You're Older Than You've Ever Been. And Now You're Even Older: Sari Botton On Aging At Any Age

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2022

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Writer and editor Sari Botton has a long career in the publishing world — some would even call her a "legend." Her essays have appeared in places like The New York Times and The Guardian. She was the longtime essays editor at the digital magazine Longreads, is now a contributing editor at Catapult and she edited two acclaimed anthologies, including Goodbye To All That: Loving and Leaving New York. Her latest venture is Oldster Magazine, and even though it's about aging it's not about being old. It's about getting older and it features articles and observations from people at every stage of life. Sari is a bonafide Gen Xer and Meghan was curious not just about the process of creating Oldster but also about the challenges of building something in the new creative economy after a long career in traditional media. They talk about what constitutes an "ideal" age, what it's like to get older when you don't "follow the script" of traditional family life, and why many aging people worry as much (if not more) about having enough money than about their health. (Pro tip: Sari buys lottery tickets.)

Guest Bio:

Sari Botton is a writer and editor living in Kingston, NY. She publishes Oldster Magazine, which explores what it means to travel through time in a human body, at every phase of life. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and elsewhere. She's a contributing editor at Catapult, the former Essays Editor for Longreads, and she edited the award-winning anthology Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving & Leaving NY. Her memoir-in-essays, And You May Find Yourself... will be published by Heliotrope in Summer, 2022.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I think there are two things happening that contradict each other. One is that the boomers and the
0:12.4	Gen Xers changed the rules about aging. There used to be more clear rules about what you were
0:18.4	supposed to do when, what you were supposed to look like, what you were supposed to dress when, what you were supposed to look like,
0:21.0	what you were supposed to dress like, when you were supposed to retire, when you were supposed
0:24.7	to have kids and get married.
0:26.1	And boomers and Gen Xers rewrote those rules and basically said there are no rules.
0:31.9	But on the other side of things, we're also encountering ageism.
0:37.7	It still exists, no matter how cool you are, no matter, you know, never mind that I still
0:44.1	dress like I'm in junior high.
0:46.7	I'm, I can't get a job.
0:49.9	You know, someone who interviewed me for a job expressed surprise that a quote-unquote
0:57.2	legend like me would be interested and then didn't give me a second interview.
1:07.6	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dowm. My guest, writer and editor
1:13.6	Sari Botton, has done a lot of things related to publishing, to words, to reading in her now
1:20.0	decades-long career. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times and The Guardian,
1:24.9	among other places, and she was the longtime essays editor at the
1:28.8	Digital Magazine Long Reads. She's also edited two acclaimed anthologies, including goodbye to
1:35.1	all that, loving and leaving New York. Her latest venture is a publication that intrigued me
1:41.0	from the moment she launched it last fall. It's a magazine about aging.
1:45.9	And even though it's called Oldster Magazine,
1:48.6	it's not about being old.
1:50.5	It's about getting older.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meghan Daum, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Meghan Daum and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.