Ashton Applewhite - Ageism Hurts All Humanity, Society, You, and Your Children

Ageism is a form of discrimination and prejudice against older people. It's everywhere, from the workplace to healthcare to entertainment to education. You may not even realize you're being affected by it because it's so ingrained in our culture, but that doesn't mean we should ignore its existence.

It hurts the economy; it's unfair to you and your children. Ageism is killing humanity one person at a time.

END AGEISM! This can be done by raising awareness about ageism and educating people about how they can prevent it from happening in their own lives and society at large. We need more positive images of older adults that show them as active participants in society instead of just older people who sit around all day doing nothing but waiting for death to take them away. If everyone did their part, maybe someday, your children could live in a world where no one has to suffer through this kind of discrimination ever again.

We must all stand up and say, "I will not let my children be discriminated against because of their age."
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Timestamps:

[00:00]
Pre-Intro remarks from Ashton Applewhite

[02:19]
Walk us through your career and how you ended up focusing a lot on aging?

[04:39]
Can you remember the first time you dealt with ageism in your own life and how it made you feel?

[06:05]
Why do you think ageism is such a big problem in our society in America? What is it about this country specifically? And do you think it has something to do with a very individualistic culture?

[11:30]
How can we begin to shift our culture to one that is more respectful and of elders and value them a lot more?

[13:25]
Why do you think people justify discriminating on the basis of age, but discriminating on the basis of gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation is looked at so differently?

[19:06]
"Silver Tsunami" - I just want that word to be gone.

[22:36]
Who do you think has the responsibility to cut down on aging? Is it the younger people since they are the future of our culture, the middle-aged people to set an example for younger generations, or is it the older generations who are being discriminated against?

[32:32]
Do you have, or what do you think of some of the short and long-term solutions slash movements to help us combat aging?
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Bio:

Author and activist Ashton Applewhite is the author of "This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism" (Celadon Books, 2019). In 2016, she joined PBS site Next Avenue’s annual list of 50 Influencers in Aging as their Influencer of the Year. Ashton has been recognized by the New York Times, the New Yorker, National Public Radio, and the American Society on Aging as an expert on ageism. She blogs at This Chair Rocks, has written for Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times, and is the voice of Yo, Is This Ageist? Ashton speaks widely, at venues that have ranged from universities and community centers to the TED mainstage and the United Nations. She is a leading spokesperson for a movement to mobilize against discrimination based on age.

This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism
https://thischairrocks.com/book/

TED talk: Let’s End Ageism
https://www.ted.com/talks/ashton_applewhite_let_s_end_ageism

ThisChairRocks.com
https://thischairrocks.com/

YoIsThisAgeist.com
https://yoisthisageist.com/

Transcript

Ashton: 0:00

Older people bear the brunt of it because we live in a sort of youth worshiping culture. And because youth is held up like thinness to be the ideal. And we need a grassroots movement, which is why I do what I do. I'm in the movement building business to raise awareness of it. Otherwise, if we don't change it between our ears and then take that change out into the culture, nothing will change at a profound level. When people in aging services use alarmist languages or refer to older people as Then or in terms of only their deficits, we reinforce the bias and prejudice and stereotyping. That is why the industry is undervalued. It's why people in aging services are underpaid. It's why tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily of COVID in 2020. We make our own jobs harder and less respected.

Hanh: 1:42

Author, speaker and activist Ashton Applewhite joins me today on Boomer Living. A reluctant writer and humorist, she began blogging about aging and ageism in 2007, and speaking on the subject starting 2012, the same time she started her blog called "Yo, Is This Ageist?" Recognized is an ageism expert by NPR, The New yorker, The New York Times and other esteemed publications. I'm excited to talk to her today about the important challenge in our society. So, Ashton, thank you so much for being with me today on Boomer Living.

Ashton: 2:18

My pleasure.

Hanh: 2:19

So, can you start by walking us through your career and how you ended up focusing a lot on aging?

Ashton: 2:26

My career has been so haphazard that I don't think it is very instructive to anyone, even me. The one, the last time I had a real job, meaning a nine to five, nine to five, five day a week. Job was way back when I was in my twenties and moved to New York and got a job in publishing because I liked to read. That's as much of a career plan as I've ever had, I'm afraid. And then I had a wonderful part-time job for many years as a staff writer at the American Museum of Natural History. And I guess I left out the key point that in between those two jobs, I got divorced and ended up writing a book about my experience and that of other women called Cutting Loose. Why women who end their marriages do so well, which turned me into a writer in my forties. I I am a reluctant writer. I find writing slow painful, but but I do it because yeah, it's a way to get your ideas out in the world. And it seems to me, that sexism and patriarchy and ageism and other entrenched forms of discrimination are important subjects. I started writing about age and aging in my mid fifties, because I realized I was terrified of not terrified, but just like free floatingly anxious about getting older. And I was old enough that it was happening. And, and in a matter of months, if not weeks because I started researching, cause that's what I do. I'm not an academic, but I noodle around on and learn stuff, and realize that everything I thought I knew about getting older was flat out wrong or way off base way too negative or not nuanced enough. And it also became apparent that there were powerful social and economic forces that were propelling those negative messages. And so, I became obsessed with why so few people know these things and that turned into my work to raise awareness of ageism and help people understand that like racism and sexism, it is something we can come together and do something about.

Hanh: 4:39

So, can you remember the first time you dealt with ageism in your own life and how it made you feel?

Ashton: 4:45

Well, I don't have a good answer to this because I am fortunate enough to have been self-employed for a long time and my job at the museum of natural history, which was a fantastically interesting job, but I wasn't, it was never where I was ambitious. It was that rare thing in the work world, a job that is very interesting, but bounded. The museum is, has, is a place where there are a lot of older people. People don't generally retire from doing scientific research and there's a huge education staff which is what I was part of. And so it is an institution that does not force people out because they are old. So, I am fortunate enough not to have encountered it in my own life. And I'm sure I have been dismissed by strangers in ways of which I'm unaware as a privileged white woman and as someone who sort of thick skin and clueless about that stuff. But my awakening to these issues was not because of some personal aha moment. It was through the process of, um, sort of learning and inquiry that I described in my previous response.

Hanh: 5:59

Sure. Sure. So, why do you think ageism is such a big problem in our society in America? What is it about this country specifically? And do you think it has something to do with a very individualistic culture?

Ashton: 6:18

Ageism absolutely has to do with our individualistic culture as does ableism, which is disk discrimination and stereotyping on the basis of ability. And ageism is discrimination and stereotyping on the basis of age. The two overlap a lot of times. Things where we think we're being ageist we might think we're being ageist when what we are actually trepidatious about is the diminishment of cognitive or physical function. And that is actually ableism. It's not about age. Plenty of younger people are disabled. Plenty of older people are not. In a the, there are two things that I think make it UN make ageism and ableism and especially big problem in the United States. One is we are a hyper consumer oriented capitalist culture. And capitalism values people sorts people according to hierarchies of value and a, probably the most basic measure of your value to the capitalist economy is how much money you make and how much stuff you buy. Ironically, actually older consumers have enormous purchasing power. But it is routinely ignored by the advertising agency and marketing agencies. So, that will change. But a lot of older people either leave the workforce or are forced to leave the workforce or can no longer work. And once you stop having a paycheck, you are seen as a less valuable citizen, even though of course. The unpaid labor of millions and millions of people, as in all the unpaid caregiving that women do of the enormous amount of volunteer work that older people do. Most most looking after other older people is done by other older people. For example, we don't value that we literally do not ascribe a value to it. So, America's hyper capitalist nature is not friendly to age and aging. And also the, this ideal of sort of the All-American myth of the, the Marlboro Man. The Cowboy. The Going at Your Own. We see this in this whole discourse about freedom and not wanting anyone to get involved with our lives. We mythologized. Independence, and the idea that asking for help somehow signifies that you are weak or lesser or inferior. And in fact, no one is independent ever. We come into to the world, obviously completely helpless. We usually don't go out that way, but we do need more help. I need help lifting heavy things and I need all kinds of help, but I always did. I needed a bunch of help when I had little children I needed help when I was sick. I needed help in, in my career. I needed help learning how to write. We all need help all the way along and the American stigmatizing of asking for help is enormously damaging to the social fabric and to our connections with each other. We, I was at a conference once where someone said,"Who likes to help people?", and every hand shot up and then they asked who likes to receive help. And only a few hands went up. That's the problem. It's part of the problem. Helping is a two way beautiful, mutually rewarding transaction. It's not as though the person who needs help is doing all the getting, right? So, it's incredibly important that we work together to de-stigmatize asking for help, acknowledge that it is something we need to do and need to do more of from birth to death and take the shame out of it.

Hanh: 9:54

Very true. Very true. In my opinion, one thing that I'm confident of is that we're all going to be a caregiver or a recipient of one. Whether you're caring or you're asking for help, to me, it's a blessing if you got your loved ones, be able to provide you care. But I understand not all of that, not all of that is accepted as the norm. I get that. And I think that's why we're having this conversations to bring that awareness is that you're going to be a caregiver or a recipient of one. And along the way, embrace it. It is a blessing. It is a gift. And it's certainly not something to be ashamed about.

Ashton: 10:29

I think what caregiving is an incredibly important, beautiful, mutually rewarding part of being human. What makes it a burden is going it alone without support. So, I am very excited to see on the new federal agenda, all kinds of support for families with little kids. We also need that. We need that support to be non-ageist, to be not dependent on the age of the person who needs the help. Interestingly, a trend that I have observed served is to change the word caregiver just to carer which is a little more neutral. It doesn't imply that one person is doing all the giving and the other person, all the receiving.

Hanh: 11:10

Yeah. So, now I often think about how many Eastern cultures have so much respect for their elders and see them as matriarchs or patriarchs. They are important members of the family. Whereas many Western countries may even see elders as expendable since they're already lived their life. So, now how can we begin to shift our culture to one that is more respectful and of elders and value them a lot more?

Ashton: 11:39

We need a grassroots movement, like the women's movement to raise awareness of this bias and discrimination starting between our own ears and carrying it out into the world. Think where we would be. Think what the women's movement has done globally to raise the voice and visibility of women around the world and educate people about the structural barriers, like for example, the glass ceiling that women, professional women face in the workplace. They get to a certain distance, which is typically in their early thirties and then are unable to get promoted because of entrenched sexism and patriarchy in the, in the workforces. So, we need a movement like that to raise awareness of the obstacles that mean both young people and older people face in the workplace in healthcare. It's different domain to domain. I want to make the point that ageism is any judgment on the basis of age and young people do experience a lot of it also."You're too young. What could you possibly know at your age?" is another example of it. But older people bear the brunt of it because we live in a sort of youth worshiping culture. And because youth is held up like whiteness, like thinness to be the ideal. And we need a grassroots movement, which is why I do what I do. I'm in the movement building business to raise awareness of it. Otherwise, if we don't change it between our ears and then take that change out into the culture, nothing will change at a profound level.

Hanh: 13:18

Absolutely, yep. Now, why do you think people justify discriminating on the basis of age, but discriminating on the basis of gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation is looked at so differently?

Ashton: 13:38

I just think we're not aware enough yet. I think that ageism is the last prejudice to rise to general public awareness. Perhaps prompted by the fact that, my generation, the post-war baby, boom, it's finally dawning on us that just like everyone else in human history, no matter how exceptional we happen to think we are. And no matter how much kale we drank or, sit ups, we do, we are going to get old.

Hanh: 14:07

Very good point. So, we know ageism is a form of discrimination based on age. It manifests itself in stereotypes or beliefs about older people as being weak, fragile, dependent, incompetent, and generally inferior to younger generation. So now, I think all too often, we forget that seniors are just like you and I. They have hopes and dreams for their future. Enjoy spending time with friends and family. And they love to travel and experience new experiences. Now, unfortunately, many senior care communities don't reflect I guess this reality. Ironically, I think in many ways societies' senior living industry is very ageist would you agree with that?

Ashton: 14:50

I would point out that, of course, older people are, are not "They". They are us, at least for me. I definitely have way more road behind me than ahead. So, I think it's one thing I try and do that I think is important if for people of whom that's true is to try not to think of older people as them. But to acknowledge that they are us future, perhaps future us. But because all prejudice relies on othering seeing a group of people as other than ourselves. And the weird thing about ageism is that other is our own future older selves. So, I think, and it does entertain me, how often I can, in a group or at a meeting of people talking about of older people in aging services who are still talking about older people as them as though they were some other distinct population to which we do not belong. Your point about the diversity of older people is really well taken. Off course, I think most older people would agree that they may have already lived a lot, but they are still very much alive and still living their lives. If there was one point about aging that I wish I could put in the head of everyone in the world, it would really advance my cause. It is that the longer we live, the more different from one another, we become. Every newborn is unique, but 17 year olds have way more in common developmentally, cognitively, socially, physically than 37 year olds who are way more alike than 57 year olds, and so on. So, of course, the senior living industry has an enormous and fascinating and wonderful challenge. How do they design environments and supports and programs, and the physical plan? How do they design communities that can address this enormous range of interest and aptitude? Some older people want to be right near a kindergarten and hang out with kids. Other older people are like, "I don't like kids. I don't want them anywhere near me." So, the senior living industry is doing a lot of really valuable self-examination, it seems to me in the wake of the COVID disaster and the hideous mortality rates of people in nursing homes, which I would like to point out also hugely affected people with disabilities who come in all ages. People don't move, to nurse, and of course nursing homes are only a piece of senior living. But people don't move to nursing homes because they're old, they moved there because they're disabled. So, I think it's important to realize that overlap. And in response to your comment about people in the senior living industry being ageist, I am sorry to say I heartily agree. It was a total shock to me when I embarked on this line of work. And I thought, "Oh, AARP and all those people are going to be so happy to hear what I have to say and not so much.", partly because in fairness, I didn't have any credentials. I was just, thinking out loud and it took me a while to get established. But I think there's a couple of reasons. One is that people in the senior living industry do the really important work and undervalued work and underpaid work of supporting people at the most frail and debilitated end of the spectrum. And a lot of them develop their identities and their funding is invested in this deficit model of old age as only one of physical and cognitive decline, which is a legitimate part of the picture. It's important not to brush that under the rug, but there's a lot more to getting older than that. If you were dealing with that population then, and that's how you get funded, that's how you design your facility, then you are invested in this negative view. And last but not least, I think it's really hard to reconcile that view of late life with what you hope lies ahead for you. I think that's a tough one and the job of a lifetime.

Hanh: 19:00

Oh, absolutely. I echo everything that you're saying, but I want to add one more thing. In the industry, I've heard the word used "Silver Tsunami." And I hear that word used outside the industry as well. And first of all, my personal take is that we need to get rid of that word."Silver Tsunami" is suggesting that aging is a tsunami. It's a disaster. There's nothing embracing, loving kind and wisdom, that comes with a tsunami. So, I'm, I just want that word to be gone.

Ashton: 19:32

Yeah. I want your listeners should know that all my work is available on my website, which is ThisChairRocks.com. And if you go there, there's a bar on the left click on blog. I have been thinking out loud about all of this for 15 years, it is searchable by topic. If you search for silvers, if you search for tsunami, you will see several things about that terminology that I have written. I'm with you, Hanh. I can't bear it. I think because it is alarmist. It is like calling it's like calling the wave of Chinese immigrants at the turn of the last century, previous century the yellow peril. It, the alarmist rhetoric and justifies, abandoning and maltreating any population. The, the longevity, boom is not a tsunami, which conjures up a frankly, terrifying vision of this, massive older people poised swamp the shores, and suck all the good stuff out to sea.

Hanh: 20:29

Absolutely. Uhh.

Ashton: 20:30

It is not a tsunami. It is the best studied demographic phenomenon in history, we have known. I'm 68 years old dead center in the Baby Boom. We've known since 1946 is when the Baby Boom technically begins that there were a lots of babies. And we've known that except for the babies who don't make it into old age, there are going to be lots of older people. So, the question is, why are we so unprepared? And that is because we live in an ageist and capitalist, and racist and sexist misogynist culture.

Hanh: 21:07

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. I just wanted to add that because that's like my biggest pet peeve and I think it's even worse when you see folks who are in the industry using those words.

Ashton: 21:16

It is really bad. I'm with ya.

Hanh: 21:17

Yeah. Anyhow. Yeah. All right, So, ageist.

Ashton: 21:21

No. Anyhow, state stay pissed. It's good.

Hanh: 21:24

Yeah.

Ashton: 21:25

You know, We need, I think we need to be, we, I think we do need to feel strongly about these things.

Hanh: 21:30

It is so insulting and Bob Kramer and I just talked last week. And we were just both very passionate how we were so pissed when we hear people saying that it's so wrong in, in all levels. So, I got a lot of questions.

Ashton: 21:43

When people in aging services use alarmist languages or refer to older people as"Then", or in terms of only their deficits, we reinforce the bias and prejudice and stereotyping. That is why the industry is undervalued. It's why people in aging services are underpaid. It's why tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily of COVID in 2020. We make our own jobs harder and less respected.

Hanh: 22:14

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for your passion and thank you for your work. I appreciate it tremendously.

Ashton: 22:21

You're welcome.

Hanh: 22:23

So, ageism is a serious issue that affects millions of people around the world. And we're not talking about older adults here. We're also. Including children and younger adults who are being affected by ageist attitudes. So, who do you think has the responsibility to cut down on aging? Is it the younger people since they are the future of our culture, the middle aged people to set an example for younger generations, or is it the older generations who are being discriminated against?

Ashton: 22:54

Everyone is experiencing discrimination or the consequences of discrimination. If your parents or grandparents are forced out of the labor the market, for example, who's going to support them? All these conditions are intertwined. It is incumbent on every single one of us, just because not only because we ourselves are encounter ageism. It is the only prejudice that every single human being encounters starting in childhood when children are not listened to or respected or education programs are not funded, and so on. So, just like it is incumbent on every single one of us to confront racism. And to support gender equality. And to stand up for gay rights, and trans rights, and all of this. Because all these forms of prejudice compound and reinforce each other. And we can't, we can't get rid of one of them without addressing them all. A good example, I'll go back to the women's movement, which has done a lot for privileged white women. But the history of the women's movement is rooted in racism. The early women who worked to get the vote did not want to ally with men, black men let alone women of color. They felt it would slow down their own progress towards the vote to ally with black women. It was the, and then deeply classist. It was, it is, middle-class white women who defeated the equal rights amendment in the middle of the, in the 1970s. And it was middle-class white women who voted in higher numbers than white middle-class white women voters who voted for a racist misogynist for president. We are not going to, and we need to stand up for the, just part of being anti-racist is standing up against anti-Asian hate crimes. Obviously, all these things are intertwined. So, you can make an argument on the basis of enlightened self-interest. It's extra important, if you're Asian to support Asians. It's extra important, if you're a woman to support equal rights for women. But we don't, it's foolish to weigh any form of oppression against the other, because they each intersect in each of our lives in unique ways. Also because of the way they combine and support each other. So, we are not going to end. Obviously it's an even bigger task to rid the world of all forms of bias than it is to rid the world of age bias. But it is incumbent on each one of us to act against it, to educate ourselves first and foremost, and then to act against any and all of them in whatever way we feel that we are able to. And if that seems like an awfully steep mountain to climb, the the counterpart of the fact that all these oppressions reinforce each other is that activism is intersectional too. If you show up at a Black Lives Matter rally, because you want to undo the legacy of slavery in this country and achieve equal rights for black people, you are being anti-ageist. Because a better world in which to be a person of color is also a better world in which to belong to any marginalized group. So, it is the opposite of zero sum. If you get out there and support, free decent public education for every kid in America, you are making your future more secure as an older person, because you want those younger people to be able to, look after you, drive you places, fix your air conditioning, whatever it happens to be when they reach adulthood. It's all of our wellbeing is profoundly intertwined. We're back to interdependence.

Hanh: 26:39

Yeah. It's humanity in my mind. I asked those questions and I broke it down to, age demographic, although in my opinion, is, it's humanity. And I'm with you when people talk about even particularly folks in the industry, talking the word, "They", guess what? This is one thing we all are doing. We're heading in the same direction. We're all heading in the same direction and we are all elderly in the making."They" are you and I. So, I whole heartedly.

Ashton: 27:09

I don't love, I don't love the word "Elderly". And I'm curious because I don't hear older people typically using it to describe themselves. What's your experience with it?

Hanh: 27:22

My, my experience is really from my siblings. I'm in my mid fifties and my siblings go all the way to low seventies. I'm the youngest of 10. So our, wide gamma of older siblings who still see me as the young bratt that I was when I was five. That's the way, how things go when you're the youngest of 10. So, anyways, so how did they receive the word elderly? And I cannot say whether they like or dislike. I think right now what's heavy for them. It's more of the health related issues. Then the terminology of the elderly or older adults. They got some heavy things going on with health issues.

Ashton: 28:01

Right. I think there's a big difference between elderly and older adult. The terms that I use, which I invented are"Olders" and "Youngers", which work very well. The problem, I think with "Elderly", first of all, language is of course really weighted. It can feel like a minefield out there. And a good rule of thumb is to call people what they call themselves. So, I don't see many people calling themselves "Elderly" because of its connotation, frailty and dability. And the other thing I don't love about it just so you know, is the way it's often proceeded by the article "The Elderly", which suggests that at a certain point, yet you end up in this elderly pile. You wake up one morning and everything's gone to hell and you're elderly, or you're old. And there, and older people, as we already discussed, do not belong to a homogenous group. We are more diverse. We grow more different from each other over time. So, I think I think a reason, a lot of older people acted recklessly in the early days of COVID was because a lot of the safety measures were being prescribed for "The Elderly." And they're like, I'm not elderly. Elderly means "I am, incontinent in a residential carer, unable to remember my name.", and there's nothing wrong with being any of those things. Those things are stigmatized, right? Because they're stigmatized, we don't want to go there. And I am, I have to say, I readily identify as older. Sometimes I call myself "Old". I don't think of myself as elderly. So, I think using "Elderly" makes people jump to the other side of some imagined divide, which of course is not real, and makes people even more reluctant to join us on the "Us" side of older people, rather than the "Them" side of "It's never going to happen to me."

Hanh: 29:55

Very true. 55, plus I got to tell you, there are so many cohorts within the 55 plus. So, I hear what you're saying, right? 55 to 60, 60 to 65. So, to call that.

Ashton: 30:09

Even 80, the older, the age group, the less the age says about a person.

Hanh: 30:14

Absolutely.

Ashton: 30:15

That's medical fact.

Hanh: 30:16

Yeah. Our society, like I said. I wanted to ask you the question how the Western culture and Eastern culture views the elderly or older adults or seniors. And

Ashton: 30:26

There's older people.

Hanh: 30:27

Yeah. It's it's really unfortunate I think. And here's the other thing too, when I just started talking about this, older adults, because that's what my scope is. And that's what the driving force of the name is of the podcasts. It's everything under the umbrella of older adults. And I got to tell you, often people would say "This isn't me." What makes you think that is it just for you, it's really parents and grandparents. And guess what, when we say older adults and aging and healthy aging and so forth, I got to tell you it's wellness is longevity. So.

Ashton: 31:04

It's also the scary stuff.

Hanh: 31:06

Yeah, it is.

Ashton: 31:07

It's all and we, and we can't pretend that's not there. We can't airbrush this or do one of my many beefs with AARP is that they don't represent people in wheelchairs and using walkers in their magazines, which is there's tons of people who use mobility devices, who are enjoying their lives and getting all kinds of interesting places. And when we leave that out of the picture, we're discriminating, we're reinforcing stigma of age and ableism. And so, we're doing it. And we're just pushing the scary stuff that we know could be out there for us. May, it might not be. But if we pretend that it's not, and keep our heads in the sand we distance ourselves from the people who do who, who are asking for help needing help which we all that is for sure. The one inevitable thing about getting older is that some part of your body is going to fall apart. Cognitive decline is not inevitable, but loss of physical strength to pick something really simple is. So, we need to represent, oldness in all, its beautiful diversity and not stigmatize it and not make the scary stuff more scary by pretending it's not there and brushing it under the rug because putting people in the closet never works out well.

Hanh: 32:28

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly, very evident during COVID. I know you mentioned movement earlier. Do you have, or what do you think of some of the short and long-term solutions slash movements to help us combat aging?

Ashton: 32:42

I think of movement as a broad single entity with enormous numbers of individual components. If people in aging services stopped talking about older people as "Them", and start talking about them as "We", that is a language of solidarity and that is part of movement building, they will be helping to build this movement. If you and I can get people to quit talking about longevity as a Silver Tsunami, we will be movement building.

Hanh: 33:12

We should just get rid of that word altogether. Oh my gosh.

Ashton: 33:15

Take take"Elderly" with it, please. Um, I want people to know about something. I created with two colleagues called The Old School Clearing House, which is a website with hundreds of free vetted anti ageism resources from videos and books. Everything's free, except the books. To to consciousness, raising guides, to papers, to it's searchable by topic. There's a lot of stuff for people on aging services, tons of stuff for the general public. And I want people to know that a movement, a global movement to end ageism is underway. And the latest, when we started Old School three and a half years ago, there was no campaign section. It's now one of our fastest growing sections. These are not campaigns about how to live forever or how to not get arthritis. They are campaigns to combat, so to raise social and political awareness of discrimination and what to do about it and the latest campaign. To join us is the World Health Organization, which launched a it's called the Global Campaign to Combat Ageism, in March, 2021, because they realized that the biggest obstacle to not just longer lives but healthy lives. Excuse me, terrible catch. Sorry, let me start that again. I don't know where that came from. Okay. The latest campaign to join the Old School Clearing House is the World Health Organization's global Campaign to Combat Ageism. Because the World Health Organization acknowledges that the biggest obstacle, not just to longevity, but to enjoying our later years in good health is discrimination, ageism starting between our ears. And they want us to think about how we think feel and act about age and aging. And you can find the World Health Organization campaign and dozens of others on the old school and the ages of clearing a house. The website is OldSchool.info.

Hanh: 35:18

Great. Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate your wisdom and your dedication. I appreciate this conversation.

Ashton: 35:26

You are so welcome. Sorry, my voice gave out at the end of it.

Hanh: 35:28

No. That's all right. I hope you're okay. You want to have to take a pause?

Ashton: 35:32

No, I just got one of those weird voice catchy things.

Hanh: 35:35

Oh, that's okay.

Ashton: 35:35

It's been a pleasure, Hanh. Thank you so much for the chance to meet you and talk to you.

Hanh: 35:39

Absolutely. You have a great day.

Ashton: 35:41

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Hanh: 35:42

Okay. Bye-bye.