties, she expects this new stage of life to be every bit as invigorating and full of high adrenalin escapades as the last. But as she skateboards, paddles a SUP, or surfs in cold winter swell alongside many men her age, she sees fewer and fewer older women. Isn’t the outdoors a vital elixir? Shouldn’t adventure be something we pursue as we age?
These are the questions Caroline Paul asks in her new book, Tough Brough. Among the interviews were 93-year-old hiker Dot Fisher-Smith, 80-year-old SCUBA diver Louise Wholey, 52-year-old BASE jumper Drew Brooks, and the many septuagenarian Wave Catchers, who boogie board together in the San Diego surf. These women aren’t famous. They aren’t experts. But their experiences offer important insight into our own physical and emotional health as we age.
Caroline dives deep into the research on aging, but also accompanies older women on bird-watching outings, sea kayaking excursions, swim laps, and walks in the park, among other outdoor adventures, and begins to see her own future in a new and dazzling light. Combining scientific research, cultural studies, psychology, and personal stories, Tough Broad is a high-spirited call for women to embrace the outdoors, not back away from it, in our fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond.
Caroline Paul is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure and Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology, which has been translated into fifteen languages. She is also the author of the memoir Fighting Fire, the middle-grade book You Are Mighty: A Guide to Changing the World, and the novel East Wind, Rain. Her TED Talk, “To Raise Brave Girls, Encourage Adventure,” has been viewed over 2 million times. A longtime member of the Writers Grotto, she lives in San Francisco.
You can get Tough Broad starting March 5, 2024 by following the link below:
https://www.carolinepaul.com/tough-broad
Additional book link: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/tough-broad-9781635576498/
Website: https://www.carolinepaul.com/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm your host, Mason. |
| 0:10.6 | Today's episode, we're talking to Caroline Paul about adventure as you get older. |
| 0:15.8 | I think a lot of us think that our window of adventure is after college or before school a gap year of some |
| 0:24.1 | sort before kids or after retirement you know what we're going to learn through this conversation |
| 0:29.6 | is that life is long you know that my wife always says her grandfather used to say if I'd |
| 0:35.1 | know how to live this long out of taking better care of myself, |
| 0:38.3 | you know, I think a lot of us just assume life is short, and if we didn't get into it, you know, |
| 0:42.6 | years ago, we can't do it now, but that is definitely untrue. A big theme of this show is trying |
| 0:47.5 | things as you get older, trying new things, trying new adventure sports, trying new experiences. |
| 0:53.5 | A lot of the people we've had on |
| 0:54.8 | this show did not find the thing they're known for now until much later in life. And it's so |
| 1:00.1 | beneficial to be adventurous later in your years. And so this story with Caroline is about her |
| 1:06.2 | pursuit of answering that question and finding those people, those women specifically who are doing |
| 1:12.3 | amazing things later in life and the benefits and the science behind it. Her book about this topic |
| 1:17.5 | and the interviews is called Tough Broad and it's out tomorrow and you'll be able to get it |
| 1:22.6 | anywhere you get books. And what's cool is that Caroline is a New York Times bestselling author, but also an |
| 1:28.6 | incredible adventure herself. She was a career firefighter in San Francisco, only I think the 15th |
| 1:34.8 | firefighter to ever be hired, a woman firefighter to be hired by the city, and just has done some |
| 1:40.2 | incredible stuff. First descends down Whitewater Rapids. A lot of first, a lot of big adventures, |
| 1:46.5 | a lot of mountain bike stuff and just all kinds of really cool things all around the world. |
| 1:51.2 | She's a pilot. She's done crazy stuff like wing walking. You know, there's so much. She's |
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