EPISODE 314

More of us will be living to 100 and beyond, says Bill Kole, author of “The Big 100.” But do we want to? And how will we pay the bills for all those extra decades? What is the impact of “super aging” on Social Security?  Bill paints a picture of the coming centenarian boom and all of its implications – good & bad – in this lively and surprisingly fun episode! After all, where else can you hear a 120-year old woman doing hip-hop? Bill’s book, “The Big 100: The New World of Super Aging,” is available at billkolebooks.com and through fine booksellers everywhere!

TRANSCRIPT:

ANNOUNCER: It’s You Earned This, the Social Security and Medicare podcast, brought to you by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. And now, your host, Walter Gottlieb. 

WALTER: There has been so much talk about longevity these days, right? We all hear about how today’s generation will live to 150. And we’ve heard that people are collecting Social Security when they’re 300…. No, wait! That has nothing to do with this. 

But there is a longevity boom going on, apparently. And that is what our guest, William J. Cole, writes about in his new book, The Big 100. He says,” You might live to 100, whether you like it or not!” I love that. 

Bill is going to join us today from Paris, France, to talk about the longevity boom and everything that it implies, including further strain on Social Security and Medicare, folks. So, we present to you, William J. Cole. 

Good afternoon, Bill, or should I say bonsoir, because it’s evening there in Paris. 

BILL: It is evening and bonsoir to you, too, Walter. 

WALTER: Merci beaucoup, Señor. Wait, that isn’t right… anyway, your permanent residence is in Rhode Island. So, what’s going on there? This might be the first time I’ve heard of someone splitting their time between Warwick and Paris. 

BILL: Well, look, everyone knows that Warwick, Rhode Island, is the Paris of New England. But as it happens, my partner, based here in Paris, has a lovely flat about half a mile from the Eiffel Tower. And so, I try to spend as much time here as I can. 

WALTER: And it was in Paris, I don’t remember how long ago, that you met the oldest living person that we know of. Her name was Calment, I guess? 

BILL: Jeanne Calment. She was, and still is, the oldest person who ever lived whose age could be authenticated by records. She lived to 122 years and 164 days and was a fascinating individual. In fact, she really kind of inspired this investigation that culminated in the writing of g 100. 

WALTER: And of course, I was going to ask you how you got into all this. Is Jeanne Calment one of those people who was like, “Yeah, I smoke Turkish cigarettes and have a bottle of Jack every day?” Or was she living clean? What was her secret? 

BILL: A little of both. She did have a glass of port wine every day before or with meals. And then for a long time, until her doctor told her to knock it off, she had two lightly puffed cigarettes every day. That she did deep into her 100s, as you do. 

WALTER: Of course!

BILL: But she didn’t live in the fast lane, nor was she a crunchy, vitamin-taking, hiking, canoeing person. She was kind of… middle of the road. She was blessed with some serious genes. 

WALTER: So how old was she when you met her? 

BILL: When I first encountered her, she was 120. And she was releasing a rap CD, which is a musical genre that was actually 100 years younger than she was. And the name of the CD was “Time’s Mistress.” It’s fantastic. 

WALTER: Okay… we’ve got to find that. I’m making a note to Shahab, our digital media manager and our engineer on this podcast. We’ve got to find Jeanne Calment’s rap and somehow insert it into this episode. 

SHAHAB: As a matter of fact, I have that queued up right now. 

WALTER: Well, thank you, Shahab. That was very fast. Well, let’s roll it. 

SHAHAB: And rolling. 

FRENCH DUNGEON NARRATOR: For the first time, you are going to listen to the voice of Mrs. Jeanne Calment. 

JEANNE: *rapping* Bonjour. Je m’appelle Jeanne Calment. 

FRENCH DUNGEON NARRATOR: My name is Jeanne Calment. 

JEANNE: Je suis… N Arles. 

FRENCH DUNGEON NARRATOR: I was born in Arles on February the 21st in 1875. 

WALTER: Well, that certainly was interesting. Thank you, Shahab. I think Drake has nothing to worry about. 

BILL: It’s not like she’s, you know, really throwing down like Eminem, but, you know, anyway. 

WALTER: Don’t tell me her handle was like Old MC or something. Holy cow. That was a great way to start off the podcast. Your grandmother lived to almost 104. Tell us about her, and is she part of what got you interested in this? 

BILL: Yes, absolutely. So, I always tell people that two women really inspired the writing of The Big 100. The first is Jeanne Calment. The second is my grandmother, who was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1899 and died in 2003, just shy of her 104th birthday, after a life that spanned parts of three centuries. And she was a larger-than-life figure in our family. She played piano for silent movies! And, when you have somebody like that in your family, it just changes you. And I was fascinated by her growing up, and it really kind of piqued my curiosity… how is it that more of us are actually reaching these ages? 

WALTER: You write that living past 100 has become more common, and you say that in the next 25 years, eight times as many people will live to 100 or past 100, and that half of all five-year-olds who are alive today will live to see their 100th birthday. So, Bill, why is this happening, and does this really affect our generation? 

BILL: This phenomenon is touching all generations. So, two big things are happening here. The first is just demographics. The boomers, our generation, are a large generation. There’s a good 75 million of us, and the oldest of us are in our late 70s now. And so, in the next two and a half decades, the oldest and fittest of us will age into triple digits. And because there’s just so many of us boomers, that alone will drive the numbers of people who are hitting 100, substantially. And you mentioned eight times more centenarians expected by 2050. 

Basically, they’re projecting that there will be 3.7 million 100-year-olds by then, which is equivalent to the current population of Los Angeles. You can imagine the whole city of LA, but they’re all 100. 

WALTER: Well, Bill, it sounds to me like if LA is going to be overrun with seniors, Earth Cafe should offer a major seniors discount.

BILL and WALTER: *laughing*

WALTER: Bill, could you do me a favor and just read aloud for us the passage that begins at the top of page 52 of your book that starts with, “like it or not.” 

BILL: Sure. 

Like it or not, living to 100 and beyond isn’t merely within our grasp —demographically and genetically speaking, it’s a fate that awaits many of us. 

Some of us will attain extreme ages we never asked for, let alone wanted. Others, desperate for more time, will leverage our life savings and jump the queue for every possible advantage. We are in for a remarkable run, but some troubling thoughts may take shape. Who’s going to take care of us when we’re all 100? Where will we come up with the cash to pay a century’s worth of bills? How will our exceptionally longer lives play out for each of us? 

WALTER: Thank you for reading that, Bill. And I want to get into some of the causes behind this longevity boom. But as we like to point out here at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, not everyone is living longer. And in this country, communities of color certainly do not have the same life expectancy as their white counterparts. 

Is it likely that this boom in super aging will leave those communities behind? And doesn’t that just exacerbate the inequality in our society? 

BILL: It absolutely does. In fact, I devote an entire chapter to that phenomenon because, look, the ranks of centenarians, and that’s what we call people who are 100 plus, is a very white space. Somewhere between 8 and 9 out of every 10 centenarians are White. And White Americans, on average, live almost six years longer than Black and Brown Americans. And a lot of this traces to diet, to exercise, to economic security, all of that, right? So, it speaks to inequity and inequality and, frankly, systemic racism in our society. 

It actually plays out in how long each of us gets to live, depending on the color of our skin. And that feels to me like a gap that we desperately need to close. 

WALTER: And you definitely go into that in the book, and I’m glad that you included that aspect. And it’s something that we mention a lot, as conservatives call to raise the eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare. As if everybody is going to be part of this longevity boom. 

Anyway, everyone is really going to want to know, is this purely genetics that is helping some people live longer? Or how much does lifestyle and environment come into play? In other words, is there something we can actively do to live past 100 if we want to? 

BILL: So about 75% of what gets us to 90, according to the latest science, are behaviors. So, diet, exercise… sun exposure! That is something a lot of us don’t think about. This all plays a real key role in longevity. 

I always tell people, you can’t live to 100 unless you’ve made it to 90. And actually, 75% of what gets you to 90 is in your control, and 25% is genetics. And then from 90 to 100, that script flips. 

WALTER: Fascinating. 

BILL: And genetics takes an increasingly important role, and the behavior is less so. And then, of course, when you get to the Jeanne Calments of the world, these people are unicorns, and they are their genetic masterpieces, frankly. 

WALTER: You mean, so we can’t all expect to be a Jeanne Calment even if we get in our 30 minutes of cardio every day? 

BILL: I wouldn’t count on it. *Laughs* I wouldn’t count on it. 

WALTER: Okay, well, there goes me living into the 2080s. Anyway, you cite some data in the book that I thought was fascinating about whether people really want to live that long. 

There’s been a lot of discussion lately around the idea of lifespan versus health span. Some folks say they don’t want to live into triple digits unless they know they’re going to be healthy and able to enjoy it. 

BILL: Well, look, I mean, we all age differently, right? All of us can think of someone who we’ve met who is 50 and presents like an 80 or 90-year-old person, right, with aches and pains and complaints. And then we’ve met those extraordinary other people who are 90, and are spry and active, and playing pickleball and tennis, and doing all kinds of things, and they’re cognitively intact. We are all on a different aging journey. I feel it myself. 

I don’t want to live to 100 if I can’t have a conversation with my grandkids or great-grandkids and know where I am and who I am. And I want to be able to be somewhat mobile as well. 

WALGER: Didn’t you cite some data in the book, some survey data, where people, a certain percentage of people actually said: “No, I don’t want to live that long if I’m not going to be able to enjoy it or if I’m going to have dementia or serious health problem.” 

BILL: Yeah, surveys show about three in four people feel that way, understandably. I did go into a little detail in the book on the hopeful side that might give folks optimism about this future of super aging. And that is that cognitive impairment and dementia are not inevitable as we age. Sadly, a lot of people do suffer these things and they are devastating, but it’s not inevitable. There was a study done in the Netherlands a few years ago where scientists looked at 307 Dutch centenarians who were living independently. 

The study showed that none of these 307 people had any signs of significant cognitive decline. And then when they died as a condition of being in the study, their brains were examined. And here’s where it gets kind of wild. Most of these folks had none of the plaques and tangles that are the telltale signs of Alzheimer’s disease. And some of their brains that were marred with plaques and tangles had no symptoms of Alzheimer’s. So, this is interesting on two fronts. One, it shows that this kind of fate is not inevitable. 

But also, what can we learn from what happened in their brains that caused them actually to, it seems, develop Alzheimer’s but not have the symptoms? You can bet the pharmaceutical industry, they’re tripping over themselves trying to unlock that secret. 

WALTER: Earlier this season, we had somebody from the Alzheimer’s Association, Dr. Heather Snyder, who was talking about the same kind of thing you are, and that there are now new preventative treatment and diagnostic options on the horizon for Alzheimer’s. So, maybe that will help people sense that, “oh, my God, I’m inevitably going to get Dementia or Alzheimer’s.” 

So, listeners, check that episode out. It was earlier in Season 3 with Dr. Heather Snyder from the Alzheimer’s Association. 

Bill, you question in the book whether society is ready to cope with more people living past 100. You were talking about whether our retirement and health security system in particular can withstand the strain. And we’re particularly interested in that question, being that we advocate for Social Security and Medicare. 

BILL: And it’s a really important question to ask. Look, we’ve known for decades that our Social Security and Medicare systems are in trouble, and that we’re going to need to intervene and change things in order to sustain the model.

It’s infuriating to me. I just had my 65th birthday, my Medicare birthday. So, I feel this personally. But why are we waiting and waiting? Are we gonna wait till the last minute to fix this? 

You know, good policy usually comes when it’s well-considered. But here’s a couple of things just to throw at you a few statistics, just to show what we’re dealing with: In 2034, which is just eight years from now, older adults, those of us age 65 and up, will outnumber children age 17 and younger for the first time in US history. 

WALTER: Incredible. 

BILL: And then a year after that, in 2035, the number of us who are 85 plus will double to nearly 12 million. And between now and 2040, America’s senior population is projected to swell by 44%, while the 18 to 64 population grows by just 6%. So, you see the strain on the system. We need to act now to preserve this system. And while we’re at it, can we please stop calling it an “entitlement, “or an entitlement in the Republican meaning of the term? In other words, a welfare type of handout. 

Of course, people are entitled to Social Security because they paid their good money into the system. Through our wages, we’ve contributed to our own Social Security. 

WALTER: We call it an “earned benefit” for the very reason that you’re saying not to call it an entitlement. 

BILL: Perfect. 

WALTER: It is an earned benefit that everyone worked and paid into, and rightly expects to collect, when they either become retired,or disabled, or upon the death of a family breadwinner, or a parent who’s a breadwinner when you’re a minor child. 

And thank you, because you’re on the same page as us. We at the National Committee favor revenue-side solutions to restore the system to financial health, meaning the wealthy should contribute more. But anyway, that’s another discussion that we’ve had on this podcast many times. 

On the other hand, conservatives say we must raise the retirement age to help out Social Security because people are living longer. But just because some people are living longer or even to 100, does that mean they can work into their 70s and 80s? Especially if they were in physically demanding jobs? And where are all these jobs for septa and octogenarians coming from? 

BILL: Exactly, right? So, I mean, look, a couple of things here. First of all, if we’re going to live to 100… and there is a profound chance that more of us will do so than ever before, stopping work at age 65 is not going to make a whole lot of sense, right? I mean, and then to go for another 35 years without working…without any income. So, in some way, independent of whatever we decide that the retirement age is for Social Security and Medicare purposes, we’ve got to look at how we will pay a century’s worth of bills.  

And it doesn’t make sense to think that we’re going to be able to stop at 65 and coast for three and a half decades — or more if we live deeper into our 100s. And this is a real concern, Walter, because if you’re working a white-collar job, a sedentary job in an air-conditioned setting, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Although even that sounds like a drag to me… if I’m 70, right? But what if you’re in construction? What if you’re in agriculture? What if you’re a landscaper, or any number of jobs? You can’t do those jobs in your 70s and 80s. 

So, this is a real problem. I think, indeed, we are aging as never before societally. We’re going to have to come up with ways to retrain people so that they can do things and work in a different way. So, if you’re hearing, listener, alarm bells on this podcast, that’s why you should be hearing alarm bells. 

WALTER: I’m going to flip the script on you a little bit. Let’s say that if AI does continue to ascend during the next few decades, and it displaces workers of all ages, we’re going to be talking about needing some sort of universal basic income, probably, or nobody’s going to have any money to spend. These corporations won’t be able to profit. 

Anyway, Bill, you note in the book that ageism is on the rise, which is kind of an unfortunate coincidence, given that many people are living longer. 

And we did an episode about ageism in season one with Dr. S. Jay. Olshansky, who you happen to quote in the book. Most of us by our age have experienced ageism in some way, but how do we measure ageism? You say it is on the rise; it is with us. What’s the metric for that?

BILL: Well, I mean, it’s hard to measure. It is somewhat anecdotal, but AARP, for example, does regular surveys of Americans asking them, “have you experienced ageism and age discrimination?” And three in four respond with an emphatic, “yes, I have.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) says that healthcare rationing on the basis of age is widespread. The WHO also says that ageism itself actually takes years off of our lifespan because it brings stress — and toxic stress is the enemy of longevity. So that alone actually impedes us from a long and healthy life… it’s a real problem. 

WALTER: Does the increase in ageism intersect in any way with what you’re talking about in the book, the longevity boom? And is it possible that as older people become a bigger chunk of society, that we will have more power in society? 

BILL: Yes, and no. First of all, we still live in a very youth-oriented society, a very youth-centric society. We value youth over old age. We just do. Other cultures, not so much, right? In Japan, they have a much better understanding and respect for elders, but we don’t have that in North America. 

So yeah, we’re growing older and grayer by every metric available in a society that still values youth over elders. And that’s going to create some tension. On the other hand, our numbers are growing. So theoretically, we should have more power, but let’s face it, we already have a gerontocracy. We have the oldest Congress we’ve ever had and so forth. So, I think there’s impatience among younger generations, “give us our turn at the table. There’s a lot to sort out here.”

WALTER: *Sassy voice* “Well, oh my God, Bill, what you just said is so 6’7″, according to Gen Z. So 6’7″.” 

BILL: I’ve been meaning to throw that at my grandsons just to see if I could get a rise out of them. 

WALTER: Oh, you’ll get a rise. They’ll be like, “stop, stop, stop right now.”

BILL: Nobody knows what that means, though. Even they don’t know what it means. 

WALTER: They don’t know what it means either. Shahab, do you know what it means? Thumbs up, thumbs down… Shahab’s a millennial and he’s given a thumbs down. He doesn’t know what it means.

So, Bill, experts on aging—including a lot of the ones that have been guests on this podcast—say the key to aging well is to find meaning and purpose as we get older. So just personally, what does that concept of having meaning and purpose mean to you as we age? 

BILL: I think it’s important to stay productive. You’ll hear people say, “I am not what I do.” 

And I like that concept… but for me, that’s only an elusive concept. I very much am what I do. I’m a journalist and an author. That’s my identity. It’s what makes me get up in the morning. I’m still creating, contributing, and writing. And I think that’s going to be part of my own personal success in my aging journey — that I have purpose, that I have optimism and a reason to soldier on. That’s key. 

WALTER: I think that’s a great note to end on. I have to say, Bill, and no offense to any of our other guests, but this has been one of my favorite interviews of the season so far. 

BILL: Well, have me back on. We could go on for hours. 

WALTER: Yeah, I think we shall. I think we shall. And I’ll be telling everybody how to get the book in a second. But I really want to thank you, Bill, for joining us while nighttime in Paris. When are you coming back to the States? 

WALTER: The end of February… so you’re going to miss most of winter in Rhode Island?

BILL: Yeah, that’s the idea. 

WALTER: That’s the idea. 

BILL: OK. Thank you for having me on. And may you live a hundred years. 

WALTER: Get me a croissant and a cafe Americano. And thank you so much, Bill. 

BILL: Thank you. I appreciate it. All the best. Happy holidays. 

WALTER: And you can get a hold of Bill’s book, The Big 100: The New World of Super Aging, published by Diversion Books at fine bookstores everywhere or at BillKoleBooks.com. So that’s B-I-L-L-K-O-L-E books dot com.

And please visit our website, NCPSSM.org for information on everything we do here at the National Committee. You can also join us and subscribe to our free newsletter, our free award-winning blog, and all sorts of good stuff. If you like this podcast, please follow and review us on your favorite podcasting platform. 

WALTER: Our engineer is Shahab Shokhouhi, who says he doesn’t know what the term 6-7 means, and frankly, neither do I. 

And our editor, Steve Lack, who may or may not know. I’m Walter Gottlieb saying: “You Earned This!”