View the archive of my 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about improving our shared healthcare system, aging, and the decades of old age now increasingly known as elderhood.

I’m Louise Aronson, a practicing geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the author of the Pulitzer-Prize-Award finalist book Elderhood, Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life, which draws from history, science, literature, popular culture – and from my own life – to weave a vision of old age that is full of ambition, humor, outrage, joy, wonder, and hope.

Please join me for my upcoming 90-minute class, Five Things I’ve Learned about Elderhood. In conversation with Kris Rebillot, I’ll share the most important lessons I’ve learned from a life devoted to improving our shared healthcare system, aging, and the decades of old age now increasingly known as elderhood. We’ll focus specifically on the most important things I’ve learned about empowering older adults to maintain their personhood and maximize their wellness as they age and how that can benefit people of all ages:

1. Old age happens to (almost) all of us
2. Being old is much better than people think
3. Aging could be so much better than it is
4. Our attitudes, policies, and systems manufacture many of the hardest parts of old age
5. Elderhood is one of the most exciting areas of human potential and innovation

I’ll share how as a young person with no particular interest in aging, I stumbled upon the profound satisfactions and untapped opportunities of old age: After graduating from Harvard Medical School, I returned to my home town of San Francisco and began my residency at UCSF. My plan was to work with an underserved population, and like most young people, I hadn’t thought much about aging or old age. Years into my training, I realized that I loved caring for older people – their long, varied life stories, their complex medical and ethical challenges, and the fact that to take good care of them, I had to know about more than their organs and disease; I also needed to understand their living environment, their social networks, their community, and what mattered to them. 

Newly attentive to our health system’s older patients, I quickly saw that they were group most likely to be harmed by medical care and least likely to be anyone’s priority. This realization helped coalesce everything that horrified me about the medical establishment – the focus on disease at the expense of health and wellness, the payment systems that incentivize illness and hospitalization while ignoring prevention and community-based care, and treatment plans that too often left patients in worse shape than when they showed up for care. Improving the lives older adults and fixing our medical system’s failings turn out to be related issues with the potential to improve all lives. The chance to do that continues to motivate me today.

My life as a writer is also key to who I am and (to my surprise) to the latest twists and turns of my career. As a child, I dreamed of being a writer or an editor – the next Max Perkins, who was the Scribner editor of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. After becoming a physician, I finally had the confidence and security to turn back to writing, eventually earning an MFA at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

My success as the author of books, articles, essays and stories that explore the intersection of medicine and life helped me discover that I could be at least as useful with a pen or keyboard as with a prescription pad and stethoscope. As a doctor, I work to improve individual lives; as a writer, I work to change minds, hearts, policies, systems and communities.

If there is a single useful idea I hope you might take away from this conversation, it’s this: We would all have more fulfilling lives and less to fear about extreme old age if every time we speak of or make policy for children and adults or childhood and adulthood we also include elders and elderhood.

• If old age seems like something that happens to other people, join us.
• If your own old age scares you, join us.
• If you want to find a focus for your work that offers immense opportunities personal, social, scientific and financial across all sectors of society, join us.
• If you want to make the world a better place for people of all ages and backgrounds, join us.
• If you want some of your most basic assumptions about old age challenged, join us.

I look forward to our conversation!

– Louise  

View the archive of my 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about scientists’ remarkable recent efforts to slow aging and improve our chances of a healthy late life.

I’m Gordon Lithgow, a professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, located just north of San Francisco, CA. I very much hope you will join me for upcoming live class, Five Things I’ve Learned about How to Live Better Longer.

The Buck’s mission is to end the threat of chronic diseases of aging for this and future generations. My work there puts me in regular contact with scientists around the world who are making exciting inroads into efforts to slow aging or improve the chances of a healthy late life. I’m eager to share with you the implications of some of our most important discoveries.

Let this be the first thing I’ve learned about how to live better longer:

Health disparities usually come from wealth disparities. Where you live matters.

I know this first-hand because grew up and was educated in Scotland (yes, I still have the accent!). Even as a child, it was clear that health disparities were a major issue. Simply put, wealthy people enjoyed good health and poorer people didn’t.  

I got my PhD in genetics in Glasgow where people’s lives are particularly cut short (“The Glasgow Effect”). Life expectancy (that is, on your day of birth, how long you are expected to live) is dramatically different between richer and poorer districts of the city. For males in Glasgow, life expectancy at birth is just over 73 years. Here in Marin County, California, men can expect to live nearly 82 years – that’s nine years difference!

In our time together, I’ll get into some of the reasons behind this depressing disparity. I’ll also share some of the thrilling results of my work at the Buck, where researchers in my lab recapitulate diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in tiny nematode worms and help move potential treatments into mouse models. We work to uncover genes and discover small molecules that promote molecular stability, something that declines with age. We are also studying numerous “natural” compounds for their effects on healthspan and lifespan.

It’s thrilling work, and our research has immediate implications for how and why we age. Some of our scientists are trying to understand why aging seems to be very slow in other species. Surely, we can gain insights from long-lived creatures such as clams and naked mole rats; we can also learn from physicians who study human centenarians to confer the same longevity to all of us. It’s gratifying to see potential treatments based on their efforts already being tested in rigorous clinical trials.

We’ll talk about all of this during our time together. Our conversation is also sure to include these other essential things we’ve recently learned about how to live better longer:   

• Denial is not a sustainable strategy. Aging is not theoretical, it happens – but it’s never too late to pay attention and take action.
• It’s important to understand that aging and disease are intertwined. At this point, much of what goes on in adult medicine is “whack a mole.”
• Stress is not always a bad actor.
• Aging is plastic. There’s a lot you can do to shape it. (Genetics do not equal destiny).

There’s much to share! Please join me and the Buck’s own Kris Rebbilot for this exciting class.

• Gordon Lithgow

View the archive of my 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the ways that each of us can make the most of the unprecedented potential and possibility that awaits our coming years.

My name is Paul Irving. I am a senior fellow at the Milken Institute. Previously I was the Institute’s president and founding chair of its Center for the Future of Aging. I’m also a distinguished scholar-in-residence at the University of Southern California, Davis School of Gerontology.

Please join me for my upcoming live class, Five Things I’ve Learned about the Upside of Aging, where talking with Kris Rebillot I’ll share all I’ve learned about the great potential and possibility that awaits our aging population.

As author/editor of The Upside of Aging, I had the privilege and joy of learning myself from prominent thought leaders who understand the significant upsides arriving for health, work and entrepreneurship, volunteerism, innovation and education – opportunities that stem from a mature population ready to pursue different dreams than those of their parents and grandparents.  

In our time together, I’ll share with you what I believe to be the most important personal and social opportunities on the horizon. As I will explain, the future of aging will be different for individuals, families, businesses, communities, and societies. Now is the time to plan and to act. We need to move beyond the stereotypes of dependency and decline that have defined older age. We need to look at aging in a new way.

In our 90-minute class, we’ll talk for starters about how:

• More years means new possibilities for work, learning, exploration, and rewarding relationships. Traditional retirement needs to be completely reinvented.
• An exciting longevity economy is emerging across the world. It capitalizes on the experience and wisdom of older workers, and is driven by growing demand for new products, services, and innovations.
• Despite the risks they face, older adults are more resilient (and happier) than their younger counterparts.
• Older age has a new look: a growing number of older adults are contributing, creating, serving, and realizing the benefits of intergenerational collaboration and co-generation.
• Ageism is a global challenge that affects all of us. By tackling it, we can live longer and healthier lives.

We’ll also talk about all you can do personally to make the most of the great changes already underway, changes that will significantly impact our additional years. As I’ll explain, there’s an upside of aging – and its available to us all.

I look forward to our time together,

Paul Irving

View the archive of my two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about how worrying less, chilling out, and reveling (a little) in not writing makes all the difference and connects me to where stories really come from.

Wait, I’m limited to five?

I spend most of my life not writing. I’m not especially proud of this fact, and for years I’ve spent most of the time I’m writing worrying about the fact that I’m not writing. You know the feeling? And yet lately I’ve found that if I worry less, the writing I do manage to do is at least slightly better. It shouldn’t have taken me twenty or so years to realize all I need to do is chill out and revel a little in not writing—but this is the truth of it.

I hope to share this with you – and all I’ve learned over my a lifetime of learning and writing – in my upcoming class, Five Things I’ve Learned about Writing (by Not Writing).

In this two-hour session, we’re going to talk about easing off, and a few other things (five, six, maybe seven…) that relate to writing by not writing. None of this shitty first draft stuff. It may work for some people, I realize, but my position is that this particular advice has done a lot more harm than good. I say less can be more.

I’m going to share with you some thoughts on not writing, including the importance of close, intense, slow reading, in particular of poetry. We’re also going to focus on listening, to each other, but also to silence. We’ll talk about where stories come from and how they don’t come from rattling off words and words and words and more words on a computer. In this spirit, I’ll ask you to ditch the computer. (Wait, this is on-line?) Okay, we won’t entirely lose the computer but we will go back to basics. One of the things I’ll ask you to do is simply wander around your own neighborhood with a pen and notebook. Because yes: in this mini-course about not writing, we’re going to write—not a lot—but enough.

Enough to make a start of something.

– Peter Orner

View the archive of my 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about this critical time in history and how we can forcefully support Ukraine – essential lessons from my years engaging the highest echelons of Russian military and political leadership.

My name is Alexander Vindman. I’m a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, former Director for Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Russia on the White House’s National Security Council, former Political-Military Affairs Officer for Russia for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia, current doctoral student at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute, executive board member for the Renew Democracy Initiative, senior advisor to VoteVets, and author of The New York Times bestselling memoir, Here, Right Matters.

I’d like to invite you to join me in my upcoming class, Five Things I’ve Learned About Responding to Russian Aggression and to the War in Ukraine.

This class comes at a critical time in history amid a growing global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. In our 90 minutes together, I’ll share the wisdom I gleaned from more than two decades of public service at the highest levels of the U.S. national security apparatus and U.S.-Ukraine-Russia relations. I’ll explain where we have gone wrong in both the current crisis and across decades of U.S. policy toward Russia and Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union. More importantly, I’ll tell you how we can change course in support of U.S. national security interests, Ukrainian democracy, and the Western liberal order. I’ll also present ideas on how you can offer your support for Ukraine today. Ukrainians have already mobilized a whole-of-society effort to protect their country, Europe, and global democracy from the forces of tyranny. Now, the West must do the same, and we need your support to ensure that democracy triumphs.

I plan to share my analysis of the most recent developments on the ground in Ukraine, the current trajectory of the war, and likely outcomes depending upon the collective West’s response. I will also do my best to dispel existing myths about the war and answer any questions you might have.

But first and foremost, I’ll share the essential lessons I can offer every American—from the individual voter all the up to the Oval Office—from my years of engaging with the highest echelons of Russian military and political leadership:

1. Navigate the long road to disaster. The expansion of Russia’s war on Ukraine was not the result of an arbitrary decision from Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Putin learned to operate with impunity over two decades in power. Time and again, the West failed to confront Putin’s brutality and blatant disregard for international law and norms. Instead, Putin had a free hand in Chechnya (1999-2009), Georgia (2008), Syria (2015-present), the U.S. presidential elections (2016 and 2020), and Ukraine (2014-present). By shrinking from the moment during these crises, the West gave Putin the impression that he could act as he pleased, Saber-rattle with nuclear weapons if anyone objected, and undermine the foundations of the Western liberal order with minimal resistance and few consequences. We didn’t end up here by accident. The road to disaster is a long one, and there were missed opportunities to deter Putin.
   
2. Manage hopes and fears. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a profound and unprecedented wave of rapture over what was then perceived as the everlasting triumph of liberal democracy over totalitarian communism. The West rested on its laurels and instead of hedging against the resurgent forces of Russian authoritarianism, ultra-conservatism, and neo-imperialism. We bought into our hopes and put up the blinders to ignore any potential signs that this was not, in fact, the end of history. To make matters worse, once we finally began to wake up to the threat emanating from the Kremlin, we abandoned all reason. Hope turned to fear overnight. We forgot the lessons of the Cold War and became paralyzed during crises. Rather than controlling escalation and managing confrontations with the Kremlin, we ceded ground to Putin. The West became Putin’s prey. We were either slaves to our hopes and ignored Russian transgressions through reset after reset, or we refused to confront Russia out of misplaced fears of nuclear war.
   
3. Focus on outcomes, not aspirations. Ukraine and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe were always more willing partners than Russia. Despite difficulties with post-Soviet legacies and corruption, they carved out thriving democracies and active civil societies for themselves. And yet, at the same time, the U.S. continued to privilege its relationship with Russia, a decidedly unwilling partner, over countries such as Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, and Moldova. Every foreign policy decision or national security issue was viewed through the prism of Russia. This has all been to the detriment of long-term regional stability. Our aspirations for a stable, predictable relationship with Russia were well-intended but ill-fated. If we had focused on tangible outcomes rather than pie-in-the-sky dreams that ignored shifting realities on the ground, we could have acted differently and contained the resurgence of a revanchist Russia.
   
4. Don’t self-deter. Your adversary knows how to warn you off. Russia practices a doctrine known as “reflexive control” in which the Kremlin sets conditions and generates an information environment that the Russian leadership knows will elicit a particular response from the West. For instance, Putin and his cronies consistently sabre-rattle with nuclear weapons through various means in order to force the U.S. and its allies to second guess themselves and back down. The U.S. must recognize, however, that nuclear deterrence cuts both ways, and we are more than capable of facing down this inflammatory rhetoric. The answer to nuclear threats is not to turn tail, abandon our allies, and surrender in spirit to Putin. We must speak to Putin in a language he will understand, and we can mitigate the risks of escalation through deconfliction channels.
   
5. Calculate risks. The U.S. should take risk-informed decisions based on probabilities and consequences with an eye toward long-term horizons. Short-term risks should not dictate policy. Otherwise, we end up with a situation like Russia’s war in Ukraine, wherein policy band-aids have precipitated a long-term crisis. No decision is without risk, and the U.S. must understand that taking risks now—for instance, by providing greater assistance to Ukraine—may buy down greater risks later.

I hope that after our time together, you will leave with a better understanding of where we are, how we got here, where we are headed, and where we need to go in Russia’s war on Ukraine. I’ll focus on practical steps that both you and Western leadership can take to support Ukraine, and I’ll give you the perspective you need to act as a well-informed voter, grassroots activist, and citizen of a just, free, and democratic world.

Turning back the tide of authoritarianism requires effort from all of us. I need you. Ukraine needs you. The West needs you. The world needs you.

Please join me in solidarity. Let’s all stand with Ukraine.

– Lt. Col. (Ret.) Alexander Vindman

View the archive of our 90-minute class and discover the Five Things We’ve Learned about the ways that t biography can help us better learn about thinking, writing, and living well.

Hi, I’m Nick Buccola, the author of The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America. I am thrilled to be hosting a series of four personal conversations with leading writers about their experience of the power of the written word.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author David W. Blight will join me for this second session in this series, Five Things I’ve Learned About the Challenges and Triumphs of Writing Biography. David and I met through the study of Frederick Douglass. We share a fascination with life and legacy of Douglass and a belief that the study of such historical figures is vital to the health of our political culture. But how do we undertake such work? How do we reconstruct and tell the story of a human life? Few scholars have devoted more thought to these questions than David and in this class, we will explore his journey as a biographer in order to learn things about thinking, writing, and living well.

David is a perfect fit for this series because he has devoted his life to studying individuals who have used the written word as their primary tool to bring about social change. Douglass often described words as his “weapon” in his lifelong battle to convince Americans to live up to their ideals. In his work on the power of historical memory, David has examined how the stories we tell ourselves about our history shape our sense of responsibility in the present. And in his current work on the great writer James Weldon Johnson, David will provide the world with yet another example of how one can transform reality through the use of language.

Please join us for what I know will be an enlightening and engaging class on the challenges and triumphs of writing biography. 

View the archive of my 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the transforming power of the Great Books—and why the ideas and passions within these ancient sources still possess the power to make and remake our lives today.

My name is Roosevelt Montás and I am a Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies at Columbia University. I have been teaching the “Great Books” to Columbia students for over 20 years, ten of them as Director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum. I invite you to join me in a discussion with Prof. Nicholas Buccola about some of the things I have learned from reading, teaching, and living with the classics.

My recent book, Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation is an intellectual memoir about how four great writers have influenced the trajectory of my life, from the shock of immigrating to New York City from rural Dominican Republic without speaking English at age twelve, to the struggles of self-discovery as a poor student at an Ivy League University, to the experience of directing the oldest and most influential great books program in the country.

I am trained as an Americanist, specializing in American political thought and its roots in Pre-Civil War American culture. I do not read ancient texts as a specialist, but as a curious and engaged individual. When teaching them, I approach them not as scholarly artifacts or museum relics, but as living texts. The classics command our attention because of what they say about the most persistent human questions we face and because the light they shed on the fundamental problems of our time. Great books are not primarily for scholars but for curious and thoughtful readers who seek intellectual experiences that illuminate their own humanity and that deepen their sense of what it means to be alive. The great books stand out for the force with which they provoke reflection on the grand question of our lives: “what whole way of life would make our lives most worthwhile living?” (to use words attributed to Socrates). Reading these books with that question in mind and discussing them with hundreds of thoughtful individuals—students, colleagues, and friends—has shaped the way I think about the world and the person that I am. 

I invite you to join me for this conversation, as Prof. Buccola and I discuss how these books can be transformative.  Among the things I look forward to discussing are:

• How all knowledge culminates in self-knowledge
• “Things are never as they seem, nor are they otherwise”
• Why education makes you free
• How the present emerges from and is organically connected to the past
• In order to see the world clearly, get out of the way

The work of education goes deeper than learning; it is the work of self-transformation.  I invite you to taste insights from ancient sources that can illuminate your entire life.

Best wishes,

Roosevelt Montás

View the archive of our 90-minute class and discover the Five Things We’ve Learned about keeping connected to the voices and visions of our country’s past – and about James Baldwin’s America and its urgent lessons for our own.

Hi, I’m Nick Buccola, the author of The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America. I am thrilled to be hosting a series of four personal conversations with leading writers about their experience of the power of the written word.

New York Times bestselling author Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. will join me for this first session in this series, Five Things I’ve Learned About America’s Past and Its Urgent Lessons for Today. Eddie and I met through our mutual love of the writer James Baldwin and it is Baldwin who provides the starting point for our conversation. Baldwin taught that history is present in all that we do and until we come to terms with our past, we cannot take responsibility for our present. In his book, Begin Again, Eddie “thinks with” Baldwin in order to better understand American history and contemporary politics. In other words, Eddie turned to Baldwin’s words in a quest to find the right words to make sense of the present. In this conversation, Eddie will share all he learned on that journey.

There is no better person with whom to launch this series of conversations about the power of the written word than Eddie Glaude. As a teacher, Eddie has inspired generations of students in the areas of theology, history, philosophy, and politics. As an academic leader, Eddie has distinguished himself as a builder and champion of the work of others. As a writer, Eddie has written seminal books in the areas of African American religion, pragmatist philosophy, and American history. And Eddie has devoted himself to sharing his genius beyond the walls of the academy, through a regular column in Time magazine, commentary on NBC and MSNBC, and he will soon be making his mark in the world of podcasts with History Is Us.

What can you look forward to in this class? My hope is that the conversation between Eddie and I will deepen your understanding of:

·      What it means to “think with” a great author like James Baldwin and how such thinking can shape your own writing and ways of being in the world;

·      The relationship between history and the present;  

·      The power and the limits of language to bring about social change.

Time with Eddie Glaude is always time well spent. Please join us for what I know will be an engaging and meaningful conversation.

– Nicholas Buccola

View the archive of our 90-minute class and discover the Five Things We’ve Learned about the essential roles that rage and anger play in public life – and in our principled responses to all forms of social injustice.

Hi, I’m Nick Buccola, the author of The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America. I am thrilled to be hosting a series of four personal conversations with leading writers about their experience of the power of the written word.

Acclaimed writer and teacher Myisha Cherry will join me for the fourth session in this series for a discussion of Five Things I’ve Learned about the Social Uses of Anger. I first got to know Myisha through her work on the philosophy of emotions. Myisha is my kind of philosopher; she thinks clearly and deeply about ideas that can help us make sense of how we ought to live. Her thinking on anger, for example, culminated in her acclaimed recent book, The Case for Rage. In the book, Myisha argues that we too often have an oversimplified understanding of how anger can manifest itself in our social and political lives. We are often taught the anger is “bad” or “unproductive.” But Myisha shows this is not always the case. Indeed, sometimes anger is not only an appropriate response to a social or political situation, but it can even be a necessary and morally praiseworthy response.

Myisha is a perfect fit for this series of classes on the power of the written word because she has devoted her life as a teacher and a scholar to thinking in slow motion about ideas that matter and sharing her thinking with the public. Myisha is committed to the idea that philosophy ought to extend beyond the walls of the academy, to the broader culture. Through her writing, teaching, and celebrated Unmuted podcast, Myisha is changing the world, one idea at a time.

There is always so much wisdom to be gained in the presence of Myisha Cherry. Please join us for what I know will be a great class.

View the archive of my 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about how the Internet is reshaping the way we learn and think, and why, for all of its promise, seems to be creating as many problems as it solves.

My name is James Surowiecki. I’m a journalist and an author, and I’d like to invite you to my new class, Five Things I’ve Learned about the Wisdom and Madness of Social Media.

About fifteen years ago, I published a book called The Wisdom of Crowds, which showed how under the right conditions groups of people could be remarkably intelligent, and smarter even the smartest person in them. The key to the wisdom of crowds, I argue, is having groups made up of diverse, independent thinkers who are able to learn from each other but still think for themselves. The paradox of the wisdom of crowds is that we’re smartest collectively when people are acting as much like individuals as possible.

I wrote The Wisdom of Crowds before social media as we know it really became a thing – before Facebook or Twitter or Instagram came to play such a big role in the lives of so many of us. And over the years, I’ve thought a lot about the way the Internet generally, and social media specifically, is reshaping the way we learn and think and how it influences what we know and how we know it, and why social media, for all of its promise, seems to be creating as many problems as it solves.

The Internet is, in principle, an extraordinary tool for making us collectively smarter. It offers us access to an enormous range of information and data we otherwise wouldn’t have, and exposes us to perspectives and opinions we otherwise would never hear. But in practice, the Net, and social media in particular, often seems to make us dumber. Social media is built around the idea of influence, not independence, and as a result it often reinforces people’s biases, encourages the spread of misinformation, magnifies polarization.

So in this 90-minute class, we’ll look at how this works, and what we can do about it.

We’ll look at how we learn and how being in groups—even online ones—can shape our behavior. We’ll talk about the power of conformity and peer pressure, and the way social media works to amplify them, and about ways to combat them. We’ll look at why spreading misinformation works, how you can recognize it, and how you can debunk it without managing to reinforce it. And we’ll talk about how you can make yourself a better, sharper user of social media and the Internet.

In the process, I hope the class will help you make your time online more enjoyable and productive, and our collective crowd a little bit wiser.

I hope you’ll join me!

– James Surowiecki