Why Longer lives Are Changing Work, Business and Society, with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Foreign. Welcome to Beyond Longevity, the podcast that explores not just how we age, but how we can build a longer, healthier future for ourselves.

We're getting very used to talking about longer lives, but we're much less used to asking what those longer lives do to the world around us, to careers, leadership, retirement, institutions, and the structure of modern life itself.

My guest today is Avivah Wittenberg Cox, one of the leading thinkers on gender and generational balance, the future of work, and the consequences of longer lives.

She is founder and CEO of 21st, the author of seven books and a regular contributor to Forbes and Harvard Business Review, and a visiting lecturer at Oxford Said Insead and Cattolica Lisbon.

Through her podcast Four Quarter Lives and her Elderberry substack, she explores how longevity is reshaping not just health, but work, leadership, identity, and life itself. This is a conversation about adaptation.

If people are living longer and staying healthier for longer, what happens to careers, retirement, leadership, and the structure of working life? And if the Goldman Sachs report is right, the real threat may not be longevity itself, but our failure to catch up with it.

Here's my conversation with Avivah Wittenberg Cox. Hi, Avivah.

Speaker B: 00:01:39

Hello, Daphna.

Speaker A: 00:01:40

Thank you so much for joining me today. Let's just jump straight in. Let's go straight to the central theme of this podcast, longevity.

When people hear longevity, they usually think health, medicine, maybe biotech. But I think you look at it through a little bit of a different lens. More work, leadership, and society. What does longevity mean to you?

Speaker B: 00:02:06

Longevity to me is one of the megatrends of the 21st century. It will change and impact everything, whether we know it and recognize it or not.

It's already actively playing on our geopolitics, on our science, on our healthcare systems, on our pension systems, on our couples and careers.

So it's this very transversal issue, which is basically simply a demographic change that we have never seen as a human species, from what I call the pyramid to the square shape where we used to, for all of our species existence, we have lived in a pyramid where there were a few old people and lots and lots and lots of young people. And that is over. We're now in a demographic shape of squares, where there's a kind of generational balance between old and young.

And the consequences of what sounds like a simple shift are very profound.

Speaker A: 00:03:09

What do you think it is that people, people still don't fully understand about the real world impacts of longer lives?

Speaker B: 00:03:17

I'd say almost everything people generally have a notion about a part of the impacts the governments are very aware of pension problems and the viability of pension systems based on a pyramid that aren't going to work on a square model. Individuals, I think, are slowly but surely beginning to understand that they're going to live longer than prior generations and their parents.

And there's a mix of feelings about that. Bit of fear, bit of pleasure, depends a lot of things.

Do I have enough health and do I have enough wealth to make it through these new hundred year lives?

And I think in the middle between governments and individuals, I think organizations are kind of the laggard of the group in terms of putting this on their strategic priority and adapting their organisations to what this might mean.

Speaker A: 00:04:18

So do you think the real issue now is that institutions and workplaces were built for shorter lives and simply have not caught up, be it mentally thinking about it and actually physically doing something about it? Because you're saying that individual people have sort of caught on a little bit,.

Speaker B: 00:04:40

At least some of them, not all of them. So I think yes, there are pockets of adaptation all over the world in different countries and cultures, some quicker than others.

What's very noteworthy, I think, to remember is that in Europe in The last decade, 80% of GDP growth has been due to people staying longer in the workplace. And retirement ages are going up a little bit everywhere. Health spans are also increasing almost everywhere, along with lifespans.

So people are healthier. There's now an IMF report that said the brain of a 73 year old is about the same as a 50 year old a generation ago.

So all these things are seeping through the system. We don't always have a completely global overview of them all.

Speaker A: 00:05:37

I want to delve further into that, but let's step back a little bit chronologically. You spent years focused on gender balance, leadership, and then you evolved into thinking more broadly about longer lives and generational balance.

How did that evolve?

Speaker B: 00:05:58

Well, strangely, they're very parallel themes.

I always think of it as the first part of my career was about the rise of women and getting particularly business and large companies to adapt to that rise and how they would integrate them, use them, develop them, promote them, sell to them, was the conundrum of a quarter century ago. And now at the beginning of this century, it's the rise of the old.

And it's a kind of parallel trend is that it's this massive global demographic shift that people aren't necessarily either paying attention to or skilled in how to integrate it and adapt their existing systems to this particular demographic shift.

So I have a little bit of A sense of deja vu in working on these longevity themes, because I do almost exactly the same things that I did on the gender balance topic for many years.

Build awareness and skills among leaders and leadership teams on the data on the impacts on what they need to know in order to profit, use and leverage this new phenomenon and then roll it out into all their systems, whether it's on the HR and talent management side or whether it's on the marketing and the whole new Q3 customer side, which I'm sure we'll talk about.

Speaker A: 00:07:38

Yes, let's stay with the women just a little bit longer. Do you think that longer lives create more freedom for women or do you think it places a bigger burden on women? Do they risk getting stretched more?

And the existing inequalities around, let's say, caregiving, careers, money, how do you see that?

Speaker B: 00:08:04

It's always a both and in all of these things. So longer lives are a huge challenge to both men and women and they're a huge opportunity. And it depends on many things.

But I'd say mostly it depends on what's called the exposome, which is all the things that you're exposed to across your lives, which either nourish you and build you up and make you ever stronger, wealthier, stabler and more knowledgeable, or make you less of those things. And we're going to see that unless we address it better than we currently are. Longevity is the source of potential greater inequality.

So for women, on the upside, if you've been a professional woman, if you've worked most of your life uninterruptedly, contributed to your pension, taken care of, your health, saved across those years, you will likely find, like many women emerging past 50, that these may be some of the best decades of your life, best career years, most impactful, most satisfying, your past, the really heavy juggling years of what I call Q2, the years between 25 and 50, and you emerge past 50 newly free, the kids are more or less done. You only have to work if that's what you choose to do, or you can pivot and do other things.

But yes, our longer lives mean that we'll probably have to work longer or make money longer in whatever way we choose to or can, and that will stretch a lot of people. And if you have had a history of inequality or marginal anything in your life, course it usually comes to bear in your later years.

And that's something we're really going to have to design for.

Speaker A: 00:10:08

Do you think we're moving toward the multi stage lives where People reinvent themselves several times rather than just climbing one career ladder.

Speaker B: 00:10:18

Yes, I think the one career ladder is almost already gone and obsolete. I think most people will have multiple careers.

I'm talking to these young kids in their 20s these days who call themselves the undefinables and they're creating portfolio careers in their 20s. They don't want to wait until their 50s or 60s.

So I think the whole definition of what a successful aspirational time on earth will look like will shift. And yes, I think humans are and have always been multi talented.

I think we've been through a sort of productive capitalist phase where a little bit like Ford cars, we had to go and do one thing and become good at it and just keep repeating it for decades. I don't think that matches the human spirit or potential particularly well.

So yes, if we're able to flourish and learn and keep growing and shifting, I think that will definitely become something that is going to be the role model for future successful careers.

Speaker A: 00:11:26

You talk about 60 year careers. Which part of the traditional career system stops making sense first? The straight career ladder. We've already discussed that.

That that's, you know, obsolete. But is it also the timing of retirement or education that is normally concentrated at the beginning of work life or the promotion structure?

What do you think?

Speaker B: 00:11:52

Or all of the above? It's everything. I mean, that's what's so interesting about the topic. Right. It will change everything. So education is a really interesting model.

Right. It's already kind of obsolete. Right.

We have a very front loaded educational system that imagines that we learn for four years between 18 and 22 and then more or less stop with a little bit of refreshment offered or not as we go along for the next 80 years. It doesn't really make any sense. And as we're beginning to see in some countries like the U.S. the pool of 18 to 22 year olds is drying up.

There aren't young people.

And so the whole educational system that's geared to servicing a particular age group is going to want to adapt and change, which by the way, it's not doing very fast. Right. It could be servicing people of any age at every stage and upskilling them and keeping them going.

You know, that's a bit of the project, but it isn't entirely.

And we could very much use what some people are calling a GI bill for midlife that we reinvest massively in the 50s or the early 50s to help people with their third quarters and create and pivot and build and prepare for the second half of their careers. And we're not thinking that way. Not yet. It's coming, but not yet.

Speaker A: 00:13:23

On your podcast, Four Quarter Lives, you had some people from Cambridge University on who were, correct me if I'm wrong with that, but they were creating a program for, for exactly that, education at a later stage in life. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker B: 00:13:42

Yeah.

So there are a growing number of universities, about 25 now across the world, of which Cambridge is one of the most recent, that are building what I call midlife transition programs.

They usually call them advanced leadership programs, which is often six months to a year of residential full time programs aimed at getting experienced leaders to think, prepare and redesign for their second half. So Harvard was actually the initiator and pioneer in the system. They created the advanced leadership initiative 17 years ago.

, back in: 2022

And what these experienced leaders are looking for is no longer recreation, it's much more recreation. And educational institutions are beginning to serve that need with these midlife programs.

So, yes, Cambridge, Oxford, St. Gallen in Switzerland, Singapore in Asia, and at least a dozen in the US have been leading the way. And yes, I interviewed all the directors of all those different programs across series 10 of my podcast.

In case people are interested, they can go and compare a little bit the programs and the cultures of the different options on offer.

Speaker A: 00:15:21

I listened to it and I found it actually very interesting and pretty fascinating.

Speaker B: 00:15:25

You should go. It's fun. It's really fun.

Speaker A: 00:15:29

I'd love to, because I do think also it's part of staying young is to learn new things, challenge yourself a little bit and sort of be out there. Got to put yourself out there.

Speaker B: 00:15:39

I'd argue that it's part of staying old. We need to rebrand old, right? I don't want to be young. I have no interest in being young. Young was okay. I think old is way better.

And so I think we should just rebrand old as a much more aspirational, interesting, fun, rich period of life where, yeah, we get to go back to school and do it all again, but better.

Speaker A: 00:16:04

The word old has such negative connotations for every aspect. You don't want to have an old car. It's such a negative word.

So it's not wanting to be young, but I think it's, it's the, the, the desire to stay young. To stay fresh. But yes, we definitely need a new word for old.

Speaker B: 00:16:22

We don't wanna stay young, we wanna stay vital. And this is part of the ageism.

So ageism is a mega topic, and it's a big challenge in getting people to rewire for this new, longer life is we're gonna have to address ageism the way when we tried to get women into all walks of life, we had to address sexism. It's the same thing. It's endemic, it's everywhere. It's a product of history.

And so we need to educate people that the words they use, the casual, exclusionary, derogatory words, which we address some of these aging issues and populations just needs to be revised and adapted for a huge segment of the population. Remember, Today there are 1 billion people over 60. And you, not I, I'm already in there.

billion that we will have by: 2050

We're going to be a huge bunch of old people, and we better make the most of that time of life.

Speaker A: 00:17:35

If you ask most people, do you want to be old? They'll say no. But what does that mean? You're going to die young? They also say no to that.

So it's really just a use of the word, the meaning that really needs to shift. Going back to your podcast, Four Quarter Lives, you speak to people from all different sectors who adapt to longer lives in practice.

Across all those conversations, is there a theme that keeps repeating when it comes to work, purpose, institutions?

Speaker B: 00:18:10

I think the word that I would pick is opportunity.

It's just there's this vast blue ocean of opportunity for organizations and individuals who understand the huge opening, expansive consequences of longer lives on countries, companies, couples, careers, consumers. Whatever you look at, it can be a crisis or it can be an opportunity, and we get to choose.

And so what I've tended to do selectively, of course, is find the people who are really making the most of this moment in history. We've been gifted 30 to 40 extra years of life.

I'd like to make the most of mine, and I'd like to see more organizations serving this moment, helping us navigate it, equipping us with tools and healthcare systems and financial systems that prepare us and adapt for it.

Because I'm very convinced that the potential of the life course is that it gets better, we get happier, we get a bit saner and more knowledgeable, and I think the world might benefit if we do it right. They might benefit from this. New generational balance. Maybe it'll calm things down a little bit.

Speaker A: 00:19:40

Yes, definitely.

I mean, you can see it already in history how the older generations, you know, the grandparent generation, how they are the calming ones, the ones that teach the youngsters with their own experience. And I think that's gotten lost a little bit because now you can just Google everything.

But before, when you were small, even me and I was small, and I wanted to know something about how was it in the olden days. You know, I had to ask older people, my grandparents, and they were always very patient about it.

And I do think that the whole mentality shifts when you can sort of sit back, breathe a little bit, analyze a little bit, and, you know, you're not on the treadmill of life. You don't feel you need to chase something.

Speaker B: 00:20:24

I'd like to think, though, I would just throw in the warning shot that most of the autocrats that we're struggling with in the world today happen to be old men in their 70s who seem to be living out their worst dreams and nightmares of a different century. So it's not all good. Right? We gotta age well, and that takes quite a bit of work.

Speaker A: 00:20:47

Yeah, that's a very good point, actually, because it's not just the romantic idea of the nice grandma sitting there with her knitting.

Speaker B: 00:20:54

Those wise old grandparents who were giving us good advice. Yep. They're the cranky, grumpy, old, frustrated. Aging is. Is a multifaceted time of life. It's not any less diverse than every other time of life.

So we're going to get all different kinds of old people. Our challenge is to grow the best that we possibly can.

Speaker A: 00:21:20

Ooh, I like that. That's a very succinct remark. I like that. Do you feel that a lot of older people are a bit reticent in getting older or wanting to live longer?

I mean, from my limited experience, my parents, for example, they're not super, super keen to, you know, live longer and even live longer healthy. I don't think they can imagine that as a possibility. I mean, I spoke to my mom the other day about it. You know, it's always a big topic.

And she said to me, well, getting old and getting all these things, that's just how it is. That's just part of life.

And there's me, you know, trying to tell her, for some part it is, but it doesn't really have to be so bad or so, so negative. What would you tell my mom?

Speaker B: 00:22:14

What I tell your mom? I. I actually wouldn't tell your mom too much because I think it's hard to change people who are already there.

Much easier to change you than your mom.

So what I do is I try and work with the people who will grab life by both hands, who will prepare differently, who will prepare physically, mentally, financially, like who are really going to invest in their own future selves to either emulate parents who age really well, or to be quite different from our parents if they didn't age in a way that we find personally aspirational. So we need to find role models, which is rare so far. Right. But they're coming. I think they're.

I see in my field a rising number of people that I really do aspire to age like, who are learning, growing and contributing at every age and stage, even until quite late. My own mom lived until 97 and was a pretty live wire till the end. So I think that's a bit the challenge ahead. Much harder to work with.

The people currently in what I call Q4, they're already kind of baked in their attitudes from an earlier time and reacting I think a little bit more to this prospect of hundred year lives. I always remember my mother saying, I never wanted to live this long. It's too long, it's too long.

Speaker A: 00:23:46

She said, I think what people are afraid of is not living to 100, it's the suffering. You know, it's that from 70 on sort of it's downhill or from 80 on, whatever.

And they don't want to live 20 years in pain or with Alzheimer's or those things that I think is what is too long. Because if you ask any happy person in their 70s, do you want to continue living a bit more? They'd all say yes.

Speaker B: 00:24:10

Do you know what the happiest decade of life currently is in the world, across all cultures?

Speaker A: 00:24:17

I'd want to say the fourth quarter, it's the seventies.

Speaker B: 00:24:20

Seventies are peak happiness.

So it's really interesting, right, we do imagine all these older unhappy people, but the reality isn't that even people with physical ailments and some element of decline are much happier than younger people. So we're just projecting our fears of becoming older on older people. And they actually seem to be doing not so bad, most of them, not all of them.

Speaker A: 00:24:47

The big majority of people in their 70s, even late 70s, they are much more like people in their 50s, even 10 or 20 years ago. I think talking about the outliers, not the very sick or the super healthy, just the average ones.

Speaker B: 00:25:04

The human spirit has an astonishing capacity for adaptation and maturation.

And so I think the challenge of growing old is to accept all kinds of change, physical change and a certain degree of modifications, but to do it gracefully and find motivation and contentedness and purpose elsewhere. And I think that's what we're going to see emerge in greater numbers than we have before.

Speaker A: 00:25:37

, in I think it was summer of: 2025

Speaker B: 00:26:05

I think everything's about adaptation, right? There's not a lot of optimism around the future right now between the challenges of demographics, climate change and technology.

And yet each of those are invitations to adapt, understand, learn and transition towards a better designed future. And I think the fact that AI and old age are hitting at the same time, I think is kind of fascinating. Right.

We won't have the workforces that we've had in the past, we won't have this huge bottom of the pyramid bunch of young people who can churn out all kinds of work, but we will have AI.

And I think AI is an interesting gift to older people because it's a way of harnessing, capturing, recording and sharing knowledge and expertise in a way we've never been able to do before. And so I think that's interesting and keeps me optimistic, at least in it's worth trying, always worth trying.

Speaker A: 00:27:17

Do you think this is mainly a challenge or also big opportunities for companies to adapt earlier rather than later to this older workforce?

Speaker B: 00:27:30

I think it's a huge opportunity. Of course it is. I mean, they should be able to help people stay well.

I see a number of employers increasingly investing in the health of their employees, in their financial management knowledge, so that they learn how to prepare and save. Prepare financially for their older ages, prepare physically and mentally so they're lifelong learners from the very beginning.

And then they have a pool of intergenerational talent and teams which if they manage well, is just a win win for employees, for consumers, and for the leadership teams that get to leverage the best skills that will then match the expectations of an aging marketplace more knowledgeably. So yeah, I think there's a huge amount of upside, especially right now, because this is the moment of first mover advantage. Right.

It's the companies that become really good on this who are going to keep the best talent and get a head start.

Speaker A: 00:28:42

Oh, definitely.

Can you give us some examples of Institutions or leaders or countries that have been implementing that, what exactly they've been doing to be ahead of the curve?

Speaker B: 00:28:55

Oh, I think there are all kinds of examples. So I mean I've been writing and podcasting about this for a while, but some countries are really investing in becoming longevity centers and hubs.

I think the current examples of lots and lots of innovation, you know, Singapore, Switzerland, the uae, they're kind of making these longevity plays. The US is always a hub of all kinds of strange and wonderful innovations in this space. You can find all kinds of things there on companies.

It's kind of CEO by CEO. It's not really sector by sector yet. Although I would say certain sectors are going to be a little bit ahead.

Like the insurance sector is staring at data for the last few decades. They are intimately aware of the opportunities and potential shocks of this longevity phenomenon.

Then you started to see cosmetics companies start to drop all their anti aging rhetoric and start going into more pro aging. I think l' Oreal is doing some out ahead of the game work internally and externally.

They have a program called called For All Generations and their long time that they've started to use models who are much older and of all ages. And I think that was pretty early to the game.

And then I was just interviewing a French hotel chain, Novatel, part of the Accor Group in France, that has actually designed its entire strategy around longevity. It's called longevity every Day and it's connecting the dots of what a hotel already does, which are kind of the pillars of longevity.

And they called that eat, move, meet and sleep. Makes good sense, right? That's what we're all trying to learn how to do.

I thought it was brilliant that again, talk about a first mover advantage that a hotel chain connects those dots. And the CEO there, Jean Yves Minet, was on the podcast explaining why and how brilliant. I think we'll see much more of that in the years to come.

I think that'll create some interesting ripples across the hospitality sector. And then you see all kinds of companies.

German company Bosch creating this advisory services firm that where retired workers can go work if they like to.

And then rather than outsourcing their consulting to McKinsey, Bain or BCG, they're allowed to outsource it to these former employees who are simply retired. And they're making a lot of money out of both, which I think is again a brilliant use of experience and knowledge.

There are all kinds of examples you just kind of have to go hunting and we will try and collect more of them. To inspire others.

Speaker A: 00:31:56

What do you think business leaders are still not seeing when it comes to longer lives, Talent, strategy and sort of organizational design?

Speaker B: 00:32:06

The topic is not yet regularly placed on the EXCO agenda. It's not yet on the leadership team's agenda as a priority on a par with climate and AI. Everybody's AI addled.

Very few companies put demographics next to AI and climate. In fact, I've been waiting for that slide for a number of years. Just, you know, the megatrends, AI, climate, demographics, and I found it with l'.

Oreal. They had it as a presentation. I think that again will become more common. But right now I teach in a whole bunch of business schools.

I teach leaders, I talk to excos and present to them. It's still news to them. So awareness is low and it will take another decade of repeating. It's.

We've made progress, as I say, with first mover companies who are always a little bit ahead.

And it's very interesting to me that a lot of the companies I work with today are some of the same who were first movers on the gender front 25 years ago. Here they are again. But it takes very successful firms who have the resources to look at scenario planning and do the long term planning.

Not everybody in our noisy poly crisis world has the capacity for broader long term thinking. If they do, demographics should be making its way to their agenda very soon.

I should mention we run a longevity leadership program at Catolica Lisbon University, which is Portugal's biggest business school. And there we do a whole one week program for executive leaders to get on board, become what I call longevity literate, which has a huge impact.

Then they go back to their companies, their CEOs or C suite people, and they drive these policies through pretty quickly because once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. And it's a huge opportunity waiting to be plucked.

Speaker A: 00:34:14

What I hear is that businesses are interested and happy to hear about, you know, the older workforce and people living longer, you know, but longevity, let's just call it longevity.

And I had Dr. Ilya Stamba on the podcast in a previous episode, who amongst other things is basically lobbying governments to implement longevity policies and all that.

And, and what he was saying is that the politicians are really, really interested in longevity and as he says, they get it, but then they leave and they go back to their daily life and it's hard for governments to implement those strategies, even if they make a lot of sense, because every politician or most politicians are just looking till the next election and they want to have, as he phrases it, a big bang for their buck. But longevity is a long term investment.

So I'm happy to hear that the companies that you speak to are looking into actually implementing longevity policies.

Speaker B: 00:35:29

The challenge with the whole new demographic era we're in is quite massive. So governments are stretched to the brim. I mean, most of our pension systems are not viable. Right.

There are only three levers that governments can pull on in order to keep our economies functioning.

One is to raise retirement ages, which they're doing discreetly but surely and very often with a lot of people, like in France we saw a couple of years ago, getting down in the streets to fight it. So one is work longer. The second is get more immigrants. We know how popular that is right now.

And the third is narrow the gender gap in labor forces and get more women working and working longer. And you're not going to get elected very easily today on any of those three levers.

And so I think this is part of the education and preparation and awareness raising is we need to educate the populace that longevity has consequences. And no, you might not get your pension at 62 like you used to. You may, because you're going to live so much longer, have to work longer as well.

Which is not music to the ears of many people who have put in a very hard back breaking 45 or 50 years already. So these are not necessarily popular topics. And so how to make them acceptable is a real conundrum for governments.

And basically for the moment, they're still hiding.

Speaker A: 00:37:18

But maybe businesses will lead that change and then governments will have no choice but to follow.

Speaker B: 00:37:24

day, this is we're talking in: 2026

So we're already in a super aging population in most of the developed world and companies are slow to adapt.

But what I'm talking about is, yeah, there are always those Smart First Mover CEOs and companies who will be shifting policies because they don't have much choice. Labor forces are shifting before our eyes and we're talking a lot about talent. But the other mega opportunities, consumers. Consumers are aging too.

And the consumers who have the highest purchasing power everywhere are the older. And so the traditional target of so many companies, products, services and marketing is towards the younger.

And if they don't change that, they're going to miss out on tomorrow's consumer.

Speaker A: 00:38:33

Base circling back to something that you mentioned a little bit earlier, which I think is rather an important concept, the idea of a square as opposed to a pyramid structure of society. Can you elaborate a little bit further what implications this is having will be having.

Speaker B: 00:38:54

Just yesterday I was speaking to a room full of lawyers and law firms in London and professional services firms more generally. And they're a very interesting example of companies that have designed their internal structures around an external pyramid.

So the pyramid structure was you have a few older senior people paid a lot of money and a lot of junior people who work really hard get paid a lot less and pay with their time for a hoped for future climb up a narrowing ladder where a lot of people get ejected. That's the pyramid. And that has been the shape of organizations for decades, a century now.

And the trouble is that is no longer the demographic shape of the countries where these organizations are now operating and the populations are turning into these squares. And so this assumption that they'll always have lots and lots and lots of young people to fuel their ranks may not be so accurate.

And then getting rid of their older talent after 50, which a lot of companies still do in a kind of knee jerk, that's what we do with people over 50. We think they're not able to learn, we think they're very kind of tech phobic, we think they're a bit slow.

So we'll nudge them out is really short term thinking because they hold a lot of knowledge, networks, connections, political realities, and they will be increasingly crucial to the future health and workforce of these organizations.

Speaker A: 00:40:43

Going back to the Goldman Sachs report that people may be aging better than expected while the system is still built on outdated assumptions. How can we educate society in general? How can we join the dots?

Speaker B: 00:41:03

Well, we could do lots of podcasts, which is a flourishing mode of communication. We can encourage a lot of people to get on the AI bandwagon and learn how to use it because that will help their skills.

We can expect more and more, if not regulation, at least guidance. So I know that in the OECD is coming out with a benchmark to measure how well companies are what they call longevity ready.

And so the more institutions like the oecd, like governments, like regulatory agencies, start measuring longevity readiness, which they will.

You know, there are a number of factors on the talent side, on the governance side, which will allow us to have better visibility on who's adapting and who will also employ you.

So individuals I think will have a better legibility of what employers they can start applying to if they get kicked out of their jobs over 50, they'll know where to go.

And I think governments will be then also in a better position to regulate if they need to, and to insist that companies start behaving like responsible employers and part of the system that will keep more people in work longer. Because I think individuals are probably readier to work longer than many employers are ready to keep them.

So there's a disbalance in attitudes and the OECD's done tons of good work.

There are really half a dozen really good reports coming out of the OECD on ageism, midlife, career pivots, and how to prepare for these longer lives. There'll be more and more work of that kind in more and more places and it's bubbling up all over the place.

Also, there's this vast longevity economy that companies are now chasing. It's already a $43 trillion possibility that will only grow. I mean, it's probably projected to grow to well over 100 trillion.

Companies aren't going to ignore that. Right. So it's just a question right now of the pace of change. Who's changing first and what sectors and countries are going to take the lead?

Speaker A: 00:43:25

How should someone in their second quarter of life, so 25 to 50 year olds, how should they think differently now, seeing that they may have done decades of contributions ahead of them?

Speaker B: 00:43:42

I think they are already changing, at least those I know. So I think one is to realize, yes, they're going to be working a long time. Two, they're going to be living a much longer time.

And so I think the idea is pacing. What I always tell Q2ers is don't be in such a rush, relax, you have more time than you think.

So our generation, when we were in Q2, we thought we had to do everything in Q2 because that's what adulthood was. It was kind of 25 to 50. And then you were old. Right? That's not true anymore.

So this fundamental challenge of Q2, which is to build now the foundations of longer lives, which means building relationships and family, having children if you want them, building reputations, building companies, building skills, and you don't have to do all of that before you're 35, which is what a lot of people think, there's a tremendous amount of pressure on young people in their own minds to succeed and retire. There's this whole phenomenon of trying to retire by 40 and be rich, which is slightly counterintuitive. Right.

On the contrary, do some of that family building work that many of us had to juggle through, do it slower, take your time, have a couple of kids, enjoy the ride, and know that you're going to have an entire Q3 to work and grow and impact and scale and achieve many of the ambitions. And you just don't have to do it all all at once. So I think the message for Q2ers is relax and pace yourself.

The message for Q3ers is lean in and now's your time. Go for all the dreams and ambitions that you haven't been able to achieve or spend time on up till now.

Speaker A: 00:45:47

I like that. I like that. And I think it's true.

Speaker B: 00:45:50

I like it too. Most Q3ers do.

Speaker A: 00:45:53

No, but it's true. At the end of the podcast, I always have rapid fire questions. And one of the questions is, what would you tell your younger self?

A lot of the time, people answer, slow down, you know, you have time. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

Speaker B: 00:46:11

And that is truer today than ever before and will become increasingly truer. So pacing, I think, and learning how to navigate multiple transitions, both personal and professional and physical and psychological.

If we can become really, really skilled transitionists, that will see us through.

Speaker A: 00:46:34

The general listener wants to explore more about, you know, longevity and aging well and all. All these topics related to it. Where do you think is the best way to start? Or is there a best way to start?

You know, do you think it's podcasts or books or websites or speaking to people or where does one start?

Speaker B: 00:46:54

All of that.

And if the easiest place is just listen to my podcast, Four Quarter Lives, or read my weekly newsletters on elderberries on Substack, because I try and cast my net very wide and present all the books, all the people and all the research reports in short, digestible ways so that we can start disseminating all of this amazing outpouring of new research and really exciting stuff that will change the way we live and the way we grow old.

Speaker A: 00:47:31

I'm happy you said that, because if you wouldn't have said that, I would have said that for people to come to all of your resources, because I do think you deal with it very, very well. And I think you really are tackling all areas of it.

You know, like you said, you have a podcast, you've got a company to educate the leaders, you have the Substack elderberries. Love the name, by the way, all these things for you personally, what does a well designed longer life actually look like?

Speaker B: 00:48:02

You know, my four quarter life model, I think, and I think that's sort of my. My model of a well designed life that in the first quarter we grow.

In the second quarter we achieve, we tick the boxes that we've been programmed by family or culture or personal ambitions to achieve. And strangely, in this third quarter, you and I probably discover that we become who we truly are.

That is the gift of Q3 for those lucky enough to get there is we understand who we are, who we aren't, what we want, what we don't want and can focus on accomplishing an internal course of purpose and meaning.

And the better we do that, I think the more we arrive in Q4, which is the years after 75, which I've called the time of harvesting, where we can gather what we have sown and enjoy it, contemplate it, celebrate it and share it and give forward to other generations. That would be a good life.

Speaker A: 00:49:13

Tell us a little bit more about that fourth quarter because I think people are more or less sort of familiar with the first, the second and possibly the third quarter, but I think the fourth quarter is such a novel idea. Tell us a bit more.

Speaker B: 00:49:28

I would argue with that, actually. I think the fourth quarter is what we've always called old.

I think it is when we start getting a little bit more physical limitations, it's where we start. If we're wise and mature elders, we begin to contemplate and prepare for our imminent, if not imminent, at least eventual death.

We write our biographies, we share our stories.

Stories we give and prepare wills and money and whatever we have to give to future generations, we organize it and talk to people and nourish those relationships. I think that's always been part of being a good elder. I think actually the new part in the four quarters is the third quarter.

I think that's what we've never really had before.

Before is those decades after 50 that are newly healthy, newly engaged, which we experience very differently than even just our parents generation did. And which I think are very much the building blocks to a happy Q4. Right.

It's accomplishing and nourishing the more intrinsic drives that arrive in q. I think Q2 is very extrinsically driven. We're motivated by a lot. What other people think, what our parents think, what our friends think, what our peer group thinks, what our company think.

Q3, you know, we've done it all, we've been there, now it's what we want that starts to become much, much more central to our motivations and adult development. People and psychologists like Carl Jung have been writing about the life course for A long time. It's just that now it's much more stretched out.

And so I think this mature part of adulthood will be longer, deeper, and more interesting than ever before. And then it's really an invitation to all of us. What will we do with all these extra decades we've been gifted?

Speaker A: 00:51:45

Well, what will you do?

Speaker B: 00:51:46

Well, my mantra for my coming years, I'm turning 65 this year, so my mantra for the rest of my time is to grow and give. I mean, those are the two things that I still care about very much, is I want to learn. And I love to explore.

And I adore talking to people and learning new ideas and new trends.

And I love to give it back, give it forward, share it far and wide and as much as possible with younger folk, because I think the intergenerational connections are how we were designed as a species. And we got to take care of these kids. We should not leave the world's issues on their shoulders.

Speaker A: 00:52:30

Yeah, very wise words and very true words. Something to look forward to. It's nice.

Speaker B: 00:52:36

Lots and a long time to look forward to. These days, you kind of think of 65 as. I mean, it's crazy, right?

I think of that as well, you know, not at all the way my mother did when she turned 65. I still remember her saying, oh, I can't wear that. I'm too old to wear that. It's like, I don't think I have a thing in my closet.

I would say that about, definitely.

Speaker A: 00:52:59

And you don't think about retiring anytime soon. And a few decades ago at 65, you know, you'd have long been retired.

Speaker B: 00:53:08

No, there's way too much to do and too much fun to be held,.

Speaker A: 00:53:12

And we're feeling better. That, I think, is a big part of it. Because if you're not feeling well health wise, that sort of puts an end to any aspirations.

Speaker B: 00:53:22

Well, that's something I was just writing about last week, is there's this new study out of Yale that because we tend to lump older people altogether into a single group, the 50 plus, and then we talk about the old. What this Yale study was doing is there are different ways of growing old.

And if you disaggregate, there are people who do very, very well and people who do not really very well at all.

And if you disaggregate those two groups, what they found is that there's almost 45% of adults who get cogn cognitively and physically better as they age, which is news to most people.

And it has a lot to do with your attitude, Whether you're looking forward to it, whether you invest in it or not will actually determine how you yourself age through sobering.

Speaker A: 00:54:17

Very much so.

Speaker B: 00:54:18

So read a book or two. Get ready.

Speaker A: 00:54:22

Yeah, read a book or two, go out, walk a little bit, do something for yourself. I think that's the most important thing, right? People also have to be proactive and not just sit back and let life sort of pass them by.

Avivah, thank you so much for coming on Beyond Longevity it's fantastic talking to you.

Speaker B: 00:54:42

My great pleasure.

Speaker A: 00:54:43

So inspirational. To finish up as I threatened you before, there's five rapid fire questions I ask all my guests.

What's the single best piece of advice you would give your younger self?

Speaker B: 00:54:57

Don't listen to anyone. You'll find your way.

Speaker A: 00:55:00

Name one habit everyone should adopt for a longer, healthier life move. If you weren't in longevity science, what career would you have chosen?

Speaker B: 00:55:10

A writer?

Speaker A: 00:55:11

What microdose habits, sort of five minute routine of small daily action yields outsized longevity benefits.

Speaker B: 00:55:20

Five minutes? I don't know. Sleep is my particular passion. At least eight hours.

Speaker A: 00:55:27

Okay, let me push you further on that. That's not really a microdose habit. That's hopefully an eight hour habit, not a five minute habit. So what microdose habit?

Speaker B: 00:55:38

Play with my puppy. Five minutes on every hour.

Speaker A: 00:55:42

Great. Perfect. Now, last but not least, what's the craziest longevity myth you've encountered and is there any truth to it?

Speaker B: 00:55:51

I've heard a lot of very crazy longevity myths. There are all these weird ones, but I'll just conclude with the one I was just sharing with you.

It's this one about your own psychology and your own beliefs about aging. And whether you think it's a good, good thing or a bad thing will make both of those things true.

And I find that astonishing, slightly terrifying, because I know some grumpy old folk, you know. And so yeah, look towards the light, see the glass half full and your cup will run with over.

Speaker A: 00:56:29

Beautiful words to finish on. Thank you, Aviva. Really, truly, that was Aviva Wittenberg Cox.

Longer lives sound like a biological story, but as this conversation shows, they are just as much a story about work, institutions and how willing we are to rethink the lives we have built around older assumptions.

Because once people start living longer and staying healthier for longer, it is not just a health system that comes under pressure, but the structure of careers, retirement, education, leadership, and what different stages of life are supposed to look like.

And that is really what makes this such an important conversation not simply how long we live, but whether the world around us is evolving fast enough to make those extra years work well for individuals, for companies, and for society more broadly. If you enjoyed this episode episode of Beyond Longevity, please follow rate and share it. Thank you very much for listening.