August 27, 2025 • 58 mins
What if aging wasn’t about slowing down—but about leveling up?
In this powerful conversation, Marc Freedman, founder of Encore.org (now CoGenerate), unpacks the surprising history of retirement, why communities like Sun City reshaped how we see aging, and how we can flip the script on what it means to grow older. From encore careers to intergenerational mentorship, Marc shows why midlife is no dead end—it’s a launchpad for purpose, impact, and connection.
If you’ve ever wondered how to thrive after 50, find meaning in your “second act,” or simply stay relevant in a rapidly changing world, this episode will change how you see the road ahead.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:39 Marc Freedman as Chip’s “modern elder”
02:46 How aging became feared, not revered
04:26 Why older people are no longer revered
07:30 Rise of retirement communities
13:14 Why people question retirement as a goal
15:56 Marc’s personal view on retirement
18:36 The origins & evolution of CoGenerate
24:10 Why intergenerational connection matters
27:46 What CoGenerate does to help
31:52 Big policy ideas for the future
37:31 Tips for those nearing retirement
44:15 Upcoming workshop with Chip
48:47 Wisdom bumper sticker
50:51 How does Marc measure success
54:00 Wrapping up
Learn more about MEA at https://www.meawisdom.com/
#MarcFreedman #EncoreCareers #ModernElder #MidlifeReinvention #FindingPurpose #LifeAfterRetirement #GenerationalCollaboration #CrossGenerational #AgingWell #WisdomAtWork #EncoreOrg #CoGenerate #ModernElderAcademy #SecondActCareers #PurposeDrivenLife
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The future of this multi generational society is the more
older and younger people can connect, collaborate, contribute
together in some of the areas like school, work, housing.
And it's forcing us to think notjust about the new length of
life, but but a new map of life.The next Gen. is Cogen.
(00:23):
Welcome to the Midlife ChrysalisPodcast with Chip Conley, where
we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time
of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful
chapter of your life. Well, hello, it is another
episode of the Midlife Chrysalisand I'm Chip Conley and I have
(00:46):
trotted into this this episode, Mark Friedman.
Mark is like my modern elder. He is the wisest person I know
in the world around policies andpractices that can create more
intergenerational collaboration.He started something called
encore.org, which actually popularized the idea of encore
(01:08):
careers. And then his primary focus today
is on intergenerational collaboration.
I, I love the guy. He is the one who helped me to
see that I'm a mentor, a mentor and an intern at the same time.
And that's what I did at Airbnb with the young founders.
I think you're going to find this to be a, a both an
(01:28):
interesting episode when it comes to the, the sort of
history of aging and longevity and ageism and age segregation,
what is also called age apartheid.
But I think it's also interesting from the perspective
of practical tools and tips for how we can actually feel a sense
of relevance and not worry aboutbeing youthful, but instead
(01:51):
being youthful. I hope you enjoy the episode.
All right, Mark Friedman, you are my modern elder.
So quick story. When I was, gosh, in my mid to
later 50s and was an Airbnb and endeavoring to write a book
called Wisdom at work, The Making of a Modern Elder, I
(02:13):
decided to go out and talk to people who knew a lot more about
aging and midlife and encore careers and things like that.
A, a, a term that you and the encore.org organization
popularized. I came to the Presidio and you
and I sat outside. I, I remembered and just talked
(02:34):
about aging and the history of aging and why we are an ageist
society. And my God, in an hour or two of
time, I felt like this is my librarian.
So will you give us a little bitof your perspective on why, how
we have evolved in the United States into a place where aging
(02:59):
used to be something people aspired to, to now being aging
being something that people are afraid of?
It's a full circle feeling around these these trepidations
because we started living longerin the 20th century.
As you and others have pointed out, life expectancy was 4647 in
(03:21):
1900, and then we started addingyears to life.
And by the middle of the centurywe'd added these years to life,
but we couldn't figure out what to to do with them.
In fact, Walter Reuther, the great UAW leader, got up in
front of his union in Milwaukee in 1948 and describe retirement
as too old to work, too young todie.
(03:43):
Five years later, Louis Mumford,the New Yorkers architectural
critic who had just turned 60 himself and who, as it turns
out, was in the midst of his midlife chrysalis.
He'd win the Nash National Book Award in his 70s in in over a
decade. But he he said at no point in
(04:04):
any society had any group been so rejected as older people
today. And the even the experts, the
gerontologists were saying that older people should stay out of
the way, rock aimlessly on theirporch, have a Whistler's Mother
like existence, and that that turned out to be a real problem.
(04:25):
People dreaded that period. What?
So what happened between the late 19th century and the 1950s
that led to older people no longer having a voice?
It was a cultural problem. We, we really hadn't
conceptualized a period beyond midlife, beyond the the 50s.
(04:51):
And that's partly because we've never had that period for very
long. But it it's, it's interesting to
note that in the United States, there's some irony because when
the Puritans came over here in the 1600s and 1700s, they loved
old people 'cause if, if you live to a ripe old age, first of
all, there were very few older people.
(05:12):
But if you live to a ripe old age, it was seen as a sign from
the divine that you were closer to God, that you were chosen.
And so the Puritans, unlike anything we've seen for hundreds
of years, they tried to be or atleast appear older than they
were. They wore white wigs.
They lied on the census, and they said they were older than
(05:35):
they actually were three years on, on average.
They even had specially trained tailors who could cut people's
clothes so they looked hunched over.
Instead of being a Jew from Eastern Europe, I should have
been a Mayflower Puritan becauseI've got the right posture for
Puritanism. But it, you know, so we started
(05:58):
out in it as a, as a what peoplecalled a gerontocracy.
We, we revered older people. That changed, as you were
saying, over time. And you know, in the 19th
century, older people were, werefully integrated in society.
In fact, all all ages were we, we live together in multi
(06:22):
generational households. We work together in farms and
and the agrarian economy. Older and younger people
together. Even the one room schoolhouse of
yore had four year olds and 50 year olds learning their AB CS
side by side. In fact, we were we became an
age oblivious society in which people did not even know how old
(06:45):
they were. Knowing somebody's age would be
like knowing somebody's blood type today.
I'm sure you'd be put off if I say Chip, what blood type are
you by the way? I've been meaning to ask.
To be honest, I I don't even remember, but that reminds me of
the Satchel Paige quote, which is the famous, the famous
pitcher who actually entered themajor leagues in baseball at
(07:06):
around 47 or 48 years old and pitched to into his 60s.
And he said, what age would you be if you didn't know what age
you were? Which is such a great question.
Well, you know, we're we're re entering that that period.
There are all these at least 40 something as LeBron James turns
40. I knew we would find some way to
(07:26):
get sports into our conversation, Chip.
So we've moved from, we moved from this era where aging was
aspirational to this era where aging was a negative thing, even
though one of the most powerful lobbyists out there was AARP and
retirement communities started to, to pop up.
Actually talk a little bit aboutSun City.
(07:47):
And you know, you've written about it in, in your books and
articles, you, you know the history of retirement
communities better than just about anybody I know.
Yeah. You know, for me, the the
interest in this history came from very practical reasons.
I was trying to mobilize older people to get involved in their
communities, to use their wisdomand experience for the greater
(08:08):
good. And, you know, it was going
against the grain graying as playing has long been the the
ideal, even before Jimmy Buffettcreated the his his lifestyle
communities. But it turns out that and I was
very critical of retirement communities, which I I think
(08:31):
played the decisive role in transforming American culture
around later life. Only 5% of the population ever
moved to places like Sun City, but they really reshaped the
culture and they came in where ahuge opportunity existed.
You know, who wants to be too old to work, too young to die?
(08:52):
That's not something that you aspire to.
And especially as that period became increasingly protracted
it, it was a difficult period for for older people.
I now believe that the retirement community
entrepreneurs really did us service in the context that they
(09:13):
worked in. So the first retirement
community was a place in Peoria,AZ with just 100 houses, started
by a real estate broker named Big Ben Schleifer, who was a
socialist. He was trying to curate a
kibbutz in the middle of the desert because he had a friend
in upstate New York who was withering away in in a nursing
home, an older friend, and he was appalled by that.
(09:36):
So he came back to Arizona wherehe was living and decided he he
would create essentially A utopian community for for all
these older people who were thrown to the sidelines of
society. And the same year he opened his
utopian community, Louis Mumford, who I mentioned
earlier, wrote an article in Architectural Digest and said
(09:58):
we've got to do 2 things to saveolder people in this country.
The 1st is to avoid at all cost making them into children,
infantilizing them. And the second is to keep them
embedded in the mainstream of society.
The article was was titled for Older People, Not Segregation,
Integration. That same year, Big Ben Schlafer
(10:22):
opened his retirement community and did exactly the opposite of
it. He It was age segregated and it
was called Youngtown. It was a chance to be young
again rather than a midlife chrysalis.
It was a reboot. And the key ingredient was that
was to make sure there were no children to burst the bubble of
(10:45):
a second child. So there were actually no real
children. And Youngtown became famous
later on because they were expelling a couple.
This is in the 1990s for harboring their grandchildren.
They it was like the scarlet letter.
There was a big sign planted on their lawn.
The New York Times pointed out that dogs were allowed at
(11:08):
Youngtown, but not children. And Del Webb was so inspired by
what he saw going on in Youngtown, which got a lot of
media attention, that directly across the street, he opened the
first large retirement community, Sun City, on January
1st, 1960. And, you know, here's another
sports analogy. If you build it, they will come.
(11:29):
Well Webb, build it and 100,000 people showed up on January 1st,
1960. Older people all around the
country who didn't want to be the most rejected group in
history. They didn't want to be too old
to work, too young to die. They wanted to be a place where
they could forget they were old,but also to have community.
As Sun City took off, Leisure World, others you know followed
(11:51):
in its footsteps. And even in the last census, The
Villages in Florida, famously a conservative retirement
community, was designated by theCensus Bureau as the fastest
growing metropolitan area in America.
And also the fastest growing sexually transmitted diseases
(12:15):
county in America as well, surprisingly.
Talk about trying to redefine the culture of aging.
But on the culture point, I and I did.
I didn't want to forget to add this.
Del Webb was the person who not only built it, but he named it.
He invented the phrase the golden years.
And that became the aspirationalideal for later life.
(12:38):
So instead of being the most rejected people in society,
people actually tried to retire earlier.
You know, it wasn't retiring at 65, but it was retiring at 60 or
55. And, and Webb's genius also was
that he democratized retirement.He created these, these Sun
Cities, which were like Levittown.
(12:59):
They were the, they're very affordable, working class
Americans who belong to unions like the UAW could go there and
they could and and they could have a new life.
So it was a kind of midlife chrysalis.
And so Mark, that led to over the course of the 80s and the
1990's, the retirement age dropping down to I think it may
(13:24):
at at its lowest point, it mighthave gotten to about 57.
And in the year 2000 and it's been creeping up since then.
I think the average retirement age today is 61 or 62 in the US.
Is that because people are by choice or by necessity feeling
like they want to stay in the workplace longer?
(13:45):
And how much of this relates to knowledge workers versus people
breaking their backs? Like Studs Terkel in his book
Working or whatever the name of that book was called was he
talked about the fact that yes, if you've, if you've been doing
mind numbing back breaking laborat age 60 years old, you don't
want to do it anymore. Retirement is Retirement is
(14:07):
something you want some leisure from, but for a lot of us today
it the idea of retirement is like a dirty word.
Yeah, well, first of all, it's you're, you're making me think
about maybe a decade ago, I heard Studs Terkel at 90 address
the Gerontological Society of America and he got up in front
of thousands of gerontologists and spoke for an hour with no
(14:32):
notes, without pause in grippingfashion.
And I, I kind of think if he wasaround today, he'd probably
write a new book called Still Working.
But, you know, the whole idea of65 as, as retirement was an
arbitrary number. You know, it was based, at least
some people think, on Otto von Bismarck's age for retirement
(14:55):
from the Prussian military, convinced that they would never
pay out a, a pension. This in the late 19th century,
of course, Bismarck was I think 78 at the time, but he didn't
consider himself part of the rabble.
But John Chauvin at at Stanford,the economist has has argued
that we would never use $1935 in2025 without adjusting them for
(15:17):
inflation. But we set 65 as the retirement
age in 1935 in in arbitrary fashion, and it became this
great point of demarcation. But I think people are starting
to question that now. I think we're realizing that all
these extra years that have beenadded, you know, 3 decades or,
(15:38):
or or more, depending on what country you're looking at,
they're not being as, as Laura Carson points out, tacked on at
the end. They're being added throughout
the life course and it's forcingus to think not just about the
new length of life, but but a new map.
Of life. Let's talk about you for a
second. You're 65.
(16:01):
I know you don't like talking about yourself.
Let's talk about history. No, no.
So, so Mark, you're 65. Is you're 66. 67.
What's your relationship with retirement like?
I mean, what is and and in the abstract, we're not talking
about like when are you going toleave your job as the Co CEO of
cogenerate.org And you know, it used to be called encore.org,
(16:25):
but you know what, like what's the Mark Friedman feeling about
retirement and and how does thatinfluence your behavior?
You know, I spent the last 30-40years railing against
retirement, all of its deleterious effects on health
and well-being of individuals and society, which is throwing
(16:47):
away the most experienced segments population.
And now I'm six to seven and allmy friends are retiring and they
seem to be having a great time. And I'm, I'm working away.
And you know, I do, I think I, I've been struck by two things.
One is after all these decades of pontificating, I wasn't
(17:10):
really talking about myself. I was talking about you, what
you should do. And it's been a little bit of a
challenge to assimilate personally, all of this
so-called wisdom that that's been, you know, being put out.
But the second thing I think is that I did one of the, it's
making me realize that one statistic that I saw years ago
(17:34):
and that I think continues to betrue is, is what is often
characterized as retirement is really a sabbatical.
People have reached a point where they they need rest, they
need a reset. It's a transition more than a
destination. And I suspect many of my friends
(17:54):
and colleagues who think they'reat a destination will actually
be at a transition. And there's research from Rand
Corporation that shows that mostpeople who retire unretire.
But I wouldn't mind retiring fora little bit.
I just finished a year in which I was doing my role at
Cogenerate and also starting a new midlife wisdom like program
(18:19):
at Yale, the Experienced LeadersInitiative.
And you know, at 67, if you're not chipped calmly, it's hard to
do 2 jobs at once. I know you've been doing about
four, but that, that was exhausting.
And I've I've been trying to getback on my feet ever since.
So talk, talk a little bit aboutEncore careers and, and the
(18:39):
origin story of encore.org, which is now called
cogenerate.org. Talk about the evolution.
In fact, there are three names if I'm not mistaken, not just
two. Give us the origin story of
Civic Ventures and encore.org and then cogenerate.org and what
changed along the way for you tochange the name.
(19:00):
I think your name changes reallyspeak to not just Mark's
interests, but what society needs.
You know, one might characterizethat as an identity crisis if it
was an individual, but there is an evolution.
And, you know, it's making me want to go back and talk very
quickly about a study we did when we shifted into being on
(19:21):
court.org, because it goes to your previous question about
people working longer. We we asked Americans over 50
whether they wanted to have an encore career, a second act for
the greater good. And it was a time when Jimmy
Carter was very much in the newsand other Bill Gates prominent
(19:42):
people who are having the secondacts.
And we found that four and a half million older Americans
were already in an encore career, essentially A10 year
career that wasn't as long as midlife in duration, but weighed
as much. And 21 million more said it was
their top priority to do that. And if you add those two up, you
(20:03):
know, you get 25 and a half million people.
And the average length of time that they planned on an encore
career was a decade. So that's 250 million years of
human and social capital to be working on some of the most.
And what we heard over and over again is that the problem was
the transition. It was a do it yourself process
(20:24):
getting from what's last to to what's next, which is why things
like the modern Elder Academy are so important.
People don't have a but, but ourstart as an organization was
focused on young people. I I was involved in the first
study that had been done of Big Brothers, Big Sisters, which
showed that these mentors had a huge impact on kids lives.
(20:45):
And I read a quote around that time from the great psychologist
Yuri Bronfenbrenner, who startedthe Head Start program.
He said what every child needs is at least one adult who's
irrationally crazy about them. So I decided to get into the
business of finding irrationallycrazy adults who are interested
in mentoring kids because the Big Brothers Big Sisters program
(21:06):
was having a huge impact. But they had more kids on the
waiting list than than in the program.
And they were recruiting the busiest people in society who
were in their 20s, thirties, 40s, didn't have enough time to
spend with their own kids, much less, you know, 10 hours a month
with somebody else's child. It seemed at that point that the
answer was in the older population.
(21:27):
So I was kind of a young person focused on young people, but
came to older people as a solution.
And at that point, you know, we were hearing the older
population was set to double at people were watching a lot of
Gilligan's Island on TV. So along with Linda Freed at,
who was at Johns Hopkins MedicalSchool then and John Gardner,
(21:50):
who was a remarkable social entrepreneur who was personally
implemented Medicare, we createdExperience Core to be an answer
to that do it yourself problem, a national core that was
summoning older people to use their accumulated wisdom and
experience to help the next generation thrive.
(22:14):
And it was funny, I remember in the early days of, of
interviewing experience core members around the country.
They, I, you know, I, I, they'd asked me about the name and I
said, well, it's to honor all ofthis time and experience that
you had. And they thought it was a
program. You want to have experiences.
I realized we were, we were on to something.
(22:35):
But the experience corps membersnever left.
They stayed 10 years in the program.
They weren't like Peace Corps volunteers or Teach for America
volunteers who were passing through on route to something
else. And so they were the first kind
of embodiment of the, of the encore career idea.
So we changed our name from fromCivic Ventures to encore.org,
(22:57):
spent about 15 years promoting this idea of second acts for the
greater good at the intersectionof passion, purpose, and a
paycheck. We created the Purpose Prize to
honor people over the age of 60 who were doing their most
significant and creative work and the Encore Fellows Program
(23:18):
to become a pathway to purpose. But after 15 years of doing
that, we, we decided to go back to our origins of bringing
generations together, but in a different way.
You know, I think the original idea behind Experience Core is
you owe future generations your time and, and talent.
(23:38):
And today I think we're convinced that it's not just
what older or younger people cando for each other, but it's,
it's what they can do together with each other.
So Co is the Latin word for together.
And and so we adopted this, thisnew name as a guidepost as we
try to bring the generations together at a moment when 1/4 of
(24:01):
the population is under 20 and aquarter of the population is
over 60. And so we think there's a great
opportunity in that kind of connection and collaboration.
Tell us a little bit more about what cogenerate does and where
are the bamboo shoots out in society, maybe whether it's in
music or in other parts of society where you're seeing
like, hey there, we are moving away from age apartheid.
(24:25):
We are actually learning how to connect to the generations
again. Tell us a little bit more about
how we might have some hopefulness about this.
Yeah. Well, you know, I, I really
think that there we, we've always as human beings, lived in
cogenerational settings. In fact, anthropologists now
think that we became human beings because of the role that
(24:48):
grandparents played taking care of young children in the hunter
gatherer period of of humanity. And that'll that allowed both
parents to go out and hunt and gather gets get lots of food and
and enable the long helpless period that human babies have
which allow us to grow these bigbrains.
So essentially you could argue that grandmothers made us human
(25:11):
in the first place. And so I think one of our
challenges is to 1st recognize that the last century has been
an aberration, A radical reshuffling of society by age,
overvaluing peer contact over cross generational contact.
And we have the weight of thousands and thousands of years
(25:33):
of human behavior moving us backtogether again.
And I think that's really what'shappening is we're seeing all
throughout society this desire to come together across age,
despite the kids versus Keynes rhetoric that that we're
hearing. And you know, they're they've
always been generational tensions, but there's been a
(25:56):
four fold increase in multi generational housing in recent
decades. We, we're seeing a cultural
revolution. You've talked a lot about the
hero's journey where it shows like hacks and only Murders in
the building and reservation dogs and more and more they,
(26:17):
they throw older people together.
They require them to save each other and in the process they
they fall in love. Music, which you've mentioned
earlier is, is lighting this path as well.
You know, it's been one nationalphenomenon after the the first
being Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett.
(26:38):
But the Grammys last year were swept away by Tracy Chapman and
Luke Combs. Luke Combs wasn't even born when
Tracy Chapman had a hit with fast car.
The do what they did together, Joni Mitchell and and Brandi
Carlile. I could go on and on in, In the
50th anniversary recently of of Saturday Night Live, Sabrina
(27:03):
Carpenter and Paul Simon did Homeward Bound, and Sabrina
Carpenter pointed out that she wasn't alive when Paul Simon
first did that on Saturday NightLive.
And then she added that her parents weren't even alive.
But there's a way in which I think there's a deep inchoate
yearning to come across to, to connect across generational
(27:25):
lines. And, you know, it's not just
young people who need irrationallove from older people, but I, I
think those of us in our 60s and70s and beyond have a, a similar
need. The Harvard Study of Adult
Development showed that older people who connect and
collaborate with younger people are three times as likely to be
happy as those who fail to do so.
(27:46):
So what does code generate do tohelp this this important trend?
I'm I'm glad you asked me and twice so I would actually answer
your question. There's been a lot of
appreciation of the power of social capital really ever since
Robert Putnam's book Bowling alone.
(28:08):
And I think there's a unique aspect to social capital that's
cross generational and you know,way, way to think of it is pair
peer parent relationships are different than grandparent
grandchild relationships. It's part of this essential
portfolio of the human experience.
And we've lost that over the last century.
And the reason we lost it is that we created a whole set of
(28:33):
societal institutions which keptpeople of different ages with
with their peers. So in the beginning of the 20th
century, we invented child labour laws and universal
schooling, so young people were gathered with other young
people. We enforced mandatory
(28:56):
retirement. Even Social Security was
designed to get older people outof the workplace at a time
during the Depression when we had huge unemployment.
And then one after another with absolute brilliance, we invented
not only retirement community senior centers, nursing homes,
lifelong learning programs that were just for older people on
the generational Twain stop meeting.
And the problem was a lack of infrastructure.
(29:20):
There's a sociologist that at NYU or who wrote a wrote a book
called Palaces for the people about Andrew Carnegie and the
invention of of libraries. And but he uses it as a way to
show how we need institutions insociety places, concrete places
that can be meeting grounds. And So what civic ventures
(29:43):
turned encore.org turnco generate is trying to do is to
create places in society where the generations can meet.
And we're and it's all built around the idea of proximity,
purpose and partnership. My my second 3P alliteration.
But we older and younger people need places where they can be
(30:05):
near each other physically proximate, they need to be
nearer of people of different generations who have the same
priorities that that they do. And they need opportunities to
do things together. And so we're working in a whole
set of places where we feel likethose connections are are most
(30:26):
potentially promising. 1 area ishigher education, which is
really reinforced age segregation in society, but has
enormous opportunities to to turn that around.
Another area is faith institutions.
You know what institution in society is more tied to the
cycle of life than religious institutions and yet often times
(30:49):
they're highly segregated by age.
Music is is another realm where we're launching a project called
Generation's Got Talent, which is trying to bring the Brandy
Carlile Joni Mitchell magic to local communities where older
and younger people in duets and in a variety of genres of music
(31:10):
end up showing what the generations can do together.
One of the most prominent areas we're trying to advance is
around service. National Service in America,
which is currently under attack,has always been deeply divided
by by age AmeriCorps members or almost entirely under 25, and
(31:32):
AmeriCorps senior members are are over the age of 60.
So you got people in communitieswho are working on the same
issues and the same buildings, you know, down the hall from
each other, but separated by age.
We just believe that older and younger people can do together
what neither can do on their own.
A macro question and then a micro question.
(31:55):
The macro question is if you were hired by the White House,
forget about the administration,this or another administration
to curate socially a program or a policy that would help to
connect people across generations.
(32:17):
What is you know you can you cancome up with more than one if
you want, but what would you recommend to the President of
the United States? Well, I, I think we need a set
of big ideas, but I'll start out, you know, I mentioned
higher education and what we could do to bring older people
back to campus. Inspired by programs like
Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, Stanford's
(32:40):
Distinguished Careers Initiative, where older people
are infiltrating classrooms withwith younger people and there's
an extraordinary interaction that that's happening in those
classrooms. But it's on a small scale and at
a very elite level. What if we gave people an early
(33:00):
year of Social Security in to goback to school in return for
working an actuarially adjusted period later?
It would be like AGI Bill for older people moving into
education that acknowledges the new length of life and the fact
that you can't shoehorn all youreducation in, you know, up to
(33:20):
age 25 than expected to last for75 years.
But it would create training grounds for people to learn how
to thrive in a multi generational world, older
people, younger people. So that's one idea.
Another idea is that older people in America have
54,000,000 spare bedrooms in their house, and we're just
(33:44):
beginning to. I think, I think Airbnb knows
that one, but go ahead, yes. Absolutely.
There's a phenomenal program called Nesterly that was started
by 220 somethings at MIT in their city planning program,
which is creating opportunities for grad students in areas where
rent is extremely high to live with older people who have
(34:07):
space, but often times need helpwith chores or or even a a
modest rent. And so it turns out that in that
in the that effort, and I've seen this over and over again,
efficiency leads to humanity. If they're, they come together
because one party needs chores and some rent, the other party
(34:30):
needs affordable housing. But relationships bloom in that
context and I've seen that over and over again.
I went to a place in Cleveland called Judson Manor, where it's
a senior living facilities, in some ways kind of the ideal 21st
century senior living community across the street from the
(34:52):
Symphony and Case Western University, all these learning
opportunities. And behind it is the Cleveland
Clinic with all kinds of health care benefits.
They decided they love music so much that they would have
graduate students in music come live amidst the elders.
And that's a matter. I showed up on a November day
and there were 35 Swedish socialscientists who'd come to
(35:16):
Cleveland in the middle of the winter day learn about what was
happening at just a matter. So when the Scandinavians are
showing up in the Rust Belt, youknow something good's happening.
And these these graduate students in music were living
next to older people proximity. They had shared interests in
music purpose. I met a 93 year old woman named
(35:39):
Carla who lives next to a young violas to marry another young
violas. They didn't invite Carla to the
wedding. They asked her to be the maid of
honor. So efficiency and humanity, you
know, but quickly blend togetherand so that's a second idea.
What about housing? How do we age integrate housing,
(36:00):
whether it's through the 54,000,000 spare bedrooms or all
of the opportunities for older and younger people to come
together and live near each other.
Another idea, the grandparent notion I I've really been
interested in how do you create fictive grandparents?
And there are efforts all over the world to connect unrelated
(36:23):
older and younger people in waysthat do produce these powerful
grandparent like relationships. We've heard more and more in
recent years about the friendship bench in Zimbabwe and
now elsewhere where Dixon Chibende has has created these
spaces where grandparents, grandmothers can use their
(36:45):
wisdom to help, particularly young mothers.
Finland has a community grandparent program.
Even in tinyish Finland, so manygrandparents and grandchildren
aren't aren't living near each other to create these community
grandparent relationships. So that's a 1/3 idea.
(37:05):
What about a new rite of passagewhere older and younger people
did a year of service together? And I think I'm, I'm a kind of
John Dewey devotee at at root because I think it's the through
the do. If you put two people in a room
and tell them to relate, you know, I think you're going to
get mixed results. But if they're working on
something they both care about, I think that becomes the
(37:27):
scaffolding around which these bonds can form.
So now the micro question is that you've you've sort of
helped to set the table policy wise and what we want to see
sort of societally. But let's say someone's
listening or watching this rightnow and they're maybe late 50s
and they're considering retirement and a little bit
(37:50):
scared of that because like there's this big gaping hole in
their life. And as Ken Dykewald, who I think
you're having lunch with today, has shown, you know, there's a
people trade their work for the TV.
So the average American retiree a few years ago was clocked to
watch 47 hours of TVA week. What do you recommend?
(38:12):
What are some tips, some personal tips that a person
could take into account in looking at how they're going to
curate their life either post retirement or even while they're
still working? What what one of the big trends
we see is back in the old days, you know, you were working 100%
(38:32):
on a Friday and 0% on a Monday. But now we have things like the
portfolio life where people movefrom one job on a Friday to
actually over the next few months having two or three
different ways of working, maybesome volunteer wise, but some
they make money. What would you recommend to
somebody who's served a little bit lost and they don't know
(38:53):
what resources they have available to them?
I'm glad you you brought up the point about people starting
while they're still working. So I would I would suggest a few
different things. One is to lean into the question
of time that we've been talking about since the beginning of it.
This is a long distance race that if you are leaving your
(39:16):
midlife chapter or you're first part of your midlife chapter in
at 50, as you and others have pointed out you you probably
have at least half of adulthood in in front of you.
There's an abundance of time at this point so you can take a
break. You can have a gap year.
(39:36):
I've, I've long thought that gapyears for grown-ups were just as
needed as gap years for for young people, right?
I mean, who people have been spending twenty, 30-40 years
working, raising kids, doing caregiving.
They need some time to take a step back and rest up and ready
themselves for the next chapter.So that's the first thing is to
(39:57):
get the time right and to acceptyou.
You know, young people will in many cases go to college at 18,
Graduate School, they. You know, spend maybe seven
years in that chapter and now weknow that emerging adulthood is
a new chapter in the in the 20s.So they get some spaciousness to
(40:19):
navigate from being somewhat dependent to somewhat
independent person. I think people in midlife need
need more spaciousness. Maybe not 15 years, but but more
than than the weekend in betweenfinishing one job and starting a
new chapter. So get the time right that the
(40:39):
second I think is to really try to find a some structured
context to to do this kind of exploration right.
I been very taken with meas ideaof of disrobing in midlife and
that doesn't happen overnight. I, as mentioned earlier, I just
finished being the faculty director for the inaugural
(41:02):
cohort of the Yale Experience Leaders Initiative and the
people who came into that program which.
Is at Yale, which is at Yale University.
Yes, at the Yale School of Management and we had a, we had
three pillars that were sequential for the program.
They really mirror meas. They they're essentially wisdom,
(41:23):
purpose and transitions. We called them looking inward,
looking outward and moving forward.
And one of the things I discovered is, is many of the
fellows needed six months just to look inward.
They, they weren't ready to moveforward.
And I, and so I think getting, you know, again, acknowledging
this, this length of time that'snecessary, but it's a fitful
(41:46):
process and it's also an experimental process.
I, I think, you know, very rarely do people reinvent
themselves. You know, we hear these stories
of, you know, somebody opening avineyard or, or B&B and the
clouds part and the birds sing and you know, nobody ever breaks
the sweat. But really it's, I think it's an
(42:08):
experimental process, which is also something that that takes
time. So I would say acknowledge the
the time question, but also try things on.
And we need more opportunities for people to do that and try
things on in a structured context.
We created the Encore Fellowships program over a
(42:29):
decade ago as essentially an internship for grown-ups that
that gap year that we talked about earlier would people could
get inside an organization, use the their accumulated skills,
but in new ways that were kind. And I think this is really
important to find opportunities to do that where you're
(42:51):
comfortable because you're usingskills and experience that your
experience matters, but in new settings towards new ends in new
ways. And so it's a mix of comfort and
and adventure. And it's really in many ways
reintegration more than than reinvention, where people are
taking pieces of their life and putting them together in new
(43:13):
ways that feel fresh and, and compelling.
And then I would say that maybe the third thing is to is to
think about the time beyond our lives.
You've talked a lot, I have as well about Eric Erickson's
famous quote that the hallmark of successful development in
later life is, is I am what survives of me.
(43:35):
But I think the operational version of that is to do things
together with young people. And I saw that in the our core
Fellows program. It wasn't part of the design of
the program. People would go and work in an
NGO, maybe they were a marketingperson at Oracle, they're doing
marketing for a social impact organization.
(43:56):
But these bonds form between these modern elders and young
leaders in the organization thatwere very rich.
And and so it, it was a soil around so, so I would say find
settings where young people are going to be in your path.
So Mark, you have taught at MEA in Baja before an
(44:21):
intergenerational workshop and this fall in November you and I
will be Co leading a workshop atour Santa Fe campus.
Do you want to talk a little bitabout that and like why?
Why would somebody even want to come to this, and what
practically will they get out ofthis experience?
Well, you know, I, I feel like the, the real fountain of youth
(44:44):
is the fountain with youth that we, we've lost the skills of
being generative because societyhas pushed us into different
corners, people, people of different ages.
And being a modern elder is is so linked to being generative.
(45:06):
And so I think we need to come up with strategies and skills
and practice working with other generations to to do that well.
And now we're at the doorstep ofthe most age diverse moment in
not only American history, but world history.
We have the same number of people alive at every age from
zero to 75, give or take small numbers.
(45:28):
So the old, you know, demographic inverted pyramid
where you get a lot of people who are young and very few who
are small, is now a flat line. And so we're entering an era in
which learning to work across generational lines is, is
essential to, to thrive as a, asa society.
But we need places to think about, to take a step back to
(45:50):
figure out how to do that, especially because there aren't
enough opportunities in our age,segregated age apartheid world
to make that happen naturally. So in the workshop people will
learn is it is the workshop oriented toward a variety of
ages and is it learning how to find your way in a more age
(46:13):
diverse world? You know, one of the interesting
stats that I find fascinating itit has changed over time is the
US Department of Labor now says by the year 2027 it used to be
2025. By the year 2027, they believe
that the majority of Americans will have a younger boss.
Now we've never seen that before.
We've always had this sort of age hierarchy.
(46:36):
You know, the the older you are,the higher you are on the org
chart. At my experience at Airbnb were
both being the mentor to Brian Chesky who is the CEO and Co
founder, but also having him be my boss.
My boss was my mentee was a fascinating experience and I
wish I had a class like the class we're going to be teaching
to help people to understand howdo you create a deeper level of
(47:00):
respect, of respect, a deeper level of understanding?
How do you how do you create mentorship, mutual mentorship?
So you know, this is in many ways a workshop around how to be
a mutual mentor, but I I want you to add to that.
Well, part of it is, is about how to become a mutual mentor
and really how to collaborate with, with younger generations,
(47:23):
not just to impart your vast wisdom or to learn how to use
technology from them. And there's so much evidence
that when older and younger cometogether, they can do remarkable
things. We, we both talked about the BMW
study, which had three, three assembly lines, one of younger
workers, one of older and a mixed line, and the mixed line
(47:45):
far outperformed the the other two.
Arthur Brooks, who's been on theMEA faculty, talks about fluid
and crystallized intelligence, young people being particularly
strong on fluid intelligence, older people on crystallized
intelligence, and argues that noworkplace should be without
both. And I think that the future of
(48:08):
this multi generational society is not just in helping each
other out, but but collaboratingon equal footing.
So we'll learn the skills of of doing that kind of collaboration
and the mindset, but we'll also talk about some of the creative
settings that are being developed where that that can
(48:28):
happen, where older and younger people can connect, collaborate,
contribute together in some of the areas like school, work,
housing, care. So this will be both the skill
building opportunity but also a wayfinding guidance.
My last question for you, Mark, is imagine a younger person
(48:53):
comes to you and says, hey, Mark, I'd love to have tea or
coffee with you next week. And I would love to have you to
come to the meeting with a bumper sticker, a wisdom bumper
sticker, something you've learned along the way that has
Mark Friedman's wisdom fingerprints all over it.
What would be your life lesson or wisdom that you might offer
(49:13):
to that person personally, professionally, whatever?
And what's the origin story for that wisdom?
It's making me think of it. My my hero was Maggie Kuhn, who
was about. I knew she is.
Yes, yes. 4 foot 10. She is the founder of the Gray
Panthers movement. She was a inveterate rabble
(49:37):
rouser. She lived in a big multi
generational house in the Germantown section of
Philadelphia. And when she died on her
gravestone in my hometown of Philadelphia and I visited the
gravestone, it says here lies Maggie Kuhn under the only stone
she left unturned. So I think that I, I think
(49:59):
that's the kind of gravestone that that we should all aspire
to. When I, when I think about my,
myself, I often think of a of a quote, a Greek proverb.
Society grows great when older people plant trees under whose
shade they shall never sit. And so maybe something that says
(50:21):
he planted trees under whose shade he never said.
But I, I ideally planted those trees with somebody younger.
We have a, a young impact fellowlike Cogenerate, though, who I
think has, has come up with something even better, which
maybe I'll appropriate and attribute to her.
Ariel Galinsky, she says the next Gen. is Co Gen.
(50:46):
Maybe I'll I'll add that one on the other side.
And last thought is, how do you measure your success, Mark?
I mean, you've been I, I like it.
You're a norm entrepreneur, a term that I didn't even know,
which was an entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur, a social
innovator who helps change norms.
You've been an amazing author. I love your books.
(51:08):
You've helped to help people to see that they can, you know,
make a difference at any age of life and even better, across
generations. You know, how how do you measure
that other than to feel a littletingly inside when someone comes
to you and says, like, Mark, youchanged my life?
The chance to work with with youChip and with people other
(51:30):
remarkable innovators has has been the great joy of my life.
But you know, it's interesting in in contemplating our
conversation because I knew you'd ask me to, to say
something beyond just the usual sound bites.
And I, I think really my whole life, not just work, but but my
(51:51):
whole life has really been around the idea of connection.
You know, EM Forster's great line, maybe this is what should
be on on the gravestone was OnlyConnect.
And that's really what drew me to bringing older and younger
people together. It was out of this belief in
love and that there was a special kind of cross
(52:14):
generational love. It's funny, you know, at the
time that I was focused on that initially, even going back to
this mentoring work and Big Brothers, Big Sisters, all the
experts, we're saying that that was an externality that needed
to be, you know, shoved off to the sidelines that read really
mattered in schools, for example, was the curriculum.
(52:36):
In fact, the experts were even talking about teacher proof
curricula to get that messy human element out out of the
way. And now we're starting to see
over and over again that connection is is king.
There's a new study of super agers that came out last week
and was reported in the New YorkTimes, which showed that the
people who live the longest werehappiest were people who had
(52:58):
these deep ties. I think that's really what I've
been focused on in my own life and organizational life.
I I'm so grateful to work in an organization where people love
each other. You know, we really work with
each other and we care about each other.
(53:20):
That's a precious thing. So I'll, I think I will go with
Only Connect as the as the adageto characterize what I've been
trying to do. Mark, thank you.
You've been an inspiration to mefor many years now, and I think
everybody should check out the code generate.org website as
(53:41):
well as Mark's books. One of my favorites of Mark's is
How to Live Forever and is not alongevity book.
It's not about Brian Johnson andVenice Beach who's not going to
die. It is about how to have an
influence that will last foreverbecause it's generational.
So thank you, Mark. Thank you so much, Chip.
It's always a joy to talk. I am so excited to be teaching
(54:02):
with Mark this fall. I hope that you got a little bit
of a flavor of for what we're going to talk about and both the
practical side but also the sortof broader perspective on, you
know, where we are as a society around aging.
One of my favorite questions I ask when I give big speeches is
I ask people to make a list of the five people in their life
(54:26):
that they feel most intimately connected to, but none of them
can be family members. It has to be friends, friends or
work associates. And so people make the list of
five. Then I say write down the age of
each one of them. And then I asked, you know, the
people, the audience, what percentage of these five, how
many of these five are at least 10 years older or 10 years
(54:48):
younger than you? And on average, about one out of
the five are. So 80% of our close friends and
peers are people who are pretty much our same age, and only 20%
are outside of that band. And that's something we need to
work on because frankly, in a society in which more and more
power in companies is moving to younger people, we need to learn
(55:10):
how to actually collaborative inhow we work together and how we
live together Even so, if I had three key takeaways from this
talk with Mark, they, they were about halfway through the
episode. He talked about 3 particular
practical steps you can take #1 is if you're in mid career and
midlife, let's say you're around50 years old, find a way to take
(55:36):
a gap year or a sabbatical or atleast some extended period of
time for you to reimagine what'snext for you.
Mary Catherine Bateson called that the midlife atrium.
And I, I have to tell you, for me, when I sold my company at at
49, almost 50, I had two years of really being able to sort of
explore things. Now, not everybody has that.
(55:58):
And I think society needs to figure out ways to make it more
affordable for people to take off at least a month, to be able
to have your brain rewired and to actually change your habitat.
It's hard to change your habits when you don't change your
habitat. This is part of the reason why I
think MEA is so necessary. Number 2 is how do you find a
(56:18):
place that has a structured content and context for you to
reimagine what's next for yourself?
The Encore Fellowship program issomething that Mark started and
you can just Google Encore Fellowships and you can see more
about that. There are all kinds of other
programs out there where older people can actually have a
(56:39):
structured context to be a mentor, be a mentor and an
intern at the same time. And MEA obviously is another
place where you can come and learn about this.
And, you know, the structured context of our workshop in
November is a great catapult or catalyst for you to imagine how
do you want to curate the second-half of your adult life?
(56:59):
And then finally, Mark spoke to the idea that no matter what you
do, you're going to have spaciousness.
Great. You're going to have a
structured context for deciding how do you want to apply this
your your gifts that you've learned along the way, but do it
intergenerationally. That's almost a requirement.
And the reason for that is because, as Eric Erickson talked
(57:21):
about with his generativity theme, when we actually are
giving something back to future generations.
In the past we could know that we were actually keeping the
species going well, but today it's even more important because
you're getting something as well.
When I was actually working quite closely with the Airbnb
founders, what I learned was like I was learning as much from
(57:43):
them as they were from me. They learned from emotional
intelligence from me. I learned some digital
intelligence from them and we are both better off for it.
I hope to see you in November because quite frankly, this is
one of my most exciting workshops of the year.
I wrote a book called Wisdom at Work, The Making of a Modern
Elder that will be a core part of the workshop as well, as well
as Mark's most recent book, How to Live Forever.
(58:06):
See you in Santa Fe in November.Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. This show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
on your favorite platform.
The future of this multi generational society is the more
older and younger people can connect, collaborate, contribute
together in some of the areas like school, work, housing.
And it's forcing us to think notjust about the new length of
life, but but a new map of life.The next Gen. is Cogen.
(00:23):
Welcome to the Midlife ChrysalisPodcast with Chip Conley, where
we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time
of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful
chapter of your life. Well, hello, it is another
episode of the Midlife Chrysalisand I'm Chip Conley and I have
(00:46):
trotted into this this episode, Mark Friedman.
Mark is like my modern elder. He is the wisest person I know
in the world around policies andpractices that can create more
intergenerational collaboration.He started something called
encore.org, which actually popularized the idea of encore
(01:08):
careers. And then his primary focus today
is on intergenerational collaboration.
I, I love the guy. He is the one who helped me to
see that I'm a mentor, a mentor and an intern at the same time.
And that's what I did at Airbnb with the young founders.
I think you're going to find this to be a, a both an
(01:28):
interesting episode when it comes to the, the sort of
history of aging and longevity and ageism and age segregation,
what is also called age apartheid.
But I think it's also interesting from the perspective
of practical tools and tips for how we can actually feel a sense
of relevance and not worry aboutbeing youthful, but instead
(01:51):
being youthful. I hope you enjoy the episode.
All right, Mark Friedman, you are my modern elder.
So quick story. When I was, gosh, in my mid to
later 50s and was an Airbnb and endeavoring to write a book
called Wisdom at work, The Making of a Modern Elder, I
(02:13):
decided to go out and talk to people who knew a lot more about
aging and midlife and encore careers and things like that.
A, a, a term that you and the encore.org organization
popularized. I came to the Presidio and you
and I sat outside. I, I remembered and just talked
(02:34):
about aging and the history of aging and why we are an ageist
society. And my God, in an hour or two of
time, I felt like this is my librarian.
So will you give us a little bitof your perspective on why, how
we have evolved in the United States into a place where aging
(02:59):
used to be something people aspired to, to now being aging
being something that people are afraid of?
It's a full circle feeling around these these trepidations
because we started living longerin the 20th century.
As you and others have pointed out, life expectancy was 4647 in
(03:21):
1900, and then we started addingyears to life.
And by the middle of the centurywe'd added these years to life,
but we couldn't figure out what to to do with them.
In fact, Walter Reuther, the great UAW leader, got up in
front of his union in Milwaukee in 1948 and describe retirement
as too old to work, too young todie.
(03:43):
Five years later, Louis Mumford,the New Yorkers architectural
critic who had just turned 60 himself and who, as it turns
out, was in the midst of his midlife chrysalis.
He'd win the Nash National Book Award in his 70s in in over a
decade. But he he said at no point in
(04:04):
any society had any group been so rejected as older people
today. And the even the experts, the
gerontologists were saying that older people should stay out of
the way, rock aimlessly on theirporch, have a Whistler's Mother
like existence, and that that turned out to be a real problem.
(04:25):
People dreaded that period. What?
So what happened between the late 19th century and the 1950s
that led to older people no longer having a voice?
It was a cultural problem. We, we really hadn't
conceptualized a period beyond midlife, beyond the the 50s.
(04:51):
And that's partly because we've never had that period for very
long. But it it's, it's interesting to
note that in the United States, there's some irony because when
the Puritans came over here in the 1600s and 1700s, they loved
old people 'cause if, if you live to a ripe old age, first of
all, there were very few older people.
(05:12):
But if you live to a ripe old age, it was seen as a sign from
the divine that you were closer to God, that you were chosen.
And so the Puritans, unlike anything we've seen for hundreds
of years, they tried to be or atleast appear older than they
were. They wore white wigs.
They lied on the census, and they said they were older than
(05:35):
they actually were three years on, on average.
They even had specially trained tailors who could cut people's
clothes so they looked hunched over.
Instead of being a Jew from Eastern Europe, I should have
been a Mayflower Puritan becauseI've got the right posture for
Puritanism. But it, you know, so we started
(05:58):
out in it as a, as a what peoplecalled a gerontocracy.
We, we revered older people. That changed, as you were
saying, over time. And you know, in the 19th
century, older people were, werefully integrated in society.
In fact, all all ages were we, we live together in multi
(06:22):
generational households. We work together in farms and
and the agrarian economy. Older and younger people
together. Even the one room schoolhouse of
yore had four year olds and 50 year olds learning their AB CS
side by side. In fact, we were we became an
age oblivious society in which people did not even know how old
(06:45):
they were. Knowing somebody's age would be
like knowing somebody's blood type today.
I'm sure you'd be put off if I say Chip, what blood type are
you by the way? I've been meaning to ask.
To be honest, I I don't even remember, but that reminds me of
the Satchel Paige quote, which is the famous, the famous
pitcher who actually entered themajor leagues in baseball at
(07:06):
around 47 or 48 years old and pitched to into his 60s.
And he said, what age would you be if you didn't know what age
you were? Which is such a great question.
Well, you know, we're we're re entering that that period.
There are all these at least 40 something as LeBron James turns
40. I knew we would find some way to
(07:26):
get sports into our conversation, Chip.
So we've moved from, we moved from this era where aging was
aspirational to this era where aging was a negative thing, even
though one of the most powerful lobbyists out there was AARP and
retirement communities started to, to pop up.
Actually talk a little bit aboutSun City.
(07:47):
And you know, you've written about it in, in your books and
articles, you, you know the history of retirement
communities better than just about anybody I know.
Yeah. You know, for me, the the
interest in this history came from very practical reasons.
I was trying to mobilize older people to get involved in their
communities, to use their wisdomand experience for the greater
(08:08):
good. And, you know, it was going
against the grain graying as playing has long been the the
ideal, even before Jimmy Buffettcreated the his his lifestyle
communities. But it turns out that and I was
very critical of retirement communities, which I I think
(08:31):
played the decisive role in transforming American culture
around later life. Only 5% of the population ever
moved to places like Sun City, but they really reshaped the
culture and they came in where ahuge opportunity existed.
You know, who wants to be too old to work, too young to die?
(08:52):
That's not something that you aspire to.
And especially as that period became increasingly protracted
it, it was a difficult period for for older people.
I now believe that the retirement community
entrepreneurs really did us service in the context that they
(09:13):
worked in. So the first retirement
community was a place in Peoria,AZ with just 100 houses, started
by a real estate broker named Big Ben Schleifer, who was a
socialist. He was trying to curate a
kibbutz in the middle of the desert because he had a friend
in upstate New York who was withering away in in a nursing
home, an older friend, and he was appalled by that.
(09:36):
So he came back to Arizona wherehe was living and decided he he
would create essentially A utopian community for for all
these older people who were thrown to the sidelines of
society. And the same year he opened his
utopian community, Louis Mumford, who I mentioned
earlier, wrote an article in Architectural Digest and said
(09:58):
we've got to do 2 things to saveolder people in this country.
The 1st is to avoid at all cost making them into children,
infantilizing them. And the second is to keep them
embedded in the mainstream of society.
The article was was titled for Older People, Not Segregation,
Integration. That same year, Big Ben Schlafer
(10:22):
opened his retirement community and did exactly the opposite of
it. He It was age segregated and it
was called Youngtown. It was a chance to be young
again rather than a midlife chrysalis.
It was a reboot. And the key ingredient was that
was to make sure there were no children to burst the bubble of
(10:45):
a second child. So there were actually no real
children. And Youngtown became famous
later on because they were expelling a couple.
This is in the 1990s for harboring their grandchildren.
They it was like the scarlet letter.
There was a big sign planted on their lawn.
The New York Times pointed out that dogs were allowed at
(11:08):
Youngtown, but not children. And Del Webb was so inspired by
what he saw going on in Youngtown, which got a lot of
media attention, that directly across the street, he opened the
first large retirement community, Sun City, on January
1st, 1960. And, you know, here's another
sports analogy. If you build it, they will come.
(11:29):
Well Webb, build it and 100,000 people showed up on January 1st,
1960. Older people all around the
country who didn't want to be the most rejected group in
history. They didn't want to be too old
to work, too young to die. They wanted to be a place where
they could forget they were old,but also to have community.
As Sun City took off, Leisure World, others you know followed
(11:51):
in its footsteps. And even in the last census, The
Villages in Florida, famously a conservative retirement
community, was designated by theCensus Bureau as the fastest
growing metropolitan area in America.
And also the fastest growing sexually transmitted diseases
(12:15):
county in America as well, surprisingly.
Talk about trying to redefine the culture of aging.
But on the culture point, I and I did.
I didn't want to forget to add this.
Del Webb was the person who not only built it, but he named it.
He invented the phrase the golden years.
And that became the aspirationalideal for later life.
(12:38):
So instead of being the most rejected people in society,
people actually tried to retire earlier.
You know, it wasn't retiring at 65, but it was retiring at 60 or
55. And, and Webb's genius also was
that he democratized retirement.He created these, these Sun
Cities, which were like Levittown.
(12:59):
They were the, they're very affordable, working class
Americans who belong to unions like the UAW could go there and
they could and and they could have a new life.
So it was a kind of midlife chrysalis.
And so Mark, that led to over the course of the 80s and the
1990's, the retirement age dropping down to I think it may
(13:24):
at at its lowest point, it mighthave gotten to about 57.
And in the year 2000 and it's been creeping up since then.
I think the average retirement age today is 61 or 62 in the US.
Is that because people are by choice or by necessity feeling
like they want to stay in the workplace longer?
(13:45):
And how much of this relates to knowledge workers versus people
breaking their backs? Like Studs Terkel in his book
Working or whatever the name of that book was called was he
talked about the fact that yes, if you've, if you've been doing
mind numbing back breaking laborat age 60 years old, you don't
want to do it anymore. Retirement is Retirement is
(14:07):
something you want some leisure from, but for a lot of us today
it the idea of retirement is like a dirty word.
Yeah, well, first of all, it's you're, you're making me think
about maybe a decade ago, I heard Studs Terkel at 90 address
the Gerontological Society of America and he got up in front
of thousands of gerontologists and spoke for an hour with no
(14:32):
notes, without pause in grippingfashion.
And I, I kind of think if he wasaround today, he'd probably
write a new book called Still Working.
But, you know, the whole idea of65 as, as retirement was an
arbitrary number. You know, it was based, at least
some people think, on Otto von Bismarck's age for retirement
(14:55):
from the Prussian military, convinced that they would never
pay out a, a pension. This in the late 19th century,
of course, Bismarck was I think 78 at the time, but he didn't
consider himself part of the rabble.
But John Chauvin at at Stanford,the economist has has argued
that we would never use $1935 in2025 without adjusting them for
(15:17):
inflation. But we set 65 as the retirement
age in 1935 in in arbitrary fashion, and it became this
great point of demarcation. But I think people are starting
to question that now. I think we're realizing that all
these extra years that have beenadded, you know, 3 decades or,
(15:38):
or or more, depending on what country you're looking at,
they're not being as, as Laura Carson points out, tacked on at
the end. They're being added throughout
the life course and it's forcingus to think not just about the
new length of life, but but a new map.
Of life. Let's talk about you for a
second. You're 65.
(16:01):
I know you don't like talking about yourself.
Let's talk about history. No, no.
So, so Mark, you're 65. Is you're 66. 67.
What's your relationship with retirement like?
I mean, what is and and in the abstract, we're not talking
about like when are you going toleave your job as the Co CEO of
cogenerate.org And you know, it used to be called encore.org,
(16:25):
but you know what, like what's the Mark Friedman feeling about
retirement and and how does thatinfluence your behavior?
You know, I spent the last 30-40years railing against
retirement, all of its deleterious effects on health
and well-being of individuals and society, which is throwing
(16:47):
away the most experienced segments population.
And now I'm six to seven and allmy friends are retiring and they
seem to be having a great time. And I'm, I'm working away.
And you know, I do, I think I, I've been struck by two things.
One is after all these decades of pontificating, I wasn't
(17:10):
really talking about myself. I was talking about you, what
you should do. And it's been a little bit of a
challenge to assimilate personally, all of this
so-called wisdom that that's been, you know, being put out.
But the second thing I think is that I did one of the, it's
making me realize that one statistic that I saw years ago
(17:34):
and that I think continues to betrue is, is what is often
characterized as retirement is really a sabbatical.
People have reached a point where they they need rest, they
need a reset. It's a transition more than a
destination. And I suspect many of my friends
(17:54):
and colleagues who think they'reat a destination will actually
be at a transition. And there's research from Rand
Corporation that shows that mostpeople who retire unretire.
But I wouldn't mind retiring fora little bit.
I just finished a year in which I was doing my role at
Cogenerate and also starting a new midlife wisdom like program
(18:19):
at Yale, the Experienced LeadersInitiative.
And you know, at 67, if you're not chipped calmly, it's hard to
do 2 jobs at once. I know you've been doing about
four, but that, that was exhausting.
And I've I've been trying to getback on my feet ever since.
So talk, talk a little bit aboutEncore careers and, and the
(18:39):
origin story of encore.org, which is now called
cogenerate.org. Talk about the evolution.
In fact, there are three names if I'm not mistaken, not just
two. Give us the origin story of
Civic Ventures and encore.org and then cogenerate.org and what
changed along the way for you tochange the name.
(19:00):
I think your name changes reallyspeak to not just Mark's
interests, but what society needs.
You know, one might characterizethat as an identity crisis if it
was an individual, but there is an evolution.
And, you know, it's making me want to go back and talk very
quickly about a study we did when we shifted into being on
(19:21):
court.org, because it goes to your previous question about
people working longer. We we asked Americans over 50
whether they wanted to have an encore career, a second act for
the greater good. And it was a time when Jimmy
Carter was very much in the newsand other Bill Gates prominent
(19:42):
people who are having the secondacts.
And we found that four and a half million older Americans
were already in an encore career, essentially A10 year
career that wasn't as long as midlife in duration, but weighed
as much. And 21 million more said it was
their top priority to do that. And if you add those two up, you
(20:03):
know, you get 25 and a half million people.
And the average length of time that they planned on an encore
career was a decade. So that's 250 million years of
human and social capital to be working on some of the most.
And what we heard over and over again is that the problem was
the transition. It was a do it yourself process
(20:24):
getting from what's last to to what's next, which is why things
like the modern Elder Academy are so important.
People don't have a but, but ourstart as an organization was
focused on young people. I I was involved in the first
study that had been done of Big Brothers, Big Sisters, which
showed that these mentors had a huge impact on kids lives.
(20:45):
And I read a quote around that time from the great psychologist
Yuri Bronfenbrenner, who startedthe Head Start program.
He said what every child needs is at least one adult who's
irrationally crazy about them. So I decided to get into the
business of finding irrationallycrazy adults who are interested
in mentoring kids because the Big Brothers Big Sisters program
(21:06):
was having a huge impact. But they had more kids on the
waiting list than than in the program.
And they were recruiting the busiest people in society who
were in their 20s, thirties, 40s, didn't have enough time to
spend with their own kids, much less, you know, 10 hours a month
with somebody else's child. It seemed at that point that the
answer was in the older population.
(21:27):
So I was kind of a young person focused on young people, but
came to older people as a solution.
And at that point, you know, we were hearing the older
population was set to double at people were watching a lot of
Gilligan's Island on TV. So along with Linda Freed at,
who was at Johns Hopkins MedicalSchool then and John Gardner,
(21:50):
who was a remarkable social entrepreneur who was personally
implemented Medicare, we createdExperience Core to be an answer
to that do it yourself problem, a national core that was
summoning older people to use their accumulated wisdom and
experience to help the next generation thrive.
(22:14):
And it was funny, I remember in the early days of, of
interviewing experience core members around the country.
They, I, you know, I, I, they'd asked me about the name and I
said, well, it's to honor all ofthis time and experience that
you had. And they thought it was a
program. You want to have experiences.
I realized we were, we were on to something.
(22:35):
But the experience corps membersnever left.
They stayed 10 years in the program.
They weren't like Peace Corps volunteers or Teach for America
volunteers who were passing through on route to something
else. And so they were the first kind
of embodiment of the, of the encore career idea.
So we changed our name from fromCivic Ventures to encore.org,
(22:57):
spent about 15 years promoting this idea of second acts for the
greater good at the intersectionof passion, purpose, and a
paycheck. We created the Purpose Prize to
honor people over the age of 60 who were doing their most
significant and creative work and the Encore Fellows Program
(23:18):
to become a pathway to purpose. But after 15 years of doing
that, we, we decided to go back to our origins of bringing
generations together, but in a different way.
You know, I think the original idea behind Experience Core is
you owe future generations your time and, and talent.
(23:38):
And today I think we're convinced that it's not just
what older or younger people cando for each other, but it's,
it's what they can do together with each other.
So Co is the Latin word for together.
And and so we adopted this, thisnew name as a guidepost as we
try to bring the generations together at a moment when 1/4 of
(24:01):
the population is under 20 and aquarter of the population is
over 60. And so we think there's a great
opportunity in that kind of connection and collaboration.
Tell us a little bit more about what cogenerate does and where
are the bamboo shoots out in society, maybe whether it's in
music or in other parts of society where you're seeing
like, hey there, we are moving away from age apartheid.
(24:25):
We are actually learning how to connect to the generations
again. Tell us a little bit more about
how we might have some hopefulness about this.
Yeah. Well, you know, I, I really
think that there we, we've always as human beings, lived in
cogenerational settings. In fact, anthropologists now
think that we became human beings because of the role that
(24:48):
grandparents played taking care of young children in the hunter
gatherer period of of humanity. And that'll that allowed both
parents to go out and hunt and gather gets get lots of food and
and enable the long helpless period that human babies have
which allow us to grow these bigbrains.
So essentially you could argue that grandmothers made us human
(25:11):
in the first place. And so I think one of our
challenges is to 1st recognize that the last century has been
an aberration, A radical reshuffling of society by age,
overvaluing peer contact over cross generational contact.
And we have the weight of thousands and thousands of years
(25:33):
of human behavior moving us backtogether again.
And I think that's really what'shappening is we're seeing all
throughout society this desire to come together across age,
despite the kids versus Keynes rhetoric that that we're
hearing. And you know, they're they've
always been generational tensions, but there's been a
(25:56):
four fold increase in multi generational housing in recent
decades. We, we're seeing a cultural
revolution. You've talked a lot about the
hero's journey where it shows like hacks and only Murders in
the building and reservation dogs and more and more they,
(26:17):
they throw older people together.
They require them to save each other and in the process they
they fall in love. Music, which you've mentioned
earlier is, is lighting this path as well.
You know, it's been one nationalphenomenon after the the first
being Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett.
(26:38):
But the Grammys last year were swept away by Tracy Chapman and
Luke Combs. Luke Combs wasn't even born when
Tracy Chapman had a hit with fast car.
The do what they did together, Joni Mitchell and and Brandi
Carlile. I could go on and on in, In the
50th anniversary recently of of Saturday Night Live, Sabrina
(27:03):
Carpenter and Paul Simon did Homeward Bound, and Sabrina
Carpenter pointed out that she wasn't alive when Paul Simon
first did that on Saturday NightLive.
And then she added that her parents weren't even alive.
But there's a way in which I think there's a deep inchoate
yearning to come across to, to connect across generational
(27:25):
lines. And, you know, it's not just
young people who need irrationallove from older people, but I, I
think those of us in our 60s and70s and beyond have a, a similar
need. The Harvard Study of Adult
Development showed that older people who connect and
collaborate with younger people are three times as likely to be
happy as those who fail to do so.
(27:46):
So what does code generate do tohelp this this important trend?
I'm I'm glad you asked me and twice so I would actually answer
your question. There's been a lot of
appreciation of the power of social capital really ever since
Robert Putnam's book Bowling alone.
(28:08):
And I think there's a unique aspect to social capital that's
cross generational and you know,way, way to think of it is pair
peer parent relationships are different than grandparent
grandchild relationships. It's part of this essential
portfolio of the human experience.
And we've lost that over the last century.
And the reason we lost it is that we created a whole set of
(28:33):
societal institutions which keptpeople of different ages with
with their peers. So in the beginning of the 20th
century, we invented child labour laws and universal
schooling, so young people were gathered with other young
people. We enforced mandatory
(28:56):
retirement. Even Social Security was
designed to get older people outof the workplace at a time
during the Depression when we had huge unemployment.
And then one after another with absolute brilliance, we invented
not only retirement community senior centers, nursing homes,
lifelong learning programs that were just for older people on
the generational Twain stop meeting.
And the problem was a lack of infrastructure.
(29:20):
There's a sociologist that at NYU or who wrote a wrote a book
called Palaces for the people about Andrew Carnegie and the
invention of of libraries. And but he uses it as a way to
show how we need institutions insociety places, concrete places
that can be meeting grounds. And So what civic ventures
(29:43):
turned encore.org turnco generate is trying to do is to
create places in society where the generations can meet.
And we're and it's all built around the idea of proximity,
purpose and partnership. My my second 3P alliteration.
But we older and younger people need places where they can be
(30:05):
near each other physically proximate, they need to be
nearer of people of different generations who have the same
priorities that that they do. And they need opportunities to
do things together. And so we're working in a whole
set of places where we feel likethose connections are are most
(30:26):
potentially promising. 1 area ishigher education, which is
really reinforced age segregation in society, but has
enormous opportunities to to turn that around.
Another area is faith institutions.
You know what institution in society is more tied to the
cycle of life than religious institutions and yet often times
(30:49):
they're highly segregated by age.
Music is is another realm where we're launching a project called
Generation's Got Talent, which is trying to bring the Brandy
Carlile Joni Mitchell magic to local communities where older
and younger people in duets and in a variety of genres of music
(31:10):
end up showing what the generations can do together.
One of the most prominent areas we're trying to advance is
around service. National Service in America,
which is currently under attack,has always been deeply divided
by by age AmeriCorps members or almost entirely under 25, and
(31:32):
AmeriCorps senior members are are over the age of 60.
So you got people in communitieswho are working on the same
issues and the same buildings, you know, down the hall from
each other, but separated by age.
We just believe that older and younger people can do together
what neither can do on their own.
A macro question and then a micro question.
(31:55):
The macro question is if you were hired by the White House,
forget about the administration,this or another administration
to curate socially a program or a policy that would help to
connect people across generations.
(32:17):
What is you know you can you cancome up with more than one if
you want, but what would you recommend to the President of
the United States? Well, I, I think we need a set
of big ideas, but I'll start out, you know, I mentioned
higher education and what we could do to bring older people
back to campus. Inspired by programs like
Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, Stanford's
(32:40):
Distinguished Careers Initiative, where older people
are infiltrating classrooms withwith younger people and there's
an extraordinary interaction that that's happening in those
classrooms. But it's on a small scale and at
a very elite level. What if we gave people an early
(33:00):
year of Social Security in to goback to school in return for
working an actuarially adjusted period later?
It would be like AGI Bill for older people moving into
education that acknowledges the new length of life and the fact
that you can't shoehorn all youreducation in, you know, up to
(33:20):
age 25 than expected to last for75 years.
But it would create training grounds for people to learn how
to thrive in a multi generational world, older
people, younger people. So that's one idea.
Another idea is that older people in America have
54,000,000 spare bedrooms in their house, and we're just
(33:44):
beginning to. I think, I think Airbnb knows
that one, but go ahead, yes. Absolutely.
There's a phenomenal program called Nesterly that was started
by 220 somethings at MIT in their city planning program,
which is creating opportunities for grad students in areas where
rent is extremely high to live with older people who have
(34:07):
space, but often times need helpwith chores or or even a a
modest rent. And so it turns out that in that
in the that effort, and I've seen this over and over again,
efficiency leads to humanity. If they're, they come together
because one party needs chores and some rent, the other party
(34:30):
needs affordable housing. But relationships bloom in that
context and I've seen that over and over again.
I went to a place in Cleveland called Judson Manor, where it's
a senior living facilities, in some ways kind of the ideal 21st
century senior living community across the street from the
(34:52):
Symphony and Case Western University, all these learning
opportunities. And behind it is the Cleveland
Clinic with all kinds of health care benefits.
They decided they love music so much that they would have
graduate students in music come live amidst the elders.
And that's a matter. I showed up on a November day
and there were 35 Swedish socialscientists who'd come to
(35:16):
Cleveland in the middle of the winter day learn about what was
happening at just a matter. So when the Scandinavians are
showing up in the Rust Belt, youknow something good's happening.
And these these graduate students in music were living
next to older people proximity. They had shared interests in
music purpose. I met a 93 year old woman named
(35:39):
Carla who lives next to a young violas to marry another young
violas. They didn't invite Carla to the
wedding. They asked her to be the maid of
honor. So efficiency and humanity, you
know, but quickly blend togetherand so that's a second idea.
What about housing? How do we age integrate housing,
(36:00):
whether it's through the 54,000,000 spare bedrooms or all
of the opportunities for older and younger people to come
together and live near each other.
Another idea, the grandparent notion I I've really been
interested in how do you create fictive grandparents?
And there are efforts all over the world to connect unrelated
(36:23):
older and younger people in waysthat do produce these powerful
grandparent like relationships. We've heard more and more in
recent years about the friendship bench in Zimbabwe and
now elsewhere where Dixon Chibende has has created these
spaces where grandparents, grandmothers can use their
(36:45):
wisdom to help, particularly young mothers.
Finland has a community grandparent program.
Even in tinyish Finland, so manygrandparents and grandchildren
aren't aren't living near each other to create these community
grandparent relationships. So that's a 1/3 idea.
(37:05):
What about a new rite of passagewhere older and younger people
did a year of service together? And I think I'm, I'm a kind of
John Dewey devotee at at root because I think it's the through
the do. If you put two people in a room
and tell them to relate, you know, I think you're going to
get mixed results. But if they're working on
something they both care about, I think that becomes the
(37:27):
scaffolding around which these bonds can form.
So now the micro question is that you've you've sort of
helped to set the table policy wise and what we want to see
sort of societally. But let's say someone's
listening or watching this rightnow and they're maybe late 50s
and they're considering retirement and a little bit
(37:50):
scared of that because like there's this big gaping hole in
their life. And as Ken Dykewald, who I think
you're having lunch with today, has shown, you know, there's a
people trade their work for the TV.
So the average American retiree a few years ago was clocked to
watch 47 hours of TVA week. What do you recommend?
(38:12):
What are some tips, some personal tips that a person
could take into account in looking at how they're going to
curate their life either post retirement or even while they're
still working? What what one of the big trends
we see is back in the old days, you know, you were working 100%
(38:32):
on a Friday and 0% on a Monday. But now we have things like the
portfolio life where people movefrom one job on a Friday to
actually over the next few months having two or three
different ways of working, maybesome volunteer wise, but some
they make money. What would you recommend to
somebody who's served a little bit lost and they don't know
(38:53):
what resources they have available to them?
I'm glad you you brought up the point about people starting
while they're still working. So I would I would suggest a few
different things. One is to lean into the question
of time that we've been talking about since the beginning of it.
This is a long distance race that if you are leaving your
(39:16):
midlife chapter or you're first part of your midlife chapter in
at 50, as you and others have pointed out you you probably
have at least half of adulthood in in front of you.
There's an abundance of time at this point so you can take a
break. You can have a gap year.
(39:36):
I've, I've long thought that gapyears for grown-ups were just as
needed as gap years for for young people, right?
I mean, who people have been spending twenty, 30-40 years
working, raising kids, doing caregiving.
They need some time to take a step back and rest up and ready
themselves for the next chapter.So that's the first thing is to
(39:57):
get the time right and to acceptyou.
You know, young people will in many cases go to college at 18,
Graduate School, they. You know, spend maybe seven
years in that chapter and now weknow that emerging adulthood is
a new chapter in the in the 20s.So they get some spaciousness to
(40:19):
navigate from being somewhat dependent to somewhat
independent person. I think people in midlife need
need more spaciousness. Maybe not 15 years, but but more
than than the weekend in betweenfinishing one job and starting a
new chapter. So get the time right that the
(40:39):
second I think is to really try to find a some structured
context to to do this kind of exploration right.
I been very taken with meas ideaof of disrobing in midlife and
that doesn't happen overnight. I, as mentioned earlier, I just
finished being the faculty director for the inaugural
(41:02):
cohort of the Yale Experience Leaders Initiative and the
people who came into that program which.
Is at Yale, which is at Yale University.
Yes, at the Yale School of Management and we had a, we had
three pillars that were sequential for the program.
They really mirror meas. They they're essentially wisdom,
(41:23):
purpose and transitions. We called them looking inward,
looking outward and moving forward.
And one of the things I discovered is, is many of the
fellows needed six months just to look inward.
They, they weren't ready to moveforward.
And I, and so I think getting, you know, again, acknowledging
this, this length of time that'snecessary, but it's a fitful
(41:46):
process and it's also an experimental process.
I, I think, you know, very rarely do people reinvent
themselves. You know, we hear these stories
of, you know, somebody opening avineyard or, or B&B and the
clouds part and the birds sing and you know, nobody ever breaks
the sweat. But really it's, I think it's an
(42:08):
experimental process, which is also something that that takes
time. So I would say acknowledge the
the time question, but also try things on.
And we need more opportunities for people to do that and try
things on in a structured context.
We created the Encore Fellowships program over a
(42:29):
decade ago as essentially an internship for grown-ups that
that gap year that we talked about earlier would people could
get inside an organization, use the their accumulated skills,
but in new ways that were kind. And I think this is really
important to find opportunities to do that where you're
(42:51):
comfortable because you're usingskills and experience that your
experience matters, but in new settings towards new ends in new
ways. And so it's a mix of comfort and
and adventure. And it's really in many ways
reintegration more than than reinvention, where people are
taking pieces of their life and putting them together in new
(43:13):
ways that feel fresh and, and compelling.
And then I would say that maybe the third thing is to is to
think about the time beyond our lives.
You've talked a lot, I have as well about Eric Erickson's
famous quote that the hallmark of successful development in
later life is, is I am what survives of me.
(43:35):
But I think the operational version of that is to do things
together with young people. And I saw that in the our core
Fellows program. It wasn't part of the design of
the program. People would go and work in an
NGO, maybe they were a marketingperson at Oracle, they're doing
marketing for a social impact organization.
(43:56):
But these bonds form between these modern elders and young
leaders in the organization thatwere very rich.
And and so it, it was a soil around so, so I would say find
settings where young people are going to be in your path.
So Mark, you have taught at MEA in Baja before an
(44:21):
intergenerational workshop and this fall in November you and I
will be Co leading a workshop atour Santa Fe campus.
Do you want to talk a little bitabout that and like why?
Why would somebody even want to come to this, and what
practically will they get out ofthis experience?
Well, you know, I, I feel like the, the real fountain of youth
(44:44):
is the fountain with youth that we, we've lost the skills of
being generative because societyhas pushed us into different
corners, people, people of different ages.
And being a modern elder is is so linked to being generative.
(45:06):
And so I think we need to come up with strategies and skills
and practice working with other generations to to do that well.
And now we're at the doorstep ofthe most age diverse moment in
not only American history, but world history.
We have the same number of people alive at every age from
zero to 75, give or take small numbers.
(45:28):
So the old, you know, demographic inverted pyramid
where you get a lot of people who are young and very few who
are small, is now a flat line. And so we're entering an era in
which learning to work across generational lines is, is
essential to, to thrive as a, asa society.
But we need places to think about, to take a step back to
(45:50):
figure out how to do that, especially because there aren't
enough opportunities in our age,segregated age apartheid world
to make that happen naturally. So in the workshop people will
learn is it is the workshop oriented toward a variety of
ages and is it learning how to find your way in a more age
(46:13):
diverse world? You know, one of the interesting
stats that I find fascinating itit has changed over time is the
US Department of Labor now says by the year 2027 it used to be
2025. By the year 2027, they believe
that the majority of Americans will have a younger boss.
Now we've never seen that before.
We've always had this sort of age hierarchy.
(46:36):
You know, the the older you are,the higher you are on the org
chart. At my experience at Airbnb were
both being the mentor to Brian Chesky who is the CEO and Co
founder, but also having him be my boss.
My boss was my mentee was a fascinating experience and I
wish I had a class like the class we're going to be teaching
to help people to understand howdo you create a deeper level of
(47:00):
respect, of respect, a deeper level of understanding?
How do you how do you create mentorship, mutual mentorship?
So you know, this is in many ways a workshop around how to be
a mutual mentor, but I I want you to add to that.
Well, part of it is, is about how to become a mutual mentor
and really how to collaborate with, with younger generations,
(47:23):
not just to impart your vast wisdom or to learn how to use
technology from them. And there's so much evidence
that when older and younger cometogether, they can do remarkable
things. We, we both talked about the BMW
study, which had three, three assembly lines, one of younger
workers, one of older and a mixed line, and the mixed line
(47:45):
far outperformed the the other two.
Arthur Brooks, who's been on theMEA faculty, talks about fluid
and crystallized intelligence, young people being particularly
strong on fluid intelligence, older people on crystallized
intelligence, and argues that noworkplace should be without
both. And I think that the future of
(48:08):
this multi generational society is not just in helping each
other out, but but collaboratingon equal footing.
So we'll learn the skills of of doing that kind of collaboration
and the mindset, but we'll also talk about some of the creative
settings that are being developed where that that can
(48:28):
happen, where older and younger people can connect, collaborate,
contribute together in some of the areas like school, work,
housing, care. So this will be both the skill
building opportunity but also a wayfinding guidance.
My last question for you, Mark, is imagine a younger person
(48:53):
comes to you and says, hey, Mark, I'd love to have tea or
coffee with you next week. And I would love to have you to
come to the meeting with a bumper sticker, a wisdom bumper
sticker, something you've learned along the way that has
Mark Friedman's wisdom fingerprints all over it.
What would be your life lesson or wisdom that you might offer
(49:13):
to that person personally, professionally, whatever?
And what's the origin story for that wisdom?
It's making me think of it. My my hero was Maggie Kuhn, who
was about. I knew she is.
Yes, yes. 4 foot 10. She is the founder of the Gray
Panthers movement. She was a inveterate rabble
(49:37):
rouser. She lived in a big multi
generational house in the Germantown section of
Philadelphia. And when she died on her
gravestone in my hometown of Philadelphia and I visited the
gravestone, it says here lies Maggie Kuhn under the only stone
she left unturned. So I think that I, I think
(49:59):
that's the kind of gravestone that that we should all aspire
to. When I, when I think about my,
myself, I often think of a of a quote, a Greek proverb.
Society grows great when older people plant trees under whose
shade they shall never sit. And so maybe something that says
(50:21):
he planted trees under whose shade he never said.
But I, I ideally planted those trees with somebody younger.
We have a, a young impact fellowlike Cogenerate, though, who I
think has, has come up with something even better, which
maybe I'll appropriate and attribute to her.
Ariel Galinsky, she says the next Gen. is Co Gen.
(50:46):
Maybe I'll I'll add that one on the other side.
And last thought is, how do you measure your success, Mark?
I mean, you've been I, I like it.
You're a norm entrepreneur, a term that I didn't even know,
which was an entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur, a social
innovator who helps change norms.
You've been an amazing author. I love your books.
(51:08):
You've helped to help people to see that they can, you know,
make a difference at any age of life and even better, across
generations. You know, how how do you measure
that other than to feel a littletingly inside when someone comes
to you and says, like, Mark, youchanged my life?
The chance to work with with youChip and with people other
(51:30):
remarkable innovators has has been the great joy of my life.
But you know, it's interesting in in contemplating our
conversation because I knew you'd ask me to, to say
something beyond just the usual sound bites.
And I, I think really my whole life, not just work, but but my
(51:51):
whole life has really been around the idea of connection.
You know, EM Forster's great line, maybe this is what should
be on on the gravestone was OnlyConnect.
And that's really what drew me to bringing older and younger
people together. It was out of this belief in
love and that there was a special kind of cross
(52:14):
generational love. It's funny, you know, at the
time that I was focused on that initially, even going back to
this mentoring work and Big Brothers, Big Sisters, all the
experts, we're saying that that was an externality that needed
to be, you know, shoved off to the sidelines that read really
mattered in schools, for example, was the curriculum.
(52:36):
In fact, the experts were even talking about teacher proof
curricula to get that messy human element out out of the
way. And now we're starting to see
over and over again that connection is is king.
There's a new study of super agers that came out last week
and was reported in the New YorkTimes, which showed that the
people who live the longest werehappiest were people who had
(52:58):
these deep ties. I think that's really what I've
been focused on in my own life and organizational life.
I I'm so grateful to work in an organization where people love
each other. You know, we really work with
each other and we care about each other.
(53:20):
That's a precious thing. So I'll, I think I will go with
Only Connect as the as the adageto characterize what I've been
trying to do. Mark, thank you.
You've been an inspiration to mefor many years now, and I think
everybody should check out the code generate.org website as
(53:41):
well as Mark's books. One of my favorites of Mark's is
How to Live Forever and is not alongevity book.
It's not about Brian Johnson andVenice Beach who's not going to
die. It is about how to have an
influence that will last foreverbecause it's generational.
So thank you, Mark. Thank you so much, Chip.
It's always a joy to talk. I am so excited to be teaching
(54:02):
with Mark this fall. I hope that you got a little bit
of a flavor of for what we're going to talk about and both the
practical side but also the sortof broader perspective on, you
know, where we are as a society around aging.
One of my favorite questions I ask when I give big speeches is
I ask people to make a list of the five people in their life
(54:26):
that they feel most intimately connected to, but none of them
can be family members. It has to be friends, friends or
work associates. And so people make the list of
five. Then I say write down the age of
each one of them. And then I asked, you know, the
people, the audience, what percentage of these five, how
many of these five are at least 10 years older or 10 years
(54:48):
younger than you? And on average, about one out of
the five are. So 80% of our close friends and
peers are people who are pretty much our same age, and only 20%
are outside of that band. And that's something we need to
work on because frankly, in a society in which more and more
power in companies is moving to younger people, we need to learn
(55:10):
how to actually collaborative inhow we work together and how we
live together Even so, if I had three key takeaways from this
talk with Mark, they, they were about halfway through the
episode. He talked about 3 particular
practical steps you can take #1 is if you're in mid career and
midlife, let's say you're around50 years old, find a way to take
(55:36):
a gap year or a sabbatical or atleast some extended period of
time for you to reimagine what'snext for you.
Mary Catherine Bateson called that the midlife atrium.
And I, I have to tell you, for me, when I sold my company at at
49, almost 50, I had two years of really being able to sort of
explore things. Now, not everybody has that.
(55:58):
And I think society needs to figure out ways to make it more
affordable for people to take off at least a month, to be able
to have your brain rewired and to actually change your habitat.
It's hard to change your habits when you don't change your
habitat. This is part of the reason why I
think MEA is so necessary. Number 2 is how do you find a
(56:18):
place that has a structured content and context for you to
reimagine what's next for yourself?
The Encore Fellowship program issomething that Mark started and
you can just Google Encore Fellowships and you can see more
about that. There are all kinds of other
programs out there where older people can actually have a
(56:39):
structured context to be a mentor, be a mentor and an
intern at the same time. And MEA obviously is another
place where you can come and learn about this.
And, you know, the structured context of our workshop in
November is a great catapult or catalyst for you to imagine how
do you want to curate the second-half of your adult life?
(56:59):
And then finally, Mark spoke to the idea that no matter what you
do, you're going to have spaciousness.
Great. You're going to have a
structured context for deciding how do you want to apply this
your your gifts that you've learned along the way, but do it
intergenerationally. That's almost a requirement.
And the reason for that is because, as Eric Erickson talked
(57:21):
about with his generativity theme, when we actually are
giving something back to future generations.
In the past we could know that we were actually keeping the
species going well, but today it's even more important because
you're getting something as well.
When I was actually working quite closely with the Airbnb
founders, what I learned was like I was learning as much from
(57:43):
them as they were from me. They learned from emotional
intelligence from me. I learned some digital
intelligence from them and we are both better off for it.
I hope to see you in November because quite frankly, this is
one of my most exciting workshops of the year.
I wrote a book called Wisdom at Work, The Making of a Modern
Elder that will be a core part of the workshop as well, as well
as Mark's most recent book, How to Live Forever.
(58:06):
See you in Santa Fe in November.Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. This show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
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