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The Good Fight

Jonathan Rauch on Why Many People Are Unhappy in Middle Age (and How Life Gets Better After Fifty)

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.6907 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2023

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution, a member of the Persuasion Board of Advisors, and the author of books including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Jonathan Rauch discuss how our sense of satisfaction with life is age-related in ways that are often independent of our objective circumstances; the academic research showing that happiness across one’s lifetime often resembles a U-shaped curve; and how we can better align societal practices to facilitate this midlife transition (and better utilize the assets of old age). This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

At Barclays, we're here for every goal.

0:06.4

We're here for the Premier League,

0:09.0

and the Barclays Women's Super League.

0:12.0

We're here for the football chance for giving more girls a chance.

0:18.0

We're here for the grassroots and all the muddy boots. From schools to stadiums we're here for it all.

0:27.3

Barclays here for every goal.

0:31.3

On virtually every measure, study after study, all over the world, anything you can look at

0:36.6

shows that the stereotype of aging isn't correct.

0:40.3

It turns out that aging makes people more emotionally resilient, more emotionally stable.

0:49.1

They're less likely to be swayed by very strong emotions.

0:52.0

You can actually measure this in the brain.

0:54.2

You know, you put people of different ages

0:55.8

and fMRI machines and give them stimuli.

0:59.2

Older people are more prone to look at the bright side and less prone to dwell on the negative.

1:06.4

They have strong reactions to things, but the storms tend to pass more quickly.

1:12.0

They tend to be less disruptive.

1:15.0

It turns out that given a bad situation, like say a health shop or a financial shop

1:21.0

holder people will react to that somewhat less, the aging process

1:25.1

actually provides a buffer.

1:27.4

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. Over the last few weeks I have been telling the story of where the set of ideas about race and gender and sexual orientation that have come to be so influential in the academy and in American public life actually came from.

1:49.0

I started with Michel Foucault. I talked about Edward Saeed and Guy Tris Bévach about Derek Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw.

1:58.4

Now today I want to tell you how those ideas were merged, provided a synthesis of concerns about identity.

...

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