• Golden Years – James Chappel

  • Feb 3 2025
  • Length: 33 mins
  • Podcast

Golden Years – James Chappel

  • Summary

  • What's the current stage of retirement and aging in the US? And how did we get here? James Chappel discusses his new book Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age, the impact of The Gray Panthers and why The Golden Girls is "the most important TV show in the history of American aging." James Chappel joins us from Durham, North Carolina. ___________________ Bio James Chappel is the Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History at Duke University and a senior fellow at the Duke Aging Center. He's the author of the new book Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age, a history of aging, health, and disability in the USA from 1920 to the present. It appeared in November 2024 and has been widely reviewed in outlets like The New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times. He received his PhD from Columbia University. At Duke, he works on the intellectual history of modern Europe and the United States, focusing on themes of religion, gender, and the family. He has published two books and published widely in both scholarly and non-scholarly sites (The New York Times, The Nation, and more).. He is currently co-chair of the Prison Engagement Initiative at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and founded the Duke-in-Prison lecture series. _______________________ For More on James Chappel Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age by James Chappel _______________________ Mentioned in This Podcast Episode The Simpsons clip (2:45) _______________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy – Teresa Ghilarducci Life in Retirement: Expectations & Realities – Catherine Collinson Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller ______________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. __________________________ Wise Quotes On The Gray Panthers "Actually, the 60s was a lot more intergenerational than people remember. There are a lot of older activists. And there also was a lot of old age activism. So what the finally winding back to your question, they're kind of like the 60s for old people. Obviously the name, right? So the Great Panthers, it's obviously a play in the Black Panthers. Black Panthers are, among many other things, kind of the more radical wing of the Civil Rights movement, just as the Gray Panthers were the more radical wing of the old age movement. There was a kind of mainstream old age movement, which was in favor of things like Medicare, which was great, you know, they succeeded. The Gray Panthers are more like the talented movement. They are more like less dramatically reoriented American society towards older people. And so they do a lot of amazing things that I think ought to be remembered. And I think that in 2025, what's most striking about their activism is how, in today's words, we'd say it's very intersectional. So they don't think about old age by itself. They actually think about old age and environmental justice. They think about old age and how to have like a greener society. They're already doing this in the 1970s. They're thinking about old age and racial justice. They're paying a lot of attention to communities of color. They're paying a lot of attention to nursing home residents.
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