Crow's Feet: Life As We Age

Jean Anne Feldeisen hosts Dr. Kerry Burnight, a gerontologist, researcher and writer on a mission to “Make Older Better.” After decades of work with aging adults, and studying the things that go wrong in old age, including the ageism that hampers change, Kerry is determined to spend the rest of her career helping “fortify” people for old age. Or in her words, aging need not be “the downhill slide that people believe it is." He...

Employment to age 65 used to be a given. If not a career run at the same company, non-profit, or government agency, a worker armed with a skillset and expertise honed over decades could be reasonably assured that the acquired knowledge remained marketable. 

Recently, that assumption has been turned on its head, especially in the technology sector. But there is also opportunity.

Here are three stories about being laid off at 55+ and f...

At 68, Lee Bentch doesn’t fit the stereotype. He’s still working, and after his day job, he cooks dinner for his five grandchildren and daughter. Lee is one of more than a million grandparents helping to raise their grandkids, and he’s also a Crow’s Feet writer. In this episode he tells us how he manages to plan and cook healthy meals seven days a week. Lee is interviewed by Jean Feldeisen, another Crow’s Feet writer, therapist and...

Join host Jan M. Flynn in conversation with Lenore Guido, Bereavement Coordinator for a New Jersey hospice program, who has a private counseling practice focusing on compassionate grief care. Grief is something we often shy away from thinking about, but it’s also something we’ll all experience. Lenore, who is drawing on more than 45 years’ experience in the field to write a book on healing from loss, shares a perspective both clear...

Award-winning author Melinda Blau talks with Crow’s Feet writer Warren Turner about the women she calls her “old ladies,” people who inspire her to squeeze the most out of life in her own late 70s. Meet Zelda, who played tennis until she was 99 and who still got a kick out of telling dirty jokes. Or Marge, a financial whiz at 104, who laughed as she pushed around her Rollator. Listen in as we learn what matters is not how old you a...

The Living Apart Together (LAT) lifestyle choice is gaining traction among both married and unmarried couples, especially older folks ready for a bond beyond the traditional. 

The LAT framework is predicated on three pillars: 1/The couple agrees that they are a committed romantic couple. 2/ Others view them as a committed romantic couple, and, 3/ they live in separate places.

This episode is a deep dive into LAT featuring two relatio...

Prolific author and lover of “old ladies” Melinda Blau hosts an unprecedented mother/daughter conversation with “America’s gerontologist” Kerry Burnight, her 96-year-old mother Betty, and Melinda’s daughter Jennifer Martin, a hospice nurse. The four discuss complexities of the mother-daughter duo as both age – role shifts, stumbling blocks and challenges, the need to simultaneously stay connected and draw boundaries.

The episode is ...

Meet Susan Rice, a comedian and actress who’s bridging the generation gap through humor. You’ve probably seen her in movies, commercials and maybe your local comedy club. She calls herself “a funny old bag” and continues to do standup for audiences from Gen Z to near 90. Join Nancy Franklin as she and Susan banter about Rice’s 40-plus year career, dish about life on the road in her 70s, and being the “cool” grandmother everyone wis...

Binnie Klein is a Renaissance woman. At 74 she has reinvented her life time and again, from poet to psychotherapist to memoirist to songwriter, with several steps in between. 

She picked up boxing as a sport when she was 55. The red gloves in the corner of the gym caught her eye, and a memoir followed in 2010.   

A surprise phone call in 2016  triggered memories of a long-ago love, heartbreak, and the radical politics of the 1960s. A...

In this episode, Jean Anne Feldeisen talks with Connie Zuckerman, Managing Editor of the weekly newsletter agebuzz. In her late fifties, Connie started a small online newsletter for her circle of friends and family. Eight years later, agebuzz has grown to 50,000 subscribers.

Before agebuzz, Connie spent years as a lawyer, bioethics consultant, and writer. Her career includes studying and making decisions about issues related to agin...

An interview with leading Orthopedic Surgeon and Sports Medicine Expert, Alan Beyer, M.D.  As we age, our risk of falls rises, leading to the  specter of serious and debilitating injury. But we can minimize those risks with some knowledge and common-sense precautions. Join host Jan M. Flynn in conversation with Dr. Alan Beyer, the Executive Medical Director of Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Newport Beach CA and host of radio show &qu...

"Skilled nursing facility." "Post-acute care facility." "Rehabilitation hospital." Whatever they're called, they all mean the same thing: what most of us think of as a nursing home. The time may come when you or someone you love needs that level of care — and that need can be sudden, like after a fall or accident.

When that happens, you can end up in a whole new world that operates by different rul...

Whether you’ve been with your significant other for one year or 50, you know that successful relationships aren’t always a bed of roses—both people have to work at it! How do we keep love alive and thriving, especially as we age, when our bodies, our work, our family situations, and our personal needs are changing?

In this special Valentine’s episode, you’ll hear from a veritable Whitman’s Sampler of Crow’s Feet writers, listeners, ...

Beauty fads come and go. Today, you can choose from Derma-planing, CO2 laser resurfacing, Mesotherapy injections, Exosomes and.....BOVINE COLOSTRUM? Do any of these work or are we just f-ing up our faces? Meet Valerie Monroe, former Beauty Director of “O”, “The Oprah Magazine” and author of the popular “Don’t F*ck Up Your Face” on Substack. In this episode, Monroe talks about what works, what doesn’t, and what it really means to ag...

That’s what psychologist and “dating anthropologist” Patricia Thornton, Ph.D., considered when she re-entered the dating scene after a divorce. In this episode, hosted by Nancy Franklin, we learn about Thornton’s experiences dating more than 150 men and whether or not she eventually hired a male escort. Thornton offers great advice for elders reentering the dating scene, including dating outside the lines, and even embracing unconv...

In this episode, Dr. Dale Atkins talks with Jan M Flynn about something many of us would love to see more of in our communities, nation, and world: Kindness. More specifically, what authentic kindness means, and how it can show up in deeper and richer ways as we age — and how that can contribute to a kinder world for us all.

Based in New York City, Dale Atkins is a licensed psychologist with more than 40 years experience as a relati...

It’s a gift to let your family and other loved ones know what to do when you’re gone and what you want done with everything from pets to possessions. But where to start – and how to make that happen? One answer: Rusty Rosman’s “Two Envelopes” – a way to preserve “your voice” and let others know your wishes.

In this anecdote-packed episodes, Rusty Rosman tells all-too-familiar stories about how we tend to avoid the difficult topic of...

In these weeks before the holidays, Mother Nature, the daily news, sometimes our own families, can seem to conspire to drive us all batty. In this podcast, we serve up a feast of useful suggestions for keeping it together in these turbulent times. Join host Jean Feldeisen and a Bakers Dozen Crows Feet Readers and Writers as they share their secrets for resilience and taking care of themselves.

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How do we remember our past? What stories do we tell ourselves that become ingrained as memories even though the stories might not be real? 

Author, memoirist, and septuagenarian Jonathan Lerner sits down with Jane Trombley to reveal discoveries about his teen years outside Washington DC as he researched for his latest memoir, Performance Anxiety. Some of the stories he recalled didn’t quite line up with reality, a discovery that ca...