Welcome to episode 217 of Live Happy Now.

This is your host, Paula Phelps, thanking you for joining us again today.

You've heard the phrase, you're not getting older, you're getting better.

But how often do you believe that?

Well, after hearing today's guests, you're going to see aging in a whole new way.

Dr. Louise Aronson is a geriatrician,

writer, and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Her new book,

Elderhood, redefining aging, transforming medicine, reimagining life, gives us a completely new

perspective on aging. Let's listen as she explains how changing our attitude toward aging can transform

the path we're all on. Louise, thank you so much for sitting down with us today. I really appreciate it,

and I'm excited to talk about this topic. I'm excited too. You know, your book gives us a lot to think

about in terms of aging. So I think for myself, as I was reading it and

getting through it, I think we really want to know what inspired you to write it, because it is a

huge subject. It is a huge subject, and I guess that's part of why I wrote it. I mean, you see

lots of books about childhood and adulthood, this sort of period in human history where in an unprecedented

way, more of us are living decades in elderhood. I mean, really longer than we spend in childhood.

And for some of us, as long as we spend in adulthood, you just don't really hear about

elderhood in the same way. You hear about old age or silver tsunamis. You hear little bits,

but it's not all pulled together in a way that gives it the same respect and attention that earlier

phases of life do. And so I just thought I would try and do that, which admittedly is like a

crazy thing to have tried to do, but somehow, somehow in the end it worked,

although there was a long time where I thought this is insane, why am I trying to do this?

...