On aging, storytelling, and higher education

Greetings and welcome to the future transform, a weekly conversation about the future of higher education. In this session, we explored an unusual and vibrant combination of topics, storytelling, aging, and higher education. Our guests were Joe Lambert, a world-renowned leader in digital storytelling, co-founder of what eventually became Story Center, and most recently the author of Story, aging, and the art of making meaning. Plus, Steven Katz, professor Emiritis of sociology and distinguished research award recipient at Trent University. We explored our trio of topics by developing many connections between them. For example, we discuss the stories we tell of aging, the different stages of old age, intergenerational teaching on campus, mandatory retirement, the invisibility of minority populations in stories of aging, different types of assessment by age, and critical gerontology. I hope you gained as much from this session as I did. There will be links in the show notes. And as always, the comment box stands ready for your thoughts and questions. >> Uh, welcome everybody to the future trends forum. I'm really glad to see you here today. We we've got a couple of terrific guests talking about a deep vital subject. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. This week's topic is a is a hybrid. Uh this is a very uh interesting one. We're putting together three things at once and these three overlap in a ven diagram kind of way. And we haven't done this before. This isn't the threesome that we've tackled before. The three parts are storytelling, aging, and higher education. So the subject here is to figure out how to blend these. How do these connect? And I hope over the next hour we will have many many fruitful and positive ways to bring these all together. U so let me introduce our two guests. Um Stephen Katz, uh professor Amiradus of sociology and distinguished research award recipient at Trent University. Professor Katz, greetings, sir. Thank you. Hello. >> Hello. Uh, and thank you for having an awesome background of which I'm very envious right now. [laughter] I I I'm in a conference room, so all you get is the wall, right? But but I I miss the books. Professor Katz, uh, first of all, uh, where are you today? Where have we found you? Um, I'm at home in Toronto and uh we just had a gigantic storm here and fortunately my Wi-Fi just came on after um about 20 hours of it being off. Some people still don't have power and you might hear some chainsaws out there cutting up branches that have fallen on the road >> and uh things that have blown away. So, apologies for that. But yes, I'm here in Toronto. Uh, two cats are sleeping beside me just like Joe's dog and so we have uh, you know, human nonhuman energies happening for both of us. >> No, that's the best. Um, I'm glad to hear it. In in the chat, Steven Peasley says, "But storm has done incredible damage. Um, hang in there, please." And, uh, if if you go offline, we'll completely understand. >> Thank you. But I'm I'm glad you're safe. Um, would you prefer that I call you Professor Cats or Dr. Catz or Steven? What would you prefer? >> Stephen is usually gets my reaction best. [laughter] >> We do want we do want your your reaction, sir. I'll I'll defer to you on that. Stephen, the the way we ask people to introduce themselves in the forum is a little unusual. uh we we don't ask for the academic obituary style where we ask you know what what did you do in the past and where'd you go to school we ask about the future and the near future uh what are you going to be working on for the next year what's uh what's top of mind for you what projects and what ideas are are uh leading the way >> um thank you and thank you to you Brian and Joe for including me I feel very much like Joe's roadie by the way on this [laughter] on this hour. He's [snorts] He's the rock star. I'm just carrying his gear, you know. Um >> that's a bit of horseshit. Uh Stephen, [laughter] I stand in the shadow of your actual expertise versus my own. >> We'll see about that. But um future. Okay. Well, I'm retired now from teaching. I'm still carrying on with some uh research and writing. I guess my immediate projects for the future. Uh some diverse ones. I'm working on a new project on loneliness and aging and the so-called loneliness epidemic and what that really means in terms of larger cultural narratives about productivity and resilience and belonging. Um I'm also in a cover rock and roll band as a drummer. So >> I have various projects coming out of that besides performing some writing on Boomer rock and roll, boomer memory and why rock and roll has been so important obsessively so sometimes narcissistically so to my generation. Um and lastly I'm part of some major grants on aging and marginality and technology. the role the role of new technologies in care uh in defining aging in organizing the experience of the life course in technical ways um that includes planning that also includes the use of of kind of digital economies u and their value. So those are yeah some of the main um things that are taking energy right now. Well, they sound like wonderful things in which to invest energy. Um, [clears throat] I mean, of course, you know, the the rock angle is going to set everybody off on a tangent. Carl, yeah, our friend Carl Hackaran has already given us a a guide to a history of rock and 500 songs. Uh but but these these these books sound u these this research project sound wonderful especially grappling with the um the loneliness question um and uh and thinking about continue your work on on on aging. Uh you have a series of books on this which is uh all look really really powerful. Um well thank you for joining us. We're glad to have you. Let me let me bring up your your u your your rockstar compadre um Joe Lambert. Um I mean I it's it's hard for me to introduce Joe because um uh he's a friend and also I'm a huge fan of his work which has changed my life. He's uh responsible for my first book um and uh for changing my practice in all kinds of ways. And Joe is just a great figure on the world stage uh who has led the way for digital storytelling and is just constantly reinventing stories and the way people get to be present present to each other. Um I I could say a lot more but I just want to say Joe welcome and and what are you working on now? That's the sound of my ego deflating after that [laughter] deduction. [gasps] You know what am I working on? I mean I I am I am still working on my book on aging even though I've quasi published it. I've told everybody it's it's sort of a a group collaboration and I'm continuing the elderware project which is how I met Stephen you know through our friend Peter White House at Case Western or you know retired from Case Western. I met a a group of people who were doing work in aging that I wouldn't have known before that. Um, you know, I'm I'm continuing work now as story host and and teaching with story center, my former organization. And the the new project for the year is called the water table which is about the relationship between water and democracy which I think being here in Santa Fe >> and thinking about the history of of water resource management that goes back about a thousand years here in New Mexico >> and and that water and democracy is is in inexraably tied. So, I'm going to be doing some workshops around that in the new year. Um, just [clears throat] as a pro bono project and see who else I can get involved. That's why I'm saying that out loud. If any of you are interested in the topic of water and democracy and storytelling, I would love to connect on that. And I love these bands that have been coming up. Thank you guys for bringing your bands. >> Yeah. >> Oh, that's a first of all, that's a great name. Uh, Water Table. I I really like that. Um that's a a very evocative name for the subject. >> Yeah, I I'll just say that I met the guy at for the LA Times named Ian James who's their water guy and he was the water guy with the Phoenix paper for years and Ian and I got talking and I just suddenly went, "Oh my god, this is such a I'd read books about you know the Cadillac Desert and all these books about water politics, the Colorado River and >> but suddenly I'm like oh this is a global thing. It's even thinking about Nepal and the management of water resource. I mean, >> oh my god, there's so much going on. So, it's a big big idea. >> I'm waiting for you to ask the question, Brian. >> Uh, sorry, my laptop just paused for a second. Um, you you were saying you mentioned uh Can you all hear me? >> Yeah, we heard you. You didn't freeze to us. So now I think my uh I think my uh Siri decided that it was time to uh talk to me. Um you you were mentioning Nepal and and the difficulties of water management. >> Yeah. I just I and you know this we're here to talk about really the space that Stephen and I found ourselves in. So, let me switch gears a little to say, you know, why in my year of retirement, the first year after 41 years of being the executive director of a nonprofit, the same nonprofit, I I said, you know, what do I want to do? And the fact of the matter is that for about a decade, I'd been working with people over 60, purposely doing workshops following my own age. I turned 60 about 10 years ago. So I wanted to suddenly be doing more work with my colleagues, my cohort, uh people my age, you know, about the role that story played and I knew that I had a perspective growing out of one workshop model that I did with a woman named Janet Ferguson who's a Bermuda based international uh Ferrarian educator uh where we [clears throat] were looking at life stage and and you know in some ways developmental psychological places that older people go toward. And those that know the book I wrote called Seven Stages, Story in the Human Experience, I was borrowing from Robert Keegan, who is a, you know, Ivy League professor that looked kind of was mating, if you will, Ericson and PG in a way that I thought was useful for the way story center taught taught story. And I've used that framing for a lot of workshops and inevitably I had some people that knew what they were talking about in the gerontological environment who could talk about the way we should understand that and and the reason I invited Stephen to this conver I I did 23 podcast interviews really as research for the book in I wasn't really trying to be a podcaster but as research for the book and of all the people I spoke to Stephen was the most inspiring ing to me in the way he talked about the stories that we tell ourselves about the process of aging and where I think that links to our role in higher education. I went to the university retirement I think it's called global aging conference at at u Arizona state in March. Lindsey Beigley is an amazing person running this Mirabella, you know, environment and it's part of a network. And I suddenly realized that the intergenerational component of higher ed is something that will only grow, right? I mean already higher ed's in a having problems with the demographics of the the kind of drop off on the number of students that are doing the normal post high school cohort in their early late teens early 20s and they're trying to figure out what to do and one of the things they can do is integrate older people not only through the Oer lifelong learning or other kinds of uh extension programs but through actually integrating campus And and to me, this idea that that intergenerational awareness becomes less of what we used to call the generational divide and more the multiple wisdoms that people of different generations have. And Stephen had spent some time thinking about these things a great deal more than I had and really knew what he was talking about. So I sort of invite Steve I'm I'm taking this over from you Ryan. I'd invite Stephen to talk about how how is it that higher education has a role in changing our story about the culture of aging. So that's the way I'm going to frame the story to you Stephen. >> It's a great question. >> Yeah. So very good question. Um well at the very basic level as Joe mentioned um we have a younger population shrinking and we have an older population growing. Um, in university, we often have middle-aged people teaching young people about older people. [laughter] Um, but we don't have older people very much at the university. Um, because of, you know, previous uh mandated retirement programs. Um, so what do we do? Do do we want to change that? Uh, there's a couple of trends happening now. One is some experimental education in intergenerational classrooms for example that's happening at my own university um at and at the University of Toronto and also holding some of those classes offampus uh for example at the University of Toronto has an intergenerational course that's uh takes place at Christy Gardens which is a retirement residence and long-term care home which opens the question of why not why don't we have care homes, long-term care homes, uh retirement residences as cultural sites of interest for education, for classes, for movies, for um festivals, for music, they have been put so off-rid. I had an exercise where I actually asked my students to find long-term care homes in the town the university was in because you couldn't find them. There's no signs. You drive I said drive down a street and see if you see anything that relates to older people either. Shops, signs, I don't mean drugstores and hearing aid places either. I mean cultural centers of learning and vibrancy and um uh entertainment for example. So in terms of higher education, intergenerational classrooms and intergenerational spaces that become I think important and revitalized as educational spaces in themselves. An old age home doesn't have to be just for care. There's no reason why it can't be the site of a movie festival for example or have a dance room or an intergenerational concert. This is something we need to move towards to make education intergenerational education. So they older people come to our space but we also go to their spaces and we kind of integrate the two much much better forming a network of of uh vitality and joy and expression and artistic creativity between us. Now of course older students don't necessarily come to university to get a job or to pass tests or exams to go on to a career. So that's another thing we have to look at is shaping the curriculum that's an agefriendly one that's a diverse and age friendly curriculum the kinds of testing the kinds of expectations um that we have then there's faculty uh my un Canada has kind of gotten rid of mandatory retirement but other places have not >> to have a professor who's worked and thought and taught all her life and then at 65 to say you're out I think is a bit of a tragedy. Think about those resources that are lost. Um some of you in your states I don't know if you have mandatory retirement or not at universities but that's a discussion that's so that's a second point a strong discussion about professorial and educational mandatory retirement. Why are we retiring people and asking them to step off the stage just at a point in their life where they have so much to offer, especially wisdom and experience. And then the third area that of course Joe works at much more than I is re-evaluating the potential of wisdom and experience in our education, our educational systems. What role does it play? What role does an aging life at full of its understandings play in educating younger people? Joe sees it through stories. I think that's a vital lifeline is stories narratives and not and also the kinds of narratives that contest dominant cultural narratives about aging itself that contest the ages stereotypes. Do we want our younger people to grow up being afraid of aging? Not only of older people, but aging in themselves, seeing the aging process as dangerous, risky, undesirable, ugly, alienating, and lonely. How can we educate our younger citizens not to grow up that way? And that's where I think Joe's work on narrative and story becomes so important. What are the stories about aging that we teach our younger people? And often there's no blueprint. We just let the ages overflow happen and layer on top of everything for younger people. I ask my students in my own aging course, how old can you imagine being and still be yourself, still be who you are? >> Most of them said to about 60 or 65. Hm. >> I said, 'Well, statistics show that anyone born in 2000 is likely to live to a 100. Um, so you have 35 possible years with no imagination. >> You can't imagine your last third of life. What does that say about our culture to you? What does that say about your own ability to understand the longevity that you will likely experience? And there was kind of silence just as there's silence on that last third of life, there's no stories about it for them. There's no narrative >> to continue with. That's I think part of our job in education also to fill in that void that last third with narrative with stories and with an integration between old and young. Those are three powerful powerful goals. Stephen, I I I I hope the I hope the forum can be a space for addressing at least that last one uh and maybe some of the others in in in the chat. There have been some comments u that respond to this. Um our friend Claire Koul says, "Classes at community and technical schools have great possibility here. Our classes often have a vast age range from dual enrolled high school students to adult retraining to retirees seeking enrichment. Taught the right way, these intergenerational spaces are a strength." And then uh our our our good friend Al Lavine um had a a story related to this when he started an educational technology at the Maricopa Community Colleges in the early 1990s. There was a project called Kade to Gray which connected kids with residents in retirement homes in a massively online uh environment. >> So we we've got some initial signs of this. Joe Joe Lamry, did you want to jump in? Yeah, I mean my my my thinking is is mainly about the way uh Stephen when when when I interviewed him talked about our our going to the fourth age which is this he described it as the other side of the fence which is when we get the diagnosis that says you you can't you know you're losing your memory or you get the diagnosis that says you can't use your limbs you know in some way anymore. or whatever. It's the thing we fear the most. And if you think about one structure of our societies is we work to have enough money to not suffer in our old age. And those of us in the United States where we're fearing the end of social security, we're you know we're already impacted by the way our health care systems Stephen if you want to bring your health care system south. We are >> ready at any time. all of us, you know, Bernie Bros are are just trying our best to get Medicare for all in the United States. You know, I think what the main thing I learned about storytelling that I hadn't considered in this project is how rich the stories of even that age of that other side of the fence age. And I, you know, being able to work with people like Pia Ktos, another amazing Canadian, the work of uh Anne Basting, our American in in story work with people with Alzheimer's, story work and other kinds of processes with the frail elderly because identity does not stop even if we can't remember the stories of our youth or the stories of last week. identity is still there and it's active and interesting and and fascinating. So Stephen, I I think this is a kind this is not exactly higher education. It's about thinking about all of our lives. Many people here have elders who are heading out the door. We're many of us are more of that age. My partner's mom has been in memory care for five years. What do you think about how we should as educators in general help people think about uh being on the other side of the fourth wall of the other side of that fence? >> I'll just be brief in that and that's something I should have mentioned um as well. Um Paul Higs and Chris Gillard have a theory that the third age which is sort of what many of us talk about when we talk about seniors culture active busy uh intellectually engaging socially rewarding um lives that is sort of between 55 and let's say 85 uh with Peter Lazlet first identified as the third age. So rather than three boxes of life, youth, adulthood, and old age, he theorized that there's actually an age in between old age and adulthood, which he identified as the third age. And that led [clears throat] to third age universities in Britain and um uh travel clubs and a whole series of industries that responded to this piece of the life course which was not old old was not disabled but was active and lively but maybe retired. That left the last age pushed back if you wish. um that again my colleagues Higs and Gillard call the fourth age imaginary by which they mean the imagination of that other side that Joe talked about and its boundaries. Is it cognitive decline? Is it physical decline? Is it survival of a serious medical incident? Is it uh loss of your family and spouses and partners? Is it being all alone and um maybe impoverished? What is it? Where is the boundary line between that active senior citizenrich third age and hitting the wall and entering a dark what they call black hole >> of the fourth age. And Joe is right. Researchers are starting to look at the fourth age in terms of its vitality, its citizenship, its forms of expression. Um, people with dementia are still people. They still have their lives even if they have dementia. How do we understand that? Um so fourth age education is something that is often pushed off the map when we talk about aging as being active, positive, healthy, um lively. Sometimes that kind of narrative forgets that people face a boundary line to that and enter the black hole of the fourth age where they often neglected and often seen as anti-examples to act active and productive aging. You know, disabled, declined, um disenfranchised. Um what about that part of old old age? We are kind of neglecting that in our celebration sometimes of the new third age of productive aging. Right? >> So story storytelling has to go there too. You know appreciation of life identity social belonging also has to go there. Um and that's more difficult >> for us too. It's more difficult to imagine ourselves as belonging and participating um in our own fourth ages. It's a great scheme, a great system um thinking those third and fourth ages and then thinking of the the black hole model and how we need to have stories instead of that. The the there have been a few a few comments in the chat which u which built on this and also some resources. So Joe and I both put in links to his book on this. Uh Al Naveine shared a blog post of his and you guys should read his blog just automatically. Uh he also has the advice and this kicked off a thread about the importance of getting uh audio of elderly uh family members and recording them. And a few folks have have spoken of how they miss hearing the voice of of some of theirs. Um which is very very powerful. Um, >> but we also have a question from our our dear friend Carl Heckarin. Carl, you've been very patient. Please, please go ahead. >> All right. Thanks, Brian, and thanks thanks Joe and Stephen. Uh, so my name is Carl Hecker and I'm a I've retired from the computer industry and I'm a longtime member and instructor at Worcester Institute for Senior Education at Assumption University. We have so we've been in operation for 30 years more than 30 years now and have um been collaborating wherever possible with the students on the assumption campus. So, for example, I've um when I've taught courses in American history, I've had a a couple of uh one professor who would bring his students in to do their presentations as a part of you know their their education and also to to engage with uh the members in my in my class. uh similarly partnering with other uh faculty members to see what we can do um up to now including uh conversations about AI. So it's been a wonderful opportunity. Uh there's a an email I got just this this morning about a life legacy project which is uh conducted by a member of the assumption faculty uh having their students uh talk with members of wise about their their life experiences. So it'll be just that kind of of recorded interview as a part of their of educational endeavors. One last thing, I've been um you know teaching about technology for for quite a while and about 15 years ago a woman came into one of these sessions and it was um we gather in the coffee shop. They bring their laptops, phones, and tablets uh to see what was going on. Uh one woman came in uh very nicely dressed. Um she was 92. She was bringing in her iPad because she wanted to uh watch better YouTube videos to learn how to cook better and to be able to listen to classical music. Ever since that point, I've said no one gets to play the I'm too old card with me. You're always going to uh be able to learn something. So, thanks a lot, Brian, and thanks a lot uh Joe and Stephen. >> Oh, thank you for that work. >> Um the uh Joe or um or Stephen, would you like to speak to that? >> Uh just thank you Carl for sharing your experience. Um, and obviously you're thinking about these things yourself as you're retired um, as well. I see you have a lovely stone uh, it looks like an altar behind you of some kind. Do you sacrifice things in the fireplace there or >> um, it's a a stone fireplace that my father built um, from stones from the lake where we live. >> Beautiful. >> Very beautiful. really nice. >> I know, you know, Carl, I I just appreciate what you're saying and I know more questions are coming up in the chats. So, my my problem is I'm trying to keep up with the chat, which I should just let Brian and and uh gang do, but I noticed my friend Roberto has this hand up and I want to >> next one. >> Roberto, please go ahead. >> Uh, thank you. Can you hear me? Uh Joe, it's wonderful to see you. Uh I'm calling in from Oakland, California, and I work in the area of policy, cultural policy, and an arts manager. I know Joe from back in the day, Life in the Water Theater Company. He was uh a founder of and I think there's a reunion coming up. I'll be there. But anyway, um, >> yes, >> the the thing is I worked here in Oakland with a group called Kingmakers in Oakland. It's a cultural mentorship program for brown and black boys and they're great group. I don't I funded them. I was a funer and um they have a curriculum called AI ancestor intelligence. So talk about that narrative shift about AI and we're all supposed to get all swoon around AI and I wait a sec I want to know the stories of my elders and given the whiteness of the academy those stories are never there. So how do we understand the sociologies that are evolving around this discourse about aging and race in that as somehow the narrative of old folk is just white old folks and it's not like or so often is the case not like I was taught that you got to go kiss your your theas and all the elders that are in the circle before you can even say go play that's just like that was a great you know that was elementary. So I guess I'm really my question is do you think this discourse is evolving uh thoughtfulness around aging also maybe some insights how they're dealing with age uh with race in these this these narratives maybe I know you know Joe but Stephen please um >> yeah actually Stephen is pretty good in this space so Stephen take it away. Oh. Uh, sorry, Joe. Yeah. Uh, great question, Roberto. Love the art on your wall, by the way. Um, >> it looks like somebody is punching somebody or else giving them a strange haircut >> for many years. So, it's it's a sarro cactus that the little buds are being He's at a barber shop. >> Oh, he's at a barber shop. Okay, that's better than a barber shop in the head. Um these are excellent questions and they lead to a lot of critical thought now going on in aging studies about the um you know dominance of let's say white narratives of the life course and how gerontology itself is a kind of colonizing discourse not only in uh uh prosperous western countries but in the rest of the world especially now in India and China where geranttological discourse from the west is becoming modeled into care systems and layered over traditional care systems in uh third world countries and in China and India especially and in Africa um there's a kind of globalization of white gerontocratic expertise that's very troubling >> but in our teaching absolutely right we have do and we already there are some incredibly important indigenous scholars uh afroamerican afroanadian scholars feminist work um disability work trans uh work in aging studies and what is largely now called critical gerontology a kind of [clears throat] >> vague label >> is absorbing these alternative critical and radical uh perspectives on aging and reflecting and teaching them back to our graduate students and our students. That stuff is makes its way as usual and drips and drabs into policy. Um especially unfortunately in the US where you have a war on so-called woke and critical race theory, um ridiculous kinds of stereotyping. I know. But it gives power to um anti-education um you know policies and university funding and all the stuff all of you have suffered in the last couple of years especially about um Sandy Grandandy a colleague of mine in Ohio uh has written marvelous stuff about indigenous stories and narratives of Alzheimer's disease that's helped us rethink um how dementia should be thought about. Um, we have great work on all of this, great investigations. The pre the problem is how to get people to read it, think it, put it into policy, understand it. um uh Trent University where I work has one of the largest indigenous studies uh programs in Canada, one of the first and so we draw a lot from the from their uh program on elderhood. Uh we have elders teaching in our classroom for example. Um >> it's still not enough because the power of gerantocratic what I'm calling discourse has western science behind it and western funding behind it and it's very difficult to break into that. Um India for example is on a fast track for building westernstyle long-term care homes. >> Very expensive, very urban, very elite. Um and that is starting to become in the hierarchy of care options uh floating to the top. China also on a race to build western style uh nursing homes and the reason and it's seen as status to get into a nursing home a western style nursing home in China it's seen as high status how does that come about when you have traditional forms of care you have other dialogues stories practices why does our model become the top of the option list um both in our cultures and in other cultures. This is a task of critical thinking, of critical advocacy um to start to dismantle that kind of hierarchy. Um and Roberto, your question opens up that critique. It gets to the heart of it. >> Uh thank you, Stephen. uh it I know it's a complicated issues and I think where I begin uh often in kind of where I have public speaking as a policy maker uh that I get the opportunity to do. I just like the reframing of AI to ancestor intelligence. Let's >> let's lean into that and forget that other you know forget me. It's intruding into my life. But I I need that those stories. >> Yeah. I think it's interesting, you know, Roberto, you know, the alternate roots folks and I've been doing a work this year with, you know, a sort of anti- athoritarian project called Horizons Project. and a lot of I found it really interesting the way cultural communities now are doing these multigenerational collaborations you know and and finding ways to honor that in a way that you know a community like alternate roots has kind of built into it you know a structure of the elders and the youngsters and the and getting out of people's ways I you know there were two questions here that I'm going to jump toward Brian one is we live in a culture in which old people won't go away either, [laughter] which we mainly see in our politics, right? The idea of gerontocracy and and who gets to make what choices and when do people make space for other people. >> I think these things are the things that get worked out in dialogue and and I I do think I I live in a co-housing community. You know, the idea of multigenerational emphasis is something we put a lot of time into. who you know that there are youngsters, there are children here, there are teenagers here, there very few 20 and 30 year olds but some in creating environments where that happens. It's not just uh you know senior centers that might be neighborhood based or or even programs inside housing environments, educational programs inside public housing or inside other kinds of housing environments that might be intergenerational. It's we don't we're not set up to think like that. We're not set up that it's natural for a 20year-old to walk into the same room to have fun as an 80-year-old. And and to [clears throat] me, if we created I mean, I think what educational institutions can do is create mechanisms where that's more natural and it's and it's not just sitting in the same room. It's encouraging things like story exchanges or or engagement exchanges that may be connected to curriculum, but they may just be part of the idea of what a society looks like inside uh, you know, a more healthy world than we generally have. I'm saying that from Santa Fe where when I moved here at 65 I felt 15 years younger from the Bay Area because everybody was older than me and I was like >> this is kind of cool. I suddenly am a chipper young 65year-old instead of being you know whatever. the oldest guy in the room in Berkeley. You know, >> I remember moving uh we moved from Vermont to Virginia and I had the reverse experience, you know, where I was, [clears throat] you know, in my 50s being used to being like the kid on the block in Vermont. Um, I I I just want to add in in the chat, I want to make sure people don't miss this, uh, Carmen and Wesson and Tatiana and Simone have posted links and and, uh, and Joe Murphy links to, uh, really good resources on audio and memory. U, so I I want to make sure that, uh, miss those. >> Um, >> cool. That's great. uh to Joe Lambert. Um building on your question here and returning Stephen uh to your um to your question about how what higher ed can do. We have a nice formulation of this from Claire Hool who says this. I've seen plenty of trainings about generational differences, but they rarely offer solutions for teaching and learning just management. What would an intergenerationally informal curriculum look like? How would I in my work with faculty encourage teaching practices that acknowledge and valorize student age and experience? Carolyn Crawford followed this up saying that um she tends to integrate teamwork on different projects that emphasize the sharing of their own subject matter within the framework and the assignments. So it's a form of collegial recognition as well as networking opportunity. So Carolyn offers one answer in terms of that teamwork across differences. Joe offers another answer or two more in terms of dialogue and in terms of sharing stories. And I'm curious uh Joe and Stephen, what else have you seen uh that higher education has done or could be doing uh to try to make intergenerational differences productive and relational? Um, I don't know if some of you know about the intergenerational school that Peter White House has helped found it in uh Cleveland, Ohio. And uh some very uh creative curriculum have come out of that. But one of them to to respond to Brian is uh experiential classrooms where they actually go out um into areas of Cleveland and the older students uh who are familiar with it explain their history of different buildings of different sites of different ways the city has developed and it becomes part of an environmental advocacy um class for them. and environment is a great area where all generations have a stake. Um I mean the typical stereotype is that boomers and older people have screwed up the earth for younger people because of their greed and their incessant need for owning everything uh and destroying the earth in the process. Um so having uh critical environmental classes um between generations actually going to places together I uh is something the intergenerational school has discovered works as a kind of curricular um activity. Another one is to not necessarily use testing tools aimed for younger people, for older people >> and to come up with more creative ways of evaluation besides the famous ones, the essay, the exam, the you know seminar presentation that we all use in in higher education. Think of other ways to evaluate uh like storytelling or like uh breakout groups or like journals or artistic forms of expression or site visits. Uh going to a museum together and talking about art. Um that's something an Basting does with people with dementia. She has a class that goes to a museum in um and looks at art together and then um what do you call it? It gathers the perceptions from all the all the participants as part of the class discussion. So all of this is possible. Um and we should be you know exploring these kinds of curriculum. They're also fun. >> Fun was a great thing to mention. goes back to Joey's idea of the 20-year-old and the 80-year-old in the same room and having fun. >> Yeah. I mean, there resources that I found along the way of my research and and you know, some of them I just threw in there um as examples and also just references that that um Stephen just brought up. Yeah, I I think there's a lot more going on that's that's not as visible. I I would like I said when I went to the um conference at at U Mirabella you know the the retirement home in at ASU which is very Tony very you know speaking rich people's homes it was like a million dollars to get in or something crazy it was >> things but but I you know met the people that are working across the country and I learned that there are 115 universities in the United States that have retirement homes attacked attached to their universities in some ways either on the the land or near enough that there's integrations. I think part of it is the built landscapes that we know about and the the the kind of culture of of uh segregation that we do with age and you know it it requires effort on both parts and I and I'm convinced that um a lot of younger people are looking for these relationships and you know we we didn't really talk about mentorship roles but I think there's a lot of us that are playing more of that role the older we get where we're I I I seem to always be working with a a 20-year-old or somebody who's just trying to negotiate, you know, how to get through. And uh I think that's another role that we could play that's not just it's not like big brother, big grand father, big whatever we would be. Uh but it's an idea of like we there should be more organizing of that. And yeah, my friend Mark Ruth Freriedman has encore.org. There's a lot of thinking about the way that could work more efficiently. I put Generations United >> into um this process, which is more like you build a school near a senior home, you know, or or a daycare center near a senior home and so you can at least have people hanging out. But I think there's a lot more thought about the roles that we could play when we don't have the same kind of day job and maybe we have just enough money to get by. Those of us that are fortunate enough to have just enough money to get by once we've retired. So all of that's interesting. We should probably look at other questions, but I just wanted to say that >> this is great. Well said. We have we have two questions that have come up that are on the same wavelength and I want to put them both out there for you. Um because this might go in a different direction. Uh one of our friends in Scotland Demeck says that uh the fourth age has almost no stories. There's medical description. There's family testimony from outside but very little firsterson narrative partly because the conditions that define it also erode the capacity to tell it. To what extent can technology or higher education help people remain outside the fourth age black hole? So that's that's the one question. Next to that, uh our friend in Armenia, Brent Anders, says, "How does AI play into this?" Both with AI literacy and the power of AI to help us tell stories in different ways such as audio creations, video, liveaction, animation. So two two technology and education questions. What do you think? How can that help? >> There's some great resources. Um, Stephen, take the first question and I'll take the second one. >> Okay. Well, uh, that's absolutely right. The story, the stories, even the existence of the fourth age is increasingly well hidden. Um, and I think that kind of also begins with us. we have an asymmetry between how we feel and the dominant narratives that are around us about aging and how we contest those. Um, and how those dominant narratives become our stories is something that takes a lot of critical reflective work. Uh, we borrow the language of medicine in the fourth age. If you ask somebody who's 95, how are you? You probably will get a kind of medical narrative or an inventory of aches and pains, disease, >> organic recital. >> Yes. Organ recital. Exact. Exactly. How did that become their narrative of who they are at 95? Um, and that becomes their dominant story. Um, I guess it takes, you know, [snorts] what I've seen in the comments, people spending time with their elders, uh, making tapes, sharing experiences, classrooms talking about the fourth age, not as a disaster zone, um, but as part of part of life. Again, my students, the final third, the last third of their life has no imagination. Is strictly a dark page or a blank page. Um, all of this has really become a problem. But part of the last thing I'll say is we have to watch how much we celebrate what comes before it. How much we celebrate the positivity of the third age. Um, and how much that cuts us off ourselves from fourth age experiences and understandings. I think we have in a way reacted to the negativity of historical agism by overceelebrating the third age to a point that creates new boundaries and fears >> within us about the fourth age. We study our blood work as if it's a um you know a lottery >> and that hopefully we'll win >> you know on the the cholesterol or blood pressure or you know >> right >> we've become very very a little bit obsessed I think with keeping ourselves super healthy, super young, super active, super productive and engaged because of the fear of that boundary coming up and uh falling over the cliff or over the edge whatever the metaphor um and I think we need to uh understand that as a dominant narrative a dominant cultural narrative itself that we've adopted um ask ourselves how do we talk about ourselves as retired where does our language come from where did these stories come from why are we using those metaphors to talk about ourselves I'm as young as I feel >> or um you know these are good thoughts. I'm not criticizing them but they don't come from nowhere and they don't come from just inside ourselves. >> We have a open space between the stories of our culture and the stories of oursel and that space is something we have to look at I think with a critical eye. How did we get our vocabularies about ourselves as we age? And what do they say about old old age and the boundaries um that that are between us as it were and and them but I'll turn over the AI question which I >> Yeah. I mean we're running out of time. I realize we're out of time, Brian. So I'm not going to jump into it. I want to make sure that both Stephen and I thank you, Brian, for giving us this form. And I want to thank everybody that came. I hope we did. We get access to the chat after the fact. >> Yes. >> Because the chat is amazing. And I want to give you a chance to say goodbye to everybody and do whatever your ending business is. >> Well, if you uh if you'd like, um uh there's two options. Uh the easy one is I can send you the chat by email uh Joe and Stephen right off the bat. But what I was hoping to do was uh post this recording to YouTube and then uh add that as a blog post to which I add extracts from the chat. Um if if we can you know set up the time for that. Um would that work for everybody? >> Absolutely. uh in the in the chat Gretchen Moffett among other books that are mentioned there uh reference Atul Gwand's being mortal which I cannot recommend highly enough Gande is a superb writer a real a real treasure everything by Gande is excellent um Joe I got to say Joe Lambert and and Stephen um can we bring you back in a few months and uh and continue this conversation I I get the feeling that we're we're just scratching the surface and that there's so much more. I mean Joe, you mentioned mentorship for example. In the chat there were a lot of discussions about death. Um we we're barely looking at a question of institutional structures. Can can I ask you all to come back in a few months? >> You could >> I can ask you I hear that. >> Now whether we'll do it or not is a completely different question. >> I know. I know. >> No, of course you can. >> See the abuse the abuse has to has to come in. It has to continue. up. [clears throat] >> Uh Stephen, one thing uh one thing we might do is uh we might pick one of your uh recent books um and use that uh as an anchor. Uh Joe's recent book um on aging and story is linked in the chat repeatedly and uh everyone should be taking a look at that. Joe and Stephen, thank you so much. You are terrific, terrific people. Uh >> Joe, it's always good to see you. Stephen, it's great to meet you. >> Thank you. Thank you, Brian, for including me. Thank all of you for your patience. >> Um, I think Brian has my email. Uh, there's no reason why we can't continue >> talking uh through email. Uh, my last point is, as I mentioned, I'm working on a new project on loneliness and aging. If any of you have anything to help me with that, books, experiences, um, readings, poetry, anything. Um, I'd really appreciate you getting in touch with me. >> Can do. Can do. Um, and last quick question, Joe and Stephen, what's the best way to keep up with you guys? What's the best way to uh follow your work? >> Yeah, mine is storyhost.net. storyhost.net net is my new, you know, kind of consulting identity where activities and classes and things that I'm doing um can be found. >> I have a um a website that my niece has started for me of which I'm totally inadequate in upkeeping. So, she keeps bugging me about it and she's right. I would just say my email is my best connecting point and just a sharing of stuff. Send me stuff, I'll send you stuff um through email until my my website gets I have my CV online which is not only a boring ridiculous inventory of that reads like a phone book of accomplishments. Uh, I don't recommend that just because it's uh, but I'm willing to send that out to anybody if they want to scan it and find something interesting for themsel. >> Um, I always said when I worked before I retired, I'd like to get to a 50page CV, which I was joking about at the time, but now everybody is expecting that. Somehow they took me seriously and I think I So I've been trying to get to 50 so they'd stop bugging me. Anyway, I'm at p I'm at page 47. So, >> you know, I'm I'm getting close, but it's it's a silly, you know, CV building is is kind of a silly inventory. I people measure by the uh yard rather than, you know, I have a tape measure, >> right? >> But email is best. I'm going to put my email in the chat uh in case you don't know it. And I'd really appreciate hearing from anybody uh about any of this. And certainly Joe uh Brian and Joe, yeah, you're a great group. I'd be happy to come back and learn learn more about all of you. >> Well, that's awesome. Thank you. Thank you both. And uh thank you to everyone on this uh on this conversation. As always, the forum community is splendid, warm, brilliant, thoughtful. This is a wonderful group. Um, and speaking of wonderful groups, we have to wrap up. We have uh sessions now scheduled into January of next year. So, just go to the forum website forum the future of education. us and you can see a whole bunch of sessions covering everything from enrollment to AI and quite a bit more. Um, I'm going to try and post this as soon as I can uh when I get off the road. But in the meantime, everybody, uh, it's September, so um, I hope you were either in the middle of classes or classes are about to start. I hope you're all doing well. Especially hope you're all safe and sound. In the meantime, take care. We'll see you next time online. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.