Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep # 129 History Comes Alive: How Cynthia Affinito Captivates Senior Audiences
Ever wonder how powerful storytelling can transform lives across generations? Join host Doug Drohan as he interviews Cynthia Affinito, founder of Historical Speakers for Seniors, who reveals the fascinating intersection of education, entertainment, and cognitive wellness for older adults.
After 32 years of teaching world history, Cynthia recognized a significant gap in educational programming for seniors. "These communities are filled with doctors, lawyers, people from every walk of life, and they're still learning," she explains. This realization sparked her mission to bring captivating historical narratives directly to senior living communities throughout New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. Alongside her husband Damon, who specializes in U.S. history, they've created a service that challenges the misconception that older adults lose their desire to learn and engage.
What makes their approach uniquely effective is the science behind storytelling. Cynthia explains that good stories trigger the release of oxytocin in our brains, creating feelings of trust and connection. Her visual presentation style—using carefully curated images and videos without text-heavy slides—has proven remarkably successful not only with seniors but also in her high school classroom. The impact extends beyond entertainment to actual cognitive benefits, particularly for memory care residents who often "perk up" during presentations about Renaissance art or World War II, reconnecting with their own memories and experiences.
From the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, Cynthia's breadth of knowledge brings history to life through conversation rather than lecture. The podcast concludes with a fascinating impromptu discussion about why certain empires rose to prominence while others fell, leaving listeners curious about the historical forces that continue to shape our world today.
Ready to experience history in a whole new way? Connect with Historical Speakers for Seniors through their website or email to bring these captivating presentations to your community. Because as this enlightening conversation proves, learning truly is a lifelong journey.
Historical Speakers for Seniors
Cynthia Affinito
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group. I am your host, doug Drohan, a teacher and owner of a really interesting company that I have to admit. We have not had a company like this. On my 100 and so episodes that we've produced so far, I'd like to introduce Cynthia Affinito, the owner of Historical Speakers for Seniors, to the show. Welcome to the show, cynthia.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Doug. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mentioned you're a teacher. You're down the street at Northern Valley, old Japan, or what we call NBOT, and just so happens that Northern Valley Living Magazine serves those communities. But it's great because I was looking back in June of last year we did a special issue where we featured teachers from NBOT that were once students and although you were not a student at NBOT, having grown up in Oradell, we also had a story about your business, where I forget where the shot was taken, but you were featured in that magazine as well. So why don't we just go back? So you are a history teacher.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I've been teaching history for 32 years, mostly world history, but just all sorts of topics you know along those or throughout those years. So it's like United States history and constitutional law, I think. At one point, anything they asked me to do I did, but mostly it was world history, for sure.
Speaker 2:So I was just in Florida over the weekend, just went for a couple of days. Florida over the weekend, just went for a couple of days. My mom turned 90. And for my dad's 90th, which was in February, my wife, who got into this Wondery app called History. What is it called? Something historical? Right, it's a podcast show that does world history. It does the story of the Constitution, the story of the Civil War, war, the story of whatever, and we thought my dad would really be into it because he loves history. So they didn't know how to download the apps. When I was there, I went on the uh, just on the web, and just typed in you know a wondery app and found it and then he was listening to. Actually, they did the story of the financial crisis in 2007, because my dad worked in wall street.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow and um it's. It's narrated like a almost like a ken burn. So it's not just history like oh, back in 2007 layman was over leveraged, it was people, okay, you know. Uh, hank paulson walks in the room and it's this guy narrating like a conversation that he's having. So I've listened to. They do one called business movers, where it's different stories of like when walt disney was trying to buy land in Orlando to build. Disney World. So it's really interesting. But the whole point of how do you make history interesting? It's through storytelling, right?
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:So that's the segue into your company called Speakers for Seniors.
Speaker 3:That's right, yeah. Called Speakers for Seniors? That's right, yeah. So after teaching for like 32 years, I just basically took my show on the road and I thought, yeah, I was touring a lot of senior communities with my mom because she's 84. And so she was just looking into possible assisted independent living and just speaking to the people there and them saying like, oh, you know, we have all of these activities. I thought you know, these communities are filled with doctors, lawyers, you know from every walk of life, and they're still learning. You know they still enjoy a good story about history especially. And so I thought you know what, why not kind of take the stories to them? And that's how it really all began.
Speaker 2:Right. So you know you. If I look at your website, it's like step back in time and you embark on a captivating journey through history. And you know, I think, what Ken Burns did really well, which was different for its time at the time, and now it's been like what? 30 years.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When the Civil War came out and baseball, but it's been like what, 30 years, yeah, when the civil war came out in baseball. But it's having those actors who narrate characters, so it brings it to life more. And one of the things that I try to, you know, I really um espouse every single day about what I do is how storytelling, a good story, actually releases our body, our brain releases, releases oxytocin, which is the trust. I don't know what oxytocin is. It is a hormone. Is it some kind of protein? Whatever it is, it's what mothers produce when they're giving birth.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And it builds trust and it creates, like this, warmth. And when you're, advertising is connected to stories. When people have that warm and fuzzy feeling, even if they don't consciously think about your ad or your brand, you're making that kind of subliminal connection that builds over time. And certainly you know we could say seniors I think obviously, as a as a history teacher in high school, you probably see this as well. The best way to reach people is to kind of take them through a captivating journey. So why, why did you zero in on seniors?
Speaker 3:Just because I thought that they're an underserved population in this area. I think a lot of the times we think of senior citizens as people who, you know, at a certain point, don't want to learn, stop learning, and it's just not true. You know a lot of people when I go in and just have these lectures about all sorts of things, everything from Africa, African history to the Mongols, Renaissance art. My husband does all the US history, things like baseball and World.
Speaker 3:War II. You know, sometimes like that, things like baseball and World War II, sometimes like that they'll actually reminisce about their own experiences with baseball and World War II and that otherwise we have people. If we do something with World War, I reminisce about how their grandparents were involved and they have their stories. So I think it's just a way for them to really exercise that part of their mind that I think a lot of us just don't, because we're so busy or we just forget to. We just sit in front of the.
Speaker 3:TV, maybe just watch whatever is on, but it really gets them thinking. And the way that I present within that hour, um it, it's all pictures and videos.
Speaker 2:I was going to say do you use visual? Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just Google slides and but it's like the. The videos and the pictures just help to really bring to life the stories that I tell them. I don't use notes or anything, it's just pretty much like get up and have a nice conversation with them.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of medical studies. You know, with music and it probably unlocks the mind and the spirit, in the same way that you know people that are suffering from dementia or people that have other cognitive issues like you know, declines in their lives, when they can get into something like the music that brings them back to the 1940s or the 1950s, it just opens up this window that they maybe had closed or didn't realize was closed.
Speaker 3:Well, we've actually done things in memory care, believe it or not, and I'll do like a 30 minute presentation as opposed to an hour, and especially the Renaissance art minute presentation as opposed to an hour, and especially the Renaissance art. I had a lot of people who you know. You normally you would see them and they're not responding. They kind of perk up and you know whether they've been to Italy or not. They talk about their trip to Italy and you know Michelangelo, and it is a really interesting change.
Speaker 3:You know and I think it's really, I think it's a very important service to provide to all of them, you know, not just like an assisted living, independent living, but also memory care as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Now do you use the, the? Do you employ these use of visuals in your high school classes as well? Do you find, in a world of Instagram and YouTube and TikTok, that students might absorb more if there's a visual to go along with the story?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it took me a while to realize you know how to present things effectively, I think as a young teacher.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I know for myself like I had all sorts of bulleted notes and I expect the students to write things down and I mean there definitely is a skill to note taking on that end of it. But as I got kind of to the older grades and I taught the AP World History and I had juniors they would read all the things first before they came into the class. Before the presentation they would already have their notes. And the idea was is that all I had to do was put images up there and talk about it and have them talk about it with me?
Speaker 3:And then they highlighted their notes as they went. So for me it's been like over the last few years that I've only used pictures. I've only used images and it works so much better. The flow of the presentation just works better that way, and it works so much better.
Speaker 2:The flow of the presentation just works better that way. Yeah, that's great. I think I work a lot in the senior care population in terms of businesses that advertise my magazines, and one of the reasons is the demographic of who receives the magazines every month. The average age is 45. Magazines every month the average age is 45. But you know that the I think the misconception is that only older people read magazines or printed material these days, which has actually been proven to be incorrect, and there's been some articles recently in in Forbes and Bloomberg and NPR about the resurgence of print and how younger people and when I say younger, younger I mean people in their 20s and 30s are looking for something to get them away from their devices. You know, there's kind of this digital disruption.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good way to put it, for sure.
Speaker 2:But having something in your hands, that tactile experience, and then being able to, you know, spend more time with it, I think is really important. And you know, the storytelling is, I think, in any type of setting, whether it's educational, entertaining or, as we were talking about marketing and advertising, it's something that's underutilized. But to your point, I mean, obviously you guys have latched on to this. So now, who are your like? Where do you go to do these, like you know, these speaking engagements?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we've been all over New Jersey, pennsylvania, new York going into sometimes they're like the senior citizen communities, like the community centers. I've done the like senior schools up at Clarkstown, a couple of classes there like a series, like almost like a series, right Like five classes for five weeks, and then you know Brightview, delaney, you know all the kind of the names of the different, yeah, assisted living and independent living.
Speaker 3:My first place, though that kind of opened it all up for us was Thrive up in Montvale. They're fantastic, all of them. Actually all the activities directors, I have to be honest, are some of the hardest working people I've ever met. Yeah, they really do a great job in just trying to engage their populations, and so we started at Thrive and then it's just kind of expanded from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thrive, and then it's just kind of expanded from there yeah.
Speaker 1:Thrive is a really nice place.
Speaker 2:I guess you get a lot for your 15 grand a month, or you've been through Allegro.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we just did something in Allegro last week where they do. Sometimes they'll do like a day where it is just dedicated to a country. So last week it was Japan. So I went in and did a history of Japan presentation and it was kind of cool.
Speaker 2:All these topics, you know them by heart, for the most part from all of your years of teaching.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, it's all up here in my brain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so you go back to 8000 BCE. What is BCE? What does the E stand for?
Speaker 3:Yeah, BCE. What does BCE? What does the E stand for? Yeah, so I tend to use just BC and AD in the senior communities because a lot of the times those switchovers are a little bit not well received. But so BCE and CE was the attempt to take religion out of the timeline but to keep that zero point that we usually use. So historians just came up with the before common era and common era and that's what we have. So I tend to stick with the AD and BC, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to pick a topic. I'm going to put you on the spot here, let's see. So one of my most. I've traveled quite a bit, mostly Europe, and well, mostly Europe, a little bit of South America, but not really South America. It was a business trip, so let's just say Europe. And my second time, in Rome, I had a Fedor's book which dates me and it was like a walking guide through the forum, and what I found amazing was, first of all, you could walk on the stones in the paths that the Romans walked on. And I was in Greece once where, back in the day, the Panthenon you could actually walk on it and in it and sit in the I think it was the theater of Dionysus or whatever, like before people started chipping away rocks and ruining everybody?
Speaker 3:Were they close enough? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was, you know, just to be walking the forum and, you know, thinking of what this was like, you know, thousands of years ago. So the history of Italy from Rome to resilience. So when does the Roman Empire start? If you know, recorded history of the Roman Empire that we would know?
Speaker 3:that we would know Well, I mean, the whole collapse of the empire happens around the 500s. So if you're talking about the republic or you're talking about what I'm, talking about going back to when they conquered most of europe and africa yeah, I mean you're dealing with, like the 100s up to the 500s, you know, reaching its height and then eventually collapse. No, no, ad ad ad.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, even before that, like when we're looking at the creation reaching its height and then eventually collapse. No, no, ad, ad, ad.
Speaker 3:okay yeah even before that, like when we're looking at the creation of the Roman Empire, um, you're looking at, like, augustus and then the establishment of that position of the empire, and then from that point forward, then you have, like, the different emperors that will come and so why?
Speaker 2:why were the romans so good at what they did? I mean one of the other things I lived in england for a year abroad and went to bath, bath england yeah, I've been there. It's nice yeah, and I'm like wow, the romans, like they built these health clubs with the, you know, the hot room and the cold room and the sauna, and it was like yeah, how did we know to do this, like when they built aqueducts?
Speaker 2:like I'm always shocked at like who was the first person to realize that you could turn this thing that's growing wheat and create flour, or this thing that looks like, uh, weed and it's rice, like who was the first to do that? I don't know if we can go back that far. Yeah, why were the romans so good at what they did? And and how were they able to build an empire that spanned, you know, throughout europe and parts of north africa?
Speaker 3:and northern africa. Well, actually a sidebar to that, just so you know, the Indus River Valley civilizations of like many years prior to the Romans, created bigger baths, bigger areas of bigger baths, and so it's about, for the Romans, a lot of exchange of ideas. So there's a lot of exchange of ideas in the Silk Road that happened from China all the way to the Romans, which most people don't really realize the connections there. But the Romans also ruled during a time of great peace. I mean, they had state-of-the-art equipment when it came to their own military and they dominated, right. So the people that they took over, those people didn't have weaponry, right?
Speaker 2:But why them? And why didn't those other people have weaponry? That's what I'm trying to get at, Like why was it having to do with the climate there, the natural resources? Like why Italy?
Speaker 3:Locate. I mean, it's also location right, Location location, Like they were the ones that were in charge of trade, and so if you have dominance over trade, right I'm going to sound like a little kid, but why but? Why yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, why Italy? Now? Granted, they were positioned in the Mediterranean, but so was Spain, so was Turkey, or whatever Right.
Speaker 3:But they weren't centralized. They just were not centralized as well as the. Romans were. When the Romans had been centralized into Rome, into that city of Rome, they were kind of sitting in the cells.
Speaker 2:We can go on and on and on. I'll just keep saying why.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, you could why did they fall?
Speaker 2:Greece was such a powerhouse. What happened to Greece?
Speaker 3:Greece expanded too far, and then it lost its leadership. And when alexander, the great you know, died, I mean he was macedonian, but when he died he lost that, that leadership, and then the eastern part of the empire fell, and then the western part of the empire fell and then spain had a great the spanish empire.
Speaker 2:They conquered, they discovered, so to speak, the new world. What happened to them? Was it? Because I'll tell you exactly what?
Speaker 3:happened to them 1588 happened to them 1588, they tried to invade England for a number of different reasons and they were beat.
Speaker 2:The Spanish Armada right.
Speaker 3:The Spanish Armada.
Speaker 2:They couldn't recover from that.
Speaker 3:They couldn't because King Philip had invested so much money and they had lost so many ships during that I think they lost like half their fleet.
Speaker 2:And shipping was the main source of power and income.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:In those days.
Speaker 3:It's really interesting.
Speaker 2:I mean we could go on and you know, you can tell We'll have to do an episode of one of these. And do you know ancient civilization or whatever? But I'm always like I ask you know? Say to my son, like you know, when you see these things, uh, you know who decided, you know who figured out you could turn this into wheat or or that this thing growing, there was corn and you could take corn and create, you know, corn meal and corn bread.
Speaker 3:you know you would like this book. You would like this great book called history of the world in six glasses.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Starts off with the history of beer and then it goes wine and say beer, wine. It has spirits, talks about let's see the spirits the tea, coffee, and then ends with with water, not in that particular order It'll.
Speaker 2:I think answer your why question as to like yeah, yeah, I know wine and beer came from, yeah, yeah, mesopotamia or wherever, but uh, it's interesting. Yeah, well, that's my, that's my knowledge of it. Um, yeah, yeah yeah, no, it's, it's great and I I appreciate you indulging me. But, um, yeah, I, you know my I I prefer history of the world from Mel Brooks, you know, that's my favorite movie A lot of people do for sure.
Speaker 2:It's a great, great movie. So let's just talk a little business. So how would you know who? How would people reach out to you If? If someone's listening to this podcast and you know they work at a senior uh community, yeah, how would they contact you? What's the best way to reach you?
Speaker 3:um. I mean they can reach me at my email address historical speakers for seniors at gmailcom. Um. You can also go onto our website historical speakers for seniorscom. Um and uh, just contact us through there. There's like a little button to press for that.
Speaker 2:Now I'm sorry when you say we, I know there's a Cynthia Afanito and there's a Damon Afanito.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So you guys related.
Speaker 3:He's my husband.
Speaker 2:Okay, no, and he's also a history teacher.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he, he um. He is a history teacher. He's actually a U S history teacher, he's actually a US history teacher. So he fills in all the holes for me because although I've taught US history, my love is really world history, so for him he likes all the US history stuff.
Speaker 2:Is he teaching about the equal but separate, but equal government that we're supposed to have?
Speaker 3:Right now.
Speaker 2:Well, historically, I think, they got rid of that. Yeah, they started that constitution yeah yeah yeah, we joke about it, but I don't know. Um, well, this is great, cynthia. You know I I maybe we can come back and and speak about um a specific topic, or, you know, I have a lot of connections in the industry and we probably know you know a lot of the same people, so yeah, let's stay in touch and just bear with me while we just have Chuck say goodbye and you and I'll be right back.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.